Builds 1977 FJ40 Rebuild – Focus on Custom Stainless Tub

[psmbfuer]

Look at how nice this looks

40 SERIES FRONT BUMPER

Just unwrapped one from @OPMACHINE Here it is next to an OEM painted bumper and another bumper I had powder coated in Vegas Gold. Excuse the dirt on the other; for comparison, I cleaned off the right side. The color between the two powder coated bumpers is nearly if not identical. The OP...

forum.ih8mud.com

Yeah, that is great looking and pretty much exactly what I have been thinking for the front, very original, but with the Warn, and a few extra attachment points. Thanks for sharing knuckle47. And I have the same experience with the ends of the stock bumper, just a tap and their bent.

 

[psmbfuer]

So, thanks to @firemanj92, rethinking got the better of me and I have ordered a set of clips to install to so we can compare the clips to our previous hubcap installation approach shared in post #196.

For anyone that is interested in the clips, I actually ordered one set from CityRacer and another from The Florida Yard - I just want to check them both out to see how they compare prior to installation. Both set are galvanized, which is very close to aluminum on the galvanic index, so there shouldn't be much issue, but we will likely coat the foot of the clip or otherwise add another layer of isolation between the foot of the clip and the wheel before installing them.

I'll revisit this again once we receive the clips.

 

[psmbfuer]

Back on post #14, we build the main front driver's floor pan, and eventually we repaired the driver's side mid-tub cross member, but we hadn't completed the floor, or install it, so let's wrap that up.

First we needed to finish drilling holes and welding on the mounting nuts so we can later bolt on the tunnel. And although we don't seem to have any close ups, we again used the stainless flange nuts.

Then we needed to finish a mount to attach the driver's floor to the original passenger front floor, along the rear.

And here is a view from the bottom showing how the floor will be plug welded to the rocker.

 

[knuckle47]

Before you paint this excellent example of metal work, you should do a walk-around video of all the repairs to the tub and post it on YouTube, this is really a nice piece of work and skill

 

[psmbfuer]

Thanks again knuckle47 - it's been an enjoyable build. And thanks for the recommendation regarding YouTube, time will tell ...

 

[psmbfuer]

Now, the final few steps to complete the driver's floor.

We used both panel adhesive and plug welds to attach the new inner rocker and then plug welded the floor to the outer rocker and mid-tub cross member.

We need to fire the photographer - he forgot to take any additional pics of the driver's front full clamped down and welded in place...

But here is one from the bottom with the plug welds complete.

 

[Malleus]

I'm going to miss this when you're done...

 

[psmbfuer]

Thanks Malleus, it has certainly been more enjoyable having you along for the ride. As far as the build, there is still more to do on the tub, but as you allude to, most of the heavier fab work is nearly complete. After that, we have seats, some hinge work, trans tunnel repair, some get-it-on-the-road paint, a little carpet and sound deadening, and then some back-on-the-road action. And after that, we should be back in real time mode. and I hope to pull the tub off the frame, replace the two tub supports with stainless, etc.

 

[knuckle47]

It may be sounding odd… I have found reading through the forum with pictures of the project is equally entertaining and enjoyable. Whether you’re making tub parts or installing a hinge, it is fun to read it and see it. I posted something about picking up a pizza and it was starting to snow… I’ll bet 85%of us have been out in snow doing something…REALLY nothing special…..the picture I added showed the blizzard like conditions I went into and conveyed the act of misery going out side. By the way…we wound up with 3” and 14*F this morning…

I find your pictures provide some intuitive thinking and make it interesting..sometimes motivational. I guess that’s why it is said …1 picture is worth 1000 words. You’re providing some very cool reading.

 

[psmbfuer]

Hello again knuckle47 - very kind words, and equally appreciated. I had to do a little searching to figure out where you posted your pizza run in the snow - I wasn't aware of the "how-is-everyone-doing" thread, but I am now, thanks. Being just west of you, we also had a cold and snowy start of the day, although we had 4 to 5 inches of beautiful white stuff, and are expecting a low of 2 degrees F tonight.

And, very good to hear that this has been both entertaining and enjoyable - for what it's worth, I suspect some of this comes from my soft notion of a target audience. As I noted in post #1, a fellow mud member that I met live, @wimberosa, suggested that I start a build thread, and as I considered it, the decision to post came down to the hope that the younger audience, or young moms / dads that might be considering a 40 project with their kids, would find some of what they need and possibly a little motivation to get started.

To me, "kids" (mine are now in their mid to late 20s) are by far the most amazing experience, largest responsibility, growth driver, etc., that I have had and every will have. Then, while the family was growing up, outside "kids" would stop by, too many of which were without an active dad in their lives, and to some, I tried to provide insight, the occasional ear, help repairing their trucks, etc... Anyway (trying to keep this short), with this audience in mind, I thought it important to provide details, answer to why(s), lot of pics (reducing the word count, as you say, by thousands), alternative approaches, etc.

