Builds 67 R2.8 Restomod Build (1 Viewer)

[amico]

With the fenders done we circled back to integrating underhood components. There's a lot going on with an intercooled turbodiesel in the engine bay and then we've got some accessories to deal with as well. We reassembled the major bits and took some time to review and plan for component locations.

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In the shot above you can see the two main air connections between the engine and intercooler on the left and right side of the engine. These are large space claims so routing other items around them is pretty much a necessity. I didn't love the look of the angled pipe on the left so decided to redo it as an S bend which I fabricated from two 45deg bent pipes. That still left me with the challenge of putting in the air box shown earlier in this thread. I reinstalled that box (FZJ80 with mods) and just couldn't quite get things to come together. After fussing around with it I finally decided it was time for a reboot. We had another early FJ40 in the shop so I borrowed the airbox from that one and did some test fits. The early units have the down facing connection which was looking appealing.

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After a few test fits and temporary mockups we decided to procure another of these airboxes and run with it. These are the tough calls, all the labor in the prior box goes out the window and we end up absorbing most of the cost of this rework but it's going to come out as a much nicer finished product and I just had to do it. We mounted the new box in a very similar matter and hooked everything up.

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Much better.

We moved on to another rework challenge - the ARB compressor. In the leaf spring setup we had it mounted on the inner side of the driver's fender, but now we had a shock tower where it used to reside. We were running out of real estate fast but found a spot to put it that seems like it will work well.

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It's going to be tight in there between the AC and heater lines, air box, and air ducts but it seems like it will work. We'll put a remote quick connect for tire filling somewhere nearby but keep the compressor down here somewhat out of sight.

Really like the way you set your air cleaner up, you have solved another of my problems. I think I'm going to do mine exactly the same way. Do you have a picture showing how you hooked up your hoses or piping from the turbo to the air box. If this last picture was a little more right I think I could see your setup. Also are you going to install a reserve air tank for your lockers or will the compressor just connect direct???

 

[whitey45]

Very nice build, are those spring and shock mounts available new from Toyota? Have seen them used a few times now..

 

[Well Sorted]

Really like the way you set your air cleaner up, you have solved another of my problems. I think I'm going to do mine exactly the same way. Do you have a picture showing how you hooked up your hoses or piping from the turbo to the air box. If this last picture was a little more right I think I could see your setup. Also are you going to install a reserve air tank for your lockers or will the compressor just connect direct???

I don't have a great shot of the air intake setup but can describe it. I'm using the MAF pipe straight down from the air cleaner. From there I have a 3"-2" silicone 90deg elbow. The 2" side connects to a 45deg hard tube which then has a 90deg silicone elbow conneting it to the compressor inlet. It's tight, but it all fits. Here's the best shot I have...

And for the lockers - no reserve tank required. The little silver cylinder is a small tank which is all the lockers need, they operate of pressure not flow so there's no need for a large tank with an ARB. This compressor can supply both lockers no prob. It can also fill tires if you're not in a big hurry, it's rated to run 100% duty cycle.

 

[Well Sorted]

Very nice build, are those spring and shock mounts available new from Toyota? Have seen them used a few times now..

Yes they are, both 70-series and 80-series are available from Toyota. These are 70-series units which have a smaller spring diameter so you need to make sure you run matching 70-series springs.

 

[Marn0]

It's probably just me but I would rather see the A/C condenser on the other side of the intercooler. Saves them struggling so much

 

[amico]

I don't have a great shot of the air intake setup but can describe it. I'm using the MAF pipe straight down from the air cleaner. From there I have a 3"-2" silicone 90deg elbow. The 2" side connects to a 45deg hard tube which then has a 90deg silicone elbow conneting it to the compressor inlet. It's tight, but it all fits. Here's the best shot I have...

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And for the lockers - no reserve tank required. The little silver cylinder is a small tank which is all the lockers need, they operate of pressure not flow so there's no need for a large tank with an ARB. This compressor can supply both lockers no prob. It can also fill tires if you're not in a big hurry, it's rated to run 100% duty cycle.

Thanks for the info.
Just to pick your brain being that I am installing my air filter as you have with an older FJ40 air box. Where do you plan to connect the Crankcase Breather tube??? I had planned to connect mine to the factory installed pipe outlets provided in the FJ40 air filter carburetor/ air box-connector arm. Yours in the picture above sets on top of the 3" aluminum pipe that Cummins provides for their MAF sensor, which I was copying. The Cummins installation manual says the crankcase breather line is to connect between the MAF sensor and the turbo preferably 10 to 12 inches away from the turbo. Well that ain't gonna happen. Being you are a mechanic and I am not what will happen if the oil breather connects in front of the MAF sensor rather than behind???

