I broke my own rule again with a 1994 petrol pickup "Iota"

[John Young]

All right, now let's see if we can push the pickup body under the UTE back...

We are getting there....

 

[John Young]

Let's get at least one corner in....

Now the 2nd corner....

Turns out the roller skates do have real utility....

Damn sexy, if I do say so myself!
And here she is with the mud flaps back on.

I love this UTE back. I don't know if the local authorities will have a problem with it because it is a little wider than the stock, but if that happens I will send it to the US. The UTE back is high up. About waist height or a little higher.

 

[John Young]

Today I worked on the steering column. I de-rusted it an used some odd coating from lock-tite to create a rust-resistant coating. I don't like putting rusty parts back in a truck.

The UTE back has quite an area and is equipped with hold-downs. It is all steel and pretty darned heavy.

And here is the new firewall pad from the salvage yard in Sharjah. It is from a post-2000 truck but it is 'good enough' and better than reusing the old one.

When I pulled the steering column back out the shaft all the way down to the steering box came out. OMG is was caked with dirt and oil. I used a strong degreaser and primed and painted it.

I only have a few days left of use of this warehouse so I am racing to get Iota out of there. I won't finish, but I'm going to try to attach all the pieces.

 

[cruisermatt]

I bet you will get a lot more use out of this one here then the 91 (aka sell me the 91 )

 

[John Young]

I took a day off of work today to try to move forward in getting the pickup mobile. Today was dedicated to the wiring harness. It was not bad. The only cuts were associated with a non-standard aircon installation. But a lot of the factory tape had deteriorated badly and while I did not want to take it completely apart I did remove all the worst of the factory tape.

 

[John Young]

I also can't stand to put dirty stuff back in a truck and the old battery tray was on its last legs, so I bought a new one from a current 70 and am reusing the existing struts. The tray itself is identical.

Under the battery tray the years of small leaks had put a pretty uniform surface rust on everything. I decided to try to address that at least somewhat. I cleaned it well and used a rust converter coating and masked off the area.

The way I see it, if I touch it I have to make it acceptable to me. It wont' be a thing of beauty but at least I can say it is protected from further damage.

All I had was gloss black or gloss white and I decided to go with gloss black.

 

[John Young]

I gave a second coat to the area under the battery today.

I also gave up on trying to get a later model 70 firewall blanket to work on this 1995 truck and set in to repair the original by using strips cut from the original vinyl floor, which was in bad shape.

I glued patches on both sides using contact cement and it worked really well.

Time to install the wiring harness.

I screwed up though... I broke the firewall grommet by pushing too hard on it. Ended up filling the cup with black silicone sealant which annoyed me, but this was never meant to be more than a working truck and I have to get on with it.

I used a clamp to hold the harness up a bit so the bundle would come out through more or less the center of the sealant while it cures.

Tomorrow, if the gods are smiling, the steering column and pedals will go back in.

 

[John Young]

I retrieved the windshield hinges today.

Kept working inside on the wiring

And got the battery tray in.

Tomorrow I work on the doors:

 

[John Young]

Today my friend Z came up from Abu Dhabi to help me do all the two-man jobs.

Here is the first door and the roof finally on Iota

And the hood is finally on. That took a lot of adjusting. Totally required two people to do that.

That's the diesel 105 in the background there. Mechanically wonderful. Cosmetically 'challenged'. The Abu Dhabi government was not easy on it.

We also had a mishap with the hood release that I had replaced yesterday. After a fair amount of sweat from the two of us we got the hood open again and I made a quick and dirty fix.

Iota is finally starting to look like a truck again:

 

[John Young]

One more photo:

After doing all this I am left with an even greater appreciation of the 70 series. It feels like it was designed to be taken apart and put back together again. And everything has two fasteners when one would ordinarily do. As I said to a friend today, I think this is the pickup that Marty McFly would have had if Hill Valley were in Australia. Maybe minus the UTE back.

