Builds Bean! The Adventure Continues (1987 FJ60) (4 Viewers)

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I installed the rear drawers this week and my wife and I made some DIY dividers for them.

So nice being able to bolt these in without two people and having to get under the tuck!
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Anderson Plug for the refrigerator:
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(The bungee cord in the picture above holds our stove in place).

Fridge-slide and fridge installed:
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As I mentioned, my wife and I made some DIY dividers for the drawers. They were so easy to make and work really well. We had some corrugated plastic lying around and cut it to fit the perimeter of the drawers. The plastic is called Plasti Shield Pro and is used for covering floors, walls, etc. during construction.

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After making a perimeter around the drawer, we cut dividers and used bobby-pins to keep them in place.
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They are super lightweight and stable.

We dimensioned the lower left corner of the drawer below so the trays would nest in perfectly and be held in place.
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There is a company online that makes these for Pellican cases (that is where I got the idea) but theirs have foam glued to them. This could be a good option if you had more delicate things to store in your drawers.


And with that, the Bean is pretty much back together and ready for adventures!
The only things left on the list are to install the roof top tent and charge the AC system. The RTT will go on soon and I plan on doing the AC in the next month or two.
I also have some routine maintenance items to attend to (flush brakes, adjust tie rods, maybe knuckle job....the usual maintenance), but as it sits, this truck is now ready to be used!! :bounce:
maybe I missed it. Who's drawers are these? love the divider idea!
 
maybe I missed it. Who's drawers are these? love the divider idea!
These are a set of ARB drawers that I picked up a few years ago.
Here is my original post about them:
 
I installed the rear drawers this week and my wife and I made some DIY dividers for them.

So nice being able to bolt these in without two people and having to get under the tuck!
View attachment 2968673

Anderson Plug for the refrigerator:
View attachment 2968674
(The bungee cord in the picture above holds our stove in place).

Fridge-slide and fridge installed:
View attachment 2968682

As I mentioned, my wife and I made some DIY dividers for the drawers. They were so easy to make and work really well. We had some corrugated plastic lying around and cut it to fit the perimeter of the drawers. The plastic is called Plasti Shield Pro and is used for covering floors, walls, etc. during construction.

View attachment 2968676

After making a perimeter around the drawer, we cut dividers and used bobby-pins to keep them in place.
View attachment 2968675

They are super lightweight and stable.

We dimensioned the lower left corner of the drawer below so the trays would nest in perfectly and be held in place.
View attachment 2968679

View attachment 2968678

There is a company online that makes these for Pellican cases (that is where I got the idea) but theirs have foam glued to them. This could be a good option if you had more delicate things to store in your drawers.


And with that, the Bean is pretty much back together and ready for adventures!
The only things left on the list are to install the roof top tent and charge the AC system. The RTT will go on soon and I plan on doing the AC in the next month or two.
I also have some routine maintenance items to attend to (flush brakes, adjust tie rods, maybe knuckle job....the usual maintenance), but as it sits, this truck is now ready to be used!! :bounce:

Smart stuff on the drawers, I cringe every time I see drawer systems made out of massively thick plywood, inside and out.
 
that's surprising on the paint. Did Kelly have any thoughts on what's causing this? If you need a good place that's more local to you check out Cook's auto rebuild in Seattle. They did my paint over 7yrs ago...still looks incredible.
Kelly wasn’t sure on what’s causing the issue. He said it sounded like bad prep work, but told me he took great care in the prep of the rig and used quality products to paint it with. He did offer to fix it if I want to ship it back to him, but I just got this thing back together, so it’s staying as is for the time being.

I don’t think I’m in the market for another shop to paint the truck haha. The wallet is running on empty…Any remaining funds need to be spent on gas for getting out and using this rig!
 
Your choice for the door vapor barriors turned out great. I'm adding soud deadener and new door/window seals all around. I will have to give that stuff a long look...

Thanks!
 
Your choice for the door vapor barriors turned out great. I'm adding soud deadener and new door/window seals all around. I will have to give that stuff a long look...

I’m really impressed with the material. It looks nice and the doors are super quiet.
My only advice would be to install the VB-2 in warmer conditions. I did this in a 40F shop and it wasn’t as pliable as I think it would have been at 60-70F.

The other bummer is if you have to access the inside of the doors, you have to cut and patch the VB-2. Not a big deal, but something to be aware of.
 
Visiting my in-laws this weekend near Portland, OR and woke up to a wintery blast of snow. Unexpected! It’s still coming down pretty hard!
Glad we drove the Bean down. Heading back up to the peninsula in a few hours.

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Lauren and I had a good trip to Portland to visit my in-laws last weekend. The Bean drove really well, but I'm hoping I can improve upon the steering a smidge. I'm trying to get the truck to wonder a little less so my wife is more comfortable driving it on the freeway. I do need to take a little play out of the steering box...I'll probably tighten the adjusting screw about 1/16 - 1/8 of a turn and see how that feels.

