Builds 1973 Build - Putting the puzzle together (2 Viewers)

[Trick450r]

This past weekend I wasn't in the mood to work out in the shop so I setup a work table in my basement and started on the engine harness. I've done quite a few LS swaps and custom work on LS engines in general, so this isn't my first standalone harness conversion. However, the last one I did on my rx7 I wasn't happy with a few corners I cut so I decided to rectify that situation this time around. I've since removed all the factory stuff from the rx7 and replaced it with a Holley Dominator EFI system and harness so I've actually got a harness that would have worked for this application laying around, but I decided to start over with another.

I figured i'll document this to some extent and hopefully others find it helpful...if anybody has questions about using LS engines in landcruisers or anything else feel free to pm me.

Anyway, step one is printing out the PCM harness pinouts and identifying what goes, what stays, and what needs to be broken out for remote hookups. For the purpose of this project I am removing all the emissions stuff, A/C, and a couple unused connectors. I had initially intended to keep the electronic transmission control stuff just in case I decide to put a 4l60/80 in it, but unfortunately the harness had a big slice in it that destroyed some of that wiring so I just deleted it all.

This is how I started

First thing is to strip all the loom/tape from the PCM connectors to back behind the first set of connectors.

And the point of no return, cutting off all the OE fusebox connections besides the pink wires in the main connector.

^ Fun fact: You can actually just put all those remaining pink wires to 12v+ switched, and all the orange wires to 12v+ batt and it'll run with 58psi fuel pressure and grounds...that's not even close to the right way to do it, but it does work.

Next is to follow your pinouts and start pulling pins from the PCM connectors (I start with the blue one). Examples of what I've removed here are rear o2's, Air pump, EGR, Evap, A/C controls, Fuel tank pressure, etc etc etc. NOTE: You can ADD a circuit to pin #42 in the blue connector (unused from the factory) and have it programmed to trigger a ground signal for a fan relay at a programmed temp.

The easiest thing to do at this point is to pull all the loose wires back from the PCM to behind the fuse box connector, you'll find a lot of them terminate at the fuse box and will just be out of your way already. Also some of the remote wires you'll need are available now and can be traced from the PCM connectors to the fuse box connector and can be labeled and split out. Example: starter relay, 12v+ batt to pcm, 12v+ switched to pcm, fuel pump, tach signal, speed sensor (you HAVE to keep this), OBD2 serial data, Brake switch, etc.

I strongly suggest blue painters tape to the keep the harness shape under control as you remove circuits and get the loom removed. If you let it all run wild you'll have a hard time getting it sorted out again. Plus, painter tape is simple to tear off if you need to back track. You can also see here how I split out the remote hookups from the PCM connector.

Here i've got both Blue and Red PCM connectors finished, taped back up temporarily, and all my remotes split out. When I tag the remotes I also put the pin # and connector ID just in case I have an issue later...like you can see on one of these tags "9R Fuel Pump"...so pin #9, Red Connector, Fuel pump on.

From that point on it is pretty easy but incredibly tedious. You've got two choices here:
1) Re-loom the small area you tore apart, hookup your remote wires and go for it (what I did on my RX7 the last time I did one of these harnesses)
2) Remove every circuit you don't need all the way back to the effected connector.

For this project I decided to remove the circuits completely. And I'm glad I did because when I got the leg of the harness that travels to the drivers side o2 sensors and the transmission I found the harness almost completely cut in half. I back tracked at that point and de-pinned and removed all the electronic trans stuff which is a TON of circuits, and only had two wires to identify and repair going to the front o2 sensor on the drivers side. So with about half of the loom stripped away:

You basically want to chase your circuits all the way to the connectors and remove it all, the furthest thing from the PCM is the passenger side rear o2 sensor. So if you're removing emissions then you're stripping the whole harness down. The last thing you want to do is identify the pink wires going into the fuse box connector in one of the first pics. You can use a continuity test (or resistance if you want) to identify which one goes to the MAF sensor, 2 to the coil connectors, 2 to the front o2 sensors, and you should be left with 8 for the injectors. More on what to do with these in my next post.

Anyway, once it was all said and done I had removed this rats nest of wire and connectors:

And lastly I brought in the intake to lay the whole thing out. This is the best thing to do to get a feel for where it goes before you tape and loom it again. At this point you can visualize where and how your going to mount the PCM, if need be you can still extend everything and move it. You can also shorten and tidy up and bunch of other stuff, since I've done this before I moved all the grounds to one location (back of DS head), I moved the MAP sensor connector into a different leg of the harness that is much cleaner, and I'll shorten up all the injector wires and hide them a bit.

I ordered a small fuse box and couple relays to wrap this job up so I'll finish it next weekend and post a couple pics of that too.

Oh ya, I also think I've got a neat solution to stiffen up the door hinge pillar and also some other areas...stay tuned for that.

 

[Trick450r]

I totally forgot I had this build thread going! This rig is about 90% complete now, I'll get back here and update everything. In the meantime, does anyone know the best way to post pictures such that they'll stay here? I hate going back and seeing all the pics gone.

 

[pb4ugo]

Download them from your phone or computer.

 

[thatcabledude]

I totally forgot I had this build thread going! This rig is about 90% complete now, I'll get back here and update everything. In the meantime, does anyone know the best way to post pictures such that they'll stay here? I hate going back and seeing all the pics gone.

Just upload directly to the forum:

 

[Trick450r]

Okay boys and girls, time for a mega update. First and foremost I'm short on pictures. I started a youtube channel a couple years ago and havent taken as many pics since i've filmed everything. There are quite a few videos on the 40 build on my channel, so go subscribe and watch them, my channel is Ranwhenparked https://www.youtube.com/@ranwhenpark3d . Some of the more blurry pics are actually screenshots from a video anyway.

Anyway, off we go.

So right about the time I stopped updating the build thread, I put the 40 into storage anyway . I was spread pretty thin at the time and wanted to focus on wrapping up my 63' Ford, which was a lingering project for years. So the 40 got dragged onto the trailer and tucked away.

I think it was tarped on my trailer for a little over a year...But the '63 came out awesome! This thing is now my weekend go-to driver, my wife and I have put probably 20k miles on it the last couple years.

Anyway, fast forward a little more than a year. The truck is pretty much done, and the 40 is back under the knife.

And then I got serious about this thing...

 

[Trick450r]

Some of the pics I'm going to post are screenshots from videos taken later...so other stuff is done that I haven't covered...anyway

One of my big priorities was not only making the Mallotte tub as rigid as possible (because these things are paper thin in some areas) but also making it significantly safer. Which starts in the passenger area. I think I mentioned early in the thread that I wanted to remove the terrible plywood panels that support the door hinges. Well, this is what I ended up settling on for the lower portion:


So the portion that the body mount bolt goes through is 1/2" aluminum plate. It has a 3/4" x 2" aluminum part that is attached to the base plate and goes up the backside of the door pillar. I machined a flat at the hinge mount location for the hinge to sit against. This way the door hinge and door pillar have a direct load path to the body mount / frame.

The next thing I attacked was the seat mounting. Mallotte would have you bore a couple holes through the fiberglass and just bolt your seats to the floor with some fender washers....no thanks. So I started by removing the mild steel plates and bars that came in the Mallotte tub around the middle body mount area, they looked like this originally:

So I replaced those with stainless steel plates that extended to the body mount, and added stainless steel solid bar going up the side of the body. the side of the body is 10x stronger now. I panel bonded these in and later fiberglassed them in as well, I'll get to that. You can see I welded nuts into the end of the solid bars, that is because I If I ever put a hardtop on I can put a bolt and jam nut into those bars and thread them up to support the front hardtop bars.

And then I could start thinking about seat mounts.

 

[Trick450r]

So for seats I decided on newer Jeep seats, it's slightly sacrilegious but they're real nice. I found a set of brand new never used ones from an 18' Willys edition. Once I had the seats I could start on the mount structure. So remember the plates I attached at the body mount locations? I fabricated some 1"x2" steel tubing to attach the front body mount plate to the middle plate. They run just under the lower door lip inside. Those look like this:

I also decided to use one of the plastic reproduction tanks from cruisercorps, I dont know how I feel about it yet...but it works. I also bent up some Aluminum fuel tank straps and ran the lines through bulkheads in the floor behind the tank:

Next came the fun part. I fabricated an entire inner skeleton for the passenger area. It bolts to the 1"x2" bars on both sides, bolts through the floor in the middle, and the drivers seat bolts sandwich through the floor as well. It's all made from 2"x.375" steel bar. So now the seats are tied through the body mounts. If this didnt make the glass tub a lot more rigid and safer, I dont know what will.

And with that, Jordy had seats!

 

[Trick450r]

Around this time I turned my attention to the drivetrain, I really wanted to get Jordy yard driving. So I yanked the engine out, cleaned and degreased it, painted it, painted the trans, and rebuilt the Tcase:

The Tcase ended up being a problem. The 4x4 shifter portion was frozen and garbage. I ended up yanking the case out of the parts truck, taking both apart, and building one functional case. This was quite the saga and is well documented in the video on my youtube channel. Anyway, once I put the drivetrain back together I decided to ditch the original 4x4 shifter assembly and faricate a twin stick:

It's similar to other available kits. I just didn't feel like waiting so machined all the parts and built my own, it works perfect. I did buy these nice shift knobs though, then painted the inlays orange:

 

[Trick450r]

Once the drivetrain was bolted back in I bent the twin stick levers to fit the body, modified the factory steel trans tunnel cover and installed a nice boot. I also put in a TCI th350 shifter around this time.

You can see in that pic where I had to cut out a section of the tunnel to fit the levers where they curve around the trans. I also had to build the entire flange around the tunnel cover to fit the Mallotte tub. I was dead set on using the steel cover though just for rigidity sake.

Anyway, with the list of items needed to yard drive getting smaller, I bought a 3 row aluminum radiator and mounted it up in the factory support. This one also has a trans cooler built in so I fabricated AN lines and ran them through the frame rail from the trains to the rad.

So, I wrapped up some odds and ends like radiator hoses and Power steering AN lines. I ziptied all my wiring out of the way, bungee corded the PCM to the fender, threw the front clip back on and ripped Jordy around the yard!

Things I also did by this time that I don't really have pics of:
Rebuilt the front axle/brakes
Fabricated a true-dual exhaust setup consisting of Shorty headers and 2.5" stainless V-banded pipes running outside the frame rails
New brake booster/master cylinder
probably a few other small things

Again, most of this stuff is documented in detail on my youtube channel.

 

[Trick450r]

So right about this time I stumbled upon this Ultima GTR project, brought it home, and put Jordy back in storage for another year or so...are you guys seeing a pattern develop yet?

 

[B y r o n]

Opposite ends of the spectrum!

 

[Trick450r]

Opposite ends of the spectrum!

Yeah, I've got what you might call an....eclectic taste in cars.
I actually just sold the Turbo LS rx7 that I posted a pic of on the first page.

 

[Trick450r]

So after letting the truck sit for another year or so I pulled it out just prior to fall of 2022 and ripped into the body work. This tub had been absolutely hacked apart by the previous owner, so I just wanted to start over fresh. I filled every hole they had put in it and smoothed everything out, as well as bonded in aluminum angle piece in a lot of the 90* corners just to aid in rigidity. I also supported every hole with aluminum from the backside. I dont have pictures of the whole process, but the windshield support area is a good example of the issues I had:

Obviously there was still some more finish work done on that eventually. Anyway, I used the same strategy everywhere: Aluminum backing bonded in, fiberglass to cover it, and the lightest amount of filler possible to smooth it out.

