kw90surf's Grad Present to Himself, 1991 FJ80 H150F Touring Build (1 Viewer)

[kw90surf]

Loaded up quads, kayaks and a zodiac with a couple of buddies and headed down to the south shore for a weekend's shenanigans. Ended up staying for 5 days, and was very comfortable in the tent. The 80 did not love the hilly highway out to Bridgewater, and I spent most of the time in 3rd gear at 3k/60mph. Averaged a slick 8.0 MPG on the way down (which included a lot of idling as the 12v cooler I had promptly killed my battery when I shut the truck off). Took the old highway home at 35-45mph and got 13.5 MPG, which is the way I will be taking from now on.

Spent the better part of Saturday checking out the plethora of ATV trails in the area.

After we packed up there, I dodged on up to a friend's cottage up in the northern part of the province on the Northumberland Strait for the night. I dropped the trailer at home on the way, which seemed to cheer up the 80's highway performance.

Spent most of the day up there floating around in the shallow water, consuming cold beverages and getting sunburnt

Headed home late the following evening and got to try out the new Silverstar ultra 9005 bulbs I put in the low beam sockets. Huge improvement over the lights that came out. Very crisp white light.

 

[kw90surf]

Took some time to get after some things that had been bugging me since I bought the truck.

First I went ahead and replaced the whining, chattering, no-working-when-at-idle power steering pump with a rebuilt unit that came with the truck. Pump had been re-sealed and included a new pulley and woodruff key. Was going to replace the high pressure line that had been leaking as well, but when I checked the fitting on the steering box it was loose, so I tightened it and am going to monitor to see if it continues to leak. Pump was very simple to replace. New unit whines worse than the last, but provides power to the steering, which is nice.

I went splits with my old man on a hoist earlier this summer, which has absolutely changed the game.

Second I had a front flare that I crunched during an off road maneuver last fall which needed to be fixed, along with the mounting holes for the mud flaps on the rear flares. The bolt hole on the bottom of the front flare ripped through and was being held on by zip ties, so that was my primary concern. I also wanted to re-install my mud flaps. Tried my hand at fibreglass repair for the first time, and I'd say mission accomplished. It wasn't pretty, but the front flare is held on now. This further affirmed that I will really just have to keep my eyes open for another good set of used flares.

I cleaned up the edges with an air dremel and gooped the repair glass on there. Once I was done I ground it down a bit more flush with a flap wheel attachment.

Third I knew I had to do something about the thinning and fading bed liner. I tried a couple methods of removal (hoping I could get it off without nuking the paint underneath), but the only thing that worked was aircraft stripper, which took it right to the bare metal. I want to get the truck painted eventually, but for now I just want it to be sealed up and look half presentable. So, I bought a litre of Tremclad semi-gloss black, thinned it with mineral spirits and laid it overtop with a foam roller. Came out surprisingly well! Wish I did it a year ago. We'll see how it holds up, but it only cost me $20 and 3 hours of my time.

 

[kw90surf]

After the first coat


Finished and dry the next day:

 

[kw90surf]

And, big day today! Went and picked up my H150F from the bonded warehouse it was shipped to.

Getting this transmission here was a significant logistical undertaking and is not a process for the faint of heart. I rolled the dice on this one in a couple areas, including needing to take the Australian seller more or less at his word. I would recommend to anyone keen to try this to keep a large cushion for unexpected costs along the way. The parts themselves only ended up being about 40% of the total costs. After doing a lot of research and scouring Australian classifieds for someone who both had all of the parts I needed and was willing to work with me, I sent the first email in early March to get the ball rolling. About 200 emails and many phone calls later here we are, and it appears to have paid off.


Picking the pallet up from the depot:

Strapped to the pallet was:
- H150F
- HF2A or HF1A (not sure)
- Flywheel
- Clutch
- Clutch cylinders and lines
- Clutch pedal and box
- Prop shafts
- Shifters
- Shift boots
- Gearbox mount
- Crossmember
- Aisin hubs
- Chrome door handles
- Starter
- Misc. hardware

I ended up ordering a bunch of new parts as well from various sources, a list of which I will post up soon. Really looking forward to digging into this project.

 

[kw90surf]

Lots has happened in the last year!

