just another average '70 40 build

[misterpepper]

I've welded and ground all the cracks. I probably found 20 scattered between the hood, fenders, doors and tub. I actually just found one more last night. I'm trying to do it right, short of just replacing everything.

Regarding the heater motor there is another common electrical motor that will fit with minimal mods (4 Seasons p/n #35576, combined with a 50W 1ohm resistor for low speed) and can be had for ~$20 on ebay. The heater isn't in great shape and it looks like they don't command very much here on Mud (best case is probably ebay in the dead of winter). I thought maybe I had enough value in just that one part to pay for the whole lot of parts I brought back (which was only $100 for everything), but I guess not. It might get me halfway there, though. I'm looking forward to the day my cruiser is complete and debugged and I can begin selling off all my duplicate or unused parts and figure out what this whole project ended up costing me. (I'm hoping for under $2k, which I think is reasonable.)

 

[misterpepper]

Well I'm STILL trying to find the right combination of time, sunlight, and calm days so I can finish up the rest of the priming and begin turning my garage into a paint booth. I've been plugging along slowly, but it's getting there. Any day now the stars might align and I'll get the priming finished.

So I've kind of taken for granted the fact that since this wasn't a complete rust bucket the mechanicals would be salvageable. Combine that with the fact that I have double or even triple of a lot of the parts and I haven't worried too much about it. Deep down I'm just kind of hoping it will mostly all just work once I finally get it back together. Well the other day I had the wheels off to prep the inderside of the wheel wells and I decided to take a peek at the brakes. The passenger side was full of grease. Doh. I'm not going to tackle it just yet, but it looks like I'll be replacing my axle seal. Hopefully my wheel cylinders are okay (or at least rebuildable).

I just placed a big order for a lot of the weatherstripping and other parts I know I'm going to need. Cruiser Christmas again in about 4 days! I think with this latest purchase I've spent everything I know I'm going to need to, with two exceptions -- a wiring harness and an exhaust. I may try to weld on the exhaust I already have (from off of another FJ40) myself, or I may just take it to the exhaust shop and have them do it. As for the wiring harness, my stock harness had been well worked over by the PO with a lot of extra blue wires added, spliced in and out of everywhere. I made a few minor snips during the initial teardown, typically only of the PO's hack job, but enough that I was going to be doing some electrical work. I'm leaning now towards replacing the stock harness with a Highway 15 universal kit. I realize this is a lot bigger job than just fixing up the stock harness again, but after 40+ years of exposure it seems like every connection is heavily corroded and every plug housing is ready to crumble. I'd just feel a lot more secure knowing that the wiring had been redone.

Have any of you used a Highway 15 kit on a 40 and how was your experience? What do you think I should do about the grease in my drums? Oh yeah, I ordered a dash cap, but I don't have a pad. Who here has made a cap work without the pad and what tricks will I need to know?

 

[misterpepper]

Somebody asked me a question about the powdercoating I used for all my pewter parts, so I thought I'd put up a picture to show how it compares to the factory pewter. I don't have a lot of pewter bits left because I've powdercoated most of them. Color-wise it's pretty close. A little less yellow. The finish obviously has more texture and is not as glossy, but because of the metal flake in the pewter it looks pretty close from far away. I wouldn't recommend this powdercoat for a resto-rig, but if you're trying to get a somewhat stock look and feel with some added durability I think it achieves it.

There are a couple of parts that pose a problem for powdercoating, notably the window regulators and the drivers seat adjustment lever. These parts have plastic pieces that are either riveted or molded on that if sent through the powdercoating oven will melt. When in doubt, test by heating up a soldering iron and see if it melts the plastics. The powdercoating oven gets to 400 degrees or so and any plastic parts that can't stand up to the heat will melt and fall to the floor. I had to drill out the rivets on both the handles and the roller wheels of the window regulator. For the drivers seat latch handle I heated the part with a torch and melted the plastic from the inside to get it off. It still pressed back on tight when I reassembled it, but I added a bit of glue just to be safe.

Oh yeah, before I forget, the powder I used was "stainless steel texture" by TCI, according to my powdercoater.

 

[misterpepper]

Well the closer I get to paint the more I feel the need to keep the cruiser the stock color -- spring green. I've already painted the firewall the grey I had been planning on, but it hasn't ever felt right. Color is such a hard decision. I think the grey would make for a pretty bad a** cruiser, but that's not really what I'm trying to achieve. I want something a little more fun. Since I'm keeping the 3 on the tree and the bench seats I don't mind having a retro color. With the bigger tires and and black wheels I don't think it'll get confused for being for too retro, anyway. Does anybody (besides you, VI) have any objections to sticking with spring green?

 

[majojo4]

Do it! Spring green Looks awsome!

 

[misterpepper]

Better than the faded yellow with brown masking-tape-wide-featuring-rattle-can-fade-pinstriping job you grew to love so much? I really like the spring green. It's been like watching a butterfly coming out of its cocoon as I've been getting it prepared for paint. The reservation I have is that when I see rigs restored to spring green I'm not as much of a fan of what I see in pictures. I think it's partially due to the perfect shiny paint job where a color like spring green (or horizon blue) really deserve a certain amount of patina. The actual color on my truck may have changed a bit over the years as well. It doesn't look quite as bright in person as it does in pictures. I had a gallon of paint mixed up yesterday to match mine, not the T1028 paint code, and I'll experiment on a test piece before I make the final call. I was half tempted to ask for matte instead of gloss. With any luck, when I see it on something bigger than a business card it will be an easy decision.

 

[majojo4]

I went on a Rubicon Trail run a couple years back where some one showed up with a fresh paint job in Spring green on a 40. It was an eye grabber every time it turned a corner. Couldnt stop looking at it. So nice!

