Sark's HZJ73 Adventures (1 Viewer)

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I might as well ask - working on removing the cone washers now that the first ring is out. Any easy ways to get this sub assembly to budge? Documentation says tap with a hammer onto a brass bar in contact with the studs, to loosen the cone washers. I’ve been wailing on all the studs for 25 minutes without progress…

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The cone washers can certainly be difficult to get out. When my brother took apart the rear axle on his HDJ81 it took over an hour to get the cone washers out. One trick I can recommend with stubborn ones is to take an air hammer/chisel and cut one of the bits off flat, thread a nut on to the end of the stud to protect the threads and give it a blast with the air hammer. Be very careful to hold the air hammer straight relative to the stud or you can bend or break the studs.
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When dealing with the power locking hub components you will want to make sure to get the carbon brush holders pushed down and a small piece of hardware wire threaded through to retain them to reinstall the hub. A small hooked pick works well for this.
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Thoroughly clean the inside of the hub assembly and get some Molykote 44 Light grease to lubricate the slip ring, brushes and gear assemblies before reinstallation as per the manual. I was originally intending to swap to manual hubs, but after having my automatic ones apart a couple of times they really aren't hard to service, and have been very reliable for me. When some NLA part finally does fail I plan to convert them, but until them I'll enjoy the luxury of being able to lock my hubs with the push of a button. I take whatever luxury I can get, they're few and far between in these old Cruisers!

Also, one modification I found very helpful was to file a small notch in the ends of the snap ring that goes around the axle stub; these give a place for the snap ring pliers to lock on and really help when removing or reinstalling the snap ring in the future.
 
Progress:

I was able to get the hub sub-assembly off, finally. One important note for other beginners like me - using an actual hammer instead of a mallet on the studs made the difference in getting the cone washers off. Then the mallet had it's turn to free up the sub-assembly once the cone washers were removed.

After taking the sub assembly off, and taking the brake rotor hub off, I checked the wheel bearing. Is it normal to, at this point, find play in the wheel bearing? It was able to move forward and back quite a bit, without coming out fully. I paused at this point, because I wasn't sure if that was a sign that the bearing should be replaced or not.

I'm going to try to hammer out the bolts to remove the rotor, but if anyone has any recommendations or observations based on these pictures, please share.

If money wasn't a factor, I'd skip this post and just order a rebuild kit for it all. Would I be ok cleaning everything up and adding new grease, after replacing the rotor? Or am I going to run into safety issues re-using the parts that I just took apart?

As for the backing plate... I'm just going to hammer the scuffed area away from contacting the new rotor (since they're NLA).

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Yes, an actual steel hammer with a brass drift is essential when doing the cone washers by hand. A brass hammer without the drift doesn't work either, it will just bend or break the studs. It is perfectly normal for the wheel bearings to be loose once the hub and rotor assembly are removed since the large spindle nut is no longer providing any preload on the bearings. At this point I think it is perfectly reasonable to clean and inspect the wheel bearings, repack with grease if they check out, put in new seals and gaskets and reassemble. Make sure to use the appropriate grease for the slip ring and auto locking mechanism though.
 
If you haven't gotten the seals and gaskets yet you'll need one each of:
90311-62001
90311-62003
43531-60031
 
We're back on the road!

It was a good experience getting in there and finding out what I was working with. Snap ring pliers were key in getting that ring back on, even though there's no holes in it.

I replaced the brake rotor and pads on the front left. I pull left when braking now, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing that's now due to different brake pad thickness? If I go in now and replace the right side, that should help fix it? I'm sure there's a few possible causes, so I'm going to take the cruiser in to my local shop for a checkup - post work done by me to sort of "verify" my effort was done ok. I need an alignment anyways, so I'll see if they find anything while there.

