This will be a lengthy post, however, if there is any confusion or questions, please feel free to DM me.
So, while my profile says I've been a member for several years, tbh, I just bought my first 60 earlier this year. I got into this world because my brother had a brown 60 as his first rig and I fell in love with them as a kid. That being said, I sold my house earlier this year due to an unfortunate separation and had a large chunk of money burning a hole in my pocket. I figured it was a now or never thing. Sometime, late April/early May, I was perusing the Facebook classifieds in search of an fj 60. I found one in Kalispell, MT. As soon as I saw it I gave the guy a call, he was nice enough to hold it for me. So I flew from Seattle, WA to Kalispell a couple days later one way. My plan was to drive this big thing 9 hours back to my home in Washington. This proved difficult as I could drive no greater than 25 mph for more than a half mile at a stretch without the rig wanting to die out on me. So this is where the tech write up begins. The fella i bought it from was a really, genuinely nice guy, his heart was certainly in the right place but he was a novice diy'er at best. He wanted to do more with it but he wasn't capable. He told me he did all the fluids, put a new carb on it and de smogged it. Among a couple other small things. It turned out I had to u-haul it all the way back home because it was so bad and so unsafe to drive... and to think i paid $10k for it sight unseen. Que to me tearing into it a couple days later and it became an all summer long project. during this build, I turned to mud for a lot of help, both asking questions and reading old articles. Among all of this I could not get straight, definitive answers about a lot of what I did. So, this is a definitive answer. a lot of people are going to disagree with me and that is OK, all I have to say is come out here and see this for yourself. I de smogged my 60, 100%, 38/38 Webber carb, man a fre hei distributor, and electric fuel system. So, from the top:
Carb: I used a 38/38 DGES Webber carb. The one that came on the rig was a cheap Chinese carb for a tractor and super flooded the motor. for those that say Webbers are junk or finicky, I've got my final tune on it, went from 115* heat this summer to now in the 20's. Elevation of about 300' ASL where I live, over mountain passes, down to the coast and back. I have not had to mess with the jets or screws in months. Every time i pull a plug to check it, it's a nice light caramel color. It starts and runs beautifully every day, even when I let it sit for 3 weeks.
Distributor: I went with the Man-A-Fre HEI mechanical advance distributor. I will admit, this thing was a headache at best, but it's sorted out now. When I bought it, it came to me without the hold down. I called and they sent me one free of charge. I went to install it and no matter how I tried, it would not seat in the block. This was problem number one. I found that the o ring used to seal the housing is just a hair over sized. The best thing to do was lube the crap out of the o ring and have patience and keep working it, it will go. Problem number two, I heard after so many miles the distributor will lock up or eat the gear either on the cam or on the dizzy itself causing a failure. Admittedly, yes, mine locked up on me. I only found it because I was replacing the push-rod cover and had to pull the dizzy to get the cover out. I only had about 1,000 miles on it. I called MAF and they sent me another dizzy free of charge and brought to their attention what was going on. I don't know if they changed their manufacturing process or not, but I'll tell you all what's going on. inside the housing, the shaft rides on bushing that are made of oil lite bronze. for those that don't know, oil lite bronze is a very porous bronze that is filled with oil and supposed to self lubricate as it wears. Couple that with incorrect post heat treat after the machining is done, the housing warped a few thousandths of an inch and the bushings expanded just enough that the 2 things in unison caused it to lock up. I talked it over with a couple old time gear head buddies. We made the decision to fix the dizzy instead of replacing it with one that would ultimately fail the same way in another 1,000 miles. The trick is to pull the dizzy totally apart, down to a bare housing and shaft. Get some valve lapping compound from your local parts house. Spread the compound on both upper and lower bushings generously. put the shaft back in the distributor making sure not to force it too hard. Find a socket that fits the flat head of the bottom of the distributor shaft, if I recall it was 12mm or 1/2". put that socket on your drill and slowly at first start turning the shaft in the housing making sure to run the shaft up and down on the housing to even out the wear. Once it frees up mostly, add water to the housing and it will help cut the grit of the compound down and give a better polish. Stop every 30 or so seconds and check the play of the shaft. Once you get it to a spot where it feels free, but not loose and sloppy, pull it apart and clean the hell out of it. Get some good de greaser and a bottle or bore brush and was it multiple times making sure you have all the grit out of it. Then re-assemble and slap it back in. This works for any HEI distributor, not just MAF specific. I also opted for mech. advance because I wanted as few vacuum lines/leaks as possible, so now I only have 1 vacuum line and that's to my brake booster.
