cult45's 45 recovery and remobilisation

[catskinner]

cult are your roadtrak majors made in Australia or japan, a couple of observations of mine the Japanese rtm seen to have had better rubber and aussie made rtms have a bit bigger lugs. I like the more classic looking Australian logo
Japanese

Australian

 

[cult45]

Jeez you've got me there mate. I'll take a look-see when I swing by the truck today. Previously Aussie25 and a few others had warned me against running old tyres. When you say 'old tyres' do you mean like the ones in catskinner's pics? Cause my RTM's are about 30 years newer than those. No cracks.

cat, I can pick an early Landcruiser rim a mile away. What are those bad boys..?

 

[west aussie]

at a guess i would think you need 1 1/8' wheel cyls all round. thats how i put my 64 together. it had a mixture of front and rear and left and right but got it all sorted. dont know where your 1' came from unless it is off a shorty 40; its certainly the odd man out. im pondering all this myself at the moment with my 61 shorty. someone commented in that thread that perhaps 40 and 45 have different size wheel cyls on the rear. quiet possible. at any rate the only 1' wheel cyls i have ever seen were on my fj25 and the 61 fj40. (but then i only normally play with old 45s).

ireland was great. didnt make st james gate but sampled plenty off their product elsewhere! went to a small town car show and caught up with the local toyota boys. they play with mid 80s hatchbacks (starlet?) and that sort of crap. was hard not to laugh; but credit where its due. they do some nice restoration work and each to his own. they were nice lads anyway; got some pics somewhere.

those dash pieces look great. that choke cable you cant get out seems aftermarket or later model to me, not original 64. other pieces wpould be good for my 61 though. and i still in love with your darth vader light. i may be able to trade you this lower thermostat housing. its NOS. has some goo on it where has been offered up to a motor once but has never been used. you didnt end up with the interior rearview mirror from the 64 did you? andy budge needs one for his project.

 

[cult45]

When you say 'all round' re the wheel cylinders, do you mean all four rears or all eight including front and rear? Cause I have four 1" ones for the front. The other pieces are yours. I'm not even sure why I decided to send them your way, I just had the urge. Cruiser karma I guess. The darth vader light I can't part with for a thermostat housing. What else have you got?

In other news I picked up a week's work so no Cruiser time til the weekend when everything's shut..

 

[west aussie]

1" wheel cyls on the front has throw me. there is just so much i dont know about these old girls; but i haven't really stepped too far beyond 64. Cruiser Karma is a good thing; it won't let you down in the long run

 

[cult45]

Well the Great Brake Wheel Cylinder Mystery has been unravelled. Slacks Creek Brake and Clutch put the micrometer to my wheel cylinders to discover the fronts are 1 1/8". I don't know why I never actually measured them. I guess I was just tired and they looked smaller due to being of the single piston variety and away I went. In the mean time I'd spoken to wiring and general Landcruiser guru Coolerman who confirmed the same thing: 1 1/8" on all four corners and singe piston front, twin piston rear. Slacks Creek Brake and Clutch will provide kits for me to recondition the cylinders. They will provide me a fourth 1 1/8" twin piston cylinder for the rear [I had 3 x 1 1/8" and 1 x 1"] and resleeve all four in stainless, also providing kits. They've also tracked down another ten early type tube nuts [unavailable] and some misc. clips. The only down side to all this is that the parts will be ready tomorrow afternoon and I'll be flying out Tuesday morning to go back out west for two weeks. So I'll have to learn patience. Whilst I'm away I have a friend's screenplay to edit [John Jarratt is attached] which is a cool hot rod flick set in 1960. Lucky I'm only working ten hour days on the gas pipeline..

 

[cult45]

The long hours recently has kept the Cruiser time to a minimum, but I got a few bits and pieces done. Sourced a union bolt for the clutch master, rendering it ready to be bled AND USED! Bought a tap, drill and bolts to undo my overzealous thermostat housing job. I spent a fair bit of time on this cause I didn't want to completely destroy the $195 housing [which I recently found out I could probably get for much less]. This is the end result. It annoys me that I've had to space it out with washers, because I really enjoy well engineered solutions, but I'll have to just live with it. Drilling out washers really is the lowest form of engineering. I cleaned the horn contact ring and spaced them apart with a piece of sandpaper cut into a circle to replace the perished rubber item. Anything thin and circular will do. I found these cool factory leather harness joiners and cleaned them up. Damn I love period engineering.

 

[cult45]

Saturday morning, I went round to bloke near me that had a 45 for sale [parts or whole, to recoup costs] and scored a wiper motor and blades for $50! Bargain!! You can see the difference between the pre-'70 ones and the '70 - '74 ones here. Without having installed it, I would say I'm 80% sure you can swap your old pressed in wiper refills for the '70 - '74 type, allowing you to run regular wiper refills. Naturally I'll confirm this in a few weeks. New on top, old on the bottom.

The dude was working on an XP sedan delivery, an uber rare one of two hundred that left the factory in '64/'65. Matching numbers too. He's gonna restore it.

 

[cult45]

So hungover as s***, this morning I made three Landcruiser stops in a row. One was a garage sale in which I scored two headlights [including a Koito one], a set of body stands, a vacuum cleaner and a '70+ wiring harness joiner for $15. The owner had just finished restoring his matching numbers '81 FJ45-P [sans bumper] and had some spares. Mostly 2F stuff so no use to me. Nice guy though.

The second stop was to catch up with a bloke who wrecks out and sells 4x trucks. He's got some early stuff and is going to help me out with the front flex line t-piece that I've misplaced like the fool I am. He's also going to give me an upper and lower t-stat housing. He drives an HJ47 with a turboed 2H, soon to have a H55 behind it, ND aircon and factory power steering. I'd managed top contain myself until he showed me this rare little gem he picked up a few months earlier. Yep, another factory FJ45 Troopy soft top. 1977 model. I'll have to update that other thread going on here to let them know there's more out there. Pretty cool rig. Virtually rust free and 99% complete.

The third stop I made was to visit sneaky as he's given me a '65 45 firewall cut. Admittedly I thought it was going to be a little more usable than it is, but generosity is generosity and there's a good vent system in it. Sneaky is an engineer, like his father before him, and we chatted cars. Sneaky's old man has a pretty nice 1927 Chrysler semi hemi [we think]. What a day for cars! So, loaded with my goodies I headed back to the Cruiser..

 

[cult45]

Got back to the truck and only had an hour or so, so I vacuumed the interior [long, long overdue], begun installing the headlights and did a general tidy up as I am heading away for a fortnight. Included in this was spraying WD40 on my machined brake drums as they'd begun to corrode. Rule #1 of brake restoration? Machine your drums dead last. And after visually inspecting my thermostat housing fix [and letting it cure for 20+ hours], I cranked her over..

 

[cult45]

Hello ladies..

 

[west aussie]

splendid work cult. loving it.

interested in your wiring terminal blocks. are they oem or something else you found to suit? originals still available new from toyota i think. i bought 2 sets several yr ago for about $40 a piece. (was financial commitment!)

dont let a bit of surface rust on your brake drums worry you at all.

and love that old falcom. got a good mate with a standing order for that exact xp sedan delivery.

keep it up!

 

[cult45]

Thanks west. They are OEM. I didn't know what they were until my mate Deano pointed them out [he's an AV cabling/sparky type dude] and there's two captive nuts on the inside of the guards. I saw a FHT 45 for sale recently and she had the same blocks in the same place.

Well, I'm away for two weeks, so other than the occasional check-in, I'll catch on the other side!

Go the sedan delivery!

 

[sneaky]

Hi Dan,

Glad the fire wall went to a good home. It was pretty far gone, but I hope you can find a use for it as it was destined for the tip.

 

[cult45]

Hi Dan,

Glad the fire wall went to a good home. It was pretty far gone, but I hope you can find a use for it as it was destined for the tip.

Mate I will find a use for it - 100%. I appreciate the offer of free Cruiser parts! Hey did you ever find the instrument cluster? I was initially after the glass in it, I think that how we got onto the firewall in the first place

 

[cult45]

I've been out west for two weeks straight with no wrenchin time. Back tomorrow!

 

[cult45]

Apologies to anyone following, but I've been commissioned as script editor for a period hot rod feature set in an outback town in 1960. They're about to ask for some money and the script needs a bit of cult45 magic before they do so. So instead of wrenching on my beloved 45, I'm wrenching on a script. Close enough for me. They've already got these guys attached:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0418877/?ref_=nv_sr_1

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0920460/?ref_=tt_cl_t4

Which means they'll be speaking my dialogue. Which is pretty fly! We shot a series of scenes 18 months ago. It's here [] if you wanna check it out. That's me wrenching with the blue FB Holden in the background then ready to rumble with the thugs with a shifter in my hand, me again in the ratty '28 ragtop coupe [that thing was so cool!] and me again telling the local copper that 'that rumour's been going around for years..' Anyway, lot's to do and I'm heading out west again Tuesday. Ciao! -cult45

 

[cult45]

..and before I got a chance to even get out west this happened. I even have a spare, but it's in my other toolbox AT MY 45. Idiot. Interestingly enough, once the fan belt goes, the vacuum for the brakes goes, the vacuum for the clutch booster goes and then you can't even shut the motor off. So you're kinda dead in the water. I recall reading a thread on here about a guy down in Mexico that had to continually stall his BJ42 to stop it. Reckon it might be the same type of thing.

 

[cult45]

Oh and lastly, talking to this fella I know earlier this evening who told me about an old bloke not far from me who drives a recently restored '63 FJ45. So upon my return I'll be going to see him for sure..

 

[ozcrusier]

I have a few spare speedo clusters if you need one.