Builds 1977 FJ40 Rebuild – Focus on Custom Stainless Tub

[psmbfuer]

Our ‘77 FJ40 has seen better days - it needs mechanical and electrical work, seats and wheels need to be replaced, and much more, but most of all the tub needs a complete rebuild.

In that my personal Cruiser work rarely stays on the top of the family to-do list for long, and because I wanted to avoid boring potential readers / contributors, I’m just kicking this build thread off now, despite having slowly starting the work in late 2015. I also need to give credit to @wimberosa for the encouragement to kick this off.

Background
I have owned Land Cruisers most of my life, with my first FJ40 back in 1987, but by 2007 the pre-heat glow plug timer on the family BJ42 failed and what could have been a relatively simple repair turned into a broad set of customizations, many of which are complete, and yet the BJ42 is still down today.

By 2015, my son was 14 and the family (yes, even my wife) wanted to again have a driveable 40 or 45 that we could enjoy and work on together, so in September we decided to buy a relatively inexpensive FJ40 that we could enjoy driving, and rebuild over time. The FJ40 that we bought was a ‘77 advertised here on Mud by @rckhound. The ad represented it as in good running condition, with a body that was very rough, but oddly with a frame that had no cancer. The tub skeleton, (the hard to reproduce channels where the top sits and where the doors close on the tub) also appeared to be rust free.

Here are several shots of the 40 from the original ad.

So I flew from Pennsylvania out to Colorado, found that the good and bad were accurately represented, thanks @rckhound, and purchased it. Here is the shot I took after arriving at a parking lot to view the 40.

More to come tomorrow.

 

[fireflyr]

this isn’t starting well. I have this sense of foreboding……

 

[psmbfuer]

Yes, it is a rough 40, and it was a little daunting, and although our efforts have been slow, then have been steady and good progress has been made. To ease your concern and provide an example of the progress, here is a shot of the driver's rocker before and after.

 

[psmbfuer]

Enjoying the New-To-Us 40

Once home, the family was thrilled to again have a drivable, albeit rough, 40, so much so that we were deliberate to keep it drivable as long as possible, while also starting work. This combined with knowing that the tub would need to be replaced, or almost entirely rebuilt, we temporarily installed an old pair of aluminum quarter panel skins and install temporary patches needed to pass PA State inspect.

After the patches, we removed the top, and the family, including our four-legged members, enjoyed the topless 40 year round, while in parallel starting repairs and planning how to deal with the rebuild, especially the tub.

And here is a shot showing the temporary patches and the aluminum quarter panel skin and my pups waiting for their ice cream.

Builds - 1977 FJ40 Rebuild – Focus on Custom Stainless Tub

77 FJ40 Build, with focus on tub rebuild using 304 stainless steel.

forum.ih8mud.com

 

[psmbfuer]

Repairs While Still in Service​

Front Marker Lights - The front markers would sometimes flicker, which was a result of poor ground, so we ran separate ground wires to the front marker housings, which has corrected this issue. We will be redoing this in the future with better connectors and new housings that we have ready to go on.

 

[psmbfuer]

Headlight Switch – The headlight switch bulb was burnt out and rather than just replacing it, we decided to install an LED. This required a pair of resistors and an LED in the headlight switch and we love having this light working again.

Clutch - The clutch would chatter no matter how carefully it was engaged, so we purchased all new ‘77 parts and had a spare flywheel resurfaced. After stocking all of the needed parts, we began the disassembly and found an old style three finger clutch assembly. And while we might have made adjustments to calm it down, we decided to move forward with all of the new ‘77 parts that we had already purchased. Luckily, I also had a 77 style clutch fork laying around.

We build the following to pull the pilot bearing.

Overall, the clutch replacement when well, but getting the tranny / transfer back in was a struggle. I took a day off from work, and was working alone. I also don’t have a lift so was working under the truck, with a homemade tranny jack. I had a very difficult time getting the trans to slide into place, even with the alignment tool. I had spent several hours struggling with it, but once my son came home from school, I had him push in the clutch and it everything slid together in a matter of seconds.