Now comes the final part of all this de smog
The fuel system: This was where I saw the absolute most wishy washy answers. It seems to be a 50/50 split. Some say yes you can go electronic fuel delivery system, the other half say no they're junk. I'm here to tell you that yes, you absolutely can go electronic and I attribute that mostly to why i don't have any carb problems. Just remember that while yes you can, you WILL get what you pay for. The parts house electric fuel pumps are cheap garbage. I read somewhere on this forum that Webber carbs call for 2.5# of fuel pressure. i confirmed that with Webber/Redline. the fuel input is rated for 2.5#-3# inlet pressure and the stock mech. fuel pump is higher than that. What I used starting from the gas tank to the motor is a fuel lab billet fuel filter, I think it was like 4 micron, it ran around $100. I ran a carter super street 9-16 psi fuel pump $125-$150. Then i ran that to a fuel lab 0-3 psi adjustable bypass regulator with I think an aeromotive 0-15 psi gauge. that set up was about $150-$200. I ran all new -6 an fittings where I could to seal the system. I should note that, I do not have a bypass fuel pump, the bypass is in the regulator which is mounted next to the passenger inner fender where the charcoal canister used to be. In getting rid of the charcoal canister, I just ran the fuel tank breather straight to the low vacuum side of my intake on the air filter plate.
After all this, I have around $2000 into the mechanical side of my fj. That does not include the nickel and dime things like hardware or gaskets if you need different stuff. I will say it was a pain to seal everything and find the answers and figure it out how to do this, but, in the end it was well worth it. This truck fires up perfectly every time and is just a blast to drive. I thought about posting a thread of my whole build process so far, but there is enough to it that i don't think i will unless people want to know. Anything is possible with some money and know how.
So, while my profile says I've been a member for several years, tbh, I just bought my first 60 earlier this year. I got into this world because my brother had a brown 60 as his first rig and I fell in love with them as a kid. That being said, I sold my house earlier this year due to an unfortunate separation and had a large chunk of money burning a hole in my pocket. I figured it was a now or never thing. Sometime, late April/early May, I was perusing the Facebook classifieds in search of an fj 60. I found one in Kalispell, MT. As soon as I saw it I gave the guy a call, he was nice enough to hold it for me. So I flew from Seattle, WA to Kalispell a couple days later one way. My plan was to drive this big thing 9 hours back to my home in Washington. This proved difficult as I could drive no greater than 25 mph for more than a half mile at a stretch without the rig wanting to die out on me. So this is where the tech write up begins. The fella i bought it from was a really, genuinely nice guy, his heart was certainly in the right place but he was a novice diy'er at best. He wanted to do more with it but he wasn't capable. He told me he did all the fluids, put a new carb on it and de smogged it. Among a couple other small things. It turned out I had to u-haul it all the way back home because it was so bad and so unsafe to drive... and to think i paid $10k for it sight unseen. Que to me tearing into it a couple days later and it became an all summer long project. during this build, I turned to mud for a lot of help, both asking questions and reading old articles. Among all of this I could not get straight, definitive answers about a lot of what I did. So, this is a definitive answer. a lot of people are going to disagree with me and that is OK, all I have to say is come out here and see this for yourself. I de smogged my 60, 100%, 38/38 Webber carb, man a fre hei distributor, and electric fuel system. So, from the top:
Carb: I used a 38/38 DGES Webber carb. The one that came on the rig was a cheap Chinese carb for a tractor and super flooded the motor. for those that say Webbers are junk or finicky, I've got my final tune on it, went from 115* heat this summer to now in the 20's. Elevation of about 300' ASL where I live, over mountain passes, down to the coast and back. I have not had to mess with the jets or screws in months. Every time i pull a plug to check it, it's a nice light caramel color. It starts and runs beautifully every day, even when I let it sit for 3 weeks.
Distributor: I went with the Man-A-Fre HEI mechanical advance distributor. I will admit, this thing was a headache at best, but it's sorted out now. When I bought it, it came to me without the hold down. I called and they sent me one free of charge. I went to install it and no matter how I tried, it would not seat in the block. This was problem number one. I found that the o ring used to seal the housing is just a hair over sized. The best thing to do was lube the crap out of the o ring and have patience and keep working it, it will go. Problem number two, I heard after so many miles the distributor will lock up or eat the gear either on the cam or on the dizzy itself causing a failure. Admittedly, yes, mine locked up on me. I only found it because I was replacing the push-rod cover and had to pull the dizzy to get the cover out. I only had about 1,000 miles on it. I called MAF and they sent me another dizzy free of charge and brought to their attention what was going on. I don't know if they changed their manufacturing process or not, but I'll tell you all what's going on. inside the housing, the shaft rides on bushing that are made of oil lite bronze. for those that don't know, oil lite bronze is a very porous bronze that is filled with oil and supposed to self lubricate as it wears. Couple that with incorrect post heat treat after the machining is done, the housing warped a few thousandths of an inch and the bushings expanded just enough that the 2 things in unison caused it to lock up. I talked it over with a couple old time gear head buddies. We made the decision to fix the dizzy instead of replacing it with one that would ultimately fail the same way in another 1,000 miles. The trick is to pull the dizzy totally apart, down to a bare housing and shaft. Get some valve lapping compound from your local parts house. Spread the compound on both upper and lower bushings generously. put the shaft back in the distributor making sure not to force it too hard. Find a socket that fits the flat head of the bottom of the distributor shaft, if I recall it was 12mm or 1/2". put that socket on your drill and slowly at first start turning the shaft in the housing making sure to run the shaft up and down on the housing to even out the wear. Once it frees up mostly, add water to the housing and it will help cut the grit of the compound down and give a better polish. Stop every 30 or so seconds and check the play of the shaft. Once you get it to a spot where it feels free, but not loose and sloppy, pull it apart and clean the hell out of it. Get some good de greaser and a bottle or bore brush and was it multiple times making sure you have all the grit out of it. Then re-assemble and slap it back in. This works for any HEI distributor, not just MAF specific. I also opted for mech. advance because I wanted as few vacuum lines/leaks as possible, so now I only have 1 vacuum line and that's to my brake booster.
Now comes the final part of all this de smog
The fuel system: This was where I saw the absolute most wishy washy answers. It seems to be a 50/50 split. Some say yes you can go electronic fuel delivery system, the other half say no they're junk. I'm here to tell you that yes, you absolutely can go electronic and I attribute that mostly to why i don't have any carb problems. Just remember that while yes you can, you WILL get what you pay for. The parts house electric fuel pumps are cheap garbage. I read somewhere on this forum that Webber carbs call for 2.5# of fuel pressure. i confirmed that with Webber/Redline. the fuel input is rated for 2.5#-3# inlet pressure and the stock mech. fuel pump is higher than that. What I used starting from the gas tank to the motor is a fuel lab billet fuel filter, I think it was like 4 micron, it ran around $100. I ran a carter super street 9-16 psi fuel pump $125-$150. Then i ran that to a fuel lab 0-3 psi adjustable bypass regulator with I think an aeromotive 0-15 psi gauge. that set up was about $150-$200. I ran all new -6 an fittings where I could to seal the system. I should note that, I do not have a bypass fuel pump, the bypass is in the regulator which is mounted next to the passenger inner fender where the charcoal canister used to be. In getting rid of the charcoal canister, I just ran the fuel tank breather straight to the low vacuum side of my intake on the air filter plate.
After all this, I have around $2000 into the mechanical side of my fj. That does not include the nickel and dime things like hardware or gaskets if you need different stuff. I will say it was a pain to seal everything and find the answers and figure it out how to do this, but, in the end it was well worth it. This truck fires up perfectly every time and is just a blast to drive. I thought about posting a thread of my whole build process so far, but there is enough to it that i don't think i will unless people want to know. Anything is possible with some money and know how.
