Builds Good Dog Build (1 Viewer)

[RiggityJ]

Fail, but we’ll get to that.

Cleaned up the thermostate housing, corrosion really didn’t look that bad so I’m going to run with it. New thermostat, water pump, gaskets, hoses and plastic fan. Man those OME hose clamps are beautiful. Fan (and most components) was a replacement from @Racer65. As near as I can tell, I have had no issues with the fan in my ~69 block and 71 chassis. Replaced fasteners with that shines new bling. Reused the old fan spacers.

I’ll direct your attention to theground below the fan shroud in the image above.

That moment I realized what I have done:

Time to take it all apart...again...

 

[fjc-man]

Took a while to get the motivation to post again as I have hit a couple walls.

1. I figured out why my thread tapping handle failed. It was to prevent what happened. Ended up breaking the thread tap bit in the the back bumper. Still stuck, and haven't figured out how to get it out. Sprayed it with wool wax to prevent it from rusting in, and will figure it out later.
View attachment 2264501

2. Prep'd the back hatch by cleaning up the edges with goofoff, a plastic scraper, and brillow. Did a final thin clear coat over the surface to try to seal whatever was underneath and to provide a good sticking surface. Used the VHB tape.
View attachment 2264502

3. Ended up in gasket hell, probably (definitely) my fault because I have ADHD and can't finish reading a forum that I was specifically told to read. Still haven't, but will go back and try again. Bought weatherstripping from racer city and the VHB tape. They didn't want to stick together at all. It was like sticking 2 positive magnet ends together. Big fail. Yes, I took the red covering off.

View attachment 2264503
The one bright light was @HemiAlex recommending the 3M Stripe Off Wheel. I think its like 10X faster than goof off and scraper. Highly recommended. Probably get back to cleaning engine bay and frame, prepping frame for paint, and finish removing the old crappy weatherstripping.

I’ll give you one guess why that tap broke. Because the metal is so hard it’s brittle. So take a hammer and a punch and hit it from different angles and chip it out of there. Got it all out? Tap it again. Carefully.

 

[RiggityJ]

Everything is slower when you have to clean and remove rust as you go. At least I’m not painting everything. Cleaned up the front grill, lights, and bezel, then woolwaxed the interior.

I can’t stress this enough, clean your bolts before you try to take things apart. And use penetrating o

Buttoned everything up. With the fog light as it is, it looks a big special... probably have to take it apart again.

 

[RUSH55]

Kinda reminds me of Project Wrong Way. I like your plans of getting everything mechanically square with some good clean up and running it. Oil preserves, so just spray down the potential problem areas from time to time and should be good to go.

 

[RiggityJ]

@fjc-man I had successfully blocked the broken bolt saga from my mind.

I got it out eventually. Tore up some vice grips and the tap didn’t even move. After 10-12 hours of work with no progress, I was about to give up and get a welder, Then I end up taking a drywall drill bit to it. If you walk the drill side to side and lean on it hard, it will go through just about anything it turns out. Went through enough of the tap in about 10 minutes for it to fall out.

 

[RiggityJ]

Front is buttoned up and it runs!!! Well, more like it jogs. Looking into a FJ60 carb conversion (upgrade the early single barrel carb on the 69 f155), anyone know of threads to point me to? I have been searching and can’t really find what I am looking for.

Also, got almost all the parts needed to put a new classic cruisers roof on. Waiting for CCOT to send me some parts. Also have a new speedo cable and windshield wiper parts coming.

 

[RiggityJ]

Just realized I didn’t post the wiper motor rebuild. The grease and gears had seized up with rust and age. @40channel’s YouTube videos were super helpful. Forgot to take photos of it cleaned up (doh!). But clr, brake cleaner, and new grease got things moving again. Need to find a new 4pin electrical connection and redo the wires, but that’s for another day.

 

[RiggityJ]

This dog needs a roof!

When I got GD, it didn’t come with a top so let’s put one on it. I’m posting now so that people can provide comments/throw stones BEFORE I do the work for a change. So far, I have picked up the following:

1) a newly manufactured cap from classic cruisers.
2) a set of new set of Rain Gutters from CCOT.
3) a new Hard Top Windshield Cap fromCCOT
4) a lot of aluminum rivets from CCOT
5) headliner from SOR.com
6) 3m seam sealer for the rain gutters from amazon
7) 3m headliner adhesive from amazon
8) rivet/rivnut tool from amazon
8) rubber roof gaskets from city racer

I still need paint (most likely get white POR unless there is another recommendation). Classic Cruisers provided me the following instructions that seem like a good starting place:

- Clean up the top rail on the hard top side panels and the windshield to roof
- lay the pieces of the drip rail around the perimeter of the top
- align all the pieces so the outside edge is continuous and even, snug tight with bolts but don't crank down.
- tack weld all pieces together enough so the entire rail can come off the truck and lay on a flat surface to finish welding.
- clean up all the welds
- primer inside and out of the drip edge
- place back on Cruiser and lay top in the rails *** the fiberglass edge may need to be trimmed with a grinder slightly to allow it to fit inside the drip edge
- once the fiberglass top is laying flat on the track gently clamp into place in a few locations around the perimeter and mark where all the rivet holes will need to be drilled in the outer lip.
- drill appropriate sized holes for the pop rivets and rivet from the underside of the drip edge so the mushroomed part of the rivet is on the top side of the drip rail.
- use a continuous flow seam sealer to fill and seal the channel found on Amazon, apply enough that it almost spills over the edge. Let cure, pull off the to assembly
- paint the top
- install the headliner and install on the Cruiser

I’d like to attack this in phases: 1) weld rain gutters, 2) glue gutter to rails, 3)paint, 4) headliner, 5) put that sh*t on!

