Introduction - New (to me) '78 FJ in Colorado (4 Viewers)

[knuckle47]

This is not what I saw on Reddit the other day but you may discover something here

How to Register a Car in Montana from Out of State: All You Need to Know - Montana Car Registration and Montana LLCs

Do you want to register your car in Montana to get the benefits of Montana’s friendly vehicle registration laws? Understanding […]

5starregistration.com

 

[jayp2]

Maybe an exported US spec restored in SA and imported back to the US?

Look closely at spring hanger/nearby sections of frame that tend to be stress points.

Not saying your's is one of them but a lot of the south american imports lived hard lives on rough roads before being cleaned up and brought to the US in recent years

 

[h82crash]

Nice ride. I hope you get it registered without much heartache. Smog check on a 47 year old car is ridiculous. Phoenix goes back to 1967 for smog. Bureaucrats with zero clue. One reason I chose where I live. I was considering KY or FL where they don't have any smog checks.

 

[procomsignathid]

I have just read the 3 pages of your thread and the truck is pretty and the best thing…you love it. I have seen a ton of ads for registering in Montana…NO idea what it means or involves.

Here where I live I see tons of cars from North Carolina and a few from Vermont and they’re not “ just passing thru’’. I would bet my last nickel it’s for avoiding high insurance costs. Until there’s an accident

Good luck with your 40. I’m a fan and following any changes you may make. She’s a beauty

Thank you for the kind words! I do indeed love the car and every day parts trickle in Ive been out to the garage to fix this and that. Its been very rewarding thus far.

Im waiting for a gas cap to arrive before I get it emissions tested, but Im just going to go for it as-is and see if I get lucky. Saw a post on a local forum here in CO from 2016, guy in the same boat as me and he just tinkered with making idle super lean before goin in, he passed. Crossing my fingers.

 

[procomsignathid]

In the mean time while I wait for a gas cap / emissions test, added gaskets to the kick vents…. Cleaned cud off the doors w alcohol and used 3m super 90 to adhere the gaskets.

Had to adjust spring tension a bit and am using some clamps overnight to compress the gasket a bit so the doors stay flat.

 

[knuckle47]

Good luck…hope it works for you…. That vent cover cleanup is a nice satisfying end game. Don’t underestimate a quick shot of clear on the part you might want a little gloss on. I did my fuel hose cover and evaporator cover behind the passengers seat with a type of matching pewter. When I hit it with a quick spray of clear, it looked like a diamond…sparkling under a jewel case lamp,

Just make sure you let the color coat dry or use a compatible clear coat spray… solvent can eat the paint below to a spectacular wrinkle finish (YUK)


Have fun

 

[rlong]

In Colorado (primarily front range counties) you are supposed to pass a visual inspection that the equipment is there. You might get lucky with a lackadaisical employee. The actual emission standards are low for these years so if it simply runs well and is not super rich or burning a lot of oil it should pass very easily. Try it. If you fail visual you will have to hang all that garbage on there once every 5 years (vintage plate) (unless the law changes). On my sons 1984 CJ7 we had to do just this; it was supposed to have a (terrible) emissions carb and the air injection in manifolds (not head); I just “faked it” in places so it looked “sorta real”didn’t have the right carb so I zip tied the emissions wire plug up against the carb body.. at “AirCare CO” several kids looked and pointed at different parts (it is a early somewhat unique system) and we passed!?! I’ve heard the visual can be hit and miss (visual). They will probably put your vin in and get an error, then go to year / model. This will throw them off on the visual.

 

[cbmontgo]

In Colorado (primarily front range counties) you are supposed to pass a visual inspection that the equipment is there. You might get lucky with a lackadaisical employee. The actual emission standards are low for these years so if it simply runs well and is not super rich or burning a lot of oil it should pass very easily. Try it. If you fail visual you will have to hang all that garbage on there once every 5 years (vintage plate) (unless the law changes). On my sons 1984 CJ7 we had to do just this; it was supposed to have a (terrible) emissions carb and the air injection in manifolds (not head); I just “faked it” in places so it looked “sorta real”didn’t have the right carb so I zip tied the emissions wire plug up against the carb body.. at “AirCare CO” several kids looked and pointed at different parts (it is a early somewhat unique system) and we passed!?! I’ve heard the visual can be hit and miss (visual). They will probably put your vin in and get an error, then go to year / model. This will throw them off on the visual.

My experience having lived in the Front Range is that they are very black and white on both the visual and tailpipe testing on anything newer than 1975. My '76 failed one time due to the gas cap needing a new seal. They were never anything but strict in Douglas County. It's ridiculous, especially on vehicles that might see 500 road miles per year.

I'd go ahead and consider a Plan B on license plates (South Dakota, Montana, etc.).

But who knows. Try it and see if maybe it passes.

 

[procomsignathid]

My experience having lived in the Front Range is that they are very black and white on both the visual and tailpipe testing on anything newer than 1975. My '76 failed one time due to the gas cap needing a new seal. They were never anything but strict in Douglas County. It's ridiculous, especially on vehicles that might see 500 road miles per year.

I'd go ahead and consider a Plan B on license plates (South Dakota, Montana, etc.).

But who knows. Try it and see if maybe it passes.

I'm in Boulder county, haha (for those outside of CO its probably the most draconian county here). My guess is I will fail the visual inspection, but oh well. I have an appt with a garage that specializes in FJs late next week and I'll likely just pay through the nose to get it emissions legal in CO. I find it annoying, but it will be my daily driver, so I think its fair to comply with the law here (and I want to register it in CO because they now have a Dinosaur Ridge vanity plate, which is nearby where I grew up).

