FJ55 newbie

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I have a feeling I'm going to dump a lot of money into a REALLY ugly truck. :)

Just don't do the same thing with women and you'll be okay...
 
Lucky for me Danielle is not ugly, and is fine with me dumping lots of money into trucks as long as I keep her truck and quad running good as well. :)

Picked up the motor today. So purdy all freshly rebuilt. I almost feel bad putting such a nice new pretty motor into such a beat up rusting truck... it should go into a nice old car but too bad for it I'm more into 4x4s then classic cars. Also picked up two new mufflers today. The old exhaust is gone... totally rusted away. Sounds like our plans for tomorrow might not happen and I'm actually kinda OK with spending the day putting the motor together and getting it all ready to go back in.

Going horse camping with the wifes family in two weeks and we're going to be about 45 minutes from the Rubicon and 8 people and 3 horses so there's going to be lots of time to go play a little and see how the Bucket wheels.
 
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Got the new 283 almost ready to go in. My dad was laughing at me for not cleaning up the intake better but it's going in a 4x4 not a show car.. it's just going to get dirty again if I make it look nice. ha ha. Going to pick up a new water pump and starter today, clean up the headers, get the distributer in and then hopfully tomorrow get it in the truck and get everything back together.
 
Whewwwww.... way too hot today to be working on my truck but my dad and I managed to get it in. Right now I'm trying to deside if I feel like starting to hook up everything or if I should just wait until tomorrow and go to the river today and cool off.

Still have a long list, but it should be running tomorrow or Sunday by the latest.
 
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Got this from a friend for the Blue cruiser. He got it out of a Hilux at a junkyard for his Hilux and then got rid of the truck and kept the AC for a few years. He brought it over to be a few days ago and I'm stoked. This will look really nice in the blue pig and although I wanted to keep it 100% stock... this fits the look of the dash enough I don't think it's going to ruin the stockness for me too much. Plus it was like 107 yesterday and today...
 
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Well, I've been busy and distracted and just finally got back to working on the Bucket last weekend. Got everything in, hooked up, ready to go. Wouldn't fire. Had fuel and spark and wouldn't fire. Then I got sick and finally got over today to mess with it. Pulled a spark plug and found the pistons were hitting them! Smashed them so they couldn't spark.. thank God none of them broke, just bent. The plugs in the old motor were like a month old so I just used them... but this motor had differant heads.. opps. Replaced them with the correct ones and it started shooting flames out the carb but still not starting.. I rechecked the distubutor and it was 180 as I thought it might be... flipped it around and it started up almost right away. Sounded awesome with the open headers! Ha ha.

Wierd thing happened though... the Automatic transmission started POURING fluid out the dipstick when I reved it up a little... I have NO idea what that was about. It's a TH400... I disconected the vacaum line to the trans and it stopped doing it... but I don't really know why or what happened... any ideas? The vac lines tell the trans when to shift right? Sooo... I can't just leave it off... I'm retarded about auto transmissions. Nothing changed.. the trans work perfect when I parked it and swapped the motor.. and it's the same motor that came out, chevy 283.
 
looking good, the a/c is cool.. :grinpimp:.. if you have a freind in the a/c business they can help you redo it since its going to be a r12 system you are going to need to find some r12 replacement, as the 134 lowers the system efficency about 20%, all the 134 systems run larger condensors and evaporators.. 134 in a r12 system sucks ... especially in a pig, alot to cool off...

good luck

Ray
 
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Sweeet! Finally got it all together today. What ever was going on with the trans puking yesterday didn't happen today... so I don't know and don't really care as long it it doesn't happen again.

Stupid headers are leaking, so I've got to pull them off and retighten them again and see if I can't get them better. I forgot to bring zip ties to get the plug wires off the headers... they are tied up with weedeater line right now. Need adjust the valves, and just clean up the engine bay a little but I'm pretty much there. I was going to drive it home today, but figured I have to finish welding and cutting the back so it's just going to go back to my parents house Monday anyway, might as well leave it.

The motor was a bit weak. It was just flat.. stumbled off idle and just didn't make the power I expected... not even close. I have a few ideas... the only fuel I had there was avgas I had left over from Sand Mt in June... I noticed while putting it in it didnt's smell like avgas anymore. I'm kinda hoping it was just stale and that's a big chunk of the problem. Also, when I was messing with the timing, the coil wire shocked the hell out of me... so I need to replace that.. those two things could be a lot of the problems.

