HJ47 welcome here?

[Henry James the 47th]

more comparison photos. The corroded one is the keeper, and is yet to be hit with the crushed glass

 

[Henry James the 47th]

the core of the wiring harness starts to take shape, and I picked up a red top Ultima today.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

Aside from any minor sheet metal alterations to the glove-box side panel when I fit the lighted lighter socket into place, I'm pretty much done as far as any welding/grinding on the lower cab. I think so.

I made a start on re-assembling and adjusting the front diff, and hope to complete it early in the week. When that's done, I can get the axles back in and the truck back onto 4 wheels again.

 

[DanS HJ-45]

Looks great (as usual)!

With the wiring harness, is that bits of the original and bits from a 60?

I ask because mine is really, really cut up and a mess--so I'm still debating what to do about it. Please take many pictures.

Dan

 

[Henry James the 47th]

That picture is the 'guts' (the main leads to the main relays) of the original (?) 47 harness, including the glow and starter relays that mount inside the passenger apron, with one wire end fitting changed to a 60 series type end. I'm planning to use as many of the 60 style o-ringed round terminals, in preference to the the non o-ringed 40 series square/rectangular types. I've pulled 5 harnesses apart to one degree or another, so I will try and solve the wiring with the best parts possible. So far, that means a 60 series fuse panel in preference to the 47 one, and a 60 series relay and control module panel where before there was only a separate bulb check relay on the 47's system.

And I will take lots of wiring photos as well.

I've already drawn up a detailed wiring diagram but won't post it up quite yet. I want to make sure it works first, and I need to figure out the wiring details for the VSV on the engine. I understand how it works, and believe that I have to put it into the main 15a. 'engine' fuse line of wiring and relate it to the alternator circuit.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

No new photos today, just an update. I started on the front diff- on Saturday, but was hampered by a lack of shims after getting started. That problem has been solved, so I hope to get the front diff. done this week during evenings. I expect it will take at least a couple of hours to do - basically, you have to take the main pinion bearing on and off, each time a shim adjustment is required, and that is why it's good to have a friend with a garage and a press to aid in getting that bearing on and off easily.

The cab: I realized I needed some mounting nuts welded into the firewall for putting the brake and clutch lines on, having decided that all three lines needed to run across the firewall. I realized the the donor red FJ40 firewall out in the yard had that sort of line routing. So, I took the lines off that unit and used them to template the mounting points on my firewall. It was very fortuitous to come across that wrecked 40 in the bush!

In the end I needed three new mounting holes, and welded nuts in on the backside of the firewall. Firewall is done!

I trial-fitted the accelerator pedal into place, and it seems a little hokey - go cart-like, if you will. Well, I guess that's what the factory came up with. For curiosity's sake, I swapped the pedal arm from the RHD unit into place, using the LHD's mounting plate and spring, and it fit pretty well. This pedal arm is in better shape than the correct one, so, since it seems to work, I think I'll go with it. I guess a rubber pad of some sort will be needed for the floor pan immediately underneath/to the side of the pedal itself?

I also took the opportunity of welding an additional mount for a relay into place on the passenger side apron. I was thinking that I might one day need a new relay if either the glow or starter relay packed it in, and if I couldn't get the correct OEM piece, I might have to put in something else, like a 60 series relay, so having an additional mounting place seemed like a good idea.

Last step on the cab was to drill a hole for mounting the very front of the passenger side running board. And THAT is that for the cab. I spent more than an hour yesterday just staring at the sheet metal and trying to figure if there was something left to weld, but I came up empty. I guess it's time to shift gears and get into the paint/sand/fill stage, the wiring stage, and the re-assembly stage. It seems hard to believe after nothing but welding and grinding for 4 months!!!

Questions remain about the exhaust routing and brackets/rubber isolators required, etc.. I have an EPC of the exhaust parts (seems that FJ45 and HJ45/47 exhaust systems are the same, save for the initial section of pipe coming down from the manifold), but I'm still not sure what to do at this point. I'm looking to put a 2.5" exhaust in, maybe by buying sections of mandrel-bent stainless online, and cobbling something together piecemeal. Any suggestions?

 

[Henry James the 47th]

I have moved the cab to a new location and tomorrow should see the first coat of epoxy primer

 

[Henry James the 47th]

Unfortunately, I need to do a couple of tiny weld repairs before things can proceed any further, so I'll have to drag the cab back to the welding area, unless I can find a way to get the power out to where the truck is now situated.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

seems like those last few percent's of work needed in getting to 100% completion can take a lot longer than anticipated. I had to wheel the cab back to the welding room twice today, the first to deal with those three niggling areas, and then the second time to deal with a little boo-boo when I was defining a sheet metal seam line.

I had a problem in the joint on the dash immediately to the right of the tachometer cut out. I had cracked this once before and welded it, only to see it crack again. I thought I had welded it decently the second time, but obviously not.

So I realized something about welding approach, reasoning out why the weld had cracked: the butt joint was too tight. If the sheets butt tightly together, then what tends to happen is that the weld piles up on the surface of the seam line, slightly melting the upper surface of the seam but not achieving full penetration to the backside of the material. There's needs to be a space allowed for the wire to go, in-between the pieces (just like the gap given by one of those inter-grip clamps ).

Otherwise, when grinding the weld down, the weld that had piled atop of the seam line is 99% ground off, leaving a very thin amount of weld holding it together. A few flexes back and forth and the more brittle remains of the weld give easily along the seam.

A further complication in the case of this crack in the dash, is that the seam was under compressive pressure - the seam line either bulged out (the normal position), or could be made to -'klung!- bow inwards. Neither position was flat to the rest of the dash. The worse of the two options, however, was the normal position bulged out, a trickier and more plastic-intensive situation to dress out.

In the end, this approach worked perfectly, and the dash is now re-welded at full penetration and is much flatter, a tad concave even. That was a relief, and it proved the point to me about leaving space for the welding rod to go when fitting pieces together.

So, I ran the zip wheel through it a ways, and then clamped the copper 0.25" plate behind it and wrestler the dash metal a bit.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

then I dealt with this little clip on the inside of the cab at the back. It would have looked bad to leave it with all the holes. I have no idea, by the way, what this clip is for, though I imagine some sort of strap going through it.

Of course, it was good to discover and eliminate the small amount of rust lurking under that clip

 

[Henry James the 47th]

three more

 

[Henry James the 47th]

problem solved

 

[Henry James the 47th]

another set of three. In the first two you can see a bit of a gouge on the lower end of the clip, which I had to go over again with a weld and re-grind to restore the situation. It could still use a tidy up.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

now I'm on to final disassembly of the windshield, which involved popping the black plastic defrost baffles off, and removing the wiper linkage. Then I de-greased it and scratched it up.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

I managed not to lose any of the eight little pins that I knocked out of the baffles and into the interior of the windshield frame. They're precious little items those pins.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

next set. I cleaned the lower interior seam of the windshield frame and sloshed some rust-killing/converting chemical along it. The windshield and bib are both de-greased-sanded-de-greased now, and ready for epoxy primer - as is the cab, finally!

 

[missipboy]

looking good.

 

[DanS HJ-45]

Wicked!

That is all.

Dan

 

[Henry James the 47th]

The funny thing about a coat of primer is that it helps show up all the sheet metal imperfections in a hurry. I should have used more powerful lighting around the cab in the welding room to get a better handle on surfaces.

That said, I still don't have enough precision in my control of the weld zone and the surrounding metal to be able to get the sheet metal joints to come out perfectly flat. I know it's possible, but I don't have the knowledge yet.
The top of the cowl looks the worst, and will require the most fairing with synthetic filler - more than the 1/16" max. for which I was hoping. I can take solace in the fact that the rust has been chopped out and there is solid metal welded in.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

The guy doing the painting, Mark, left the paint open overnight to let it thicken up a bit, and after that he still felt that the AWL Grip paint had more solids than the PPG product I picked. The AWL grip does not come in blue however, only battleship gray, and it might be less expensive. 3 liters of material went on the cab today, so it looks like another gallon of primer will be required.

I reworked the gas pedal, bending the inner end of the coil spring into a hook so as to be able to catch it in a different position and thereby increase pedal swing tension. It worked. I have the pedal working pretty well now, though a rubber bump stop could also be added to improve the feel further.