 

[70Cruza]

Awesome thread, Awesome build. And thanks for the super clear pictures too!! I just bought my 70 FJ40 from So. Cal it is white in color and very nice looking. Before I bought this one there was a grey one for sale near lake Havasu that I was looking at. It was that primer gray color that shined though and had a red-orange pinstripe going down the side. It looked sweeeeet!!!!
It was a salvage title/ theft recovery and that was the only reason i did not get it. I DO however have pics of it somewhere. Maybe when I get off work I will try and post a couple for your reference. Again great job, nice work!!

P.S. Im a hot rod guy and well really liked the rat rod scalloped hood striping. Didnt care for the sides though.

 

[misterpepper]

Thanks for the feedback. I'd love to see a picture of the grey one from Havasu. Feel free to post it here or shoot me a PM. Color is such a big decision... My pictures are all hosted on flickr and your post inspired me to organize them a little so you can check them out in a little larger size if you want to here.

 

[majojo4]

Do we have paint yet? Anxious to see it.

 

[Glacierskier]

Nice work! I love the seats. Did you recover them yourself or send them out? FJ looks great.

 

[misterpepper]

I recovered them myself. The covers came from Cruiser Corps and other than a slight problem with the fit of one of the pieces that they were very quick to make right it has been relatively painless to do it myself. That's not to say it didn't take a fair amount of time and attention to get right. One nice thing about having bench seats is that you don't need to buy special foams for them. I got my foam from the local upholstery shop and it looks to be much better quality than the stock stuff. While I was in there I also added a few new support bars to the springs and re-covered the springs with new canvas. I guess I've watched a few too many hot rod shows and figured I know what I'm doing. It's not really rocket science though.

I think a big part of getting the seat covers to look right is taking your time making sure everything is stretched out nice and tight and even. I didn't go so far as to make sure the stitching lines up from the seat back and bottom, but I don't see that as being a big deal. One tool that helped a ton was my little electric impact driver. Maybe it was the powdercoating in the threads or maybe it was that I was using different screws nd the threads were a little different than stock, but those little buggers were hard to drive in. I don't think I could have done it with just a screwdriver and if I was using a typical drill I'm sure I would have stripped out most of the heads and worse, I would have slipped off a number of the screws and jabbed holes in the seatcovers. I know because I did it a couple of times even with the impact driver.

I spent a lot of time stretching the covers on, putting in a few screws, re-stretching them to get them tighter or lined up better, and so forth. I probably on average installed each seatcover close to half a dozen times getting it right. If I were to do it again I'm sure I could do it quicker, but this time through it took probably close to 20 hours from bare frame to covered and reassembled. Keep that in mind when someone who knows what they're doing offers you $200 to do it for you. Sometimes I wish I wasn't quite so cheap.

 

[Glacierskier]

Well again, kudos on the seats. They are awesome! Thanks for the info I am sure it will be a hug help to a lot of us. Again NICE JOB!

 

[majojo4]

Is this any help?....maybe you already had this information...thought Id post it anyway. I know it says 64-67 but I am almost certain it covers more years than that.

 

[Glacierskier]

Misterpepper,
roll with the Spring green. Looks great and will be unique. Living in Colorado, California, New Mexico and New Hampshire I think I have only seen ONE! I have seen a lot of others... Stick with the original color is my 2 cents.

Have you decided on a lift? Or is one in place already?

 

[misterpepper]

Basically just a shackle lift and some 33's. I may have to extend the bump stops to keep it from bending up the rear fenders. I'll flex it out to see how it tucks. Post #35 gives the best idea of how the stance will end up. It's a little misleading because I have some little wooden blocks lifting the hard top up a little.

At this point I'm pretty set on spring green. I'm just trying to figure out if I need 2 gallons or if I can get by with one. They're cheap, so I don't mind getting 2, it's just that I spent a couple of tries getting the mixture right and if I get a second gallon, even if it is the same formula as what we ended up at, I'll still want to mix the 2 gallons between each other to make sure it is consistent. Better to know now than later because I'm only going to be able to spray everything in batches and I'd hate to run out of paint, get a second gallon, and have it be slightly off color.

The idea of painting it myself is getting scarier the closer I get to actually doing it. I did pick up a spray gun, so I'll be spraying instead of rolling and using a Preval sprayer (basically a fill-it-yourself spray can) on the hard stuff like hinges and in the cracks. I see so mant horror stories about runs and orange peel and I really don't kno what I'm doing. I would imagine I can pull it off, but I've put in a LOT of work to screw it up royally now. I'm looking into flattening agents because I want it to look like it has some age to it. Not totally flat, just to add some patina. I don't want that fresh off the showroom look when this is a 40+ year old vehicle with a 40+ year old color, and not a nuts and bolts restoration. Hopefully I can finish up some last little things and start laying some color soon. Stay tuned.

 

[jc71fj40]

sexy LV in the beginning of the thread Looks a little different now a days.

40 is looking awesome! spring green for sure!

Jake

 

[Volcanic Iceberg]

sexy LV in the beginning of the thread Looks a little different now a days.

40 is looking awesome! spring green for sure!

Jake

That LV looks a lot sexier now I drool watching your build. Glad you got it though.

 

[thecrazygreek]

Keep it spring green!

Spring green is the tits!

 

[70Cruza]

Thanks for the feedback. I'd love to see a picture of the grey one from Havasu. Feel free to post it here or shoot me a PM. Color is such a big decision... My pictures are all hosted on flickr and your post inspired me to organize them a little so you can check them out in a little larger size if you want to here.

Sorry it took me a while to find the pics and i could only find two. Anyways here they are. Now that I see what the spring green is I think it does look sweet though. Sorry for the poor quality pics. they were off of Clist....Well heres what the grey one looked like hope it helps. Good luck and