A company.. it would cost a ton to buy the gear needed...
How Cheap Can I Do It
- Thread starter Jackinacrack
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A company.. it would cost a ton to buy the gear needed...
Pay particular attention to the rear sill, seen in the second picture. It looks like its past starting to blow out and rust away. Usually the bottom of the rear door posts also need to be replaced at this point. Although your lucky Florida doesn't use much salt during the winter. The rear takes a pounding and it's where you need good structural strength. Hook up with @shawnfj40, he knows a lot about cruisers. Pictures of the interior, engine, frame and chassis would help an evaluation. Pull up the floor mats and look real good at the floors, spend some time underneath. I just did a second wheels up restoration on a 78 FJ40LV-KCJA and spent approximately $18K plus about 700-900 hours of my labor working from June to December about 25-30 hours a week.
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I’ve recruited my sons to help me a bit on this. We bought this FJ site unseen for a few hundred bucks. No clue what we were getting until it was rolled off the transport. So we poked our heads under the hood, and what did we find? A small block Chevy. So I check the number on the block. It’s a mid-late-60’s 283. A little Googlin’ tells me it likely was from an early Chevelle. The speedo reads 72,532 miles, so I’m thinkin’ “Maybe I got lucky”. Probably not. We put a gauge on each cyclinder, and no pressure in #4. Could be a stuck valve, but I’m gonna do a frame off anyway, so out comes the motor. We’ll pull the head of the block and take a peek inside to see what I’ve got.
The GM bell housing looks like its from an early 60’s truck. Has a weird clutch fork and pin like I’ve never seen before, but is nicely fitted up to the stock 3-speed. Plenty of meat on the clutch.
Whoever did this V8 conversion new what they were doing. The front drive shaft is shortened 7 inches to accommodate the GM bell housing placement, the rear drive shaft has been lengthened 7 inches, and the whole shebang has been moved forward 7 inches. Whoever did this hand-fabricated a new floor plate over the tranny and transfer case, beautifully welded, but painted a slightly different red then the rest of the Cruiser. The stock radiator is there, but an oil cooler has been added. That tells me the conversion was done a long time ago, before the advent of triple core aluminum radiators. Oddly, whoever did this cut a hole in the front of the left fender and mounted the oil cooler right behind the hole. Weird.
[GALLERY=media, [GALLERY=media, 65540]Surprise...A 283 under the hood by Jackinacrack posted Jan 25, 2018 at 10:55 PM[/GALLERY]
The GM bell housing looks like its from an early 60’s truck. Has a weird clutch fork and pin like I’ve never seen before, but is nicely fitted up to the stock 3-speed. Plenty of meat on the clutch.
Whoever did this V8 conversion new what they were doing. The front drive shaft is shortened 7 inches to accommodate the GM bell housing placement, the rear drive shaft has been lengthened 7 inches, and the whole shebang has been moved forward 7 inches. Whoever did this hand-fabricated a new floor plate over the tranny and transfer case, beautifully welded, but painted a slightly different red then the rest of the Cruiser. The stock radiator is there, but an oil cooler has been added. That tells me the conversion was done a long time ago, before the advent of triple core aluminum radiators. Oddly, whoever did this cut a hole in the front of the left fender and mounted the oil cooler right behind the hole. Weird.