Currently, I’m looking for a welder or place to work on the the gutters.

 

[RiggityJ]

O and it drives! Thanks to @HemiAlex to helping get the thing running better and I finally got plates, so watch out! Also, turns out I had the radiator fan in backwards (fun fact you can make that work.

 

[RiggityJ]

Did a little spelunking the other day and realized the speedomarker to transfer case unit that I thought I was missing had been jammed up into the frame, so that was sweet!

Also had a quick panic attack when I saw missing bolts and a gap.Thankfully it was just a dust cover and not a big deal.

 

[RiggityJ]

Re-tubed the heater tubing to bypass the cab heater for a couple reasons. First, it was easy. Next is I Haven’t gone through the heater and don’t trust it not to spew radiator coolant all over. And lastly, I am thinking about vintage air, which would make the heater redundant. New 1-inch tubing goes in front of the engine, under the air filter, and between the oil filter and air intake manifold. Tube ended up a little cleaner that the picture, as I zip tied it to the 1/4” hardline ( fuel pump hardline maybe?).

Added a rubber shoe between the upper radiator hose, which was contacting fan shroud.

Also, changed the radiator fluid,oils filter With some of that oem goodness ( thanks @HemiAlex for the hookup), and oil. Used 7quarts of valvolien zr1 20w-50. Only problem is I realize I still haven’tput the thermostat back into the thermostat housing and replaced the hardware. Dumb*ss PO has 1/2inch bolts all over the place! O well, another day.

 

[kerplunk]

Well, now this is sure to keep you up tonight thinking about it....
I've head toyota still sells that pipe on the lower radiator hose w/o the heater hose "T".
And the fitting on the head can be replaced with a 1/2 inch BSPT plug (I think, verify the size).
Rather than having 4 feet of heater hose just running from one to the other....

 

[Ocho77]

She's looking great...nice work!!

 

[RiggityJ]

Well, now this is sure to keep you up tonight thinking about it....
I've head toyota still sells that pipe on the lower radiator hose w/o the heater hose "T".
And the fitting on the head can be replaced with a 1/2 inch BSPT plug (I think, verify the size).
Rather than having 4 feet of heater hose just running from one to the other....

welcome to my engineering mind.

Thanks @Ocho77

Painted the roof gutters and front roof cap gray primer to prevent rusting. This most importantly, at least for my wife, allows for storage somewhere other than my guest bedroom. Hope to mock up the gutters this weekend.

Got laughed out of multiple weld shops saying ”that doesn’t exist!” End up buying on amazon. Hopefully there are no issues. I figure it’s 70’s steel, so it’s not super high tech metalto start with anyway. Who cares if the weld isn’t perfect. If I’m honest with myself, with me at the spark it was never gonna be perfect. Just gonna smoke out the neighbors.

 

[middlecalf]

I’ll be interested in how that primer works for welding. I’m a fan of Seymour paints.

 

[Frikkadel]

So, GD came with 2 mirrors, one on the door and one in the door pin. Got some new pins and another side mirror and installed them. Not sure which side mirror I will go with in the end, but it definitely won't be the ones in the door pins. Door pin side mirrors had threaded ends, that the PO ground down to mostly fit the door hinges. Trashed./QUOTE]

Never seen that before. Mirrors in the door hinges - what the hell.

 

[RiggityJ]

Got the rails mocked up this morning.

First thing was to clean up the tops. PO had installed a sun shade over top using self tapping sheet metal screws. Whyyyyy? So many small holes in the top of the windshield now.
Owell. I think they should work for the most part. I will have to make another hole in the rear corners, as the top most screws that hold the rear hatch cross member are obscured.

 

[RiggityJ]

Layout was intuitive, without instruction from ccot, and easy. All except the front. Not exactly sure how to fought the front most rails.

This is the piece I am talking about. Where it connects with the side, does it lay on top or on bottom? Does it matter? Am I too paranoid?

Or

 

[RiggityJ]

Turns out that spray can sucks to weld through. Had to grind it off. Don’t waste your money @middlecalf

made a trip to the holy land in UT.

 

[RiggityJ]

Got the rear “U” section welded. Tack welded it on while loosely bolted on. then used pipe rack to hold up the “U” and finished the welding off the top. Thing is so flexible it takes at least 2 people to force the thing on to bolt it down.