I Gambled and Won - 1971 Spring Green FJ40 Rescue

[diesellibrarian]

Well, it seems that I'm becoming a bit of a Land Cruiser hoarder - at least temporarily.

A few months ago I added a 1971 FJ40 to the stable, but because it was a long ways away, I haven't even been able to give it a once-over. That changed this weekend, though, as my son and I drove out to the south Slocan area of British Columbia from our home in southern Alberta to see if we could revive the thing and get it home. I knew it was a long shot, but he was down for the adventure, so we packed up a bunch of tools and parts into my cargo van/camper and headed west!

The backstory on this rig is that I had put the word out on the Western Canada Land Cruiser facebook group that I was looking for a bench seat for my '72 FJ40. A couple of people wrote back, but this one fellow said that he had a seat, but "maybe I'd like to purchase the whole truck instead." I replied that I was always interested in that kind of thing, depending on price, and he mentioned what was frankly a very very favourable price, so we agreed on a deal and he was kind enough to drop it off at my friend's place in the south Slocan valley of BC, where it's been sitting for a couple of months. I was told that it "runs, drives, and stops." Well, two out of three ain't bad I guess.

Plan A was to get the truck going and drive it back to Alberta in tandem. Plan B was to get the truck going and drive it to the east shore of Kootenay Lake, where my brother and I have some land - about a 90 minute drive from where it's parked. Plan C was to dolly or trailer it home. Turns out I probably should have had a Plan D, but sometimes my optimism gets the best of me...

Anyway, this past Friday we headed out, getting a later start than I'd hoped, but that's the way it goes sometimes. We arrived after dark so I couldn't even get a good look at the rig until the next morning. I've posted a couple of pics of this truck in my '72 FJ40 build thread, but here are a few more to show what we were up against.

First order of business was to clean out the accumulated leaves, dirt, and junk from the cab. There was a set of jump seats in the back (score!), but they were not mounted. The bench seat was also not bolted down, so it didn't take long to remove everything and get the truck tidied up. I also removed the fuel tank, for ease of cleaning.

As you can see from the interior shots, the truck is Spring Green, which is probably my favourite colour on a 40. At some point in its history, it was resprayed a dark metallic green. They didn't do a very good job, though, and it's peeling off, which is fine by me as it will be stripped at some point anyway.

With all of the crap out of the cab, I was able to assess the condition, and I was very pleasantly surprised. Aside from the rear 2" near the sill, the floors are solid, as are the inner fenders. There's a bit of pentrating rust on the gearbox cover, but nothing serious. So, things are off to a good start!

All in all, the truck seems to be very complete and unmolested, aside from the respray and the thick layers of bondo that have been added here and there.

You will also have noticed the Super Swampers that someone crammed under the truck. They are 33 x 10.5' and they definitely don't fit. I'll be selling those ASAP to help fund the restoration of this truck.

Anyway, back to the story: it didn't take long to get it running. More on that in the next post!

 

[diesellibrarian]

The first thing we checked was that the engine was not seized. It turned over easily by hand. Too easily, in fact. Did a quick visual on the timing and filed off a little nub that had developed on the points contacts, poured a little two-stroke oil down the carb, and it fired up right away! Gotta love a Toyota inline 6!

Knowing that the engine would run, we reinstalled the fuel tank (which was actually in decent shape - not too cruddy or rusty at all!), some fresh fuel line and filter. By tweaking the carb we were able to get it to idle. There was a lot of valve train noise so we popped the valve cover off and were shocked to find that almost all of the valves were at 0.040" or more! In the case of the intake valves, that's 32 thousandths out of spec! It's crazy to me that we were able to get it running at all, but I guess these old F engines aren't too fussy.

Anyway, with the valves adjusted we fired it up again, and that's when we noticed that the valve train was completely dry. Looking closer, we saw that oil was dumping out from under the banjo fitting where the oiling tube joins the rocker arm shaft. It looked as though the whole fitting had shifted to the rear a little, and for some reason was not sealing. We were able to remove the fitting and adjust the oiling assembly a little so that it lined up better with the oiling tube. Thankfully, that adjustment did the trick and it wasn't long before oil showed up at the rocker arms and started oiling the push rods. Again, it's crazy that this engine ran even with a rocker arm assembly that had been dry for who knows how many years??

With that problem sorted out, we changed the oil. The oil in the case had the consistency of water. I think it was mostly gasoline, frankly. Dumped some fresh 15w-40 diesel oil in there and changed out the filter. After that the engine quieted down and the blow-by dropped off considerably. I really think that we brought this engine back from the brink.

Next item on the list was the clutch and transmission. With a quick bleed, everything worked great and we were able to tootle it around the yard a bit. Even the vacuum transfer case worked flawlessly!

Then came the brakes. We were losing light as we dug into the front drums. It took a while to get the drums off, but thanks to a good tip from Mud, we were finally able to get them off. If the star adjusters are seized (as these were), the trick is to open the bleeder valves and loosen the cylinder mounting nuts. That seems to provide enough freeplay for the drum slip over the shoes. We were able to get the left front cylinders freed up, but the right side was a no-go. Nevertheless, we bled the system and with that we were able to get some pedal, though it took two pumps.

It was at that point that I realized that we were not going to be able to drive the Cruiser any distance. Driving with marginal brakes is one thing, but in a mountainous region where deer love to hang out on the highways, heading out on the highway was just asking for trouble. So, we packed our tools back into the van and headed home. I'm currently formulating a plan to have the truck shipped, as it needs to be gone from where it sits by the end of the month.

So yeah, that's all I have to share for now. It might be a little while before this thread gets updated again, as I've got a few projects on the go already!

If anyone's interested, I made a little 50-minute YouTube video documenting the high jinx: