Hi my name's Chris. I recently purchased an fj62 for my wife that were building to be her daily driver. We've wanted a Land Cruiser for years and finally found one for a decent price. It's a 1988 fj62, we have completely disassembled it and the frame is off to be blasted and powder coated. We live in Bradenton Fl and tried to find a machine shop that is familiar with the 3FE motor but didn't have any luck. I found a guy in Tampa that builds Porsche race motors and spoke to him on the phone and he was willing to look at our motor. We dropped it off for him to do a leak down test a couple of weeks ago. He called me a couple days ago and said that over 60% was leaking and he couldn't do a proper leak down test to try and diagnose the motor because it was leaking so bad. He told me to rework the head it was going to cost $1500 plus parts and then we could go from there. He recommended a full engine rebuild and said the cost could be anywhere from 5k to 7k. We are doing the majority of the work to our cruiser ourselves for the fun of it and to save money. I'm finding out that parts are not always available and our cruiser is going to need a lot of little things that add up very quickly. Im not a mechanic but have quite a bit of tools and am mechanical inclined. It's a blessing to have found this forum to say the least ! I'm not sure which way to go with the motor but I definitely want to keep it Toyota. Anyway Just wanted to Introduce myself and say I'm thankful for this forum. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
