Builds Golden Boy / was 'an as-yet unnamed gulf spec diesel 1991 HZJ pickup'

[John Young]

So after some last minute SNAFU's, I received this message a little while ago:

Hi, John.​

​

Your car should be picked-up shortly.​

​

The driver will call you to confirm ETA tomorrow.​

Hooray!

 

[John Young]

Golden Boy arrived more or less intact early this morning!

The truck would not start, and the fuel gauge read empty. Not being used to diesels I foolishly got a jump and it started, but then stalled.

I roused my younger boy and between him, the driver, and me we managed to push it into the parking in front of the house

Those are four steel 5 hole OEM rims, similar to what you see on the spare. I got them for free with the new narrow Dunlop tires and just had them ship them with the truck. I figured someone in Virginia might they they were cool. The guys were supposed to send 5, but they sent 4.

We then went off to the gas station for 1 gallons of diesel and put some in the front tank.

No joy in starting immediately. And I just noticed a little shipment damage:

 

[AirheadNut]

Cool! Try pumping the hand primer on top of the fuel filter housing until it goes hard, that will bring fuel up to the injector pump.

 

[John Young]

I remembered reading somewhere about the primer pump on these 1HZ. I think this is the culprit.

The water sensor cable is not connected to anything, BTW. Gonna have to fix that...

The primer pump button on top does not seem to operate at all. After reading on Mud for a bit it turns out that these fail all the time. I can order one from Japan, but I have the DMV appointment next Tuesday and they are very hard to get. I'd really like to get this truck inspected and titled and licensed.

I've read on this forum mention of a Mercedes diesel primer pump alternative, but I can't seem to find any specifics. I'd think I should be able to get the Mercedes part in time to keep my appointment--if I can find out what it is.

 

[AirheadNut]

That's the one. If the fuel lines are empty it can take quite a few pumps to bring fuel back up to the filter. You should start to feel resistance on the pump and hear the fuel filling the filter. Usually the failure with those is that they develop small leaks that let air in gradually, causing a hard start situation after the truck has been sitting. It shouldn't prevent you from getting to the DMV.

 

[John Young]

That's the one. If the fuel lines are empty it can take quite a few pumps to bring fuel back up to the filter. You should start to feel resistance on the pump and hear the fuel filling the filter.

Thanks; my son and I took turns and had no luck getting the filter to fill up at all. Any idea about this Mercedes alternative?

 

[AirheadNut]

Not sure about the Mercedes pump as a replacement for that one, I've seen Mercedes pumps used on 3B and 12H-T engines, but their primer pump is located on the injection pump. You could try taking the fuel filter off and manually filling it with diesel and see if the truck will start.

 

[Gun Runner 5]

A very sharp looking truck.

 

[John Young]

Couldn't find an oil filter wrench so out to the local parts store for one, and successfully took off the filter:

The filter was mostly filled with fuel. We topped it back up and put it back on the truck and tried starting again.

Still no joy.

It should be noted that the water sensor on the bottom of the filter is not connected to anything.

I do think the hand-priming pump is bad. I'm going to try to order a new one and get as fast shipping as possible.

 

[c2dfj45]

Could you buy some new fuel hose and put a hand primer bulb in between the filter assy and the injection pump to pull fuel thru the filter to get you going?

Or maybe just bypass the factory filter for now with a disposable filter and hand pump.

 

[John Young]

Could you buy some new fuel hose and put a hand primer bulb in between the filter assy and the injection pump to pull fuel thru the filter to get you going?

Or maybe just bypass the factory filter for now with a disposable filter and hand pump.

What I ended up doing was buying a generic GM assembly for 75 bucks on Amazon, with overnight delivery. Seems functionally identical. We will see...

 

[coldtaco]

What I ended up doing was buying a generic GM assembly for 75 bucks on Amazon, with overnight delivery. Seems functionally identical. We will see...

View attachment 2553212

If that works that would be a cool alternative to keep in mind

 

[John Young]

The replacement/substitute came this morning, delivered by Amazon less than 10 hours from when I ordered it.

It seems pretty well-made.

The hand-pump seems much more substantial than Uncle Toyoda choice. It is a little physically bigger I think, but there is plenty of space. The hand-pump develops vacuum nicely too. And the hand-pump has quite a lot of volume on each cycle.

The best part, being of a certain age, is that this pump is 'mature' and that they have a professional brand:

It is good to know that they have advanced equipment. I wonder if they used it to make this filter/primer?

Somebody took a marketing course, I suspect. I wonder if it is one of iFJF's High Effective and Advanced Management team?

 

[John Young]

It was a busy day today.

The GM unit is larger, but it does fit in the space without issue:

I made a bracket out of 1" angle iron to adapt the GM unit to the Toyota mount.

And it fit in the space. I am going to re-do the bracket to move the GM unit closer to the firewall, but for the moment it works.

The angles of the inlet and outlet could have been worse, but they could have been better too. 3 feet of 7mm fuel line from the local auto store (22 bucks!) worked ok, but the angles are more acute than I'd like. I am going to get some angle couplers to relieve them after I re-do the bracket, which I will do after I get the truck inspected for registration/licensing.

 

[John Young]

Here's my younger boy doing the installation:

First crank

Got the old truck cranking over while I pumped the primer, and it caught!

The generic GM substitute pump seems to have a lot more volume than the OEM unit. I'm almost thinking not to go back to the Toyo unit. My reading and some comments from folks on this forum suggest the Toyo design of the primer on these is not the best. And if I stick with this GM unit it is very easy to replace again.

Now that Golden Boy is capable of movement under its own power we did a quick check to see the most likely gotchas for the safety inspection. Sure enough, the drivers side front turn signal was not working. Just a lose bulb. The emergency blinker switch is a bit flakey and sometimes both sides don't work but if you flip it again it is fine. Another item for eventual replacement.

I'm stuck on the wipers. They don't function. I checked the fuse and it was fine. And it is dark now. So time to crack out the FSM pdf and see if I can find out what's going wrong. I'm pretty sure this was working when the truck left Dubai because it underwent an inspection as part of the export process.

If any of you have any hints on what to try on the wipers, I'd be grateful.

 

[Honger]

Here's my younger boy doing the installation:
View attachment 2554592
First crank
View attachment 2554594
Got the old truck cranking over while I pumped the primer, and it caught!
View attachment 2554595
The generic GM substitute pump seems to have a lot more volume than the OEM unit. I'm almost thinking not to go back to the Toyo unit. My reading and some comments from folks on this forum suggest the Toyo design of the primer on these is not the best. If I stick with this GM unit it is very easy to replace again.

Now that Golden Boy is capable of movement under its own power we did a quick check to see the most likely gotchas for the safety inspection. Sure enough, the drivers side front turn signal was not working. Just a lose bulb. The emergency blinker switch is a bit flakey and sometimes both sides don't work but if you flip it again it is fine. Another item for eventual replacement.

I'm stuck on the wipers. They don't function. I checked the fuse and it was fine. And it is dark now. So time to crack out the FSM pdf and see if I can find out what's going wrong. I'm pretty sure this was working when the truck left Dubai because it underwent an inspection as part of the export process.

If any of you have any hints on what to try on the wipers, I'd be grateful.

I had problems with my wipers and sprayer due to the switch stalk assembly. I had to replace the whole assembly.

You're gonna need a multimeter to sort that out.

 

[John Young]

I had problems with my wipers and sprayer due to the switch stalk assembly. I had to replace the whole assembly.

You're gonna need a multimeter to sort that out.

Thanks Honger.

Another clue: the sprayer DOES work.

 

[John Young]

Quite a day...

My DMV appointment is for Tuesday and getting a new one takes weeks so I'd really like to get the inspection passed and make my DMV appointment.

I started by looking for the wiper relays, but had no luck. Then I decided to inspect the switch as Honger had suggested so time to start unscrewing things.

But how to get the steering wheel off?

There did not seem to be any screws behind it, unlike the 80 and the 100. So back to Mud and it turns out you just kind of pull of the horn button/pad.

Lots of dust from the desert. The 560000km on this truck shows a bit.

Incidentally, the steering wheel tilt mechanism is frozen. The knob moves and springs back but the tilting mechanism seems frozen solid. Any tips on fixing that would be appreciated.

Anyways, I got the binnacle off, I sprayed contact cleaner in, and even some lubricant, and this improved the operation of the emergency blinker switch. But even with the dash apart I failed to find any of the wiper relays. But this time I did notice something: When I operated the wiper control the indicator lamps on the dash dimmed slightly. This got me to thinking, could the problem not be behind the dash, but rather with the wiper motor itself?

By now it was close to Noon, and Mr. Tire's inspector likely was getting backed up. And I really wanted to use Mr. Tire partly because I like the guys who work there and partly because they know my other strange, high mileage, Middle East Land Cruisers, the 350K mile 100, and the 360k km 80. If something was iffy I thought I'd rather have it happen at Mr. Tire.

So... time for a bit of a Hail Mary...

I've taken apart other Toyota actuator motors with worm gears and put them back together (mostly unsuccessfully) so I at least knew what to expect inside.

I took the mounting bolts off so I could move the assembly around a bit:

I have not mastered how to actually remove the actuator off the arm behind the firewall, and I suspect it may require doing it from the other side. But it turns out that at least on the 75 you can rotate the assembly almost 180 degrees so you can get better access to the motor.

I carefully undid the two screws holding on the motor housing and by rotating the housing you can 'unscrew' the worm gear from the actuator and pull off the armature past the carbon brushes along with the motor housing.

Once removed, the cause of the failure was obvious: Rust!

 

[John Young]

To continue:

I used my fine wire wheel to get the rust off the iron plates of the armature, and my buffing wheel to clean up the corroded end (which fortunately was not bad), and then I buffed the armature contacts.

Then I used a hand wire brush to clean up the permanent magnets. I contemplated using the ultrasonic parts cleaner but decided putting the housing into water would make it hard to get dry again.

I satisfied myself by hand wire brushing it again several times. Some of the debris was attracted to the magnet so getting it all out took some time. The last thing I did was blow it all out with my compressor. The housing ended up looking pretty good, and hopefully water won't get in there again.

Then I loaded up the bearing with some general purpose grease and put some on the worm gear as well.

 

[John Young]

This next part was tricky, and the real reason I'm going through so much detail here. Getting the armature back in and the carbon brushing in the correct position, all while the wiper unit was still on the truck was going to be a challenge.

The first thing I tried was putting small alligator clips on the contact springs to stop them from pushing the brushes into the center of the motor (which would prevent me from putting the armature back in, and that did work. But when I was doing this one of the ends of the springs came off the end of the retainer tab at the top of each brush housing and I realized all i had to do was do the same things to the other two springs (there are three brushes in this motor)

And then I carefully inserted the armature back in and 'screwed' it in to engage the worm gear. It took a couple of tries.

Then I put the springs back on the tabs so the carbon brushes were again pushed against the contacts on the armature.

Then it was time to put the housing back on. Fortunately, with the armature engaged with the worm gear the armature was held in place. Normally, the permanent magnets will try to pull the armature out. I sort of let the housing ease back on the motor. It resisted a little, likely because I put too much grease in the bearing at the end of the housing, but it squeezed out and the housing went back on, and I screwed it back in place.

All of the screwing and unscrewing of the armature from the worm gear put the actuator in a different orientation than I had started with, so I had to move the wiper arms to get the wiper actuator in the right spot to bolt it back in place.

I worried a little about that but concluded that the position contacts in the motor would be correct in relation to the angle of the wiper arms, and there was nothing left but to give it a smoke test.

And lo and behold, when I turned on the ignition the wiper motor turned on to return the wipers to the rest position. It worked!

And Ta Da! Mr Tire came through: