Builds Last of the BJs: 1989 GEN BJ60 restoration, 15B-T swap (3 Viewers)

[Eurasiaoverland]

Engine and transmission out

Enough with the spanners and sockets, time for some heavy work.

The 3Bii is out. Because the engine is so far back from the front of the chassis, I had to use the boom at its full extension, not ideal for moving the crane around.

Out with the H55F. The previous owner's son emphasised that the original H41 was converted to a 5-speed in Kota Kinabalu (KK), Malaysia. I indeed believe that the H55F extension housing is of a different age from the main transmission case, due to different paint overspray. The front part of the transfer case could well be original, but the rear part is a vacuum-shift type, dating from 1987. No matter how shoddy the work though, this is a full H55F. Of course, some monkey has stripped the threads in the filler plug, and jammed in, crookedly, an oversized plug, So that will need a thread insert.

The thing is utterly filthy. Oil seems to be creeping out from everywhere, hard baked on by heat. Disgusting.

These seals are long gone. Lowermost is the totally trashed seal for the 2-4 wheel drive selector shaft. The mechanics had used silicone to stick the old seal (whose metal lip holds a rubber gaiter, which is disintegrating) onto a standard oil seal.... well I guess it sort of worked.

Frequent oil changes do not seem to have been on the mind of whoever serviced this transmission. It is utterly filthy inside as well as outside.

I would learn quite a bit about transmissions from rebuilding this (more later), so while it was a very expensive repair, it was also a lot of fun. Lots of new, shiny pieces to come. It seems only specific things on the car were properly maintained, and this poor H55F was certainly not one of them.

EO

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

Body removal

I gave quite some thought to how I was going to remove the body from the chassis. Eventually, it was a post in the 60 Series Australia FB group that gave me inspiration, where someone had lifted it with a crane from the floor pan. Another member had ruined his shell by lifting it with ratchet straps through the window openings... so I knew not to do that and the idea of an A-frame lift was out.

Here's the arrangement - the engine crane is at full extension, the balance bar is lifting the body by two pieces of angle which I have bolted to the front rear seat rail holes, and the rear seat belt holes.

The secret was to modify the engine crane by putting much longer legs on. I cut two 1800 mm lengths of 50x75 mm steel bar and had the local machine shop copy the crane fittings. Here I am test lifting it (with some body mounts still loosely attached) to get the balance right and check everything is stable.

Time to call over an assistant, just to steady the body while the crane is moving across the floor, and it's an easy job. The chassis needs to be as low to the ground as possible, but not so low as to stop the crane legs from sliding under.

Out with the chassis, and the body gets rested on the wheels. I guess those oversized wheels came in useful in the end...

And that's the chassis. First thing to do is chop those crappy running board brackets off.

EO

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

Chassis clean-up

The chassis always looked great, it was just caked in 22 years of baked-on grease, oil and road dirt. TIme to clean that off.

The pipe work is in perfect condition, all original brackets and protective coatings. I'm very happy to see this as it would be practically impossible to get new ones shipped out here.

Even the exhaust hanger brackets are perfect.

I soaked the dirt in diesel, scrubbed it over a bucket, then pressure washed off the final residues to reveal this. I would say 95 % of the surface area is covered in factory paint, on top of that is some partial coverage from the green anti-rust paint.

Beautiful preservation, clear, matching chassis number (last three digits digitally removed).

I flipped the chassis upside down and left it to rest. It does not need much more than some surface prep and it will be painted in 2k black.

EO

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

Glass out

In this part of the world it seems almost impossible to find new glass for a 60, and so I was very nervous about removing the windscreen.

The weatherstrip (almost certainly original) is not in great shape, and there is some bubbling along the right hand upper edge. The glass itself is not original but is in perfect condition.

Once I had secured a new weatherstrip (actually two; a genuine one with the channel for the tacky chrome trim, which mine does not have, and a CityRacer plain weather strip - thanks Toyota for stopping production of this part!) I had no hesitation to carefully cut out the old weatherstrip.

No horrors unser there, in fact it's pretty much perfect.

Out with the mouldy old head lining (new one ordered from SOR).

The solid rear quarter windows popped out easily, leaving me with a bare shell. Here you can actually see the worst of the roof / gutter rust. There are two rust holes in the edge of the roof skin above the C pillar, but more worryingly two visible rust spots under the gutter channel. One is clearly visible above the rear pillar, the other is not clear in this picture as it has been painted over during the last respray. A lot more on this later!

EO

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

Time to turn this project around...

I have done one previous body-off restoration, with a single-cab Hilux where cab and tub are both quite small and manageable pieces. For this project, I am going to make something I've wanted to try for a long time.

Designed in my head, planned on the back of an envelope it's a...

