FJ62 Hospice Care

[too tall]

Are you replacing all of that EGR stuff or just deleting it? I have a 3fe in my 40 and deleted it to simplify it a bit more. Your frame looks pretty bad. It looks like a good donor for your 40 IMHO although I don't like killing cruisers that still have life left in them. Not as bad when you are using the heart to keep another one on the road. 3fe is a great motor in a 40, totally different feeling with a manual transmission behind it as well.

 

[Devils Paw 80]

I suspect this is going to continue until I post cancer pictures, so here are a few:..

Is that frame rust adjacent to hole in exhaust? It's a common problem, and an excellent reason for getting rotten exhaust replaced sooner than later.
On most rigs, that is. Understand you won't be keeping this one alive. I still think frame may be OK for awhile if that rot hasn't spread beyond inner rail.

Someone on Mud may have a battery tray for you. Or perhaps rebuild/ reinforce that one with wood.

 

[Advent]

Are you replacing all of that EGR stuff or just deleting it? I have a 3fe in my 40 and deleted it to simplify it a bit more. Your frame looks pretty bad. It looks like a good donor for your 40 IMHO although I don't like killing cruisers that still have life left in them. Not as bad when you are using the heart to keep another one on the road. 3fe is a great motor in a 40, totally different feeling with a manual transmission behind it as well.

Deleting the EGR. I bought a really sweet keychain from @NLXTACY but it’s a bit big for my pockets since I’m 5’6”. I’m hoping it fits on the engine.

I hate to tear down good vehicles, too. That’s why this thread is about hospice care, giving it the best damn quality of life possible for the remainder of it’s life. This truck ended up being more than I hoped I would find; a mechanically good vehicle with a bit of rust. That’s a tall order around here, stuff tends to just fall apart and we don’t have any junkyards.

Is that frame rust adjacent to hole in exhaust? It's a common problem, and an excellent reason for getting rotten exhaust replaced sooner than later.
On most rigs, that is. Understand you won't be keeping this one alive. I still think frame may be OK for awhile if that rot hasn't spread beyond inner rail.

Someone on Mud may have a battery tray for you. Or perhaps rebuild/ reinforce that one with wood.

The frame is bad on both sides; near the exhaust I see a small hole through close to the leak. I haven‘t decided whether I’m going to JB Weld the snot out of the exhaust or try to piece something together out of parts store bends. I’m beginning to think seriously about the latter.

I‘ve already ordered a new OEM battery tray. $90 including shipping is more than I really wanted to spend but I’d rather just deal with it quickly. I want to see how it runs after all my work!

 

[60 toy ota]

Thought that looked familiar! I remember seeing it in town when I worked in Juneau a couple years ago. Always thought it was a fun looking rig. Seriously missing AK right now

 

[Advent]

Tech post! I hope this is one for the FAQ because I put in a *lot* of study time.

I’ve been reading all the desmog guides and staring at vacuum diagrams and realized a lot of people plumb the EVAP system incorrectly when desmogging 3FEs. This is not helped by the fact that the FSMs show the BVSV plumbed two different ways, with the best explanation showing it plumbed backwards:

In the above photo it shows the lower port on the BVSV going to vacuum and the upper port going to the charcoal canister. That is either backward or the other manuals and truck hard lines/firewall diagram are backward. I’m going to assume the former.

What the above photo does show, though, is that the BVSV should be plumbed to the EGR nipple on the throttle body rather than to manifold vacuum. The reason for this is simple: the evap system isn’t intended to run at idle; that would function as a vacuum leak and manifest as surging. When plumbed to manifold vacuum the system would *primarily* function at idle rather than during throttle-open conditions; I believe ported vacuum makes use of the venturi effect to enable the system to open when there would otherwise be low vacuum such as when accelerating.

