- Joined
- Sep 26, 2004
- Threads
- 62
- Messages
- 303
- Location
- Commerce, Texas
- Website
- www.4x4crawl.blogspot.com
Over the past couple of years, I have been thinking about buying a street-legal Land Cruiser to fix up and drive. I test drove a FJ55 out of Emory but was scared off by the rust / fiberglass replacement pieces and scarcity of spare parts. Then I found a NICE FJ40 in Paris, TX but hated the color. Peter Sloop, a former Proffitts, Cruiser Custom owner (Big Green crawler that came to Roundup in 07'), had recently purchased a Troop Carrier as a project vehicle and started telling me about it. He is in the middle of a complete overhaul. He sold his rock crawler after Moab last year. The HJ47 sounded cool so I started searching for one. Most I found were rust buckets or out of the country. John with Proffitt s Cruisers had a couple in the past and helped me out quite a bit. A couple of weeks ago, he emailed me that he had spotted one for sale on Mud that looked very clean and minimal rust. The worst rust spot (per the seller) can be seen behind the passenger-side door in the 2nd pic.
A couple of days later, I made a deal with the seller and bought it. It is being shipped in from Munising, MI (only in MI 1 year) and should arrive on Wednesday. If all works out, I plan on driving it to Bonham this week to get a new driver-side door handle from Butch.
It's a 1982 HJ47 (rhd), 4-sp in the floor, 2H diesel, with about 83,000 origional miles. It has the original PTO winch & rear seats. My plans are to get rid of all rust, give it a new paint job, Line-X the interior floor throughout, and possibly new upholstry & headliner (if needed). Will probably get rid of the roof rack as well. I wish I had a longer trailer and I would bring it to the Roundup. Maybe I can drive it to the meeting on the 12th.
Russell A.
A couple of days later, I made a deal with the seller and bought it. It is being shipped in from Munising, MI (only in MI 1 year) and should arrive on Wednesday. If all works out, I plan on driving it to Bonham this week to get a new driver-side door handle from Butch.
It's a 1982 HJ47 (rhd), 4-sp in the floor, 2H diesel, with about 83,000 origional miles. It has the original PTO winch & rear seats. My plans are to get rid of all rust, give it a new paint job, Line-X the interior floor throughout, and possibly new upholstry & headliner (if needed). Will probably get rid of the roof rack as well. I wish I had a longer trailer and I would bring it to the Roundup. Maybe I can drive it to the meeting on the 12th.
Russell A.
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