While the tranny and transfer were out, we also installed a fresh rear main seal, the oil pan gasket, replaced all parts in and around the emergency brake, and installed a new starter.

 

[wimberosa]

The whole thing ends up amazing! Stay tuned!

 

[psmbfuer]

Thanks much Wimberosa, moving over to the tub planning in my next post, hopefully later tonight.

 

[fireflyr]

It’s a pain to do a lot of work solo, glad your son is around to help. I ended up cutting a couple 2x4s to length so I could pump the brakes and wedge it between the toolbox and pedal and run around and bleed the brakes. Worked better than a vacuum bleeder for me. Thanks for documenting your progress. I have been blessed that rust is not one of the issues I have had to deal with.

 

[psmbfuer]

Agreed, he was a big help, and I love when he has the time join me. That said, I should have also come up with a way to depress the clutch prior to that - I man-handled it for way to long - live and learn.

And sure thing regarding documenting the plan and the work - I have benefited greatly over the years from the work that others have taken the time to post and I thought it was time to do the same.

No rust - the beauty of California. I lived there from 89 - 92 and had another green FJ40. If memory serves, it was a 78, and it also had no rust. Unfortunately, I needed to sell it to move back to PA.

The same truck on a trip through Moab.

 

[psmbfuer]

Planning the Tub Build

Again in an effort to reduce downtime, and to provide the most educational benefit for my son, we wrote up and organized an outline of how we would tackle the tub rebuild. The planning information below is fairly detailed (hopefully not too much so), but for any of you that haven’t done much fabrication, welding, etc., we hope that this section might be useful.

In wrestling with our goals and trade-offs, we considered using pre-fabed mild steel panels available on the market. I have also installed Aqualu’s aluminum tubs and they are excellent and were a strong contender. We also looked into the Teseven stainless tubs, but I wanted to go a fairly deep into design and fabrication with my son, so we decided to build all replacement panels and we planned to use 304 stainless. This approach likely means that some panels will not have ribs, so apologies in advance to the purists – it was a tough choice.

For what it is worth, we spent more time on this rib / no-rib issue than maybe we should have and started to design a panel press, and looked at motorized bead rollers, then almost bought a rib press from a Mud member, but we wanted to be realistic and get this back on the road while my son was still in high school (and we didn’t want another multi-decade project like the yet-to-be-completed BJ42), so we decided to skip trying to press or roll ribs (for the most part).

Our goals for the tub rebuild are fairly straightforward:

• We want to reduce the chance of recurring rust as much as possible, obviously.
• The new tub should look as close to original as we can realistically make it while considering our current equipment / tooling, and what we can practically achieve within our financial and time budgets.
• Obviously the tub should be durable, strong, and safe.
• I want to have an enjoyable time with my son while providing the broadest learning experience possible in terms of fabrication, thinking through design / trade offs, developing welding skills, paying attention to details, planning ahead, recovering with grace when we fail to do so (this one is for me), and dynamically adjusting the plan as reality dictates.

