Builds Jeff's '97 "College Throwback" build thread - (1 Viewer)

[Jeff Elliott]

Well, the time had come to scratch a long time itch and get the ride I dreamed of owning when I was in college - an FZJ80. I went to school in a mountain town in NC where we got quite a bit of snow and the full time 4wd and manly lines spoke to me back then and still do to this day.

Starting this thread to chronicle my progress in building my "perfect" FZJ80.

 

[Jeff Elliott]

It all started in Feb of '18 when an add for a very low mileage, black 80 with lots of nice modifications showed up here on mud...

For Sale - 1997 FZJ80, Only 89k Lifted, King Shocks, 35's, ARB...etc

I was lucky enough to catch the thread very quickly after it was posted and replied as the first in line. Spoke with the owner and all sounded great. Made a deal for the rig sight unseen. After a lot of logistics, I was able to arrange for a pre-purchase inspection at a local independent toyota mechanic in Cali where the owner lived. All checked out great according to the guy so I wired the funds and got the title overnighted to me.

Arranged for the rig to be picked up by a carrier and brought to me in NC. That's where my initial problems began. The carrier got the rig loaded, made another stop to grab another car, backed my rig off to accommodate said additional car and them my rig refuses to start. The carrier abandons my rig somewhere in oakland CA. I have to arrange for another carrier, who has a winch on his truck, to find and load my rig to bring back to NC. This takes a week or so. After a lot of effort and another wrecker / roll back since she wouldn't run, the rig arrived in my driveway on March 14th.

 

[Jeff Elliott]

Well, getting her running took about 20 minutes. The PO had not reinstalled the battery hold down and the battery had apparently slipped forward enough to pull the internals of the fusable link apart. A new link and she fired right up.

This is where about a month's worth of effort began to get this thing running smoothly... Ultimately, I had a combination of a bad ECU which was likely caused by burned injector wires in the bundle near the EGR pipe. That saga was chronicled here:

FIXED!!! Bad ECU - Runs rough, CEL and P0304

The baselining that I hadn't planned to do for a while began then and there including:

• Valve cover gasket, spark plug tube seals
• New dizzy cap, rotor, wires, o-ring
• Throttle body cleaning
• Relocation of the VSV
• New Fuel Filter
• All new vacuum lines
• New OEM water hoses
• New fuel injectors (yes, all of them)
• Rear heater bypass
• New heater valve
• PHH bypass

Here are a few pics of this saga...

 

[Jeff Elliott]

After she ran like a gasoline fueled rig vs. my grandfather's old tractor, I started working on other preventative maintenance items including:

A brand new Blue Fan clutch with 20K oil:

A cooling system flush with this stuff which certainly pulled a lot of crap out of my rad and pipes:

A new oil pump housing gasket, front main, AC idler pulley, oem belts:

New thermostat, gasket, and new OEM rad hoses:

 

[Jeff Elliott]

Somewhere along the line, this rig was plagued by a couple of serious issues - The first was a dog who must have lived in the rig given the amount of hair I found in there... my best guess is a blonde Labrador Retriever. The second, is some serious stink of unknown origin.

Either way, the cure was removal and shampoo of the carpets:

 

[Jeff Elliott]

The PO also included lots of additional parts and pieces - including a Safari Snorkel. I installed that and a more suitable antenna last weekend:

 

[Jeff Elliott]

The kind folks at LSeat send me some new leather... It looks pretty good a first glance. I'll be putting these and some seat heaters in this week:

 

[Jeff Elliott]

Today was new Lseat leather and seat heaters in the front row... took about 7 hrs (haven't hooked up the switches yet)!!!

 

[Biggreener]

Which color choice from LSeat did you go with for the "Oak" OEM interior?

 

[Nors]

The PO also included lots of additional parts and pieces - including a Safari Snorkel. I installed that and a more suitable antenna last weekend:
Part number and source for antenna?

Antenna Part number and source?

 

[Jeff Elliott]

Which color choice from LSeat did you go with for the "Oak" OEM interior?

Yup, Oak. It's a great match. Can't imagine getting closer unless Mr. T sourced it.

 

[Jeff Elliott]

Antenna Part number and source?

Good ole Wally World... It's a Scosche:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Scosche-...75035&wl11=online&wl12=16652627&wl13=&veh=sem

 

[Jeff Elliott]

Well, today was an attempt to fix the wandering steering and wobble at highway speeds... Jacked her up and found quite a bit of movement from 12 to 6 but none from 3 - 9 so assumed preload was the issue. Pulled the caps and could move the 54mm nuts by hand

Had already ordered the Trail Gear locking 54mm nuts so set the preload to 13 ft lbs and installed 'em. Passenger side went smooth as silk. Driver's side was very difficult to get screws lined up and wound up getting too much preload on that side. Hub got HOT at highway speeds. Guess I will get to do that again tomorrow!

 

[Jeff Elliott]

Also have been working on the tunes in my rig... Wanted to make a rack for misc. electronics and connections in the passenger side rear area. Here's some progress on that front along with the mounting of the main speaker amp under the driver's seat:

 

[Jeff Elliott]

Haven't been a good mud'r... Need to update a few things:

Installed proper seat heater switches scavenged from an RX 300 (I think):

Replaced the aluminum wheels for some admittedly heavier but much more ascetically pleasing gunmetal colored units:

My radiator took a dump so in went a Koyo aluminum replacement:

And started hacking up my ARB bumper to accommodate a winch:

 

[Mad4Rnr]

And started hacking up my ARB bumper to accommodate a winch:

Great work so far! Curious what winch mount plate you got going into that non-winch bumper? I have the same bumper and been wondering how the conversion would turn out, sub'd for more info...

 

[GW Nugget]

NICE... you are going way faster than me.

 

[Jeff Elliott]

Great work so far! Curious what winch mount plate you got going into that non-winch bumper? I have the same bumper and been wondering how the conversion would turn out, sub'd for more info...

Hey thanks! The plate is a good old harbor freight item that I cut down to fit inside the frame rails. Here's a link in case you're interested - its pretty heavy duty for being HF:

universal winch mount

 

[Jeff Elliott]

Finished the bumper this weekend :

 

[Jeff Elliott]

Finally wired up the winch this past weekend...

First, had to make the relay box water tight, mount it behind the ARB bumber and use water tight connectors so I could remove the bumper if needed. Also wired the winch to the antenna "up / down" switch in the cabin since I deleted the motorized antenna a while ago: