'69 Piggy Build

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A

adventuregoat

10 Year
Joined
Sep 4, 2012
Threads
17
Messages
83
Location
Coeur d'Alene, ID
Figured I might as well start my own build thread as I work on my rig. Where to start... Well about a year ago I purchased my very first vehicle! A 1969 FJ55. Although I have little to no experience working on cars I have always loved older vehicles and the moment I laid eyes on a pig I knew I must have one. I don't know much history about my ride other than that it eventually ended up in Prescott, Arizona in the hands of a guy who got it in a trade. He didn't know much about them. Well I drove all the way out to Arizona with my dad from Southern California and got it that night. Sweet deal seeing as it only has minor rust and came with a nice Perkins Diesel engine (Not sure if it was out of a tractor or it could have possibly came from a Land Rover). Other modifications that have been done to the pig are SOA, a sweet hole in the roof :o (Somebody along the line was trying to make a sunroof, not something I want), and a second fuel tank. Fast forward a year and I purchased another pig from out in Huntington Beach, CA, which is a 1973 that came with a whole two pigs worth of parts :cheers: I plan on using the parts from the '73 to build up the '69. I have big plans for my pig: 35" tires, custom aluminum dash, clean up, bed liner interior, fresh paint, bucket seats, roof rack, bumper, tire carrier, eventually swap the axles and make it more off-road capable, and I am considering putting in a pressurized water system which will pull water from either a tank or the rear bumper. So here's my pigs! The white is my '69 and the green is my '73.

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Progress so far

Cleaned out the interior - Nasty stuff :frown: Also found a scorpion that had been living underneath the old carpet! Scared the hell out of me.
Ripped out the weatherstripping and old headliner, talk about dusty...
Pulled the engine out of the '69 and welded together a small mobile engine stand for it. Have tried starting it but it is getting air in the fuel lines somewhere... Hopefully it's a quick fix and that's all that it is. Going to be needing a new fuel pump for it anyways though...
And I've started digging through all the parts in the '73... Oh boy. There's everything! :bounce: I've got a full set of panels in perfect condition, an extra windshield, extra rear doors, 2 bench seats, 2 bucket seats, new alternator, PS, brake booster, 2 sets of door handles in pretty good condition, tire carrier off an Isuzu, extra gauge cluster, gauge cluster from a 2000 or so Camaro, and tons of other stuff, and I still have a couple boxes to go through but can't access since everything is pilled on top of them and the driver door and tailgate have to be opened from the inside :doh:

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Big Frank,

Looks like you got a good start with extra parts. I did the same and bought a parts pig, but started changing things. Now I use the parts wagon just as a reminder, so I know how things bolt together, doors, etc.

Good Luck with them!
 
I'd love to find out more about my parts stash also, but haven't been able to see much since I need a place to store all the stuff, planning to build a shed.

From what I remember both marker lights were intact but in need of some cleaning.
 
Waiting to get back from college to get back to working on my ride. Sucks because I don't usually have much time during the year with my mechanical engineering major to be going home on the weekends to work on it. :frown:

Anyways, my goal is, by the end of summer 2014 to have a rotisserie built up so I can work on the frame while the body is in the shop for paint, Line-X, and custom dash work. In order to get to this point though I'm going to need to do some body work (Yay! :o).

After looking at the body I've found that I have quite a bit of rust along my rocker panels. I know the previous owner on the green '73 simply just cut the entire panel out and welded in square tubing along the bottom. Although this looks nice I was hoping to keep the curved and original look while also killing the rust and adding protection for off-roading (3 birds with one stone?). So I'm thinking that welding in a solid round tube in place of the rocker panel would serve this purpose, has anyone ever done this?

Also will need to be filling in the sunroof since I don't want it. Not sure if I should weld in a new piece of sheet metal or cut out this piece of the roof from my parts pig and weld that in. The metal on the roof is very thin so I'd be worried about it warping. Opinions?


Anyways! Here's some pictures of some of my ideas, cause it's pretty boring without pictures right?

For the dash, I really like this one that LGE-CTS made for a Ford Bronco build they did. I'd like to have the same made for my pig if the price isn't outstandingly high. For gauges I would LOVE to get those Auto Meter gauges seen in the same Bronco build but they run for about $600 for the set :mad:

For the bed liner I have decided I will probably go with Line-X and will be getting my engine bay, interior floor, and possibly the undercarriage coated. I added a picture from TLC 4X4 of a 55 they did where they got the entire floor sprayed and it looks fantastic.

As far as paint goes, I'll be sticking with the two tone original blue and white or a two tone green and white, I haven't quite decided yet but am leaning towards blue and white.

I've gotten a lot of inspiration from TLC 4X4, ICON 4X4, and from lots of builds on here, if anyone's ever heard of them, they do outstanding quality work.

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