However, it does run and drive and is perfectly drivable again. The motor sounds awesome and once warmed up idled and sounded awesome. After the off idle stumble it picks up and moves pretty nice. Best part... after a 10 minute drive and returned home and parked it... NO LEAKS!!! I think that's a first for me to have an engine swap have nothing at all leak after the first test drive.

Also, did a test painting to see if I liked the OD green. I love it. Tomorrow and monday I think I'm going to go ahead and sand and paint it. OD green where the grey is/was and flat black where it's white. Should look pretty sweet. Going to make vinal stickers in red for the raised TOYOTA on the back. Funny how the ugly POS truck actually made me love it and want to keep it alive. :)

So.. after monday I should be towing the Blue one over to swap it's motor and put a nice fresh 1F into it. Soon I'll actually have all 3 cruisers running at the same time. Crazy.
 
Brought her back home to be with her sister and cousin!

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It wasn't the best drive home though.. Ran out of gas (so we thought)... lucky for me the wife was behind me. We went to a gas station and filled a jerry can and came back... the fuel wouldn't go down into the tank. The fuel would just sit in the neck and I could shake the crap out of the truck and it would go down into the tank... but it took forever to get the 5 gallons into it. It started again... but the fuel pump was running like crazy like it wans't able to get fuel pressure built up. The rest of the drive home I was struggling to keep it running at stop lights. I am wondering if there isn't some kinda pressure issue with the fuel tank going on. Will have to figure it out tomorrow, I'm tired today and am thinking it's time to go to the river for the rest of the afternoon.

I also made this for fun. I had a old bent 1980's army fighting knife (army Kbar) and it was pretty messed up as a knife so I made it into a shift knob. And yeah, I took a grinder to the edge so it's nice and dull and I'm going going to slice myself open trying to shift gears. :)It works great and it's tall so I don't have to lean down to shift gears anymore.
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Love it!!!

-Daniel
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You need an old Swiss army knife for the T/case shifter...
 
I love Summit... ordered an HEI distributor yesterday afternoon... UPS dropped it off this morning. The new motor is running a lot like the old motor... backfiring a little through the carb, low power, just wasn't crisp and strong like a brand new motor should be. For sure didn't have 400HP. I only used three parts off the old motor, the carb, the intake, and the distributor. The carb idles OK and the secondaries open up. It's giving the motor fuel OK. The intake is an intake and not much to it. See the backfiring seems to be a timing issue still, I figured I'd ditch the points distributor and get an HEI for it. I wanted to use an HEI anyway, so even if it's not the issue (which I think it is) then I still have an upgrade.

I also found a huge fuel leak in the soft lines by the tank... which explains why it's acting like it was starved for fuel suddenly. Fixed it and now it's happier.

Slowly getting the kinks worked out. Hoping to get the new distributor into it today and get it down to the DMV tomorrow and get some license plates for it finally. I registered it right away but it won't stay running long enough to get it down to the DMV for a VIN inspection.
 
Well crap. The HEI distributor hits the intake! I THINK I can dremel the area it's hitting and get it to clear. It needs like 1/8th at most. I'm kinda pissed off right now, it's just one issue after another with this truck. Oh well, I'll buy some dremel bits tonight and clearance it tomorrow. It seems odd that an aftermarket intake wouldn't work with an HEI distributor.
 
It's true... I'm just annoyed becuase I thought it would be quick and easy to get this one on the road while I collected parts for the nice blue one... turns out this ugly turd has sucked up all my cruiser money and time for the last few months and my 40 and other 55 need love too!
 
Well, after lots of grinding I got the HEI installed and it fired up and was a happy engine... sorta. It was still acting like it was starving for fuel. I stopped the engine and kept the fuel pump running, climbed under and holy crap!!! I had 6 fuel leaks. All the old rubber lines had split open. I replaced them all and and checked the fuel filters, they were good.

It runs great! It's a little lacking in off idle power and mid range power, but it gets up and goes pretty good on the road. Once it's in low range it feels like a beast power-wise. I've been driving it around on the property a bunch and finally decided to take it down to the DMV today to finish the registration and finally get license plates. Made it to the gas station before I turned around and went home, the radiator sprung a little leak. I stole the one out of the blue cruiser and it seems to be holding so I'll try again tomorrow to go down and get the VIN inspection.

I also started cleaning up the welds and cutting out rust and patching. I'm not expecting it to be perfect, but just trying to remove as much as I can. I am going to try to paint it next week so I wanted to get they body as cleaned up as I can.

I really am hoping to get Bucket wrapped up enough to feel OK about starting the motor swap on the blue one soon. I have a nice rebuilt F engine sitting in my parents garage waiting to go in it.
 
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