Our Plan to Achieve These Goals​

• Rather than building and installing numerous patches, we plan to replace entire panels as much as possible and practical.
• Panels will be custom 16 and 18 gauge 304 stainless steel.
• Moving to some flat, non-ribbed panels will diminish the comparative strength to original, but we hope to minimize this by adding additional bends and/or adding L-track to the inner wheel wells, as an example. And using stainless should help with this as well.
• Even through we don’t plan to replace ribs, all other lips will remain, for example on the quarter panels.
• We plan to redesign the rear opening / sill so it will no longer be a dirt /salt /moisture catch, and rust breeding ground (for us rust belt folks), while keeping the look very close to original.
• To minimize the return of rust, butt joints / welds are the preferred method of joining mild steel to stainless.
• Where there are two or three layers/laps of mild steel in the original design, for example between the rear floor and the vertical inner wheel well (two layers), we plan to replace the mild steel floor lip with stainless resulting in a stainless to stainless lap joint. The outer, rear, lower edge of what we call the mid-tub cross member has three layers of steel. This too will be modified slightly to reduce these overlapping layers.
• We also plan to use panel adhesive on lap joints, where appropriate, not only for adhesion / added strength, but also as a caulk / sealer. We will also not rely on panel adhesive alone, but as a supplement to plug welds, spot welds and/or nuts/bolts.
• Speaking of nuts and bolt, we originally planned to bolt key panels together, easing future repair and maintenance, even the quarter panels, but my wife strongly vetoed this after seeing a test mild steel quarter panel bolted in place using a low profile, wide-headed stainless screws – she declared that “it looked like Frankenstein’s monster”. My son and I also thought it strayed too far from original, despite the benefits, so we scrapped this idea for the most part.
• We will also be using 309LSi filler with Tri-mix gas when joining mild to stainless. This combination should help to prevent cracking, reduce the chance of corrosion in and around the weld, improve weld flow, and allows for slightly less amperage while achieving the same penetration. TIG will be used, but to a lesser extent. (I should also note, that I’m not a professional, certified, or otherwise trained welder, so look into this on your own, and others might have comments / different views.)
• We also plan to draw and cut 5/16th aluminum heat dissipating plates to help speed up the welding on long panel lines, while reducing warpage.
• We plan to prep and paint all inside channel surfaces – examples are mid-tub cross member, floor supports, tub skeleton, etc.

The only areas of the tub that we will keep are the skeleton, the passenger front floor, the rear floor, and the central portion of the mid-tub cross member. Inversely, we plan to build:

• Lower rear cowl corners
• Complete rockers
• Driver’s side floor with all supports / mounts
• Both outer portions of the mid-tub cross member
• Wheel well / roll bar supports and quarter panel corner supports
• Quarter panels
• Since the rear floor is so solid, we plan to keep it, but it will need two patches. Also, as noted above the edges of the floor that mate to the new stainless vertical wheel well panel will be replaced with stainless.
• Entire rear opening, both sill and uprights, while maintaining the original FJ40 rear door mating profile

End of plan - now moving on to the work!

 

[fireflyr]

Subscribed. Saving another FJ40 AND passing on skills and an appreciation of things old to another generation.

 

[psmbfuer]

Thanks and well said fireflyr - my son has a handful of good friends that have been coming over for years, and several of them have slowly gotten more deeply involved, learning about fabrication, welding, working with metal, and repairs in general, working on their trucks (no Land Cruisers in the mix). It has been great for them, and possibly more so for me. It often results in further delays to my projects, but time well spent helping them pull beds, repair frames, etc.

 

[psmbfuer]

Since we plan to build additional 40s and an extended cab 45s after this build, and because we will be cutting everything on a plasma CNC table, we made every effort to make this process as repeatable as possible. To do this, we starting making drawings of each of the components and panels that we plan to cut and form. We also designed the panels so they could generally be bent either with a hammer or a home made bender (don't run just yet, these can result in very clean bends), and sometimes both. Later in the build, I did manage to pick up a 13 Ton press for very cheap, but more on that later.

We went through the same process for each panel and continued drawing each part and/or panels, test cut most of them in carbon steel (much cheaper to make a mistake), and refined the drawings if / as needed.

Driver's Floor
Below, you will see various pictures of the driver's floor. I'm starting with this floor pan in that it was one of the first panels that we built and you will see the manual bender that we built and used to bend most of the edges on this floor panel. If you look closely, you will see that some of the hammer rolling is a little rough. You can get much better at this with a little practice and this was cleaned up later. I also have an air chissel that I purchased plastic (I don't recall the durometer rating, but let's say it medium-hard to hard, maybe 80 - 90 Shore A), brass, and steel hammers. And again with a bit of learning and attention, these can be a big help - and even though their heads are slightly rounded, it is not difficult to press hammer head edge marks in the the rolled area if you get your hitting angle wrong, especially on tigher inside corners. I find it best to use the round end of a ball peen hammer for these inside corners.

