Builds Finally got my own...Meet BeBe

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Well hit a milestone at 4:45am on my way to the airport this morning!!!
She's still a baby at 150k

Untitled by renofizz, on Flickr
 
Well fxxx...... Started cleaning the wire around the oil pressure sender and wire came off. Looked at it and figured there was only one way it could go back on. Apparently I was wrong. So now my oil pressure gauge is spiked, I remember seeing someone was able to fix but can't seem to find (searching on my iPad sucks). Any help is appreciated.
 
Ok question for everyone. I am trying to use an old defroster switch as my switch for my Hella 500FF.

So this will be coming from my ultimate harness (from Erik). So if I am looking at this correctly the 87 wire goes from the harness to the lights, the 86 goes to the switch and the 85 is the ground.

Pic of the switches wires.
ImageUploadedByIH8MUD Forum1428725061.063176.webp

So the switch has a the following....
- white with black stripe = ground
- blue with red/orange stripe
- blue
- green x2

When I was testing the one in my truck the blue with red/orange stripe was hot when the ignition was in the ON position but the button was not pressed.

When I pushed the button with the ignition ON the light turned on on the switch and the blue wire was hot.

The two green wires never seemed to actually do anything whether switch was pressed or not.

So the 86 will go to the constant hot (blue with red/orange) but from there I am not sure what goes where?

Thoughts?
 
Ok figured everything out after working through it for about 5hrs today, that was including install time of everything. I decided to use the auxiliary fuse block as a hot fuse block and will run the lights and the stereo to that. From there I will have a switched block inside the cab for those items I don't want to run unless the engine is on.

Still haven't figured out what the two green wires are for.
 
Promised before and after light shots. Not that big of an improvement for the lights but I never really felt they were underpowered during normal night driving.
BEFORE
ImageUploadedByIH8MUD Forum1428950758.217348.webp


AFTER
ImageUploadedByIH8MUD Forum1428950789.482501.webp


Biggest improvement I saw though was in a more consistent running voltage AND the high beams. Before when I would hit the highbeams the light would just seam to have a diffuser that would spread the beam path out to light more area up. But when I put the new harness in I saw a pretty drastic improvement in not only the brightness of the beam but also the focus of it. So for me it seems the high beam circuit was lacking.

Also messed around with the Hella's, definitely going to be putting brighter bulbs in there as they are the same brightness as my headlights. Looking at going up to 100w bulbs but wondering if that might be TOO bright. Anyone got recommendations on a good bright replacement bulb set for these? Don't want anything overly expensive but don't mind spending $30ish for the pair.
 
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Well this weekend it finally happen..... WELDING!!!
A couple weeks ago I was at a party with an old shop buddy. Now he is a welder/fabricator and worked at a classic car body shop for a number of years. I have always been impressed with the work he has shown me and took what little nuggets of information I could from him when possible. Well we started talking about the Land Cruiser and what I was working on now and I told him that everything, mechanically is pretty good, I have some springs that I will be replacing soon but really the main thing that I need to work on this year is cutting out the rust and welding in new steel.

However, in there lies the issue as I have walked out multiple times to try and cut the truck up and just can never bring myself to do it. I have called for support on occasion but never had anyone there to help me, point in the right direct and tell me everything is going to be OK. I have had J (@reevesci) attempt to walk me through it a couple of times but alas I have always chickened out. Well my buddy told me that if I ever wanted help that I should just give him a call and he would be more than happy to come over and cut the truck up for me and then show me how to weld everything back together.

After getting back from Sedona I happened to be running some errands and ran across a beautifully restored truck, chatted with the owner (an out of towner) and he said that he had the same problem but one day just went at it, learned as he went and made some mistakes. He always wished that he had a welder buddy to help but he never lived in a place where he had "those" buddies as he moved a lot for work. Anyways, that started me thinking and I finally buckled and called my buddy.

So Sunday was the day, he showed up with a few tools, I brought out beer and well the pics are what happened..

CRAP - just realized I did not load the pics on Flickr like I thought I had last night... pics will be up tonight I promise..

All in all the rust was pretty bad, much worse than I expected but my buddies only complaint about it was the apparent 5 gallon bucket of mud they used on the ONE SIDE along with the tacked metal to rusty metal... oh and then there was the silicone that was used as a HUGE glob of seam sealer.... Thank god I kept my old tailgate and we were able to use that steel to patch in otherwise we would have not had enough metal.
 
Well the new PHOTO for Macs sucks. Tried for hours to get it to sync with my camera last night and couldn't get it to do it for some reason. Which is really odd because I did it a week or so ago when it first came out and downloaded our pics from Sedona. I will figure something out but last night was spent knocking down the welds, finding all the little pin holes and then blowing through those with the welder in an attempt to "fix" them. LOL... ended up fixing most everything so looks like another night with the grinder knocking down a few more welds.
 
You know the Internet rules. Pictures or it didn't happen.

It took me 3 years of looking at giant rust holes before I decided to tackle the rust. Then it took me 1 day to say "screw this, I'm buying a rust free tub"

I'm looking forward to the outcome. Body work sucks but is very rewarding
 
@Cruising Canuck Yeah I know but the thing is that if I cannot get them uploaded from my camera (didn't use the iphone this time) then that makes it a bit difficult.

And it has taken me almost 3yrs of looking at it to get to this point. Body work came out pretty good considering that I only had a small section for what needed to be replaced and the rest was done with a patch panel from my old tailgate. Thankfully my buddy is good with body work so he knew what he was doing and was able to do some shaping. Luckily these seem to be the only bad parts for rust!

On another note, realized that I now have a small crack and hole in my iphone screen. Looks like I had a hot ember from welding last night burn through my jeans and crack my GD phone screen... Oh what fun!!! At least the phone still works without issue.
 
Yeah yeah!! I know... Just had to have someone here to give me that push and make the first cut, then it was fine. I am really glad that I had him though as I would not have known what to do about all the lower rust. As you can see I had the wheel well piece but it did not go down all the way so we had to come up with something.

And since he brought his body hammers and dollies he was able to fashion a replacement out of the flat sheet from the tailgate.
 
dirtEJohnson said:
Looking good, though it appears we both have the ugly, low hanging tailpipe syndrome to deal with. Haha
Click to expand...

That was because we had disconnected the hangers to get at the sections a little easier. Of course, as I am bending it out of the way so my buddy can do the cutting and what not we both hear a loud POP. He stops, gets under the truck, pokes around a bit and then says, You know your exhaust was pretty much rusted through right? I say, yeah I figured. He then tells me, well the connection to the muffler, yeah there aint much left now, sorry but I busted the rusted portion.

So meh, will be something else on the list of things that will need to be done eventually. I want to get the suspension handled in the next couple of months here so that is the priority.
 
Well ordered shocks, bushings and got new u-bolts.... Looks like the new to me springs will be going on soon!!
 
Thanks! Yeah I ended up spending a bit more on the shocks than I wanted to but I figure I will probably have this setup for the life of the vehicle so the shocks will need to last me a while. I ended up ordering the Skyjacker M95 series shocks so we will see how they end up doing, since I am ordering from my friends small shock I got a little bit of savings but not a whole lot, but I would rather support a small business when possible than go through a major outlet like Summit Racing (which would have saved me more). Anyways, I will get the shocks sometime next week as they are shipping from Pennsylvania then just ordered the Energy Suspension bushings for the shackles and whatnot.

@dirtEJohnson How long did it take you to take everything apart and put new stuff in?
 
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