I'm just glad to be back on the road. I was having cruiser withdrawals :)

Thanks again to @cruiseroutfit for the replacement rotor. I'm sure once money allows, I'll be ordering parts for a full rebuild on everything I've been working with here. Wheel bearing, knuckle, etc. I'm sure could use it... But for now, I don't see any signs of leaking around the knuckle, and the parts that I was able to inspect while disassembling/reassembling seem to be good enough for now.

Here's my jury rigging attempt at re-inserting the bolts back into the whole rotor center piece. Using wrenches as spacers, I was able to "pull" the studs back into whatever that center piece is called by just tightening lug nuts onto them. I obviously didn't have the hydraulic press that the manual suggests using to punch the bolts back in with, so this was my best solution.

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More maintenance, minus the roadblocks on every step :)

- New front right brake pads (Part #BRAD0436 from @cruiseroutfit)

The new brake pads seemed to have solved my left-side dive on braking, after only swapping in new pads on the front left during my last little project above. Happy to find out this is fixed.

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- New air intake hose and clamps
- "HOSE, AIR CLEANER, NO.1" 17881-17030 (x1)
- "CLAMP" 96111-10460 (x1)
- "CLAMP" 96111-10800 (x2)

My air intake hose had a large crack in it. Not really surprising since it's a rubber part and it's coming up to it's 30th birthday...

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Resonator seemed fine, I just took a shop towel and wiped the opening from what I could reach. It's surprising how much better the new parts look in the engine compartment, compared to the old cracked, dusty parts.

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Also ordered/received a few standby parts for when I need them.

- Bulbs (90981-16016), which go to various instruments
- Bulbs (90981-17011), which are my headlight bulbs
(Edit to this section: Original part number of "90981-17011" was updated to "90981-17019")

Cheers
 
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"Pearl" the HDJ81 has finally arrived!

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Build thread:

 
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Swapped out the JDM front bumper for the ARB today:
I’ll try to keep this thread 70-related, but to follow up about Pearl, I pulled the ARB and put the JDM bumper back on. Wasn’t a fan of it, but that’s ok. I’m going to keep Pearl as “JDM” as I can, and I’m really loving the character that’s already there.

The good thing now, is that with the 80 taking the lead as the daily driver, I can finally bench the 73 to make progress on things I’ve been putting off because I needed a running vehicle. Now I can get my hands dirtier and fix some of the things like electrics, and other random items…
 
Since I was recently making sure I have my 80-series manuals in hand, I cleaned up my Google Drive folder of manuals for both the 80 and the 73.

Please feel free to use the link below to find the various 70-series manuals:


Within are:

- 70-Series Owner's Manual
- 1HZ Repair Manual - RM172E
- A440F Repair Manual - RM36264E
- Relay Locations
- Electrical Wiring Diagram - RM168F
 
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Not much of an update on my HZJ73, other than prepping it for the 70-series meet-up. Brake parts and hub kits from @cruiseroutfit of course.

In other news, I recently started a new position for work last month. They've had an "abandoned-by-customer" Cruiser for a number of years, and as of now, I am unofficially taking it over...

She's a 1986 FJ60, 2F motor, 4-speed manual. Brand new full exhaust, and the interior is an absolute mess. For New England, it's surprisingly not a rusted pile of junk.

Just needs some love :)

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Maintenance update, getting ready for Windrock:

- Oil change @ 261,151km (90915-30002)
- New lug studs, front, both sides (90942-02053 x12)
- New rotor, FR (43512-60041 from @cruiseroutfit)

Was going to do front wheel bearings too, but they looked fine, so I left them.

Didn't take any pictures, so... here's a random one:

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Maintenance update, getting ready for Windrock:

- Oil change @ 261,151km (90915-30002)
- New lug studs, front, both sides (90942-02053 x12)
- New rotor, FR (43512-60041 from @cruiseroutfit)

Was going to do front wheel bearings too, but they looked fine, so I left them.

Didn't take any pictures, so... here's a random one:

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What are you using for oil? I’m due for my first change.
 

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