Below are several pics:

1. A drawing of the driver's floor with the hammer jig overlay that would allow us to bend the curved edge for the transmission hump area.
2. I then convert these drawings to DXF drawing files, which are then converted to a G-code files that will be used by the CNC table (see upper left portion of the pic. The G-Code file simplistically contains X, Y, and Z move coordinates and Torch on / off commands that in the end cut the stainless panel.
3. The main floor panel about to be cut on the CNC table.
4. The resulting panel about to be bent on the homemade bender.
5. and onward - Several shots of the resulting floor replacement along with mounts and the small piece that lives just below the gas pedal.

In the below picture I use several large C-clamps to pinch the stainless in place between the blue channel to the top of the bender. Then you just push / rotate the rebar handle on the left to make the bend. Not the best pic and I can't locate any with the clamps, but you get the point. For what its worth, this little bender is pretty useful, simple and inexpensive to make, especially for as low-tech as it is. You will also need a sturdy and secure table to clamp it to.

The above bender was used to bend all edges on this floor panel other than the edge for the tranny. And I was concerned I would damage it when bending the long rear and outer edges, so I only managed to get a roughly 80 - 85 degree angle on these two edges and I used a large rubber mallet for the last 5 - 10 degrees.

 

[psmbfuer]

I have located pictures of the hammer jig and the cut flat floor panel prior to any bends.

 

[rckhound]

This is great! I love seeing this truck being revived! Shared some great memories 4 wheeling with my Dad and brothers while I owned it.

 

[psmbfuer]

Hello rckhound and great to hear from you. It is kind of surprising how many good times we had in this truck in the two years we kept it on the road - it was my daily... I was going to post a few pics of that, but figured they didn't belong in a build thread. It has actually been back on the road for the better part of a year, and again been my primary daily, but I'm about to pull the tub off the frame and go all the way down. The frame is still in very good shape, but it is entirely bare and needs some love before the winters catches up to it. I also need to flip the tub over, remove two remaining carbon steel supports, replace them with stainless and give the bottom of the tub a thorough cleaning and sealing, paint everything, and put it all back together. I'll be refreshing brake lines, power steering, suspension, any anything else I can readily access while the frame is off. I don't want it down for too long, but I might swap in a 1HZ/H55F/Split case that I have sitting here - should improve my mpg and be a little nicer on the highway with the overdrive, especially with the turbo that I have ready to go on... But depending on the down time, I might keep the current drive train 2F / 4-speed for now.

 

[psmbfuer]

Quarter Panels

The shape of the quarter panel makes it more interesting to create from scratch than some of the other panels / components. Below, I share three pics of the what we are starting with, the homemade 304 stainless replacement panel, and the same temporarily fit up on the 40.

There are three main steps in what you see above:

• Creating the new quarter panel.
• Removing the existing quarter panel.
• Installing the new quarter panel.

The above steps will likely interweave if this is the first time tackling this. For example, I took all of my measurement, drew/designed, and cut the original carbon test panel prior to removing the original. Once I was happy with my measurements, accuracy, and alterations, I then carefully removed the original panel in one piece so I can use it for additional measurements and reference, if needed. In the case of this quarter, as you can see, it in poor condition, with no usable arch reference above the tire (with the same being true for the other side), so I used my 84 BJ42 panel as the baseline. I then used specific measurement from this 77 to size, draw, and properly locate the fuel door opening and other mild differences. For example, the two panels also have differences on the front edge - the 77 bends at a 90 degree and bolts to the B pillar, while the BJ42 panel has no bend and is originally spot welded.

 

[charliemeyer007]

I'm thinking this tech would make nice LC parts for a good price.

 

[psmbfuer]

Creating the Quarter Panel
For anyone that might not have drawn something like a quarter panel, here is how we approached this. We don't have anything fancy, for example a laser scanner, and we have no formally schooled in this area, nor work related experience in this field, so others might have better advice or techniques, but this is what worked for us.

1. Take a photo of the quarter panel with the lens face centered and as parallel to the quarter panel as possible. Below you will see that I also did this specifically for both fuel door openings.
2. Import the photos into my drawing software, use several references points to scale the photos to the correct size, then use the photo to trace the curve in the panel around the tire opening. This outline drawing is just a starting point and the key is to have the curves as accurate as possible. Depending on the lens you used and other circumstances, you might need to account for lens distortion. You will see that I took separate photos of the fuel doors to help minimize any distortion.
3. Then finish drawing the part, get all of your measurement as exact as possible, and possibly slightly resize the curves that you traced to match real measurement. When you have something like a quarter panel that is long and bent, an easy way to get a length measurement is to use a non-elastic string, tape it to the quarter, in the front for example, place a mark on the string at the exact starting point, wrap the string the length of the quarter, around the rear radius and mark it again. Remove the string and measure it from mark to mark.

Below are several pictures that we used when drawing both an 84 and 77 quarter panel. We also inserted a screen shot from my drawing software showing this hybrid (picture trace / drawing) approach to get the curves of the rocker panel correct - apologies that we can't locate an example at the moment using the quarter panel.
I unfortunately attached too many photos and the next three were automatically removed and I had not noticed. I have not re-instered the next three pics in Post 22.

84 BJ42 Quarter Panel (79 - 84)

• See pic below in Post 22

84 BJ42 Square Fuel Door (79 - 84)

• See pic below in Post 22

77 FJ40 Rectangle-Shaped Fuel Door (this pic is from a 78 actually, and not the truck I'm currently working on, but they are the same - this will be a valid door for 75 - 78)

• See pic below in Post 22

Apologies, but my current drawing revision no longer has the quarter panel picture in my CAD drawing, so I'm using one from the rocker panel drawing to convey this point. Below, I use an actual photo of the rocker used to create clean curves that align to those on the 40. The gray area below the pic is the actual rocker panel that could be exported as a DXF for cutting on the plasma table.

In order to bend the quarter panel lower curved edge, we are going to use a hammer jig. The hammer jig will be 5/16th steel plate that will look very much like a quarter panel, but it will be shorter and roughly 5/8th of an inch short where needed, so we can bend the stainless panel around the hammer jig creating this quarter panel lower lip. Hopefully the following picture helps to communicated how this will work.

The below pic is not the best and it is somewhat difficult to tell what is going on, but I have created two of the 5/16th hammer jigs, one for a 75 - 78, and one for an 79 - 84. I have also cut an 18 gauge stainless quarter panel. This stainless panel is sandwiched between the to hammer jigs. You can't see the 77 hammer jig in that is is beneath the stainless. You will notice that the square 84 style fuel door on the left side of the panel - this is not used when rolling the edges of the 77. The upper hammer jig is there so you can get clean, small radius bends at the lower jig edge. If you don't have a plate on the top, you are tend to get a more rounded radius. The upper plate also helps to secure everthing in place, even though it is clamped. I then need to remove the upper jig to hammer role the fuel door opening, but I still use thick plates in the area to keep the radius sharp.

The pic below better shows the fuel door. We use a ball peen hammer for the corners and raise it off the table to get the best angle possible.

Bending of the sweeping rear radius is a manual process (for us) and is a real handful. You will see in the pic below how we mount it with a piece of wood to our pseudo-welding table so we don't distort anything and then wearing gloves continue to work it into the desired 90 degrees. I also have a jig with the needed quarter panel radius that we use as a reference as we bend this corner. We have also marked the start and stop points of the bend so we have them as references. Also note the square in the pic, it is quite important to mount it square and apply presure evenly so you do twist the panel. And for those paying close attention, you will notice that this is the diver's side panel - we don't have any pics while bending the passenger side.

And in the end, we needed help to reach a full 90 degrees

We then reinstalled the filler door neck receiver and because we redesigned the rear sill, we also installed the quarter corner support, which will bolt and be welded to the rear main sill. You might also note that I had to extend the front lip with stainless washers. I need to add about 5/16th to my drawing, so this front lip would not need these.