Builds 67 R2.8 Restomod Build (1 Viewer)

[Well Sorted]

After finishing the motor mounts I reinstalled the engine and made up a simple crossmember to hold the trans. The adapter has a pad on the bottom which accepts a generic Chevy transmission mount so I picked one up at the local parts store and then started tweaking the transmission height. There's a fair bit of leeway in the installed angle, usually we shoot for 1-2 degrees of down angle in the rear but generally higher is better to keep good ground clearance. While balancing clearances you need to keep an eye on driveline angles as well, however without the suspension installed it's hard to do much to check that.

In this case, I was trying to keep the bellhousing from crashing into the trans tunnel cover so I left about 1/2" of clearance there and I ended up with a fairly level installation where things are tucked up into the frame rails nicely. It should be easy to build a skid plate for this later since most of the main parts are above the bottom plane of the frame rails. Here's a shot of the simple crossmember in process, later I'll be building one which is more stout when I have the tcase installed and exhaust routing figured out.

With the trans in position I started on the tunnel cover. First check was to sit it down on the shift tower of the NV4500 and see what we're dealing with...

The top of the NV4500 has a sort of pyramid shape and I knew a fair bit of work would be required to make this sit down to the floor and clear everything. The factory tunnel cover is two piece (you can see the join at the bellhousing area) so I decided to cut the top off the rear section thinking that maybe I could just space it up and fill the gap. A flat table and dial indicator stand can be really handy for these sorts of jobs...

With a nice straight line it's pretty easy to make the cut around with a cutoff wheel. After that, I drilled the spot welds at the front flange and separated the two pieces. The newly convertible tunnel pieces go back in for a fit check...

There's decent clearance to the trans body, but I'll need to make room for the twin sticks and as you can see in the photo, we're still missing one key element here - the split case. I had been using rough measurements to gauge where I'd be and now started focusing not just on the rear clearance but also the side. Using those measurements I figured out roughly where the floor would need to be cut for clearance and marked it out...

That's a lot of floor to be removed. At this point I paused to consider the options and wait for the tcase parts to arrive.

 

[iwashmycar]

awesome!

 

[Downey]

Doug, I like your craftsmanship, but you'll want to keep an eye on those front motor mount cushions once you start using the rig. We normally would have put the rubber cushions as close to the frame as possible (built engine mounts down to the frame) since you have a hot riveted frame that has radical flex in off road terrain. Your long brackets that extend upward from frame, up to the cushions is going to multiply more movement into the rubber cushions, trying to rip them apart.

 

[Well Sorted]

Doug, I like your craftsmanship, but you'll want to keep an eye on those front motor mount cushions once you start using the rig. We normally would have put the rubber cushions as close to the frame as possible (built engine mounts down to the frame) since you have a hot riveted frame that has radical flex in off road terrain. Your long brackets that extend upward from frame, up to the cushions is going to multiply more movement into the rubber cushions, trying to rip them apart.

Good points Jim. I did think of that and debated whether or not to just return the Farmstrong stuff and do it from scratch. The Cummins manual has some comments on the isolator location essentially asking for it to be as close to the block as possible to help mitigate vibration. That of course goes counter to the torque on the mount coming from frame flex.

This customer is not going to use the rig for hardcore wheeling though, mostly he'll be around town and on forest roads and not getting too aggressive with flexing out the truck. He's a local and I will certainly keep an eye on the mounts though as he uses the truck. The first upgrade if he does tear a rubber mount is to go to a urethane replacement which is readily available. If the customer were a more aggressive user I'd definitely have done the mounts differently.

 

[Well Sorted]

Before doing any more cutting I checked to see how the factory fuel tank would fit this setup. I was pretty sure it wouldn't work but the test fit clearly shows how it will be in the way of the transfer case. The owner wanted a larger tank anyway, so we're going to be using an auxiliary tank under the rear floor.

When the split case parts arrived I lowered the transmission and installed the case halves onto the rear of the adapter. I made the cuts in the floor and raised the trans back up into position. Next I put the twin stick bracket and levers on to check the clearances for the linkage.

Obviously there's a lot of hardware that has to be worked around now and I was losing hope of using factory tunnel cover. I decided to make some cuts in it for the shifter and check it out though.

What you can't see in that photo is that the driver side isn't too bad, I probably could have just made a 4" strip to make up the height difference between the two. Obviously the big challenge is the rear though. I was trying to envision a way to blend the upper part of the tunnel cover with a new lower section and it just wasn't clicking for me. After a bit of consideration I decided that fabbing a new tunnel cover would be easier and look cleaner. Since the front section around the bellhousing fit nicely I cut the remainder off the rear and started fresh.

I bolted the bellhousing cover section back into the truck and started trimming the cover to match...

You may also have noticed that the floor has been cut out. I decided to remove the unnecessary hump that was clearance for the original tcase since it wasn't really needed any more and I could have a little cleaner flange on the new cover. The length of this main section is designed to go under the bench seat, I've got about 1" of vertical clearance to the bottom of the seat along the top surface. From this rear edge new sections will be made that taper down and extend out to cover the tcase and shift linkage.

 

[Downey]

Ok Doug, so it's time to look at my ebay #264033688625, and then just for giggles also look at #263644571961 for those twin stick levers- - - - - - - -just saying.

 

[Well Sorted]

With the front section fitted I threw on a couple tack welds to hold it in position. After that I started on the rear face/wall portion. It's basically following the contour of the transfer case and floor cuts as you can see below. I spent quite a bit of time mocking up the linkage for the twin sticks to make sure I'd have clearance. With the curved corner on the top right it should have plenty of clearance now and allow for a straight link from the stick to the lever on the transfer case.

The height is about 4" tall - equal with the first vertical portion of the sides in the front body of the tunnel. The rearmost section is contoured to follow the foor where the tunnel hump is and I'll put 1-2 fasteners through the brace to hold it in position. The sides will be flanged to the floor and use a seal much like the factory tunnel cover.

With that rear wall piece in place I then started on the cover panels. It was important to start this with the tunnel in position, the rear wall flexes and moves a bit when sitting on the bench so I wanted everything held in the right place before making it a single piece. I made a template for the rear center panel first (basically just a square) and tacked it in while the tunnel was in the truck. I then pulled the whole unit out and added the left side triangle on the bench.

The remaining section has a bit of an odd shape so again I made some templates, transferred it to sheet and proceeded to add it to the tunnel. The last step was adding flanges to the sides where the tunnel will sit on the floor and be bolted down. More templates, cutting and welding...

 

[Well Sorted]

With the fab largely done I did a final fit into the truck. Overall I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. The height is about 1" below the bench seat at the tallest portion and the main visible section doesn't look too overly fabricated (glad I was able to use the original bellhousing portion). There's a bit of room behind the shifter with clearance underneath, I may try to recess some nice cupholders in there if I can find a decent sized insert that will work. The more angular fab sections are hidden under the seat which helps keep it from looking too hot rod or racecar-ish.

I still need to cut in the holes for the shifter and twin sticks and pick the approriate shift boots. The floor flange needs it's holes drilled and the associated rivnuts installed. There's a lot of seams to weld but I'm going to save that for a little later as it's not urgent. Next up is patching in the floor and moving on to some other tasks on the tub. The goal is to have the major metal work all done by the end of Jan and get this thing out for paint.

 

[Well Sorted]

With the tunnel fairly close to finished I moved on to AC mockup. We chose the new-ish Vintage Air Gen IV Surefit system with the high performance blower for this build. Vintage Air lists these as for 68-83 LandCruisers and as you'll see below, there are a few mods needed to make this work with the 67 trucks. The kit comes with very detailed instruction manual, however given that there are quite a few changes in the FJ40's over this span of model years you should temper your expectation for an exact step by step procedure.

When I unboxed the evaporator assembly and did the first trial fit up under the dash an immediate problem arose. The glove box on the early trucks is a few inches wider than the later trucks (extra space to the outer side) and that interferes with one of the main support brackets. I had the option of cutting and modifying the bracket on the unit or cutting and modifying the glove box, I chose the latter. This shot shows an underside view of where I marked the box floor for cutting.

Using a cutoff wheel I was able to slice the floor, the back edge and the spot welds along the back wall. A bit of work bending the remaining spot welds to fatigue them and I had the section out. Here's a view through the door showing the remainder.

The tin can lid was a fun discovery, gotta love these old trucks. It appears someone did a small cowl repair in a prior touch up and they used the can lid to be the backup for some bondo. Another little thing to fix later. With that floor section gone, I rechecked the evaporator fit and things were getting better. You can see here that the bracket behind the blower motor now can access the factory fastener location as intended.

Obviously for anyone trying to install this on a clean truck that isn't undergoing a full restoration cutting the glovebox up is probably not desirable. In that case I'd probably try to modify the evaporator support bracket to hit another hole. In the pic above you can see there's a support that also runs up to the floor of the glovebox. That one is a pretty easy shot, just mark and drill a hole straight through the floor and fasten as instructed. There are two more fasteners in the flange near the front which also are simple through drillings that hit a small bracket on the front of the unit.

The instructions then call out an attachment at a factory fastener from the original heater just above the trans tunnel where a bracket on the lower left side of the Vintage Air unit is supposed to match up. The say to push the evaporator up against the glovebox, then back against the wall and you should be able to put a bolt through the bracket and into the factory weld nut. That didn't work so well for me...

I think I could have forced it into the factory bolt location, but it would have made the whole thing a bit tweaked and maybe look a little crooked. Perhaps some shimming and adjusting of the bracket would resolve that. In this case, I'm just drilling a new hole and adding a new weld nut, the original factory one will be deleted and welded up.

With all the glovebox fasteners in, the lower LH support bracket attached, and the filler panel above the vents inserted it's now looking like a finished assembly.

There are a few more things to do. The ECU is mounted inside the glove box and the instructions call out using the 12V accessory light outlet for locating it. On an early truck that was down on the firewall so I just drilled some new holes which will get Rivnuts to hold it instead. On the engine side I of course need to run lines and set up the front end of the system, but that comes later on in the build.

All in all I'd say I'm generally satisfied with the fit and quality of the unit. Passenger foot space isn't roomy, but it's maybe not quite as bad as it looks in that photo. Obviously we're going to have to save test runs for a bit later, but when we do I'll report out the performance. If you're interested in one of these I'd highly recommend downloading the install instructions off the Vintage Air web site and giving it a read through, it will give you a very good idea of what's required.

 

[SMG]

Looking good!

Can’t wait to hear how the AC performs.

Super jelly on the R2.8 This is on my wish list if I ever hit the lotto.

Keep up the progress!

 

[Well Sorted]

A few more updates from last week... Working on getting a lot of the supporting components mounted and wiring routings laid out. The accelerator pedal was fairly quick one, had to remake the bracket but put it on the firewall in a location near stock...

The pedal looks a little low in that pic but it actually has plenty of floor clearance and is pretty comfortable when you rest your foot on the tunnel.

After that I moved under hood. The fuel filter is pretty flexible in it's location requirements, but this spot on the driver's side firewall seemed best. It's near the on-engine pump, away from the exhaust, and easy to service.

After that I wanted to mock up the steering and get ready for steering column install. We're going with a 60-series PS conversion on this build, and we've decided to ditch the factory shock towers and run aftermarket. Everything was removed from the frame a few weeks ago so this was purely mocking up the new parts. We're probably going to use the Ford shock towers and so I've left room to weld them on the frame rail outer face. Test fitting the box shots below. Still needs frame gussets and such, but this will be the location...

The column should arrive this week and I'll then be able to mock up the full setup. We're running a Flaming River GM style column with integrated turn signals and hazards, but keeping the factory ignition on the dash. After that we'll be putting the air filter in place, that's going to be a bit of custom job but I think it will look good. More to come soon...

 

[Eric H]

The tunnel looks great. I hope mine turns out that nice. I cant wait to see the steering column installed. I will be doing mine soon also. Looks like flaming river has some quality items.

 

[Vandal FJ]

A few more updates from last week... Working on getting a lot of the supporting components mounted and wiring routings laid out. The accelerator pedal was fairly quick one, had to remake the bracket but put it on the firewall in a location near stock...

View attachment 1891814

The pedal looks a little low in that pic but it actually has plenty of floor clearance and is pretty comfortable when you rest your foot on the tunnel.

After that I moved under hood. The fuel filter is pretty flexible in it's location requirements, but this spot on the driver's side firewall seemed best. It's near the on-engine pump, away from the exhaust, and easy to service.

View attachment 1891815

After that I wanted to mock up the steering and get ready for steering column install. We're going with a 60-series PS conversion on this build, and we've decided to ditch the factory shock towers and run aftermarket. Everything was removed from the frame a few weeks ago so this was purely mocking up the new parts. We're probably going to use the Ford shock towers and so I've left room to weld them on the frame rail outer face. Test fitting the box shots below. Still needs frame gussets and such, but this will be the location...

View attachment 1891821 View attachment 1891822

The column should arrive this week and I'll then be able to mock up the full setup. We're running a Flaming River GM style column with integrated turn signals and hazards, but keeping the factory ignition on the dash. After that we'll be putting the air filter in place, that's going to be a bit of custom job but I think it will look good. More to come soon...

Cabinet Cruisers in Sandpoint, ID is making (or was at the time) an FJ60 Shock tower combo that looked really nice!

 

[Well Sorted]

I've been slacking on updates, so I'll try to catch up...

Finishing up the FJ60 steering box install involved fabricating a reinforcement plate for the inner wall of the frame. First, simple template...