For starters, I had always in the beck of my head that this truck would eventually be a diesel. I've researched all the swaps and been down each rabbit hole (1HD-T, 1HZ, 6.2/6.5, 4BT, 6BT, 4BD1T, etc.) as much as you can from behind a computer. Obviously a Toyota diesel is the ideal option, but cost is such a factor and sourcing can be tough. So, I'd been looking at UK classifieds for an HDJ80 donor, as my cousin has imported two cars from there and being a straight shot across the Atlantic to Halifax, shipping is a bit cheaper vs Japan. I had found one and had it lined up, but when COVID really took off in the UK he was unable to get to the port, so I went with option 2 and had the above-mentioned H150F imported.

Well, silly me kept trolling classifieds and lo and behold in November I found this crusty HDJ81 for sale in Calgary for a reasonable price, pulled the trigger and had it shipped to Halifax.

It's a VX 5 speed with triple lockers, tire carrier and factory winch setup. It came with a Warn XD9000, OME 850/864 springs, tailgate storage system, and lots of JDM options I wanted like altimeter/compass, dash grab handle, tire carrier, window visors, fender markers, side mouldings, chrome mirrors, stainless brightwork around the windows. Perfect donor. But, once I got it home and started poking around it I realized that it would be very possible to save the body and so the dilemmas started. I toyed around with doing the swap and selling the H150F then parting the 81 out, fixing it, keeping both and doing the swap later after the 81 was totally rotten, selling the FJ80 and restoring the HDJ81, etc etc.

Eventually after a couple months I came to my senses and decided that swapping and parting out the 81 was the best bang for buck idea. I have access to a well-furbished garage, and I'm not personally a good welder (I'm coming along lol) but I have excellent help (my father, a red-seal metal fabricator). The mechanical elements of the swap seemed like they'd be pretty straightforward, it was the wiring I wasn't so sure about.

 

[kw90surf]

I managed to find a Euro LHD HDJ80 M/T engine harness on the ih8mud classifieds, so I snagged it, figuring it would make my life much easier when it came to wiring. But, after poking around under the hood and exchanging messages with a couple of knowledgeable people, it became clear I was going to need the factory Toyota EWDs for both trucks in order to figure out what to do with it.

The EWD for the USDM FJ80 was reasonably easy to find and inexpensive. The HDJ80 EWD however is near impossible to find, and those that have them know what they have and don't want to part with them. So a week-long, several hour per day scour of the internet was in order. Eventually I found enough partials of each EWD in .pdf form that I was able to piece together an EWD for the HDJ81. I printed them off, bound them, and then spent approximately 40 hours with them side-by-side, highlighting, colour-coding, and making notes for how to integrate the engine harness, glow plugs, starter, A/C, lockers, etc etc.

If/when the swap begins, I will dig further into the wiring details.

 

[kw90surf]

Back to the FJ80:

Where I work 4 weeks on, 4 weeks off, much of my downtime is weekdays. Unfortunately on most weekdays, there's no one to go wheeling with! So my lack of self-recovery ability was preventing me from going out and enjoying the truck as much as I could. Stop being a wuss, I told myself, and went out to check out a local trail on my own on a Tuesday afternoon. After creeping into a puddle that didn't look too deep, realizing it was up to the headlights deep, holding the pedal to the boards in 4lo 2nd gear and sawing at the wheel to barely make it out, realizing the trail was a dead end, realizing I had no cell service, and needing to go back through the puddle to get out.... I went to Princess Auto and bought a winch.

I ended up with the Warn VR10 Evo, as it seemed like a good buy. Unfortunately, I found out as I went to mount it that I was gonna have to cut my valence and grille.

Marked, cut, cleaned up with air dremel, painted, installed.

 

[kw90surf]

In my humming and hawing about fixing the HDJ81 or not, I figured I'd look around for some decent panels. The FJ80 needs a driver's door anyway, and all 4 doors plus the upper hatch on the 81 were gonna need serious repair.

So I took a shot in the dark and posted on the recently christened Maritime Land Cruiser facebook page (there's not many of us, maybe 40 members in the Atlantic Canadian provinces) asking if anyone had any half-decent 80 series panels kicking around. I only knew of 7 80 series in NS (all but 2 LX450s were imported) at the time so I figured that was a longshot but, a guy replied and said he had a smashed 80 series sitting in his field and sent a picture. 1991, gold with brown interior, looked nearly rust-free and had a perfect driver's door. Turns out he lives an hour away.

