How much rust is too much rust!? (1 Viewer)

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As FJ60's ended in 1997, I will say it as least 31 years old.
As others said $500 is not nearly enough and if you seriously think that is all you want to spend then...sorry to say....get a new car with free oil changes. Even a 10 year old vehicle will cost more than $500 per year on average (it may be fine for a couple of years them bam you are hit with a 2 or 3K bill in one shot) You are looking at an old vehicle here, they break down and need to be repaired. Even if you think you can do it, forget it.
A radiator for these cost over $400 alone.
When you first get it plan to spend at least $1500-2K on overdue maintenance and other repairs if you do most of the work yourself.
Not being able to do any repairs yourself, that thing will nickle and dime you to death at the repair shop.

Download the manual for it form here For Sale - 40, 50, 60, and 80 series FSM for a hell of a price.
Get a cheap set of hand tools to get you started and go from there.

Really these are glorified tractors and while a little more refined than a FJ40, not by a hell of a lot and you really do not need much in the way of tools. Any specialty tools (i.e ball joint separators) you can rent.
Rebuilding your knuckles is a dirty and messy job, but completely do able in a driveway.

Smog will be your limiting factor, but there is a lot of information on these forums.

Sorry for being so blunt, but I feel that it is important for people to understand these will cost to keep maintained and must be maintained or you are looking at larger bills later. This goes for any vehicle really. As parts are getting harder to find, costs go up .

It is impressive when a vehicle from 1980's makes it over 300,000 miles without an engine rebuild (more common place in today's vehicles). But that does not account for, clutch, ball joints, knuckles, u-joints, cooling, AC, old electronics, brakes, fluids, etc, etc,etc.

This is super helpful. I am not super handy with cars but love learning . I'm looking into some garages I can rent or friends out of town I can go to in order to do some work myself. I'll have to do another post with updates on this .

For some reason all the complications have me more excited than before. Thanks guys !
 
Looks great, clean it up and start driving it. Looks a little neglected, so do the maintenance as you go, one thing at a time. That's my favorite FJ60 color. :)
 
Not being a super mech savvy person, do you have an idea on what it costs to replace those ballpark (in a shop, we wouldn't be doing the work).

As @duncanrm said , total hours 8-12, depending on how familiar the mechanic is with the FJ60. Best bet is take it to someone
like Georg at Valley Hybrids or Gary at Mudrak. Both are in your area. If you take it to a general shop that doesn't specialize
you'll probably get either inferior Chinese parts or dealer parts marked up twice. A Cruiser shop will source parts where the
customer will get the best part for the best price.
 
As @duncanrm said , total hours 8-12, depending on how familiar the mechanic is with the FJ60. Best bet is take it to someone
like Georg at Valley Hybrids or Gary at Mudrak. Both are in your area. If you take it to a general shop that doesn't specialize
you'll probably get either inferior Chinese parts or dealer parts marked up twice. A Cruiser shop will source parts where the
customer will get the best part for the best price.

X2 with Dave. Rebuilding the axle is not rocket science but better you take it to a scientist that has done this before if you are going to be paying someone to do it. Paying a general mechanic to learn how to rebuild them is not a route I would take.

In general, I'd figure $2-3K to base line it. It is up to you from there, depends on what falls off it as you go :)
 
As everyone has said, $500 a year won't cut it until you get it baselined and good to go with the major systems. That said, once you get to that point, I think you are close on that number. The best way to keep to that number is to do it all yourself, or as much as you can. Find a land cruiser club, most people are REALLY willing to help and teach.

If there isn't any major rust/bondo hiding anywhere, I'd go for it.

If it were me, I'd start with this as these are fairly cheap, and easy to do.
POWER WASH: spend some time at the carwash, power clean everything. Degrease, you'd be amazed at how clean this rig will turn out with just a really good cleaning. See what you got to work with.
Full fluid change: oil, coolant
Filters: oil, air, fuel
Spark plugs, dist. cap/rotor
Vaccuum hoses
Brakes: if it stops good now, it's worth it to just pull the wheels and check them out.

From there, you can dig deeper into radiator/waterpump, front knuckle rebuild, brakes. It looks like maybe the alternator was replaced recently.

This baselining is pretty much standard for any vehicle older than 25 years if they haven't been kept up with.


Pretty soon you will have it looking like @wngrog 60.

d0d38beb-71b4-4db5-bfc3-6f3f51506c95-jpeg.1904877
 
Think that @justintpryor is in your area. His family has a wealth of Land Cruisers and maybe he can lend a hand..
 
As everyone has said, $500 a year won't cut it until you get it baselined and good to go with the major systems. That said, once you get to that point, I think you are close on that number. The best way to keep to that number is to do it all yourself, or as much as you can. Find a land cruiser club, most people are REALLY willing to help and teach.

If there isn't any major rust/bondo hiding anywhere, I'd go for it.

If it were me, I'd start with this as these are fairly cheap, and easy to do.
POWER WASH: spend some time at the carwash, power clean everything. Degrease, you'd be amazed at how clean this rig will turn out with just a really good cleaning. See what you got to work with.
Full fluid change: oil, coolant
Filters: oil, air, fuel
Spark plugs, dist. cap/rotor
Vaccuum hoses
Brakes: if it stops good now, it's worth it to just pull the wheels and check them out.

From there, you can dig deeper into radiator/waterpump, front knuckle rebuild, brakes. It looks like maybe the alternator was replaced recently.

This baselining is pretty much standard for any vehicle older than 25 years if they haven't been kept up with.


Pretty soon you will have it looking like @wngrog 60.

d0d38beb-71b4-4db5-bfc3-6f3f51506c95-jpeg.1904877

This is super helpful! Starting to get feelers out for some wrench spaces.

If I could get it looking half as good as his I'd be stoked.
 
If you sell this, I call dibs. Sold my beloved ome-owner 8B7 blue '86 in 7/2009. I can't find where it went. All I know is it was with a series of uncaring owners after me.

I'm in NY and ready to buy anytime.
 
X2 with Dave. Rebuilding the axle is not rocket science but better you take it to a scientist that has done this before if you are going to be paying someone to do it. Paying a general mechanic to learn how to rebuild them is not a route I would take.

In general, I'd figure $2-3K to base line it. It is up to you from there, depends on what falls off it as you go :)


last year a mechanic from a Firestone Service center called me to ask advice on an FJ60 front end they rebuilt. He said it was even worse
after the rebuild than before. It was leaking oil all over the brakes and rims. Turns out they reassembled the knuckles , pulled the
plugs on top and filled the knuckles with gear oil. Wish they'd sent pictures
 

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