This went on for quite a while. I ended up filling the rear tailgate hinge holes and backing them with 3/16" aluminum plates to support future hinges, filling the hole from the aux tank in the rear, filling the striker plate holes, filling all the dash holes, bonding in aluminum to mount the glovebox door, and also fixing the rear wheel wells were the PO trimmed too far and opened a gap between the body and well. I also riveted the aluminum panels in most places and counterbored the hole to get the heads below the surface...anyway, it was quite a bit of glass work.

 

[Trick450r]

So I had already decided that an FJ40 is not an FJ40 without the kick vents! so you all know what that means...I went and cut the panels out of the parts truck, trimmed them down, sand blasted them, and plotted them out on the body. I started with the drivers side since the passenger side is more complex with the blower intake relation:

So basically I cut out the opening 1/4" smaller on all sides than the panel I cut. Then I traced the full panel over the opening to establish the 1/4" lip area. Then I ground the fiberglass out so the lip could sit flush to the surface. Once I had all that done I used 3M panel bond and bonded the steel section in. I also sanded the gelcoat and top layer of glass off beforehand so I could lay at least one layer of glass on top of the panel after boding it in.

 

[Trick450r]

Once I got the drivers side one I was feeling more confident, so I attacked the passenger side.

Before:

After:

So at this point all I had to do was wrap up some odds and ends and it was on to painting. One of the punch list items was filling all the dash holes. I originally took this pic so later on I knew where the original hole were so I could avoid them when mounting new switches, hence the tape measure for reference.

Around this time I also decided to test some colors and see how paint laid out over the kick vent areas...perfect!

After I got everything prepped the tub needed a thorough wash down...what better way to do that than to slide it onto the flatbed and take it over to the hose? Gotta love a flatbed truck! You can also see where the auxiliary fuel tank filler hole is filled on this one.

 

[Trick450r]

And onto paint! I did this one the old fashioned way, out in the driveway under a canopy.

Primer done!

 

[Trick450r]

And topcoat done! my favorite color is Orange and although it looks bright in this pic, it came out perfect!

I've painted a few cars now, but this one came out the best of the for sure. Practice makes perfect I guess. Anyway, the party wasn't over yet. As soon as the paint dried I taped it off and sprayed the interior and firewall with lizardskin sound deadener:

And done!

I couldn't be happier with the way the tub came out. It's definitely the most rigid Mallotte tub out there. I added a TON of fiberglass too it all over the place, not to mention the aluminum and SS plates I glassed into it in all the critical areas.

 

[Trick450r]

So with the tub complete I needed to take care of all the front sheetmetal. I had decided to ditch the OE fenders I had since they were trash and buy a new set from CCOT, but they hadn't arrived yet. So I went ahead with the windshield frame, hood, bib, aprons. I did a lot of sheetmetal work on all those parts to get them right, but a fun example was the front of this apron...it actually turned into a hilarious mistake that I put so much energy into these aprons, ill explain later lol.

Anyway, here's some rust repair progress. Gotta love recycling OE steel.

Multiply that effort by 100 and you've got a rust free front clip!

 

[Trick450r]

Once I was done with the metal work...back under the canopy in the driveway.

I actually got greedy on the topside of the hood and got some orange peel on the front which you can see...most annoying...

I'm also now seeing in these pics that I lied before, I painted the hood and whatnot before I did the tub...oh well.

I also had finished the trans tunnel, and coated it in lizardskin as well. You can see here how I boxed around the area where the twin stick levers protruded through the tunnel originally.

 

[Trick450r]

The only thing to do next was to put the body on the frame and start the arduous assembly process. Here you can also see more detail on how I ran the exhaust, the other side is identical.

And starting to fit the OE sheetmetal to the glass tub. At first it seemed like it was going remarkably well, when I stood back I realized I had issues...more on that later.

Fenders on. now it's starting to look like a 40! These are reproduction fenders I got from CCOT, they mounted up great.