 

[Well Sorted]

Thanks for the info.
Just to pick your brain being that I am installing my air filter as you have with an older FJ40 air box. Where do you plan to connect the Crankcase Breather tube???

It will have a connector in the smaller duct after the MAF sensor per the Cummins recommendation. It may not hit their recommendation for distance from the compressor wheel but in these really tight packages you have to make some compromises. f you put it upstream of the MAF you're likely to get oil buildup on the sensor itself which will affect the readings (one of the reasons oiled filters like K&N's often cause problems on EFI systems).

 

[Well Sorted]

Well, after another hiatus this project is back underway. We got stalled out in the paint process, our local painter is somewhat busy and was backed up with his own work plus a few other projects for us that were ahead in line. Since the last time I posted we did quite a bit of work...

Ran all the plumbing and wiring so that we'd have holes drilled, fastening locations planned, etc. Spaghetti time...

Test fit our tank from Long Range America. I really like this unit, much nicer than the plastic ones I've used/seen...

Relocated the factory filler from front to rear in the fender to match up with the tank. They provide a flanged filler neck, but we wanted something that would look close to OEM so a little extra work was put in...

Cut out all the remaining rust in the tub to get ready for blasting... rear sill, wheel wells, rocker supports, etc

And finally we called the blasting company in to do the dirty work:

 

[ceylonfj40nut]

Doug, really nice work. We loved the work you did on your blue 60. My boys and I snooped around it with you at SAS2 during our Soulcraft stop. Top notch. It is great to see you make it a business. I see nothing but success. Best of luck to you. We need to stop by during SAS5.

 

[Well Sorted]

Doug, really nice work. We loved the work you did on your blue 60. My boys and I snooped around it with you at SAS2 during our Soulcraft stop. Top notch. It is great to see you make it a business. I see nothing but success. Best of luck to you. We need to stop by during SAS5.

Thanks CD, very kind of you to say. It's been a little less than 2 years that I've been at it professionally and we're learning things every day, always trying to improve our skills and processes. Things don't always go as planned and of course the internet and social media content is mostly the highlight reel but we feel like we're starting to hit our stride. We're thankful that we've got some pretty great customers who want to do interesting builds, hopefully we continue to have that opportunity, it's pretty fun!

 

[Well Sorted]

After the main tub was blasted we've been working on sheet metal repairs. The budget doesn't allow us to go nuts so we're trying to balance labor costs with delivering a solid truck. As you may have noticed in the earlier pics we cut out everything questionable before blast to make sure we could get all the rust removed and get down to virgin sheetmetal before repairs began. The rear sill was one area we couldn't compromise so it was completely replaced. As with just about every 40 we see there's just too much rust there to do any sort of partial fix that won't end up coming back later. I didn't get a lot of pics of the process but I picked up the replacement kit from RealSteel and we got busy installing it.

The front sections of the wheel wells looked decent from inside the cab but there was lots of rust behind the factory braces so we cut all that out prior to blasting. We bought the pre-formed top panels from CCOT and cut them down to just use the section we needed then spliced them back in to the factory steel.

A lot of the front floor had rust pitting, in an ideal world we'd cut the floors out and replace them for a fresh factory look but the budget doesn't allow for that. The owner has elected to put bedliner on the floor to conceal some of this so our task was to just weld up the few spots where there were through-holes and touch up the seams. We had a little rust building in these front seams so we cut back a strip of the overlap prior to blasting then patched it back in with a simple strip of metal and ground it all flush again. It doesn't look like much in the pic but that's the point, trying to keep it looking close to original.

In prep for liner and paint we went over the truck multiple times with the build plan trying to be certain that we haven't missed any holes to be drilled or any last minute welding to be done. We found one thing - almost forgot the speaker mounts! The owner wants speakers in the kick panels so we picked up the kit from Icon and did some test fitting. They aren't perfect out of the box but didn't take too much time to sand down a few spots and tweak them a bit in the sheet metal brake to make the flanges lay nice and flat. The bolts on the pillar are threaded into rivnuts I put in to make it easy to fasten them, there are also two bolts that go through the floor.