Tomorrow I am going to work on reconnecting all the electrical connectors and see if perhaps I can get the dash back in. I am going to leave off the aftermarket aircon because I'm starting to think its quality may not be that good. Anyways I am going to leave that for later, after the truck is drivable again.

 

[John Young]

I spent the last couple of days putting the wiring back in and various trim pieces. Today itself was a red-letter day as it was the first time in 5 months that I was able to try starting Iota.

Here is a short video of my first attempt to start the truck:


Iota just needed a little time to get fuel into the carb. Here is the second attempt to start the truck:


It was a real thrill to have Iota start up. I will be moving out of this space shortly and the truck will do so under its own power.

 

[John Young]

It has been a very intense couple of weeks. But at the end of it Iota was drivable under its own power!

There is a lot of space under the UTE back. Long-term I am inspired by the 80 EV conversion project by J1000. I could see a boat-load of batteries under the UTE back and then a little auxiliary genset under the hood for emergencies, leaving the front gas tank in place, perhaps. Iota's drivetrain is pretty much identical to a manual transmission 80. This will wait until the truck is in the US.

 

[John Young]

I am starting to come up for air after being really worn out from the move. And last weekend I got some new seats for Iota. I decided to go for two buckets instead of the split 1-2 person seat. The seats came from a post-2000 donor and are in pretty good shape but quite dusty and dirty so...time for a bath!

These will be a big upgrade, comfort-wise.

 

[John Young]

I started work on Iota again, after a long hiatus. One thing that had been bothering me is that with the UTE back on it the side mirrors are not all that effective. I found some aftermarket 70 series mirrors in Sharjah, all of which had problems or were badly beat up, but by buying several I have been able to put together a workable pair for Iota.

Here is one of the originals before dissassembly:

This is after disassembly, paint stripping, wire brushing, powder coating and new stainless steel hardware:

I still need to clean up the mirror itself, but you can see that one can now see past the UTE back from the driver's position:

 

[Greek Cruiserhead]

So much Aussie stuff in Sharjah...

 

[John Young]

So much Aussie stuff in Sharjah...

Yes, but a lot of it is old mine equipment and really, really worn out.These mirrors, for example, are right on the edge of being salvageable. I'm trying to de-rust the ball mounts on them without completely taking them apart because the mirrors are glued in and I am not confident of being able to remove them without breaking them.

 

[John Young]

I finished de-rusting the mounting joint on the old mirrors and put the mounts on the truck today. A small but significant milestone.

I also rattle canned the mirror housins while I was at it. It did improve their looks.

I want to keep this reversible so I did not drill holes for the lower mount point. Instead I used body trim mastic which seems more than equal to the task, and it looks find too.

 

[John Young]

I'm back to actively working on Iota. Cleaning off the back (slowly) and putting things back on the truck. I've also been using a powder coater I really like for many of the exposed metal items.

One day turnaround on the wiper arms.

Nice, right?

 

[John Young]

It is a small thing but...

I found that I had lost one of the special nuts for the windshield wiper arms, so I am going to replace both with new. And the one that I have is in pretty poor shape.

 

[John Young]

The wipers and windshield hold-downs are now back on Iota.

I took apart the old seatbelt retractors and concluded that they were too old and worn and needed to be replaced. Fortunately one of the dismantlers in Sharjah has brand new ones from 70 series pickups:

I paid 1500 AED (410 US) for three complete sets. The troopy and the pickup in the US, Goldenboy, are also going to get new belts. I also got a brand new rear window for Goldenboy.

Hopefully Emirates Airline won't give me a hard time about checking it.

I'm also replacing the seats in Iota and the troopy. Both sets of seats are very tired. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, I screw up at the salvage yard. I did that in this case:

The set I got for the troopy is proper, however. Ultimately what I am going to do is to take apart the frame and cut off the towers that are spot welded on to bring the seat rail down to the proper level. In the short term I decided to shim up the low side to get it through inspection, which is in December, while I am away in the US.