Now that we have that figured out we can *properly* run the vacuum lines. I spent a lot of time staring at stuff to make sure I have this right. This is the vacuum connection on the back of the head:

In the above photo, the upper left connection goes to the throttle body EGR part (labeled E on the throttle body itself) and the lower right connection goes to the vacuum valve above the charcoal canister. The other two ports can be left open or blocked off; they don’t connect to anything anymore.

Here is the big bundle of vacuum connections under the intake manifold:

In the above photo the two connections on the left are the BVSV, as per the firewall diagram. The upper BVSV connection is plumbed to the EGR port (the other end is the upper left in the prior photo), which has a T welded into the hard tube right here. That’s the plugged line; that connection used to go to one of the EGR doohickeys, I can’t remember which. If you’re doing a ‘BB desmog’ THIS is where you should be putting the EGR port BB so that the BVSV still gets proper vacuum. The EGR R port could still get a BB up top.

The line on the right is the line from the fuel pressure VSV to the regulator body. Here’s a better view of what I did there:

I moved the VSV, I’ll cover that in my next post. It could stay on the fender if you want, in that case you would run the manifold line from the intake manifold port down to the lower left open port. That hard tube is u-shaped; the very next lower level fitting to the right is where you would plug in the VSV. Or just run it directly from the intake manifold over to the fender and skip a connecton.

This whole desmog only required 4ea 1/8” caps. One on the air filter, one over the EGR R port on the throttle body, one over the T fitting on the BVSV hard line, and one on the second hole out of the gas filter/manifold vacuum port used by the fuel pressure regulator. I may attempt the dremel off the extra hard lines sometime in the future.

 

[Advent]

Okay, now for my less-tech diary post. Spent the last couple days cleaning up the vacuum system. I decided to move the VSV from the fender to the manifold; I was originally a little worried about vibration but Toyota put three of them on the 22RE so it should be fine. I did come up with what I think is a pretty novel way to do it, though, that may help with vibration.

I have a Wits End 3FE keychain that’s gorgeous but a bit big for my pockets. I got lucky and noticed it fits perfectly over the EGR port so I decided to use it as a block-off plate. I got to thinking and realized there should be enough thickness in the aluminum to drill and tap a hole to mount the VSV so that’s what I did. I drilled a hole and tapped it to M6-1.0 to use a modified isolation mount from the fender:

Note that EGR gaskets are metal and don’t like being drilled through. That kinda sucked but I got it straightened out and filed the hole enough to work.

Then I made my mount. This is the nicest thing I’ve ever fabricated, which really isn’t saying a lot for my skills:

All I did was cut off the fender VSV braket between the fuel and EGR VSVs, then bent the bracket into a rough approximation of an L. The sleeves that go through the rubber isolation grommets are larger than the gap; if the rubber ever rots out unnoticed it won’t just fall off the intake manifold.

After I mounted it up I had to extend the wires from the plug; I did this on the VSV end of the plug. I’m going to route them along the other wires below the brake booster.

After I got the vacuum stuff sorted out it was time to pull the upper manifold to pull the air injection rail and install plugs:

This is the farthest I’ve ever gotten into an engine. That upper manifold is intimidating to remove. I’m hoping it goes on a little easier with less stuff to thread it over! BTW, yes, I plugged the intake ports. I was originally hoping to get it reinstalled tonight but the gasket is going to take a bit of work to clean up and I’m not about to stay out late with the bears.

Speaking of the which, this one climbed up the deck post to say hello while I was drinking my coffee this morning:

You know how they taught you in school to climb trees to escape from a bear? Yeah, that’s bad advice. They can climb better than you.

 

[MarkBC]

LOL that guy looks friendly eh? But if they get habituated they can get aggressive.

 

[Advent]

I have spent the last FOUR DAYS working on the intake manifold gasket.

Four. Days.

That was, by far, the most complicated and expensive part of this desmog. I ended up spending $75 on consumables to get that thing cleaned off. I don’t know what was going on but I did notice that the new OEM gasket is a different material and not metal-backed. If possible, I’d like to never do that again. What finally worked was applying aerokroil, letting it sit, using a white 3M Roloc bristle disc on my drill until it stopped being effective, then repeating. Permatex gasket remover also worked but kroil worked better.