Before spraying liner we needed a few more parts blasted, namely the bottom of the front fenders so I loaded up another load of sheet metal. At $160/hr the blast service isn't cheap, but it's really the only way to properly prep this stuff. Those guys love us though, we spend a lot of money over there.

 

[Well Sorted]

We touched up all the rework spots with primer a few days ago. I've spent most of today scuffing everything to get ready for bedliner. Rotisserie FTW

 

[Well Sorted]

We sprayed the Raptor liner on this truck a couple weeks ago. The finish came out nice and did a nice job concealing the remaining rust pits that we weren't able to cut out and replace. It's a slow and messy job, it's no surprise that Line-X charges a lot of money to do this job.

After that we loaded it up and headed to the body shop for paint.

Currently the truck is moving along through filler/blocking/sanding. It's always a challenge to get these trucks painted. Normal collision shops sometimes won't even quote the job and when they do they often want exorbitant prices or they want to use it as fill-in work between jobs which means the timeline is hard to manage. We've got a local shop who is doing pretty good working with us to get the work done in a timely manner. We just keep our fingers crossed for no hail storms to clog up the shop...

 

[Well Sorted]

Paint Jail... it's a real thing.

Still waiting on the tub to come back but supposedly we'll have it this week. In the meantime I did drop the motor back in the frame. Hopefully we can make some real progress in the next week or two.

We knocked out the ARB install for the rear axle a few days ago too. Still need to set up the front one, but closing in on having a rolling chassis.

 

[Well Sorted]

Finally got the tub back from paint. The color is much more of a pure gray than I was expecting, I thought it would look more blue/green. We used the Heath Gray paint code 113 through a paint shop in Colorado Springs so it is what it is at this point. Perhaps it will look a bit different out in the sun.

The chassis is pretty much ready for the tub. We installed the Long Range America tank in the rear (Thanks @orangefj45) and have a fresh set of body mounts to set it down on to.

We're running fuel lines now and then we'll set the tub down and bolt it up tight. From there we can get down to business doing the final assembly...

 

[orangefj45]

Beautiful work Doug!!!!!

 

[Well Sorted]

After the fuel tank install we mounted the body to the tub. There are lots of lifts and tools in this shop but sometimes it's just easier to do it the old fashioned way...

With the tub on and the bolt tight it's looking good. Something about this lighting is making it look more blue to me.

I started assembly with some of the firewall parts. This is our custom hydroboost setup now bolted down for the final time. The Wilwood master and prop valve is a nice combo unit I've used on a few builds, it simplifes lines and mounting. I haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to route the brake lines on this one yet so that's coming up on the to-do list shortly. The hydroboost lines also need to be routed but I may wait on that until the radiator and support is on, which is where we mount the PS reservoir.

 

[Well Sorted]

We took some time off over the holidays but have been chipping away at this project. Wiring and plumbing are underway, there's just no way around the fact that it's a long tedious process...

The dash is coming together, I've got the Vintage Air evap assembly installed and knobs mounted in the dash. The two switches beside the knobs are for the seat heaters. The dash is puking wiring that all needs to be routed, loomed, and fastened up under there. Most of it goes to the control box for the Dakota Digital dash which lives above the pedals. Yesterday I realized we made a mistake, somehow the holes for headlight, fog light, and wiper switches weren't drilled in the dash prior to paint. This is why I hate jumping on and off projects, little things slip through. We'll have to carefully drill and then hit the edges of the holes with some touch up paint.

We also finished up the buildup of the rear axle and got it installed in the truck, a full suite of pretty new parts does wonders to quell the OCD...

We're finishing up the ARB install in the front and will hopefully get the front axle under it in the next week or so. It always feels like a big step forward when they're sitting on their own wheels again, we're looking forward to getting her there soon.

 

[Well Sorted]

We keep chipping away at this thing... Finished building up the front axle last week. This is the housing from a 79-series (Thanks @Beno) combined with the knuckles from an FJ80. The outer birfs are the FJ80 long style to be compatible with Aisin hubs and the inner axles are from the original 70-series application. The owner wanted a locker so we stuffed an ARB inside to give him some better capability in the sand (he lives in Mexico). Overall it's a nice little mix of cruiser flavors come together to make a slick high pinion 8" for this FJ40 on coils.

 

[Well Sorted]

This week has not been going my way but when the guys called me over to check this thing out the day got a little brighter. Man it just feels good to see them on their wheels again...