And if in the end, that helped to make it entertaining and enjoyable, all the better. Honestly, I've been concerned that at times I was geeking out a little too much.

 

[knuckle47]

@psmbfuer verbose? Well not for me. I enjoy the details …I should add educational too but this is well above my skill set so I can’t imagine creating shapes like these and having it turn into an FJ40. I also believe my posts are a bit wordy at times but I need that kind of preamble to set the image I have about the story I am trying to tell. I also do not like to hijack someone’s posts but at this age, I have been there and feel the need to contribute so my 2 cents gets tossed in…and sometimes too much.

I have not been banned yet so as long as I’m not offending anyone…I’m in.

You on the other hand have some terrific content…keep it up. I’m looking forward to seeing this FJ40 in its full restored glory. Any thoughts on color or is it always rustic green? You may know I’m partial to rustic green and mustard yellow.

.

 

[psmbfuer]

Thanks as always @knuckle47 and from my perspective the added 2 cents from you and others are what makes this an interesting and better thread, so thanks.

And hopefully I won't disappoint in the end, but I'm not yet fully certain that we will paint the 40. I realize that it's not a patina 40, but the multiple colors have a bit of a story behind them and even the rusty fenders have grown on me. I have no concern about scratches or rocks kicking up, and more freely enjoy it than I might if it were to have a complete and perfect paint job.

I also have a brand new set of fenders already painted Rustic Green, and they will likely be installed when I get around to pulling the body off the frame, but I have been driving it all winter, even yesterday - I always go out in a Cruiser when it snows, and currently, this is my only running Cruiser. The thought of having it out of service, knowing how slow I can be, and the fact that I just enjoy it so much make it difficult to tear down. All that aside, tub removal must happen so I can clean and protect the frame; otherwise, driving it in the snow means exposure salt and brine, and it will slowly kill what is currently a clean and strong frame. It will also be easier to replace all the brake lines, install new springs and shocks, etc.

Regarding a potential color change, there are a lot of 40 colors that we like, some even slightly more than the Rustic Green, but we do like Rustic Green. And since the fenders are already painted, I suspect that if we do paint it, the Rustic Green will stay. Another paint scenario is to paint all non-stainless parts, but leave the rockers and quarter bare stainless. And painting everything has not been ruled out...

And since all body panels that would be seen from the outside are complete in the thread, here are several pics out in the snow yesterday, with several points worth a mention:

• I have removed the hubcaps for the winter, saving them from the road salt, but with this you will notice that the original wheel coating, I suspect an e-coating, is not holding up well to UV. I have planned to powder coat or paint the rims to the original 40 color anyway, but still a disappointment. The wheels have only been in the sun for two summers.
• The pics have been downsized and compressed, so they have lost some sharpness, but you can likely see the very poor paint line toward the rear of the driver's door - this is what you get when you try to prime and paint in 38° F day, even if I did warm it in a southern facing sun. There was a little exposed mild steel that needed protection, so it had to be done, and our shop had my non-running LX450 in it. I also removed the tape in the dark, while rushing to get in the house for dinner, which resulted in the paint tear.
• We'll get to the soft top soon.

Below, you can see the various colors that I mentioned above. Rustic Green is the color on the cowl and the thin protective stripe on the top of the quarters and around the door. The non-40 colored green hood has been in storage for decades, but it is in excellent condition, so I wound up installing it.

And here is the current front bumper that I had in storage. The one that came on it was a double round tube, similar to what remains on the rear.

 

[Malleus]

Love it.

FWIW, and since no one asked my opinion, I know that powdercoating everything in sight is all the rage, but powdercoating will chip on wheels, and cannot be repaired without repeating the entire process. I think paint is the only way to go.

 

[psmbfuer]

Thanks Malleus, for both the "Love", and the unsolicited opinion.

I agree with both of you comments about power coating (pc) and throughout most of my life have stayed away from it, but ...

Backstory: I had a new bumper for I'm no longer sure for what, when I was much younger - it took a lot of my disposable income at the time, and after several months the pc was coming off in good sized flakes, almost sheets, peeling back away mostly from sharp edges, and this wasn't caused by impact or scraping. And this experience has repeated for me over the years - even in the last several years, some of my son's new landscaping accessories, like leaf blower holders, had the pc fail, and again, not due to impact.

Then, in roughly 2018, the wheels on my 450 were in bad shape, but I didn't want to put money into new wheels, and prepping the aluminum was going to be tedious, largely because I didn't have a blasting cabinet to help prep / clean them for paint, so I started looking into options and called several local shops, for both blasting (and I would paint them myself), and for pc.

