Builds Build thread - Japhy the Canadian FJ62 (1 Viewer)

[franklin40]

good on you go giving it a go man. i wouldn’t have even tried knowing how much work you’re doing!! i would never finish!

 

[diesellibrarian]

good on you go giving it a go man. i wouldn’t have even tried knowing how much work you’re doing!! i would never finish!

Thanks! The 62 is my daily driver, so I have to break it down into bite-sized pieces that I can reasonably tackle over the weekend. Knowing that I'll need it to get to work on Monday morning helps to move things along.

 

[franklin40]

Thanks! The 62 is my daily driver, so I have to break it down into bite-sized pieces that I can reasonably tackle over the weekend. Knowing that I'll need it to get to work on Monday morning helps to move things along.

oh man i’d be in so much trouble doing that. mine is a daily driver and i’ve gotten myself into trouble where it’s on a jack stand for two weeks because i had to wait for a part i didn’t know i needed. you’re braver than i am!! but we’ll done. no better way to learn skills that just diving in!

 

[diesellibrarian]

Final update on the tailgate project. Today I got the second patch ground and filled, and a couple of coats of rattle can primer on the whole exterior part of the tailgate. I'll leave it in primer until I finish the rest of the body work on this truck and then I'll sand the whole thing again, and re-prime properly before painting. All in all, a fun weekend.

This pic shows the raised sections behind the license plate. Pretty pleased with how those turned out, for my first try at forming sheet metal.

And here it is, back on the truck, just as the sun is setting, ha ha. Should be good for another hundred thousand!

 

[SHIfTHEAD]

Looks like fun!

 

[diesellibrarian]

Thought I'd throw up a couple of pics of my bumper, which I made from cut-up sections of my old bumper. Fun project!

Found a set of vintage Bosch fog lamps that look real good with the square headlamps IMO.

 

[diesellibrarian]

So, this truck has very little rust, except the back half of it, which is very rusty. My plan is to take a week off sometime, pull the gas tank, and fix all of the rust in the quarter panels, inner fenders, inner rockers, etc., along with the a few patches on the inner box section of the frame. Since the folks at Wolf quoted me $800 for repop quarters and doglegs, I decide that there was no harm in at least *trying* to make my own. Here's progress so far.

This is what I'm dealing with. The passenger side is worse.

Being a thrifty person, I thought I'd use some scrap sheet metal from a discarded light fixture for this first stab at it. Assuming it works, I'll have to go back and fill those holes lol.

First test fit:

Getting closer:

And here's the mostly completed panel. I made the indented section separately and welded them together. This is how it looks after initial grinding;

 

[diesellibrarian]

So, I guess bodywork is a bit like a chess game: you have to think several moves ahead. I'd started working on the lower quarters, but then I realized I probably need to do the inner panels first, but then I noticed some perforating rust in the area of the rearmost body mounts. So, that's what I'm fixing next, and then will move outward from there.

This is how it looked when I removed the tailgate. Not pretty.

There's a lot going on in this area, but I decided to just start cutting and see what happens.

Thankfully the steel supporting the body is sound, but the sheet metal around it has rotted away, so I'm going to have to lift the body off the frame slightly to get in the there to clean it up and install new metal.

In the meantime, I made a patch for once everything is taken care of in this area. Used a hammer and dolly to roll this edge.

First test fit. Tomorrow, if the weather cooperates, I'll jack up the left side of the body and get this sorted.

 

[NeverGiveUpYota]

Save your cracker/beer boxes to use as templates. Brilliant on the light fixture metal. I have three of those for the same intention.

 

[NeverGiveUpYota]

There’s a guy up your way... I think if memory serves right who did that corner, he’s who I got the beer box idea from. You’ll get it!

 

[NeverGiveUpYota]

This was his thread. 650,OOOkms and counting.

 

[diesellibrarian]

This was his thread. 650,OOOkms and counting.

Yeah that guy is kind of my spirit guide. Whenever I start to lose heart, I take a look at his thread and it gives me hope haha.

 

[diesellibrarian]

Not much of an update today. Decided not to lift the body after all. Instead, I'm kind of re-engineering the sheet metal in that area. There are so many panels that converge in that one spot! Had to chop the quarter to get to some of the spots, but that was on the agenda at some point regardless. Anyway, got it call cleaned up and POR-15ed. Once dry, I'll weld the patch in.

 

[diesellibrarian]

Got this little project done, I reckon.

Here's the patch piece tacked in. Looking better already.

Zap, zap, zap, zap, zap, zap, zap etc.

After a little grinding, a second round of welding, a little filler and primer, it's looking pretty good. Now to get after that rear quarter panel!

 

[SteveH]

Great fab skills and photos. Good job! I love the use of scrap metal for these repairs.

 

[diesellibrarian]

Ok, moving on to the inner quarter: a project I've been losing a bit of sleep over, as it involves making my most complex panel yet. On the other hand, it's in a pretty hidden part of the vehicle, so who cares? Haha.

Anyway, I cut off the rusty lower part of the inner quarter and started mapping out my reproduction panel:

Then built a form using some masonite that I had laying around, and beat out the rough shape with a hammer. Turned out *okay* I guess.

I figured that if I got it reasonably close, I could use the hammer and dolly to make adjustments once it was tacked in place, and that's what I ended up doing.

Welding both sides of the join for strength. I just knocked the welds down a bit with the grinder because none of it will be really visible anyway.

Next step is to get the outer panel sorted. I haven't decided if I'm going to use the one I made earlier,or start fresh. Stay posted, haha.

 

[diesellibrarian]

BTW when I cut into the quarter panel, I discovered that this truck has been wired *twice* for towing, haha. There was a crazy rats nest of wires resting in the bottom of the quarter. All of that is coming out, eventually.

 

[kirvesmies]

i like the way you formed that inner rocker piece. for $h!t like that, i've routered the pattern into LVL n got after it with a hammer n dolly. on one floor repair project my body guy asked where i bought the floor pan patches, so i took that as a win. keep up the good work dude

 

[diesellibrarian]

Anyone ever tried to make a rear fender panel? If, not, I totally see why. It sucks! It's a tricky piece. But, since I had the day off, I thought I'd give it a go. Still learning this sheet metal bashing thing.

My quarters are far enough gone that I kinda had to eyeball it in a few places, but anyway I got this buck made up.

I rolled the edge first, so that I'd always have a baseline:

Definitely not perfect, but better than what (isn't) there right now.

The more or less finished product. I can't install it until I finish the inner fenderwell, which is my next project if the weather cooperates. Sure wish i had a garage!

 

[diesellibrarian]

The weather has turned cold, so I haven't been able to do much beyond test-fitting the patch panel I made, and stripping the inner fenders to see how rusted they are.

Here's how the panel is looking. Still need to trim the upper edge.

The inner fenders are pretty rusty, as expected - especially near the bottoms. Going to have to make a few different replacement pieces in this area. The outer mud flap mounts are completely gone.

The previous owner was a self-described "body man" who decided to make new outer rockers without paying any attention to the rotten inner rockers or the area where the rocker meets the fender.