aussie fj45 build up... no nazis please!!

[khany454]

hey thought ide do a bit of a build up thread for you all here.
well the 1st bit (up until present) im gunna bang together pretty quickly so here goes!!

i bought this in august, '77 model, 307 chev, disc brake front end, power steer and the rest is as you can see it.....

all was ok with it however i knew it needed some work done...
just not as much as i found!
this is just some of what i found...

and im only really showing the good pics here!

 

[khany454]

so anyway as it turns out the cab was in a pretty bad state, i got the sh!ts with it for a bit then got over it and started trying to find a new cab or rolling chassis in good order, found quite a few at good prices but were way too far away for me to pick them up and freight quotes were more expensive than the parts/cars themselves!
then i found this example about 470miles away from me so needless to say i hopped on the train and snapped it up! it actually wasnt for sale but my mate knows it and hassled the guy untill he agreed to sell!

its an '83 fj45, 2f, 5spd, power steer, disc brakes, tub and canopy in excellant order and the whole vehicle itself is very much rust free, only 3 areas that need attention, and im talking not even through the metal yet and about the size of ya finger nail!
oh the roof (as usual) has a couple of small rust spots aswell but again not even eaten through the metal yet

 

[khany454]

oh an i also bought a 350 for it, i believe in the old saying "theres no replacement for displacement" so the 307 aint gunna cut the mustard!
and before anyone says anything yes i do have a big block but its a little too aggresive for a daily driven cruiser!

 

[dieseldude]

oh an i also bought a 350 for it, i believe in the old saying "theres no replacement for displacement" so the 307 aint gunna cut the mustard!
and before anyone says anything yes i do have a big block but its a little too aggresive for a daily driven cruiser!

Hey khany454. Nice set up!!!

I just bought my 45 in February & it has a BB454 in it. It is too much as a DD.

I was surprised to see the amount of rust and rot on it - it didn't look bad.

 

[khany454]

thanks dieseldude, yeah im quite happy with the motor, its about 400hp and its awfully pretty! haha
yeah it did look really neat but there was a few things i was a bit funny about when i bought it, but never expected it to be that bad! had lots of really well hidden gremlins i can tell you!

but never mind, i got the new one now and im over the moon with this one!
just got to find time to get things happening with it now.... which is unfortunatly the hardest part!

so where are some pics of your 45?? big blocks excite me!

 

[Bear]

Khany,

You know, the photos of your first truck really look clean.
Your later photos of the rust you found, surely point up the caution we all need to be taking whenever we blindly buy something off the internet.
It also shows how important that rubber weatherstripping needs to be in great condition.

When you originally walked around the truck, did you have any idea there were those kinds of problems along the rear cab or under the windshield?

Thanks for sharing.

 

[khany454]

hey bear, yeah it was an ebay job.
i basically told the guy i didnt wanna go through ebay an he said thats fine, we agreed on a price then i went down to melbourne to have a look.
i got to his house about 8pm and it was freezing cold, windy and raining so i checked that it was running fine and had a quick look around it, gave him some money and left with it, knowing that if it wasnt very good underneath i could get my money back on parts (i got it really cheap)

now i knew the roof was shagged (nothing unusual) and it did have a few cancer spots here and there, nothing dramatic.
the bits i was worried about though (have a close look at the pic) was the gap between the windscreen panel and the lower tub/firewall. it had been completly bogged over, i thought maybe for some reason the previous owner had done this for looks and have more cleaner lines (for some unknown reason!!) because it was a very nicely done job!
also the body line between the lower tub and the upper rear cab panel had the same treatment.
both of these areas had been done inside and out aswell.
i didnt like the look of these bogged over areas so when i started to remove the bog thats when the gremlins raised their ugly heads.
i found they used bog, space invader (exanding foam stuff in an aerosol can) fibreglass, newspaper and scrunched up pieces of wire mesh.
it seems they had not even made an attempt to remove all the rust completly or even try to replace it with good metal.
shonky stuff!!!

so theres a lesson for us all here,
PLEASE INSPECT THE VEHICLE PROPERLY BEFORE HANDING OVER YOUR HARD EARNED CASH!!
i know im not the 1st person to have had this happen to them and im sure i wont be the last.
have i learnt my lesson?? YES! next time i wont be so worried about the weather and want to get back to the motel room so quick!
although the pub was calling me...

 

[Bear]

Khany,

Sorry.

Some of these jerks are pretty good at covering up crappy areas.
At least you had a chance to physically look it over.
Not always the case when the vehicle is 1000 miles or more away.

I'll never forget the time 30 years ago I had a body shop add some fender flares to an exotic car I owned. I told them to build the flares out of metal, NOT fiberglass, no cheap junk for me. One day I dropped in to see the progress. They were welding-up small scraps of metal to build up the flares. Good, I thought. And then I noticed whole bags-full of coarse steel wool filling in the gaps and filling-out the shapes. All-metal, just like I asked! I naively thought that was how the professionals do it.

Although I never kept the car much after the repaint, I pity the poor soul who later found a tiny rust spot, and then probes ever deeper into an entire mass of rusty cancer--created just for their enjoyment!!


Don't fault yourself too bad for not seeing the cab and windshield areas. Being bolted together, and in your case, fabbed together, I guess the best you could do is either walk away, or envision the worst possible scenario and cheapen the price you pay to cover the work needed to fix it correctly.

Good luck on your resto.

Bear






Good luck on your resto.

 

[beefcake]

good find on that 2nd one there Khany. If I wasnt selling my 45 I would be hassling you for that styleside. I have been on the look out for one for mine. I wanted to bob and dovetail it. Are you even gonna bother with the 1st cruiser you bought or just fit the V8 to the 83?
Seeing those rust pics reminds of an XY ute I bought for my 1st car, looked good til I stripped it. it never saw the road again..lol

 

[D'Animal]

How did your first one get so rusty in those places? Is that common in Aus?

 

[Henry James the 47th]

How did your first one get so rusty in those places? Is that common in Aus?

It is more common in Australian than I had thought when I bought my truck, that's for sure. The key question is: "Has it been on the beach?" The fact of the matter is that most Australians live along the coastlines of the continent, not inland, so most trucks, it would appear, have seen some beach over the years.

I did ask that question to the p.o. of my truck, and he bald-faced lied about it ("No beach, no bondo" he said). The level of rust I discovered when I stripped the truck down, along with the fine white sand that came out when I tipped my separated tub upside down, confirmed the beach action, and the bondo was supplanted by some incredibly tough roofing tar compound in the footwells. Had to chop that out with a cold chisel.

Boy, seeing the pics in the first couple of posts gave me some perspective - that's some bad rust! Good thing you found the other truck Khany454.

 

[dieseldude]

Here's pics of my 454

Hey khany454.

Bit slow in sending the pics to you. I'll blame the three feet of snow we still got.

These pics were taken shortly after she made her cross continent journey (San Diego to Barrie Ontario Canada).

This is a completely different animal than my CJ7 with SB327, let alone the diesels.