New (to me) '78 FJ in Colorado (25 Viewers)

procomsignathid · Jun 13, 2025

wimberosa said:
BTW.. You do realize this is supposed to go back to the top of the head right?
View attachment 3928436

Oh 100%! That was an in-progress shot, haha. I had installed the heater + firewall hard pipes a day or so prior to the radiator install and I used those covers to keep crap out of the system while I drove around. Ill take some more pics of the completed system this weekend- I got a nice 90-degree block union from down under and made a bracket to keep the heater hose from rubbing against the firewall.

procomsignathid · 2025-06-25T21:12:46-0600

Decided to get rid of some major jank in the drivers side ambulance door. I finally had all the pieces to do it. Im about to redo all the door seals and wanted to get this done before that. To add more to the list of reasons of "why not to buy a vehicle sight unseen", imagine my surprise upon reciving the truck that the door handle on the drivers side ambulance door was connected to... Nothing. To get the door to latch, whoever "restored" the truck added this matching set of custom latches:

Of course, the custom latches required a few light modifications on the body of the truck in order to work properly:

Yes... I have a bonus speed hole in the floor of the truck, and a massive dent in the ceiling. Anyways, onto the work to correct this jank...

procomsignathid · 2025-06-25T21:19:15-0600

I started with picking up the latch mechanisms for the top and bottom of the door on ebay. The nicer ones were out of my price range, so I went with some parts that had more of a patina

. Sorry didnt grab photos at the time, here's a few shots from the ebay listing:

Both of those are from the lower latch, which was in the worse condition of the two, given what I assume to be more routing exposure to water. Lucky for me, they're from a red truck! I took that as a good omen. I gave em a bath in WD40 for a few days, even still I needed to drill out the old bolts holding the strip of door onto the bottom latch. After wire brushing, priming, painting and lubricating, here are the results:

I picked up some stainless steel hardware from ace, drilled out the broken studs / cleaned up the threads in the lower mounting plate, and ordered some strike plates and shims from SOR.

procomsignathid · 2025-06-25T21:23:19-0600

Onto the job of the actual latch today. I drilled out the rivets and removed the old latches. Careful as I was trying to be, I ran into a heap of bondo at the top of the door and made it more ugly than it was already going to be

. Oh well, one day Ill take it to the body shop I suppose. I took a scrap piece of wood, and adjustable wrench and a hammer and did my best to un-dent the top of the door frame. Pretty happy with the overall straightness of it, but again, more fodder for a theoretical body shop visit in the future. I was able to mount the strike plates / latches just fine after the adjustments.

procomsignathid · 2025-06-25T21:28:17-0600

As for connecting the latch to the handle mechanism, I had no luck in finding the correct linkage parts / clips, so I decided to DIY it with some 1/8" steel rod.

I used a coat hanger to get each length correct for the top and bottom rod as it was easy to bend and pretty sacrificial. Once I was happy with lengths, I took a torch to the ends of the steel rod until they were cherry red, and flattened, folded and clamped them until it was wide enough to stay on the bolt slots (they can easily go in and out when turned 90-degrees, but in the operating position they stay in). For the rest of the bends I used a bench vise, pliers and a file to make em look pretty. I made each linkage a bit longer than it needed to be, the idea being that I could easily shorten it by putting a kink into the rod after it was installed.

procomsignathid · 2025-06-25T21:30:16-0600

And finally, installed, and working properly with the escuchion plate. That plate is kinda weird BTW, there's nothing to keep it from spinning with the handle, so I used some thick 3M foam tape to keep it in place. Anyways, one less piece of jank on the truck, and now I can open both doors with one hand.