Naturally, I go down to see the truck. This guy has a huge Toyota 4x4 graveyard he inherited from his grandfather, mostly mini-trucks and 4runners. But, the story was that this Land Cruiser was imported from the US to Canada when it was nearly new, and then crashed a couple years later and had been sitting untouched in his field for over 20 years. 89,000 miles.

He had been thinking he'd keep the frame and axles and have the rest crushed, so for a very reasonable sum he said I could take whatever I wanted. So me and a couple of buddies went sicko on it and stripped everything we could find of value. I ended up with:

- Perfect complete driver's door
- Near-perfect complete LR door
- Rust-free and complete but dented passengers side doors
- Perfect lower tailgate
- 90k mile transfer case
- 90k mile power steering pump
- Complete 3FE engine harness and fuel rail/injectors
- Undamaged throttle cable
- Driver's headlight
- All the EGR stuff
- Low mileage steering wheel with little-to-no wear
- Un-cracked dash pad
- Good 2nd row seats
- All interior panels and consoles
- Low mileage cluster
- 3FE distributor boot
- All the switches
- Decent cowl
- Decent hood
- Salvageable rad support and inner fenders (dented)
- Full set of mudflaps
- A couple salvageable fender flares
- Never-used toolkit and jack

 

[kw90surf]

When I pulled the 80 out of storage in April, I finally went at tightening up the steering. I had been driving it with a swollen, separated, crooked wheel, worn out tie-rod ends, and a chattering power steering pump. I installed the low-mileage wheel, replaced the tie rod ends with Joint Fuji ends from fjparts, installed the low-mileage steering pump, adjusted the drag link for steering wheel alignment, and tightened up the steering box slightly.

What a difference. Tight, unworn wheel that points straight, quiet, light power steering and very little play in the wheel. Like a new truck!

The tie rod ends really made me work for it:

I took a bunch of measurements before I separated the tie rods, as the truck had been recently aligned and tracked straight with good tire wear before I took it apart. When I put it back together, it drove excellent, but I figured I'd make a little jig to check the actual spec and adjust if necessary. I used two lengths of aluminum angle, c-clamped to the rotor leading forward and aft, marked it for a 30" tire, and measured. My measurement came out at the most toed-in end of factory spec, so I ran it for a bit but found my tires were wearing poorly, so I adjusted the toe out slightly. I could feel right away that it was toed out to far by the way it drove, so I split the difference back the other way.

So far, it drives nice and the tires are wearing okay so I haven't touched it!

 

[leonard_nemoy]

Score!!!!

 

[kw90surf]

Score!!!!

I couldn't believe it! What are the odds! And it just happened to have a perfect driver's door, the most important thing I needed, in the right colour and everything. An hour away. Unreal.

 

[SteelHunterFJ80]

The cruiser gods reward those that are faithful. Well done

 

[kw90surf]

Got home from work in early June, decided it was time to sell my faithful XJ and look for a truck. Well, coincidentally my father's neighbour and good friend decided shortly after I listed my Jeep to sell his 1993 F-250 which my cousin and I have been lusting after since we were teenagers.

The XJ:

The F-250

7.3 IDI, ATS turbo, E4OD, 4x4. From the states, very clean. Needed an oil cooler (which ended up being a bit of a saga), but very much a dream truck to me.

Back to cruisers!

 

[kw90surf]

Swapped the chrome mirrors, chrome door handles, stainless belt-line trim and window visors from the HDJ81 onto the FJ80. Belt-line was easy one-for-one but the mirrors required full disassembly of both sets to get the chrome/black housings onto my LHD inner mirror frame. The piece that mounts to the truck I had to scuff and paint black to match.

All cleaned up:

 

[kw90surf]

Went and visited another local cruiserhead to pick up a trailer hitch and some third row seats, he filled me in on a 4x4 camping trip to Cape Breton that was being planned and invited me along. Of course I was interested, and it would end up working out well as I had a quite a bit of local knowledge of the trail system in the highlands and saved waypoints from previous trips on my ATV and Hilux Surf.