In the middle of working on the gasket I found something else that can come off in a desmog but is not in the guide - the air rail heat shield. It’s the big squared-u-shaped bit in the above photo. It’s held on by three bolts; two of them go nowhere and can be left off but the bolt closest to the front of the engine needs to be replaced to attach the evap line bracket.

The gasket finally came off and I got everything put back together today. It took a bit of cranking (the fuel rail had been depressurized when I removed the cold start injector) but fired up and ran great right away. I took the opportunity while everything was apart to de-carbonize as much as I could reach. I’m going to need to send the injectors away for cleaning this winter, this is the cold start injector *after* several applications of carb cleaner:

While I was working on the engine my wife decided she didn’t like that the bedliner paint job on the front bumper/bull bar was flaking off. She’s decided to strip and repaint it, which I‘m not going to argue with since anything that gets her more interested in ‘cruisers is good, right?

Right about the time I got the engine back together today the new battery tray showed up. MUCH nicer!

Once the engine was running I checked for vacuum leaks with starter fluid; I am happy to report there don’t appear to be any. I was especially curious about the vacuum hard lines since I have them configured differently than the desmog guide; I also had blown canned air through while the manifold was off to check my routing. Once the vacuum leak check was done I put caps on all the unused lines to keep them clean.

Took it for a test drive and there is A LOT more power now. I’m honestly going to attribute most of that to the new, non-leaky, vacuum lines. I noticed the 4WD light didn’t work before; it does now. Having a billion vacuum leaks probably wasn’t helping the actuators engage.

Came back from the drive and checked the wheels for temperature. Passenger rear was hot. Pulled the brake drum off and the parking brake bellcrank is dead. Lubed it as best I could and forced it back; guess that’s on my list now. I managed to break off a bolt in one of the threaded drum holes so I tried drilling it out - no dice. I eventually gave up and just used the tap I bought for the VSV mount to tap the stuck bolt:

Went for another drive and all the wheels stayed cool but there was a nagging vibration. I checked around and the transfer case was hot. I think it’s low on lube; hopefully low and not completely out (especially since we went about 20 miles each way). I’m still waiting on gear lube so I might try dumping some random quarts of motor oil into the tcase tomorrow to see if that helps.

 

[Advent]

Oh wow, didn’t realize how long it’s been since I updated. Both a little and a lot have happened.

To start, it turns out the transfer case wasn’t really hot, I just thought it might be. Heat transfer from the transmission will do that. I didn’t figure that out until after I dumped a bunch of gear lube out onto the driveway trying to check the fluid level...I think I cleaned it up well and fast enough that my wife hasn’t noticed. Shhhh. No pictures of that!

Right about the date of the last posting my wife and I both started getting a cough. Then it got bad. We got tested and it took four days to find out we did *not* have covid-19, so that’s a plus, but two and a half weeks of coughing has sucked pretty bad. In the last five days it’s finally turned from a painful dry cough into something productive, so hopefully it clears up soon. The sickness has put a damper on my wrenching but not completely stopped things.

Did a valve adjustment; it is AMAZING how much that quieted the exhaust. There’s a bit of sludge under the valve cover but nothing like some of the engines I see resurrected on here:

Does anyone have a photo of a bored-out throttle body? The lighter color near the flapper almost looks like it was machined down after the rest; the throttle body is a continuous diameter from opening to manifold. Also, getting the valve cover off is so much easier without the air rail and heat shield that it’s not even funny.

Speaking of valve covers, anyone know what this number written on the back side of the cover means?