The one pc shops agreed with many of my concerns and also discussed why these concerns were largely not valid with his process - preparation is 90% of the battle. He also seemed fastidious and knowledgeable, and would both pre-bake and blast the wheels to be certain that any oils were burnt off and to assure he had a proper surface for bonding. He also uses a primer pc for a stronger adhesion, and then a topcoat pc, which also has strong UV inhibitors. On top of all of that, his price was also about $10 higher than it was going to cost to have them blasted, so we had him coat them. For the curious, they were $60 / wheel. And these wheels are still as good as the day we installed them on the LX450.

Then about a year later, we again trusted him with the wheels that are now on the 65 Carryall that I shared back in post #185, and these too came out fantastic and have held up well, even if they haven't seen any abuse.

After starting to trust his pc work, I build my son a bed extender and ramp system (pic below, so you can see what I'm referring to) for his business pickup in the spring of 2022, and if you ever tried to paint expanded metal, so it won't rust, it is not easy. And all of the steel used was hot rolled, so adhesion would benefit greatly from blasting to remove the scale, so we again took it to be pc'd - all of it for $380, so it simply wasn't worth my time to blast / prep and then paint. It too has held up beyond expectations - this ramp system has seen 3 year of full time service, running 30", 48" and 52" mowers in and out, plus all of the other full-out work-truck activities, and still today, nothing has started to peel or rust, and even hard impacts have not caused any chipping. There are several scrapes that cut through outer coating, but not both. This is the toughest powder coating that I have ever seen. I also suspect that the fine powder, being drawn in electrostatically, is slightly better at penetrating tight areas.

None of this is to say that your point about touching up pc work is invalid, but so far I have had no reason to - and even if I scratch a wheel on a rock, it doesn't seem to want to chip, in direct opposition to all of my previous pc experience.

And my son would likely attest to being tired of hearing me comment that I can't believe how well the pc has held up. And despite all of this, I may still paint the fifteen52 wheels because I hope they will see more action out in the desert. (This post likely wins the "too many words" award, or "I just don't care award",but here you go.)

 

[psmbfuer]

There are several patches needed in the rear floor, but we took a break from the tub to make some unnecessary, but enjoyable work on the Bib Hinge. We had a spare, so we didn't need to touch the truck, but after reworking the tire carrier hinge, we decided to do the bib hinge as well.

We should have taken a pic before we started, but the pic below is still useful to show that finding the center of the pin was not done by simply looking at the weld. We took our time, measured everything, and used a small stainless ruler to mark the center axis on the end. It's hard to see, but then we used a spring-loaded centering punch to make a mark for the bit. We then used a bit from the Rotabroach Hole Cutting Kit that we mentioned back on post #28 and started to cut a circular hole in mounting bracket of the hinge. As we progress through this, you will see that it important to get this hole centered as accurately as possible, and to use a bit with the same or slightly larger OD as the center pin.

After drilling both ends, we were able to slide the pin out.

Then we started taking measurements of everything, so we could order a new stainless pin, sleeve bearings, and thrust bearings.

The mount was slightly out of square, so we put it in the vice and gave it several slow squeezes until we got it back to square.

Then we mocked it up using another pin that I have already for the rear tire carrier swing.

 

[psmbfuer]

And here it is back together. Of course we will need to take it apart when we are ready for paint and installation. It's also worth mentioning that we used a stainless nylock nut, allowing us to get just the correct amount of pressure on the hinge so there is no play, while it still rotates nice and smooth. A bit overkill for a hinge that might need to swing ~90 degrees for a total of half a dozen times in its life, but it was enjoyable and we like the end result.

 

[psmbfuer]

Next up are the patches that I mentioned to the rear floor. These are simple, flat, butt patches. We first made the patch and then used it as a template, then cut and welded.

And now the patch is sitting in place, flush with the floor.

Here is the other patch and you can also see there were several drill holes that needed to be plugged

You can see that the pitting is quite deep, but it was interesting how strong it was, even when using the needle scaler.

We used the same process for this one - cutting or tracing could have been a little more accurate.

Next available pic jumps to the below. The fluid on the floor is Rust Mort, a phosphoric acid based solution, and as you can see, we taped up the floor for paint. We are rushing a little at this point with hopes of a spring run out west.

 

[knuckle47]

Will you need to neutralize the acid at some point?

 

[psmbfuer]

And here are several pics of the rear and passenger floor cleaned, rinsed down, and mostly taped up. We won't be spraying the floors this time around - we're just trying to get a solid layer on the steel so we can get it back on the road.

 

[psmbfuer]

Will you need to neutralize the acid at some point?

Messages passing in the night, and good call knuckle47. We rinsed everything multiple times, each with a fresh bucket of water. Above, you can see that we did the same to the front passenger floor.