FJ55 newbie

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.

So... the front door on Bucket wouldn't open from the outside. You could feel the handle was disconected. Is there a way to get at the linkage without having ninja hands? I couldn't figure it out and since it was Bucket and not the nice one I just cut a hole on the inside of the door and fixed it and am going to weld the part I cut out back into the hole... I don't REALLY think that's how Toyota would have fixed that but I couldn't figure out how to get in there to fix the linkage. However, it IS working quite nice now. :)

Headlights aren't working. All the fuses checked out, the tail lights, marker lights and front turn signals all lite up though. There is no power to the plugs that go to the headlights. Any ideas or do I just need to start hunting for a broken wire somewhere? Also, the turn signals on the fenders turn on when the headlight switch is pulled... the blue one does it too so I'm guessing that is normal? One more question... the right turn signal works, flashes normal. The left flashes once and then just stays on. Any ideas? It seemed kinda odd to me that one side worked but not the other.
 
The light problem is most likely the headlight switch or the emergency flasher switch since one side of the directionals work. You might want to pull them and start checking with a VOM meter. I can post up the contact configuration from the service manual if you need it.
 
Yeah, if you could that would be graet. It looks like there has been some bastardizing of the light switch wires. I was going to check to see what the blue one looks like but I just ran out of steam today.
 
hairy_apple said:
Yeah, if you could that would be graet. It looks like there has been some bastardizing of the light switch wires. I was going to check to see what the blue one looks like but I just ran out of steam today.
Click to expand...

I'll scan them tonight and post.
 
Hey, hopfully you see this before you go to the trouble.. it was the switch. I pulled the plug off the back of the switch and jumped wires together until the headlights suddenly came one. I will just redneck it for now with a NAPA switch until I can get a replacement. I am not gong to be driving this beast at night yet, but the road I live off of is a daytime headlight section and the CHP are nazis around here. Got pulled over a few weeks ago with a headlight out. Showed her I had a new headlight in a bag I had just bought on the way home and I still got a fixit ticket. :(
 
Figured out the lights... only to have it break down today. No idea what's wrong. It has to be something with the carb. It's flooding instantly and massively. It did it once last week, and I thought I had left the ignition on and the fuel pump and just pumped away flooding the carb. But since then I installed a kill switch so that I could have the ignition on without powering the pump.

I drove it to town last night, got back parked it. Went to go over to a friend's shop to build some stuff with him, and it wouldn't start. The carb is soaked in fuel. It is everywhere. Puddles on the butterflies. Instantly. It will start and stall starts and stall. Nothing you do with the choke or the gas has any effect. Now.. if you hold the starter down and hold the gas peddle to the floor.. it was blow black smoke like crazy and run... but as soon as the starter is let go it stalls again. (the starter is already toasted and needs to be replaced). The carb is a holly. I'm a retard when it comes to carbs. I took the bowls off and drained them and no effect. Flooded instantly again the second I tried to start it. :(

I will have to mess with it more tomorrow, but man I'm bummed. I was all excited about driving it around town today.
 
It did, I removed it and added a second glass filter when I thought I was having fuel issues last week. Put it back on yesterday, no effect at all. I think it was set to 4 as well. I will have to check today what it's actually set to.

I found some diagrams... I think I'm going to pull the bowls off today and check floats and go crazy with carb cleaner. I'm hoping there is some junk in there sticking the floats. ATV carbs are so much less scary. ha ha.
 
Nope, no fuel return line. It's a Chevy 283 with a Holly carb (don't know much about it). I did manage to take it off, take apart the bowls and check the floats and needles. Everything looked alright... seems to be working OK. No noticeable crud in anything. Cleaned it put it back together and same issue. I also think just for fun with all the flooding/clearing/flooding/clearing I fouled the new spart plugs... they looked pretty icky. Although it's starting so they must be not totally wasted yet.
 
The O rings looked OK, but I am not an expert for sure. I have a friend coming tomorrow and we're going to tear into it and get it figured out.

Just so wierd, it ran awesome one day and not at all the next.
 
Removed the window from the tailgate. Removed the motor, gears, ect. Basicly gutted the tailgate trying to figure out the motor. It would only move a few inches up or down. I cleaned the gears and greased it and it was the same so I just ripped it all out to mess with it. Found that the motor and gears and everything works perfect... the channel for the window is pretty bent up and was just hitting the window and putting too much pressure for the motor to overcome.

I THINK I am going to take the motor and gears and put it in the blue pig as it works and the blue one doesn't seem to at all. I want to find a camper shell hatch that I can make fit and have a swing up window/hatch back there. That is if I don't end up chopping the top completely...

Also, finally figured out the "flooding" problem. The coil was only getting power while the starter was turning... by myself I couldn't have tested that (had thought about it). Friend came over today and we got it figured out real quick once the carb seemed to check out. The wiring in Bucket is a joke, we are going to rewire the whole ignition tomorrow and take that scariness out.

Now I just need to find some new tires before Sunday.... Bucket is going to the snow!!!!
 
Been an eventful week for Bucket... damn. Mostly a headache for me. So a friend came over and we replaced gaskets and o rings on the carb, he tuned it NICE. We fix the stupid coil wire that was only getting power while cranking casuing it to only run if the key was held on. Got the timing set perfect and it ran AWESOME. Purrred.

Next day I replaced the headlight switch. Just used a NAPA switch so I no longer have the ablity to turn on ONLY my running lights. I've never really understood why you would want to anyway. I replaced the points and tried to start it to set the dwell and nothing. No spark. Ok.. I checked everything and it looked OK so I put the old points back in just to see and nothing. No spark. I then spent the next two days ripping my hair out trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with my ignition. Finally went down to NAPA and got a new coil and a pointless ignition. Put them in. NOTHING.

Today I just was frustrated as hell and called my dad and he came over. Its' SOOOO much easier to troubleshoot stuff with two people I had it narrowed down to wire we rewired the other day within 15 minutes of him helping.. the crimp had broken (I know crimps suck) inside. So the wire was attached and looked fine, but wans't transmitting power. DOH! Oh well, at least it runs now.

GF and I will be driving it to dinner tonight once she gets home.
 
Set your points to the factory gap, don't worry about the dwell.
 
Well, things are not well with Bucket still. After replacing the points with pointless ignition, it was backfiring through the carb really bad. I re-timed it and no effect. REALLY bad. Not just at high RPM but at idle. So I think tomorrow I am going to put the points back in and see if I can't get it back to what it was at before we started tweeking with it. HOPEFULLY, it's just ignition issues and not the timing chain or a worn cam, burned valve or something sad like that.
 
It's probably not the timing chain...
 
Yeah, am just trying to think of things that would cause an ignition in the intake... I've heard that worn Chevy engines can slip gears on the timing chain... seems like it would just explode all at once to me, but don't know.

I really don't know much about working on Chevy v8s. The only one I've ever worked on was my 40 but it was a crate motor and I pretty much just dropped it in and hooked up everything and it started and ran.

I really have a strong respect for the F and 2F motors. They are much less picky about running then SBCs are.

I really hope I can get this sorted out this week. I am going to have to take a month off from working on my cruisers to get ready for my wedding and this is my last week until mid June that I have to sort it out. I was REALLY hoping that Bucket would be our camping truck for this year. Still.. if I can get it back to where it was a few days ago, it would backfire through the carb only at full throttle... I can live with that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Back
Top Bottom