I'm pretty far into this build to be starting a build thread but I have admired so many others stories that I feel obligated to make one too. I bought this project a right before getting married in 2014, bad timing to start a project. The wife's jokes to "train me" were the origin of the license plate "UNTRNABLE" which should say "unTRAINable" but it wasn't long after riding in it that she claimed it was "unTURNable". We moved houses, it sat in my neighbors garage with minimal progress for a year or so and now we have a baby coming so i moved it into my garage and what do you know, i do stuff to it. The first picture below is the condition that I got it in.
The goal is not do fully restore it. My goal is to get it nice enough that we can have fun with it and if I park it in my driveway, i don't get evil letters from the home owner's association. Being as I'm probably saving this car from it's natural process of biodegrading I would like to spend as little as possible so you will not see a typical frame off restoration going on here.
After looking around for 5 or 10 minutes I chose a Toyota over a Jeep for the sake of retaining some value once it was operational. ($3000 CJ-5 plus restore effort and cost might sell for something like $4500 and a net loss of $$ excluding labor, $2000 FJ40 + equal restore effort and cost I figure would be worth more, maybe $6000? in the long run.
...All of that.. and I heard american cars are prone to rust...
Getting it to run was not a real problem. Getting it to run reliably was a several month long journey. I rebuilt the carb because it had been sitting so long. New plugs, wires, coil, fuel filter, fuel pump, fuel lines, and added electronic ignition. All of which yielded no luck. It would run great for a few minutes or longer but would eventually starve of fuel and die. Finally after buying a new carb, i found the element filter hiding inside the carb fuel inlet (seen below) that had been completely clogged the entire time. I threw it away. Runs great now. See below. The gold element is laying on the tip of the screwdriver. I'm not sure it this was a Toyota part or something that came when the Holley carb was originally installed.
I picked up some replacement rear panels and rocker patch panels so first step was to cut out the rust.
The goal is not do fully restore it. My goal is to get it nice enough that we can have fun with it and if I park it in my driveway, i don't get evil letters from the home owner's association. Being as I'm probably saving this car from it's natural process of biodegrading I would like to spend as little as possible so you will not see a typical frame off restoration going on here.
After looking around for 5 or 10 minutes I chose a Toyota over a Jeep for the sake of retaining some value once it was operational. ($3000 CJ-5 plus restore effort and cost might sell for something like $4500 and a net loss of $$ excluding labor, $2000 FJ40 + equal restore effort and cost I figure would be worth more, maybe $6000? in the long run.
...All of that.. and I heard american cars are prone to rust...
Getting it to run was not a real problem. Getting it to run reliably was a several month long journey. I rebuilt the carb because it had been sitting so long. New plugs, wires, coil, fuel filter, fuel pump, fuel lines, and added electronic ignition. All of which yielded no luck. It would run great for a few minutes or longer but would eventually starve of fuel and die. Finally after buying a new carb, i found the element filter hiding inside the carb fuel inlet (seen below) that had been completely clogged the entire time. I threw it away. Runs great now. See below. The gold element is laying on the tip of the screwdriver. I'm not sure it this was a Toyota part or something that came when the Holley carb was originally installed.
I picked up some replacement rear panels and rocker patch panels so first step was to cut out the rust.
Last edited:
