FJ62 3F to Ford “Barra” Swap (3 Viewers)

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Carefully removed the old choke light decal with a caramel wheel and replaced with one of Mo Faraz’ ( @63FST ) check engine decals. Great clarity & quality!
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I made a flat bracket and bolted it against a frame post next to the steering column, to serve as a mounting base for some goodies including an easy to reach OBD plug. I chose this location as it sits nicely centred between the former firewall clutch master mounting hole (repurposed to engine loom entry), fusebox and rest of dash.
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You can see some of the goodies dangling off the wires: a Dakota Digital GSS-3000 Universal Gear Shift Sending Unit that talks to a little display built into the dash, a ShiftKits inductive tacho adapter that talks to the original Toyota tacho, and a CANBarra module (in photo below) that looks after AC request, passes the PCM signal to the tacho adapter and gives me the new check engine light (and possibly some others in the future).
Then I got my son to print me some “pouches” that would hold these three modules and still have them easily removed for work or troubleshooting. A bit of bunched up wires left for moving the modules around, but otherwise all nicely tucked away under the dash:
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With the dash out I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to check the evaporator core, which, lucky me, wasn’t all too dirty. Still treated it with coil cleaner and it came up pretty clean. The foam doors on top of the fan, as well as the foamy bits between fan and evaporator housing, were in a worse state and crumbling if you even looked at them. Replaced the door covers with 6mm open cell foam and used some foam tape for the connections. Lying on the floor under the dash I was able to also get to the door in the bottom of the heater box (the door that controls mixing of cold and hot air) and replaced its foam covers without removing the door from the box. I have not removed the heater box to get to the remaining doors - they’ll have to last a few more years.
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Finished some mods to the rings holding the shifter and tcase boots in place. Really happy that the boots (except for the inner boots) could be re-used, making it look pretty close to stock ;-). Then put some sound deadener down.
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When I cleaned off the old underlay from the capet, I made the classic mistake of cutting the thread that holds the heel plate down, so I had to hand sew that back in place with 200lbs fishing line lol. Anyway, with carpet back you can hardly see what’s been done to the car.
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The exhaust has been made up thanks to a friend down the road, the last of the bigger projects to finalise the conversion. Added a cat, a flex joint and a straight through resonator connecting to the existing muffler and tip. Router in front of the cross member and underneath the transmission.
Added some heat shield where it crosses paths with the fuel lines.
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Hit a few more milestones this week:
- the engine and transmission mods have been officially approved by the inspector, modplate added to vehicle
- 12km test drive was successful, engine sits around 2,000 rpms at around 100km/hr (which I still need to verify), hopefully will be good for fuel economy; the 6-speed shifts smoothly, definitely gonna love that
- what a different vehicle, the lady has become quick at her high age ;-)
- finally have a winch, a long dreamed of addition
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Hit a few more milestones this week:
- the engine and transmission mods have been officially approved by the inspector, modplate added to vehicle
- 12km test drive was successful, engine sits around 2,000 rpms at around 100km/hr (which I still need to verify), hopefully will be good for fuel economy; the 6-speed shifts smoothly, definitely gonna love that
- what a different vehicle, the lady has become quick at her high age ;-)
- finally have a winch, a long dreamed of addition
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Incredible work, any video of it driving? Would love to hear her rumble
 

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