I also noticed that my drag-link has a good bend to it and my TREs aren't in the best of shape, so I ordered an aftermarket (Japanese) drag link from Cruiser Outfitters along with a set of 555 TREs. I also added to my order a knuckle rebuild kit...time to get messy! My wipers are leaking a bit and there is some good play when I grab the tire at 12-0-clock and 6-0-clock and wiggle it...not much play at 3 & 9 though (trunion bearings going bad?).
I found a receipt where the PO had the knuckles serviced in Colorado at a small auto shop - there was no indication if the bearings were changed or not.

The other thing I am doing is replacing all the rotors and pads with OEM. I'm going to stick with the Napa calipers I'm running. I am getting a good shimmy when I brake (warped front rotor) and a slight dart to the left when I brake hard. This was a little unnerving last weekend when I had to slow down somewhat quickly while going 60mph.
I went around and around on what rotors and pads to get, but I decided to just pull the trigger on the OEM ones since they really weren't that much more than the Parts store ones (and in a few cases cheaper!). My brakes are pretty worn down and have well over 50K since they have been serviced.

I have the Tundra brake mod up front and the FZJ80 axle in the rear...so I ordered accordingly. Sometimes its hard to keep it all straight!


Excited to give these systems some TLC and hopefully gain a bit of reliability and safety from it.
 
Had a great outing this past weekend up in the Olympics. Went out to see if one of the routes we like to drive had opened up...it had not! There was a bunch of impassable snow - super wet, heavy snow. We were dragging diffs for a while before we finally got stuck. We were able to reverse out of it, but we were there alone and didn't want to push our luck.

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We ended up helping a Subaru Forester get out of a ditch after they had bellied out in the snow and tried to turn around. The Maxtrax were handy for that...finally a chance to use them for something other than leveling out the roof top tent :poof:.
We ran into a Tundra that was trying to make it to a trailhead, but they ended up turning around too.

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My wife and I also went up a dead end side road to look for a nice future camping spot. That quickly turned snowy and the trees started to close in on us. We went until the snow was too deep, then I had to back down about a 1/4mile before I could find a spot to turn around. Just breaking in the fresh paint 😬.

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This week's goal is to get the roof top tent mounted!

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Back in post 204, I talked about how the battery side my fusible link was a bit of a hack job from one of the truck's previous owners. Not sure why, but someone soldered a new wire onto the original terminal and didn't do a great job. Its a really strange terminal that is no longer made - from what I have gathered, it was custom made for Toyota.

One of the POs cut the original wire off the terminal and soldered a new wire to it:
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To remedy this, I took an old fusible link and scavenged the plastic connector from it. This allowed me to use new terminals. I will need to use 3 separate wires since the fusible link connector takes 3 separate terminals (two 250s and one 305).

Thanks @red66toy for finding the used fusible link for me!

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The plastic connector and the new terminals:
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I used 12AWG wire for the 250 terminals and 10AWG wire for the 305 terminal. This is probably overkill, but since this section of wire is not fused, up-sizing the wire is not a bad idea. If you are going to do a similar thing with similar wire sizes, make sure the terminals you purchase are for the wire size you are using.

The terminated wires:
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I brought the wires together and used a 6awg ring terminal to secure them. Since I was crimping 3 wires into one terminal, I drilled a small hole at the end of the terminal and added just a little solder. I couldn't pull the wires out of the crimp before the solder, but wanted that added bit security.

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Adhesive heat shrink added:
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And lastly I added a piece of high temp wiring harness tubing to protect the wires.

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Very pleased with how this came out and it was easy to do! The only thing that doesn't appease my OCD is the green connector in place of the original white/clear connector...but I can live with that since I will no longer be worried about an under-hood fire!
 
Finally got around to replacing the horn ring and the horn ring pin in the Bean. I was getting a lot of scratching noise when turning the steering wheel and its finally quiet again! This is a super easy Project.

Parts:
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Here is a picture of the worn out one from the back:
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New horn contact ring:
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The toughest part was removing the steering wheel, but I was able to use a bolt screwed into one of the holes you would typically use with a steering-wheel-puller and a piece of scrap metal to create some leverage while tapping with a brass hammer. The wheel popped off pretty easily.

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Easy job and worth it to get rid of those annoying scraping noises!
 
I spent the day working on rebuilding my knuckles…I’m only about a quarter done after almost a full day of work. It takes forever to clean all the parts!
Luckily my 13 year old nephew stepped in and gave me a hand with the grease! :clap:

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I did find one strange thing - when I took my axle shaft out, it came out in two halves (separated at the birf). The clip that holds the inner shaft inside the birf had snapped in two and I found it when I took the inner birf apart.