The frame will have support tubes through it to prevent crushing the walls in when the box is torqued down. Installing the tubes requires notching out some of the pre-existing openings in the frame rail. The tubes are made from 1/2" ID steel tube cut to match the distance from the inner face of the outer wall to the face of the inner frame rail.

When it's all assembled the tubes will be clamped down tight, and don't really need to be welded but to keep everything together for assembly requires either attaching them to the frame itself or the bracing plate. Obviously the plate is much easier than welding in the frame rail, so I used the bolts to hold everything together and tacked the tubes in place.

With the inner gusset plate ready to go everything was cleaned and prepped for welding. The gusset plate and tubes were painted on the back surface with primer to protect them inside the frame rail. The plate is installed with the bolts holding it in position and then welded to the frame rail. Despite my best attempts at cleaning there was still a little contamination inside the lap joint of the riveted frame which interfered with the weld so it took a couple passes to get clean weld beads.

This inner plate has a second purpose I'll show shortly. With the Cummins intsall an intercooler is required so the radiator has to move back about 4 inches. This plate and a matching one on passenger side will going give a nice solid place to make new radiator mounts.

 

[Well Sorted]

Struggling to keep up with this post, build trucks, run a business, etc. This entrepreneurship thing is tough! Anyway, back to the story...

Here's the crossbar installed to support the cooling pack. I wanted to keep the stock FJ40 rad mount so that it's easier to source replacement parts later. The cross bar also has the side benefit of tying the frame rails together and bracing against steering loads. You'll notice many of these added parts are just tacked in place, finish welding comes later when the powertrain is out and the body is off the frame.

And here's a front view a little closer up.

I've been thinking about an R2.8 install kit for FJ40's and I have an idea how I'll do this differently next time which would allow for simpler manufacturing and also for home builders to fairly easily install a whole cooling system including radiator, condenser and intercooler. I think this will be fine for this truck though.

Here are front and side views of the whole assembly stacked up. To locate and support the top section I'm going to do a custom bent cover which attaches to the top of the bib and then comes up over the radiator. It will be a combination of aesthectics (hide all those heat exchangers), air ducting, and also tilt/locating device.

You may notice the silicone elbows look rather large and stick far out... ignore those for now, they're getting replaced later with a more compact setup. Here's the front view with the hood closed, just a nice clean black intercooler lurking in the background...

 

[Well Sorted]

After the cooling pack was mounted I moved on to the other supporting parts of the engine install. The oil filter is a pretty large unit and I had been struggling a bit finding a place for it. The R2.8 oil lines are on the driver's side and I wanted to keep the filter there to minimize hose length and keep it away from the hot exhaust on the passenger side. Since this truck has the FJ60 PS conversion I decided to make use of the old space where the steering box was. I knocked out a simple bracket to hang the filter assembly off the fender and drop into the place where the box used to be. It has the side benefit of making filter changes very easy and accessible.

I'm running a Flaming River aftermarket column in this build combined with Borgeson U-joints and a telecoping double-D shaft. With everything mocked up and in place, clearances are tight, but acceptable.

A few more bits had to be placed - the grid heater solenoid and the ARB compressor for the air lockers (running front and rear on this one). The top of the filter bracket was sitting there looking bare so I decided to mount the grid heater solenoid there. It was a bit of an easy opportunity due to the unused space but also keeps the electrical run over to the grid heater itself short, minimizing the run of big cables. I was thinking of making a bracket for the ARB compressor, but the mounting feet bolt spacing matches very will with the OEM fender support so instead it's just four holes through the inner skin and brace with M8 bolts through to hold it on.

 

[Elfman]

You are doing some great work here man. Love it!!!

 

[Well Sorted]

You are doing some great work here man. Love it!!!

Thank you sir. Not many of these builds have been done yet so I figured folks would appreciate seeing the details behind putting a R2.8 combo together. I'm just looking forward to test driving it.

 

[ceylonfj40nut]

Do you see a concern with the bottom of the oil filter exposed to the inner wheel well where trail rocks could damage it? It maybe a non issue, but had the thought and considered to share it. Great work! Looking forward to seeing you at SAS3!

 

[Well Sorted]

Do you see a concern with the bottom of the oil filter exposed to the inner wheel well where trail rocks could damage it? It maybe a non issue, but had the thought and considered to share it. Great work! Looking forward to seeing you at SAS3!

No, I don't think it's an issue. Here's a photo from the wheel well, as you can see it doesn't hang down far. It would take a pretty perfectly angled rock flying off at a very high velocity while making a left turn to just hit it and then to puncture it you'd have to really have a big rock. I think it's an extremely low probability that it could happen.