Very Very Nice you did a great job your truck and the pics are cool to!!
there is no such thing as over sharing, especially when you have a 40 this pretty
Keep up the great work on your 40! I'm enjoying your build very much.
Keep up the great work on your 40! I'm enjoying your build very much.
Many Thank Yous for all the comments while I was away. Feedback from others is one of the great resources of MUD and keeps me coming back to post and learn. I will try to keep the good times rolling, but I am starting to slow down as the "to do" list is getting shorter (Finally!).
When I restore mine it will be red but my next favorite color on an FJ40 is blue like yours.
Color choice is one of those difficult mental tasks. . . you want to get it right the first time if possible. I think the FJ40 looks great in any of the primary colors (red, yellow, blue) -- I did a lot of bouncing back and forth and looked at a lot of 40 pictures before I finally decided on this blue. I suppose you could also get a wrap installed -- would not be too complicated on these mostly flat trucks -- this way you could change the color if you did not like how it turned out. I was thinking that if I brought another one back to life I might go Red!
Details on the fog lights?
Fog lights were an OEM kit I ordered from CityRacerLLC.com (
@Racer65 here on MUD). Roger offers individual pieces or a complete kit including wiring harness and switch. Fair warning ahead of time. . . if you check out his website you will come away wanting more than just a fog light kit.
The old Power Wagon and the FJ40 do have a lot in common. There is a Power Wagon Forum but it does not seem to be as fun as this one

. Two websites that I will check into from time to time are VintagePowerWagons.com and DodgePowerWagon.com -- worth taking a look even just to check out the classifieds. I was lucky to find mine at a reasonable price -- if I'm not mistaken Hagerty has listed the Power Wagon as continually one of the hottest collector vehicles -- about 2/3 of the top 25 are trucks and SUVs. No surprise to us, right? The FJ40 fits right in with that line of thinking. . . other people are figuring out what we already know.
It will be intersting to see how well the hard top fits the aluminum tub. I've heard it can be a tough area.
I have also heard and read in other posts/archives that the hard top is not a direct fit to the Aqualu Tub. This was one area that looked to be addressed prior to my acquisition and the top looked to fit well (from the before pictures anyway) but we will see if that continues to be true when it comes time for a final fit.
Great pics! Wanted to go there Last week but got tied up with work. Did you stay in Yellowstone or Jackson Hole?
Thanks Dave! We stayed several nights at the Canyon Lodge in Yellowstone, then the Coulter Bay Cabins at Grand Teton. Both locations were budget conscious but still very clean/comfortable and offered good central locations for exploring both parks. Yellowstone is huge and some people even divide their time between north and south side of the park. Feel free to shoot me a PM if you want any details; you may well know more than I do about the place but I'd be happy to tell you what I know. A place I really enjoyed much closer to home for you is Lassen Volcanic National Park -- it was out of the way in North Central California but decided to visit after Crater Lake in Oregon. I really enjoyed it and even thought it compared to a mini-Yellowstone.
Dad had me back on the wagon today. . . literally. He had the hay cut/ready to go and decided to get the square bailer out to make some horse hay. That meant I was wagon stacker, something I enjoyed during my younger days but the novelty has worn off a couple decades later. Luckily it was third cutting so the emerald green bails were not flying out of the kicker as quick as they usually do. We accomplished about half the prepped fields and ate up the better part of the afternoon -- time I should have used to cut grass but at least it was spent with family.
Dug out a few of my favorite critter pictures from the trip so here you go:
Bison were literally everywhere. Kind of like the rats of Yellowstone!
Elk were abundant as well. There is a resident herd in the Mammoth Hot Springs area and get quite close to the buildings (and the road!). In the fall they are in the rut and you can hear the bulls bugling in the evening -- a cool but eerie sound.
This Trumpeter Swan was swimming solo down the Firehole River. I read somewhere they can weigh in at 25lbs. and have an eight foot wingspan.
One evening in Grand Teton I saw a couple heads bobbing in the Snake River. I went down to the bank to get a closer look at the OxBow Bend Overlook and wouldn't you know a couple river otters swam up to the very same bank to munch on a fish they had caught.
We had left the parks saddened by the fact that we had not seen a moose. We checked every marshy spot where they should have been but nothing. The Moose Wizard must have heard us talking about it because after leaving the parks we spotted this guy along side the road in the Bridger Teton National Forest. There was a female not far off but not close enough to get in the picture.
I will work on one more post of some of the thermal features -- only to show some of what is out there and perhaps inspire others to visit the parks in the future. The Mrs. was constantly posting on Insta-Chat/Face Page and hearing back that people would be interested in seeing such things themselves/planning a visit to one of the parks. I camped my way thru a number of them when I was younger as an inexpensive way to see the country -- they continue to draw me in and I always find something new to see or explore.