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The broken clip:
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There is a bit of scaring on the internals of the birf:
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I’m not sure what would make this clip break. I’m going to reuse the internals of the birf…I don’t think the chips above will deteriorate it’s strength 🤞.

Inside the end of the axle housing and on the outside of the birf there is also a little scaring. Anyone have any idea what would have caused this?
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The last knuckle job was by a shop in Colorado about 75k miles ago (I found a receipt that the PO left behind).
I also noticed that my knuckle shims do not have a TEQ stamped on them, so they must be aftermarket...I really hope whoever changed them knew what they were doing and matched the OEM ones. Maybe the knuckle isn't centered correctly and causing the marks in the above two pictures?

They used RTV to secure the inner axle seal, so that was a treat to get out. I also noticed the wheel bearings are two different brands and the trunion bearings look to be OEM…original?
I haven’t torn apart the passenger side yet, but I’m curious how it compares.
I need to put a quick coat of paint on the drivers side knuckle parts before putting it all back together. I have them sitting in some diluted simple green overnight to hopefully get some of the greasy crust off the outside.
 
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Been slowly prepping the axles to start putting everything back together. Everything is clean and/or painted. I even got fancy and bought some gold paint for the hubs 😍

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I am really surprised how long it takes to clean everything! That is the bulk of the work on this project.

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I ended up using Eastwood's internal frame coating for the knuckle components. I have had really good luck with this stuff...it seems to stick to everything and doesn't scratch off. It's meant to stick to the inside of rusty frames and I think it will work well on the knuckle components. It's also super thin, so if you get it into threads it doesn't gum them up at all. You can paint it over the rusty areas, but I wire-brushed and scotch-brighted everything first to get rid of the rust (within reason...there were some areas that I couldn't get to).

I really wanted to buy new hardware for everything, but it was just too expensive and I couldn't justify it. Everything was still in good shape except for a few of the split washers on the bottom knuckle bolts, so I bought some new ones of those.

I have new 555 rod ends going in as well and found that my Tie-Rod is bent. I was able to source a Japanese replacement from Cruiser Outfitters.
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Bent Rod:
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The rod-ends on this rig are pretty shot, so I'm excited to see how the steering feels with a set of fresh ones! Cruiser Outfitter's FAQ says that the 555 ends come pre-greased... Two of the ends come with grease fittings and the other two do not. The ones with grease fittings seemed dry, but the ones without grease fittings had a small dab of grease under the boot (I was able to take a small pick and expand the boot just a tad to look in the joint for grease). I think I'll put a pump of grease in each of them to be safe. Anyone have any experience with needing to grease the 555 rod ends right off the bat?


As I commented in my last post, my driver's side axle came apart at the birfield joint when I pulled it out. The clip at the end of the axle had busted in two and was in the birf when I took it apart. Well the passenger side came out as one unit, so the clip was still intact (as it should be). I couldn't resist and decided to seperate this inner axle shaft from the birf as well. I had never done it before and chalked it up to a learning experience. I used the pipe method and the shaft popped out of the birf with 4 hard hits. I was really surprised at the amount of force it took!

The force of the clip breaking ended up deforming the axle shaft splines just a little. I used a file to flatten them back out and the shaft fits in the birf perfectly fine now.
Here's a picture of the slightly deformed splines - you can see there is a small edge on them that needed to be filed away.
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I also noticed that the splines on my axle shafts look a little different from side to side, so I guess one of them is not stock...not sure which one though.
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I guess since I have both birfs out I will switch them from side to side as people have suggested.

So in taking the internals of the birfields apart, I messed up and forgot to mark which side of the cage piece faces towards the inner axle shaft.

This is the cage:
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In the FSM it says the "wider" section goes towards the inner axle shaft... but there is no wider or narrower section on the FJ60.
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Both side sections are exactly the same width. I measured with a set of calipers. I think this picture/comment is left over from the FJ40 FSM...the FJ40 birf cages had a wider and skinnier section. So I researched the heck out of this (not an uncommon issue among the FJ60 owners) and found that the larger diameter side of the cage should be oriented towards the inner axle. The wider side is 54mm and the thinner side is 52mm.

So when your birf is in the vise and the "tulip" is facing upwards, the 54mm side of the cage should be facing up and the protruding edges of the star shaped inner ring should be pointing upwards.
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Side note - I will be using Redline CV-2 grease for this entire process (birf, knuckle, bearings and everywhere else).

There are also some ways to figure out the orientation of the cage with the size of the chamfer, but this is extra confusing and hard to tell by looking at pictures. Basically, the wider chamfer and skinnier face point upwards when the birf is in the vise with the tulip facing upwards.
I hope this helps someone in the future, there were a lot of threads on this that didn't give a very definitive answer. To triple verify this, I ran it by Torfab and had them measure the diameter of a cage from a stock birf and it lined up with the 54mm diameter facing upwards (towards the inner axle). I am very confident this is the correct way to set these up!