Chock this one up to a lessons-learned for me. I let my heart do too much of the talking when it came to decision time... Some of my runner-up choices for FJs I had found online clearly had the right equipment in-place (whether or not they would have passed, who knows). So for better or worse, I bought the shiny red one without all the necessary parts. I guess it's my job to get this old south american truck up to snuff now

 

[procomsignathid]

One more thing fixed… The hood release catch was pretty rusted / gone, so I made a new one out if some rebar. A bit of backyard blacksmithing (and a lot of grinding) later and I had a decent catch. A few SS M5 screws / nuts later and it worka great. Redneck engineering to be sure, and hopefully soon I can get it properly welded with a new strip of sheet steel to reinforce the rusted part.

Now I don't feel like the hood will say hi to the windshield!

 

[Andrew S]

You might ask around with local muscle car clubs, old pickup owners, etc for who they recommend for emissions testing. Somebody local knows who "the place" is that makes the process easiest.

 

[knuckle47]

You might ask around with local muscle car clubs, old pickup owners, etc for who they recommend for emissions testing. Somebody local knows who "the place" is that makes the process easiest.

I can say this having been there to witness it:

My friend Pauli brings his truck to inspection..clearly with several “violations”. He knows “the guy” at the middle of the line.

Pauli yells out “ Hey Rocco!”…Rocco looks up..”Hey Pauli…how ya doin?”

Done! Passed…new sticker

 

[dazerb]

You could rent a private mailbox in a county without required emissions. RV clubs can set up domicile in non testing, non income tax states. Fyi. Drastic, but options.
Have fun with the rig. These things can be life changing.

 

[sogafarm]

I can say this having been there to witness it:

My friend Pauli brings his truck to inspection..clearly with several “violations”. He knows “the guy” at the middle of the line.

Pauli yells out “ Hey Rocco!”…Rocco looks up..”Hey Pauli…how ya doin?”

Done! Passed…new sticker

Sometimes they have kids with a college fund that takes donations, just sayin’.

 

[procomsignathid]

Going to take it in to emissions test tomorrow or tues AM. In the mean time, chasing down some weirdness…

Took the car out to a friends house last night, had to leave it there as the headlights died. T-shooting today after I retrieved the car. It looks like the headlights are wired into the same circuits as the taillights, blew a fuse. While rooting around under the dash found this oddness.

Does anyone know what these components are? They don’t seem very toyota-ish and are just danglin’. Searching for FJ40 computer / PCB didn't return anything that showed terminal blocks or this many caps. The PCB is protected by a little metal box that had that paper inside it.

EDIT: I should also note I did check the wiring diagram for a '78, but not seeing anything with those color wires referenced, nor into a common component. Scratching my head on this one.

 

[knuckle47]

The last photo looks like your directional flasher…not stock Toyota. The others ..absolutely no idea although it looks like it is wired into quite a few wire ends. Do you have a multi-meter to see if it is carrying any voltage?

 

[procomsignathid]

Yep, 100% the flasher on the last pic, turned the hazards on and could feel it doin its thing. Checked every contact on that terminal block against ground, no voltage. Im guessing whatever it was connected to is long gone… Ill start tracing wires when I get daylight. How strange

 

[wimberosa]

Visually I don't think you'll be near passing smog check. My 1979 is more complicated (the bvsv and abv/asv areas in particular)
but I recorded all the pieces that I had to get starting from ground zero in my build thread. You can see the final result here.

Wimberosa's build: The SUV of Theseus

Awesome documentation of the entire exhaust setup. Thanks so much. As another owner of a 79+ with a hacked up exhaust this is exactly the references and information I will need in the future.

forum.ih8mud.com

I don't think you'll be able to necessarily "pay" someone to make it smog legal. If you go a re-smog route expect to spend
some serious time just hunting down the parts. I don't think a shop will necessarily do that for you.

One option that is kinda out there is to put a CARB compliant catalytic converter on it. It should work for the 1978
as well....and yes I know it only showed up in 1979. I show how to route that in my 1979 build
thread. A seriously suspect a good CARB catalytic converter will get you past any tailpipe emissions test.

Note a catalytic converter will work on the 1978 even without the heat sensor probe (its not an O2 sensor like in later models).
The heat sensor was present to shut parts of the system down if it got too hot. CATs these days can take lots more heat without
issues .... so theres really no need for that sensor and emissions computer controlling it. A straight modern CARB CAT just place inline
in the exhaust will cover lots of emissions ills

 

[wimberosa]

Actually...thinking about this a bit more....its probably pretty easy to put a cat on this without the weird routing
for the 1979. Your gas tank is in the cab as opposed to being under the tub in the 1979. So you could probably
just weld in a cat into your existing exhaust in an opportune place and call it good. This seems more logical to
me for smog friendliness on older cars as opposed to all this brittle old smog paraphenalia they want to see on the
engine. Of course logic doesn't rule in this space and my suggestion is probably just idle speculation instead of
firm belief.

 

[knuckle47]

I think the cat idea is a good one and will provide a measure of control. If theyreally wanna see a visual….grab a bunch of plastic-T fitting and Y fittings…connect them all within a foot of each other with 5/16 black hose and terminate the hose ends in a spot that’s hard to visually access. Lay the T’s and Y’s all over the top of the engine in obviously ugly places…

Corny plan but while you're explaining the catalytic converter they can see, you distract their visual scan towards another conversation… I have seen dumber ideas work