My Dave Gore inspired FJ55 had finally come to fruition.
Scout Saginaw power steering
SM420 transmission
and 35” tires made this thing unstoppable at the 2005 MW
"One more for nostalgia…
My Dave Gore inspired FJ55 had finally come to fruition.
Scout Saginaw power steering
SM420 transmission
and 35” tires made this thing unstoppable at the 2005 MW"
Small world. The body and other miscellaneous parts for the Frankencruiser, now Bonnie, came from Dave back in 2008. Went to pick up a hood for my original Pig as he had advertised two parts 55s on Mud. He'd crushed a '69 before I got to Miami AZ and was going to keep the axles for another project and crush the '73 once I scavenged "anything you can haul out of this yard" for $100. The light bulb went on and I bought the whole carcass sans engine/trans/tcase for $300. Made another 1800 mi. round trip a few weeks later to trailer it home and he ended up loading everything retained from the crushed one into the '73 carcass and my pickup. To paraphrase Dave "I'm done. with 55 owners. They're all cheap bastards."
Just say he was surprised, maybe impressed, when we showed up in Miami a few years later with the completed project. Dave and 4+ have been a huge help to the Cruiser community over many years.
Reamed out the steering arms. The shank on the FJ60 TRE’s are approximately 1/2” while the shanks on the 1 tons are 5/8”.
So I started by drilling out the arms to 5/8” then used the reamer to finish.
The saga on this front for the last couple weeks has been working on the plumbing for the oil cooler.
I was originally wanting to just run some hoses and call it good. Unfortunately, after mocking them in, there was severe interference between the hoses and the exhaust pipe running down from the header.
After mulling on it for a bit, I decided to that some hard lines were going to be necessary to avoid the exhaust pipe. Not too big of a deal except that the oil cooler AND the thermostat head are plumbed with 8AN ports and fittings which means to me that they intend or suggest you to run 1/2” lines rather than necking it down to 3/8”. So, had to buy some more tools to accommodate 1/2” tubing, which in this version is NiCopp tubing. If for whatever reason it doesn’t cut it, I’ll upgrade to stainless.
After getting the hard lines worked out, I built some short hose assemblies to connect to the cooler.
The down pipe now has space, but not as much as I’d like, and fortunately with that, I can modify the pipe and kick it over a half inch or more towards the frame giving everything a little more breathing room.
Going to cover the hard lines with some insulation and maybe play with some different tubing holders (instead of the ‘P-Clamps’) before being completely finished with this.
The clamp could be improved from that pic, like a block style?
Any concerns with vibration with long solid lines hanging from the motor? Perhaps the 1/2” size will be durable enough, my experience with hard oil lines on the racecar was vibration caused immediate leaks if motor mounted.
I'm not sure if I have any pictures, but the factory lines for the engine cooler are hard lines. I believe I bought them at the dealer. They run right along side the motor, just like Rush's and switch over to soft lines, which I adapted to my cooler .
I'm not sure if I have any pictures, but the factory lines for the engine cooler are hard lines. I believe I bought them at the dealer. They run right along side the motor, just like Rush's and switch over to soft lines, which I adapted to my cooler .
Forgive me, but I was talking about the 5.3 truck motor. My biggest problem with the system was fighting oil leaks at the block. It took more than several attempts and different styles of adapters? to fix it.
Forgive me, but I was talking about the 5.3 truck motor. My biggest problem with the system was fighting oil leaks at the block. It took more than several attempts and different styles of adapters? to fix it.