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Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some time to start putting all this back together. I'm slightly dreading getting the inner axle shafts back into the birfields with the new clips...I hear that can be a real pain!!
 
So I was out in the shop putting the knuckles back together today and noticed that the lower knuckle bearing caps are not stock.

I realized they were not stock when I went to reinstall them and the FSM made no mention on how to orient them since they have an offset.

The offset is probably to adjust for camber angle. Unfortunately I didn’t mark them when I took them off because I thought they only went on one way :doh:

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Maybe I have a bent axle housing and they are to compensate for that? Should I just buy some OEM ones? I’m leaning towards just giving it my best guess and putting them back together 😬

Anyone ever seen anything like this? Any recommendations?
 
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So I was out in the shop putting the knuckles back together today and noticed that the lower knuckle bearing caps are not stock.

I realized they were not stock when I went to reinstall them and the FSM made no mention on how to orient them since they have an offset.

The offset is probably to adjust for camber angle. Unfortunately I didn’t mark them when I took them off because I thought they only went on one way :doh:

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Maybe I have a bent axle housing and they are to compensate for that? Should I just buy some OEM ones? I’m leaning towards just giving it my best guess and putting them back together 😬

Anyone ever seen anything like this? Any recommendations?
Have you combed through Theron's thread for any mention of this?
 
Have you combed through Theron's thread for any mention of this?

Yes I have, and I didn’t see any mention of it. Thanks for the idea though!
I also talked with Torfab and they have no recollection of ever putting these in or using this type of product. Tor’s recommendation was to install it at the negative camber setting and see how it drives.
That’s what I’ll do for now, but I am tempted to buy new (used) lower caps…but there must have been a reason someone installed these 🤷
 
Interesting idea for tuning alignment, but doesn't using an offset cap force the knuckle to ride/tilt at a slight angle?....meaning the knuckle bearings may not be riding straight up and down in their races. Seems it would also force the wiper seals to ride differently against the axle ball.

Spitballing....trying to visualize how these work.
 
I hear you…I have been thinking about the exact same things!
I’m not so concerned with the wiper set…they have some give and should mold to the surface (I think). Plus the angle difference is very slight so the wipers should be okay.

But the bearings…that’s what I’m more concerned about. Even a slight difference in angle would affect those (I think). But the old ones weren’t necessarily in that bad of shape.
I measured the offset in the lower cap and it is 0.175” (a little less than 3/16”).

The old bearings are a smaller bearing than the Koyo ones I just got from cruiser outfitters. I don’t see how this would make a difference though. The old bearings the race is just thicker so the bearing is smaller…but it’s not an offset race or anything.

I have the knuckle bolted up and it is swiveling nicely. Also the turning resistance is perfectly within the spec. I’m getting about 9lbs.

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The angle on the face of the knuckle is 0.8deg negative camber (top of knuckle is tileted more inward than bottom)

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The old bearing and new.
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So after doing some more research on the FJ60 steering/alignment specs, I found that the stock spec for camber is 1degree +/- 45' of positive camber (0.25 - 1.75 degrees positive). Positive camber is when the wheels are further out at the top than the bottom. This isn't adjustable on the FJ60 with the stock parts, but they give you the range so you can check your axle.
In my post above, I had the knuckle set up for 0.8deg negative camber because I put the bearing cap in the negative position. Really I want positive camber, so I changed it to the positive position and landed at about 1 degree positive camber on both sides.

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I installed the bearing cap in both positive and negative orientation on both knuckles to gather some data and here's what I found:
Negative PositionPositive PositionEffective RangeIf I had the stock bearing caps
Driver's Side-0.8 degrees0.9 degrees1.7 degrees~0.05 degrees positive
Passenger Side-0.7 degrees1.1 degrees1.8 degrees~0.2 degrees positive

Spiting the difference between these positive and negative camber measurements gives a close approximation of the angle if I had the stock bearing caps. The numbers are very low. I'm assuming somewhere along the line an alignment shop saw this and decided to install the offset bearing caps to try to get the camber closer to the stock range.
So it would appear the the axle is bent somewhere...I think it must be at the outer knuckle balls because I set up a laser and the housing looked very straight!

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The laser at the ends of the housing are at just about the same point as each other and the center of the housing.
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Anyways, I'm now right at the camber spec. I wish I had some stock bearing caps to put in there, but I'm going to use what I have for now and see how it does.

I also put the new rotors and pads on.
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I have the new steering linkage parts ready to go in as well!
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I'll need to do a driveway toe adjustment before taking the truck out, but I don't thing that's too complicated. Hopefully I can get it close enough and won't need to take it to an alignment shop.
 
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