Rotisserie! The body shell is held on by four bolts which go through the second and sixth body mounting points. I guessed roughly where the centre of rotational mass was in the body and got it just about right. In this state, the body shell rotates very easily and will stay in just about any position. The rotating shafts each have four holes drilled every 90º, and offset from one end to the other by 45º, meaning the body can be locked by means of a pin (a long bolt) in 8 positions.

This will be very useful for the floor, roof and wheel arch repairs, not to mention painting. And it's about time to start with the bodywork.

EO

 

[duncanrm]

Your engine crane mod is a great idea..


I ended up building a small gantry in my backyard and using an engine crane for the rear of the vehicle.

Photo here.. New item by Duncan Margetts - https://photos.app.goo.gl/8Ahssqgiz9zmoYTj7
And here: New item by Duncan Margetts - https://photos.app.goo.gl/BGGGfjTh2KcQ3nFi6

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

Your engine crane mod is a great idea..


I ended up building a small gantry in my backyard and using an engine crane for the rear of the vehicle.

Photo here.. New item by Duncan Margetts - https://photos.app.goo.gl/8Ahssqgiz9zmoYTj7
And here: New item by Duncan Margetts - https://photos.app.goo.gl/BGGGfjTh2KcQ3nFi6

Thanks. I was thinking to do something similar, how did you end up moving the body, or did you just roll out the chassis and drop it onto the frame?

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

Switching vehicles

By this time, I was just over a year into the project. The car was mostly dismantled, the rotisserie finished and ready for bodywork to commence. I had been ordering huge numbers of parts to ensure I had eveything I would need, though a few key parts still eluded me. But it was time to use all my accumulated leave and get out of Brunei for a few months.

I flew to the UK where my poor Hilux Surf had been stranded since January 2020 due mostly to Covid-19. It had been sat outside with various bits of body trim missing. having been taken off for repainting late in 2019. It needed some attention.

I spent the first three weeks of my leave working on the Hilux Surf. The trusty 3RZ-FE sprang into life after 22 months on the first crank, but other things needed attention.

I treated her to a pair of new brake calipers - the RH caliper was a refurbed unit I had had in storage for a few years, for the LH caliper I bought new OEM (Advics).

The foul British climate had blocked the cars sunroof drains, leading to a damp, stained head lining and a jammed sunroof. Unjamming the sunroof was not a pleasant job - in fact, getting the thing out of the car was horrible to start with. I ordered two new rails and a new drive cable tube assembly, but put it back together with the cleaned up originals for the time being. Working out how to put the sunroof motor back in was a long trial-and-error process, but it all went back pefectly in the end.

The head lining cleaned up quite nicely.

I got the plastic trim back from the paint shop (this picture does not show most of it...) and put it back together - I love the '90s JDM look.

I had a set of original wind deflectors but had never fitted them as I could not get the old adhesive off. Finally I checked HUBB, and made my own '3M special adhesive remover' (60 % naptha and 40 % xylene or something like that), and it came off without too much trouble.

The car looked great, I took it for a technical inspection (MOT), which it passed flawlessly, and it was ready for the road!

EO

 

[duncanrm]

Thanks. I was thinking to do something similar, how did you end up moving the body, or did you just roll out the chassis and drop it onto the frame?

I had a dolly under the body. When it came time to put the body on the chassis I suspended the body in the air then rolled the chassis under.

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

Mesopotamia

With the Hilux Surf back in perfect working order, it was time to head east. Covid restrictions had been eased slightly, but they were still there.

I took an overnight ferry from the UK to the Netherlands, then drove right across Europe to Turkey.

Grim November weather in Europe - here on the motorway in Serbia, between Belgrade and the Bulgarian border.

Happy to be back in Asia - a beautiful December morning wild camping in Cappadocia, Turkey.

A few kilometres from the Turkey - Iran border. I crossed into Iran, cleared the car through customs, then got thrown out again saying that due to the rise of Omicron-variant, the border was closed to foreigners. The announcement had come from Tehran at the very moment i was crossing the border. Given that foreigners make up a tiny, tiny fraction of the traffic crossing Iranian borders, this was a moronic decision, which was quietly retracted 15 days later.

After some messing around (failing to catch a ferry to Lebanon due to a problem with my immigration stamp, being woken up in a shaking car by an earthquake among other things) and a lot of driving in Turkey, I finally crossed into Iran in mid-January, encountering temperatures down to -23ºC. I crossed the country in a day and a half, crossing into Iraq near Basra. From there, I made my way slowly through Iraq, to the holy cities of Karbala (where an old friend lives) and Najaf, taking in Babylon and the most ancient Sumerian archaeological sites.