His FZJ80:

I slapped a set of manual hubs (with rare DLX pickup trim rings) on the 80 to replace the worn out drive flanges before the trip, and to give me the option to disengage the front axle if I wanted/needed to. I also wanted to minimize wear on the nearly-new birfields the previous owner had installed. This ended up reducing my "FJ80 Clunk" by about 60%.

The worn drive flange splines:

Splines on the manual hubs:

 

[kw90surf]

Also wired up my Lightforce 240 Blitz lights to the OEM foglight switch from the HDJ81. My roommate and I wired it so that the spotties only come on with the high-beams when the button is depressed. This gives me the ability to shut off the lights with my high-beams easily to avoid blinding oncoming traffic vs fumbling for a separate switch.

We achieved this by tapping into the R-Y wire under the column which was a little hair-raising as I hate cutting into nice OEM wiring.

 

[SteelHunterFJ80]

I couldn't believe it! What are the odds! And it just happened to have a perfect driver's door, the most important thing I needed, in the right colour and everything. An hour away. Unreal.

Also wired up my Lightforce 240 Blitz lights to the OEM foglight switch from the HDJ81. My roommate and I wired it so that the spotties only come on with the high-beams when the button is depressed. This gives me the ability to shut off the lights with my high-beams easily to avoid blinding oncoming traffic vs fumbling for a separate switch.

We achieved this by tapping into the R-Y wire under the column which was a little hair-raising as I hate cutting into nice OEM wiring.

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Nice job. Noted for future use on my own rig. Well done you work fast.

 

[Rigpig]

I'd be interested in taking that manual transmission off your hands if you still have it.
Cheers!

 

[kw90surf]

Packing for the Cape Breton trip continued late into the evening.

Met the rest of the boys at the grocery store in Elmsdale first thing in the morning and hit the road shortly after. There was my FJ80, the white FZJ80 pictured above, a nice LX450 on 35's with a utility trailer and canoe, and much to my surprise, a RAV4 (which ended up surprising all of us over the course of the week). We also met up with a 2nd gen 3500 SRW Ram Cummins along the way. More on that later....

Filling up in Whycocomagh, Cape Breton. There was talk about the person with the worst mpg buying the first round of beers at the local brewery (eyeing up my 3FE), but after we got to the gas station and started pumping the 1FZ guys on 35's suddenly got quiet I ended up getting 15.6mpg US, which I thought was pretty good seeing as we did 65mph or so and I didn't shy away from full throttle up the hills.

We ended up buying our own pints

 

[kw90surf]

Over a nice pint of local draught we discussed our game plan. It turned out that the boys weren't familiar with the trail system in the CB highlands, but we were in luck, as I'd done one trip through in my Hilux Surf back in 2017, and then 650km worth of two ATV camping trips in 2019, all three of which I navigated for so I had tons of waypoints saved in my phone. We hit the road back to Whycocomagh and took a winding logging road up to the top of the tablelands where we followed another logging road north for a while until we got to a narrow snowmobile trail that we followed down a switchback into Margaree Valley.

Then, we hopped on a secondary road to take us to another steep logging road that would take us back into the highlands.

Once we got to the bottom of the road, I opted to shift into low range for the climb. It's a steep windy climb and I didn't want the poor 3FE flogged and A440F hunting back and forth between 1st and 2nd at full throttle. It ended up being able to do much of it in Low overdrive with TC locked but even in low range it was still downshifting into 3rd during some sections.

Once we got to the top it became clear something was up with the Dodge. It was slipping and pissing transmission fluid onto the road. The driver pulled over and checked the fluid and there was still enough in it but it looked and smelled burnt, and when he went to put it into gear he got nothing, reverse, nothing. It appeared we had made the forbidden 47RE soup.

So, still 32km of highland logging road and eventually trail from camp, with the sun going down, we decided we would tow it to camp. Looking around, there was the RAV4 (nope), the LX450 which already had a trailer (nope), and the FZJ80 (no hitch pin). That left my FJ80.

Time for some heroics. 3FE POWAAA!!!!!!

Low range, 25-40kph, tires scrabbling for traction up the steep washouts, suspension hammering over ruts and potholes trying to keep momentum up, a couple of vicious 3-2 downshifts. Epic. What a soldier. The 3FE won over some fans that night.

Got into camp at Cape Clear after sundown, set up camp, made some food and a fire and enjoyed some bevvies. We'd deal with the Dodge in the morning.