I had been planning to do the oil galley plug mod while the cover was off but, while I was driving around to warm the engine up, I noticed a coolant leak on the passenger side near the radiator drain plug. When we were turning the crank pulley to find TDC there was coolant coming off the fan blades. Decided to put the engine back together and troubleshoot the leak before diving into anything else. I spent a lot of time poking around with my borescope and cell phone trying to find the leak source; this was kind of a cool angle:

Long story short, it was the upper radiator hose. Easy fix, huzzah! Bought a new Toyota hose and clamps to replace the aftermarket POS that was installed. Pro tip: that hose has different diameters on each end. I put it on wrong the first time and it dumped a bunch of coolant so I had to do it over again. $49 including shipping but it’s pretty clearly a better hose and I think it will be reusable in my FJ40.

Spent some time trying to seal up the muffler because I am not paying for a nice exhaust on this rig. Unfortunately, this took an hour to tape and lasted, like, five minutes:

Today I changed out the distributor cap and rotor, that seems to have cleared up a lot of the vibration when the torque converter is locked up. It needed doing:

That seems to have smoothed out a bit of the vibration while the torque converter is locked up. There still is some, though, which makes me think the cylinders aren’t making power evenly. I figure either a couple cylinders have low compression or the injectors are unevenly gunked up. I got a new compression tester (old one bubbled the hose testing the 2F in my FJ40) so I’ll check that soon; I’ll send away the injectors for cleaning this winter. Maybe they’ll clear up a bit from being used; I think I’ve put more miles on it in a month than the previous owner had in several years.

 

[NearJetties]

Reminds me I need to do a valve adjustment. Will be my first time doing one since I bought the truck....and first one ever.

 

[Advent]

Reminds me I need to do a valve adjustment. Will be my first time doing one since I bought the truck....and first one ever.

It’s not overly hard and is a good opportunity to check out the valvetrain. Gives an idea of how the oil holds up. One thing I found was that, the more you remove, the easier it is to get things apart/together. There’s a lot happening around the top end of a 3FE.

I found this video to be really helpful, in particular his use of a camera to find TDC and a reminder that the manual has the direction of ‘front’ printed weirdly:

 

[Seth S]

You might want to get tested again for the Rona....the testing hasn't been exactly spot on. Around here its finally pretty easy to get a test whenever you need one.

If you get to the point of stripping this thing for parts I could use a set of stock door cards.

 

[Devils Paw 80]

You might want to get tested again for the Rona....the testing hasn't been exactly spot on. Around here its finally pretty easy to get a test whenever you need one.

If you get to the point of stripping this thing for parts I could use a set of stock door cards.

I have a nice set of door cards from FJ60 in the gray color if you're interested. Shipping from here could be spendy though.

 

[Seth S]

I have a nice set of door cards from FJ60 in the gray color if you're interested. Shipping from here could be spendy though.

thanks. Brown truck. Trying to stay with brown.

 

[Advent]

You might want to get tested again for the Rona....the testing hasn't been exactly spot on. Around here its finally pretty easy to get a test whenever you need one.

We ended up canceling our 10th anniversary camping trip put of town and I got another COVID test just to be sure. So between the two of us we’re now at three negative tests. I’m feeling a lot better today, seems the crap has (mostly) cleared out.

Not much of an update but I got a shiny part in the mail:

I have no idea how 4WD was available. It also makes for a good ‘backup’ plate for my FJ40 if I can’t get GIR back (somebody with a green heep has that plate right now).

I also got digging around while swapping out the registration paperwork and found the original window sticker(s): (if these aren’t readable I can upload larger versions)

Total MSRP, including dealer options, $22,695.98. According to the CPI calculator that works out to $49,189,46 today.

I think it may have been a military officer’s vehicle as some of the other paperwork hints that it might have spent time in Germany:

 

[MarkBC]

That looks like a clean truck from the top down; nice roof, windows and hood. I guess with all the SE Alaska rain it keeps it clean above but the salt on the road rots it from underneath. I hear that it's the opposite in the Caribbean. The salt air / dew rots vehicles from the top down but the lack of salt on the roads means they are clean underneath. So now you just need to find a Caribbean 62 to pair it with!

