Build 1977 FJ40 - USA Spec Restoration - Father & Son Project - AKA "Blue"

[DirtDauberGarage]

I have a guy coming to put glass in both the FJ40 and the FJ55 this week so I had to get them ready. Painted the windshield frame and gas door for the 40 and cleaned, epoxy primed, and painted the windshield frame in the 55. I am not going to sandblast the 55 and do all I have done to the 40, but I wanted to go ahead and paint the frame before he put the glass in, to seal it up, and so it will be a smooth transition when I eventually paint the 55.

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

More pics

 

[Lifelong40Fan]

Will the 55 and the 40 be the same blue? Sky blue?

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

Will the 55 and the 40 be the same blue? Sky blue?

Yes. I haven't checked the paint code for the 55. I know Sky Blue is A11 on my FJ40. I did a little research and it looks like the paint code for blue 1970 FJ55s is 854 but it looks pretty much the same as Sky Blue. Since I already have a half gallon of Sky Blue, I will probably just use that... Like I said, it looks pretty close and I am not trying to keep the 55 all orginal like I am with the 40.

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

Here is a pic of the 55 now. As you can see that even though it is faded, the orginal color is pretty close to Sky Blue.

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

Got some work done today. Cleaned up the overflow tank and painted the bracket.

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

Installed

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

Cleaned up, painted, and installed the headlight buckets. Sorry... if forgot to take a good after pic. Trust me... they looked like brand new!

I also installed the bezel.

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

Ceaned up the windshield frame rubber gasket and installed the window frame. I could not believe how durty it was. I will probably replace this one day, but for now it is in good enough shape. I use "Purple Power" on just about everything and it cuts right through the grease and dirt.

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said; “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”...

I would says, "A thousand mile journey is traveled one step at a time."

Either way... I'm still moving forward

 

[airon23]

It's coming together for sure.

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

Alright, what a normal person would do is probably just buy a new bumper… what a wrencher/hotrodder would do is use an oxy acetylene torch to heat it up and bend it back… what I did (since I do not have an oxy acetylene torch) is some old fashion shade tree mechanical engineering.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I will let the pics do the talking. It is easy to see what I did.

I still have some smaller dents to hammer out and need to reweld the bolt hole that is cracked. I am also going to cut the wavy bend, straighten it back out and reweld it. The metal is stretched too much here to go back straight.

I still have a little twist in the driver side. I am going to bolt it on the LC and see if I can fix the twist while it is attached. Then I will take it back off, sand it, and paint it before I put it back on for good.

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

More Pics

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

More pics

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

Not perfect... but neither am I

It's better than it was, and should look even better with a little more work.

 

[Lifelong40Fan]

You’ve got a real nice press! Portable even! Half of the fun of wrenching on these is figuring out how to do more with less.

 

[DirtDauberGarage]

You’ve got a real nice press! Portable even! Half of the fun of wrenching on these is figuring out how to do more with less.

Agreed!!

 

[middlecalf]

Love it, my kind of tooling. John Deere tractors make good presses too, along with 200-lb protein feed tubs. Use what you got!

 

[ceylonfj40nut]

You may know this already, but a new OEM bumper is still available for $200 at CCOT.