 

[Advent]

Got my oil and ATF analysis back... Looks like I will probably want to tear this engine down (in which case I’d prefer to go the 2FE route) rather than swap it directly into my FJ40. As far as the ATF, I was told this transmission was rebuilt about 50k ago so maybe that explains the copper?

 

[Advent]

Finally got the front bumper back on. As soon as we got it in place, bolts just sitting there, it started pouring buckets. I hate when that happens! It sure does look good with fresh paint, though:

I ran a compression check and came up with some interesting numbers:
1. 172
2. 165
3. 171
4. 160
5. 151 dry, 160 wet
6. 179

A couple of those seem...high. I stuck a camera in the cylinders and it looks like there’s buildup in all of them. I bet Seafoam would probably help a lot.

Most cylinders looked pretty good, cross-hatch still visible, but that ‘low’ (still above factory spec) #5 looks like the top piston ring has had, possibly is still having, some issues. Check where the cross hatching ends and the cylinder wall is chewed up:

The #6 cylinder is also showing some indication of...something. Coolant in the cylinder, maybe? My two thoughts are either that or salt air corrosion, since the PO lives right next to the ocean and it would sit for long periods. If some of that salt moisture got in, could it cause this kind of buildup?

Taking photos with this $25 borescore doesn’t always show things well; it’s kind of like looking through a picket fence as you’re driving. You can see everything while moving but when you stop it’s blocked. Anyways, that picture is the cylinder wall, with the piston in the lower right corner. It looks to me like maybe it’s galvanic corrosion, but the cylinder pressure checks out fine so it doesn’t seem like it would be a head gasket or crack, right?

 

[Advent]

Oh, wow, it has been a while between updates. a lot has happened - we were both sick for over 2 months, I broke my hand, we built a deck...2020 has been a big year.

The ’Cruiser has not been forgotten! In fact, we’ve been using the heck out of it:

Took down 6 trees in the yard, too:

...Even managed to keep it clean inside, somehow.

Anyway, it’s been doing great. The engine really likes being driven; every tank of gas it runs better. I think it’s cleaning years of crap out. Possibly decades of crap. Either way, we’ve been enjoying it a lot more than expected - so much so that we’re sorta shopping for a nice one. I say ‘sorta’ because of the pandemic; travel here is problematic at best. When we can get out it will be time to start seriously looking for a rust free-ish FJ62.

Since we’re planning to get a nicer one, that also means I can do some upgrades that will move over. First on the list: replacing the glow-worms-in-a-jar masquerading as headlights. I don’t think the previous owner *ever* replaced the headlights; I believe the truck bedliner was done by the owner before him and the headlight bezels were painted in place:

I was planning to wait but saw a 20% off Black Friday deal that somehow also included the JW Speaker 8800H Evo2 headlights. That kind of deal was too good to pass up. They came in yesterday and I spent a couple hours soldering adapter harnesses following the diagram here: Instructions for LED Headlight upgrade

The finished product(s):

I saved quite a few pieces in the harnesses by using the wiring harnesses that came with the lights rather than the ‘H4-H4‘ kits most people seem to use. I also used a pair of 6 ohm turn signal resistors instead of one 10 ohm since that was all I could find in town.

I had to fight the install a bit because of rusty headlight screws, but when I tried it out for the first time, everything worked great! I’m always relieved when things work out the first time.

These things rock, even on low beams!

Just went for a drive and the difference is incredible. I really suggest these headlights for anyone looking to upgrade.

 

[NeverGiveUpYota]

Love the story and I’ll bet that po would kick himself knowing how easy it was to get his 20 year owned truck running again. Poor guy but great for you!
The bears are so darn cute and exciting to see. Be sure to post up some scenery shots at some point. Alaska is definitely on my want to see list someday.
Thanks for saving another LC from demise!
Felicity