Better late than never. I had been dreaming of visiting southern Iraq for more than a decade, and when the country suddenly opened to tourists in March 2021, I knew it would be the next destination for me. In the background is Eridu, the earliest of the Sumerian cities (founded ca. 5400 BCE) and quite likely the world's oldest city (nearby Uruk is another contender). The fact that it's now a pile of dust should be lesson to us all in the ephemerality of all things man-made. There was also a lesson for me here - I had been running on ordinary Iraqi petrol which I assumed had a RON of around 91/92. When I pulled away in H4 in this soft, fine dust I heard the dreaded knocking for the first time from my engine. I later learned from an engineer at the Baiji Refinery that the RON of Iraqi petrol - on a good day - was around 80 (which must be in the low to mid 70s on the MON scale used by Americans). After this I searched out the better petrol with a RON of about 90 and had no problems. Incidentally, the best fuel mileage I have ever got from this car was on Russian 92 RON.

After the Sumerian cities, I spent a night out in the Marshes, a beautiful experience, then headed up the Tigris to Baghdad and later on through Samarra and Tikrit.

Mosul - last stop in Iraq, pulverised by the American/Western airstrikes on ISIS in 2016/17, slowly coming back to life and actually a wonderful, friendly and secure place.

From here I pretty much drove straight back to the UK in about 9 days, though that did include some brief visits to family and a friend in Germany / Netherlands.

Then it was time to get out of dank Europe and back to tropical Brunei. There was a Landcruiser to restore and build.

EO

 

[cruisermatt]

this thread is so cool. You really should post it in the 60 section!

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

this thread is so cool. You really should post it in the 60 section!

Thanks Matt, I appreciate that, coming from someone who contributes a lot of good material here.

About switching to the 60 Forum, I initially thought to put it here as it's a non-US diesel, but I guess it more of a 60 build... do you know if a moderator can move the whole thread?

EO

 

[Rigger]

Moved as requested.

Riggs

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

Moved as requested.

Riggs

Thanks Riggs!

 

[Samppahj]

This is a interesting restoration thread. I will follow this. You can find my similar project link in my signature. Hope you get some tips from there.

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

Transmission strip-down 1

So, the scope of the rebuild is set. The vehicle is 90 % dismantled, the parts orders are coming in steadily, the body is in a rotisserie. I've had a break in Europe, brought the Hilux Surf back into service and taken it round the Middle East to stretch its legs, before putting into secure indoor storage. Back in Brunei, it's time to start the rebuild in earnest.

From here, I will try to focus on certain different areas, so may break from chronological order at times!

The transmission rebuild, ongoing as I write this, has been a long saga. It has been a journey of learning, a lot of spending on new parts, and buying or making some very nice tools. Looking back now, it might have been cheaper and certainly easier, to just buy a new H55F, though shipping to Brunei would have been difficult. But it turned out to be, so far at least, my favourite part of the rebuild. I have not fully rebuilt a transmission before, so for that reason alone it has been pretty rewarding.

Filthy. The total neglect of the transmission has led, I think, to advanced wear in some areas, though other common wear points (e.g. the rear splines on the output shaft) would turn out to be pretty fine.

Removing the transfer input bearing and PTO drive gear with a puller (my first) which I bought in 2008 in Kathmandu in a laughable attempt to remove the Pitman arm from my Hilux. It has occasionally come in useful but I would need a much longer, stronger puller to get much further with the H55F.

Stripped back to the transfer front housing. Notice the open hole below the transmission output shaft. The font piece of my transfer case I believe to be original to the vehicle which came with an H41 transmission and so would have had a bolt there. The so-called mechanics who did the swap clearly did not know what they were doing - this open hole would slowly allow oil from the transmission or transfer to move between the two, likely leading to an overfuill/underfil scenario.

It looks like this transfer input seal has started to react to something, or melt. Or perhaps been damaged when it was removed and re-installed. Seems it didn't occur to whoever was assembling this that the seal could be left out entirely, given that there is a gaping open hole right next to it. You pay peanuts...

Even after scrubbing in diesel and point-blank pressure washing, the case is still filthy! This will need some elbow grease. As well as the stripped filler plug thread, there is also a snapped fin next to the drain plug port. Maybe from use, but I suspect from monkey mechanic practices.

EO

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

Transmission strip-down 2

The rubber boot on the gear lever is perished, hardened and stretched and soaked in oil. Replacing this cheap part could have saved a lot of dirt getting into the transmission.

Nice work on the gear stick. I imagine the upper part of the lever is the original H41 stick, with the bottom end from the donor H55F welded on, suggesting it may have come from a 70 series which has a differently angled stick. Add a new gear stick to the used part (NLA from Toyota) shopping list.

The 5th gear shift fork shaft boot is perished and broken. Even the epoxy on the reverse light switch has disappeared....

My attempt at SST 09817-16011 made from a cheap 27 mm socket.

Not much left of the gear lever seat. The nylon bushing on the end of the lever is also worn and totally deformed.

EO

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

Transmission strip-down 3

Having removed the transmission from the car, removed the transfer and top cover, I mounted it into an engine stand in my laundry room and cast my inexpert eye over the gearset.

Apart from being absolutely filthy and stained like an old teapot, there does not initially seem to be anything really wrong with the geartrain. Everything moves correctly and quietly, no gear teeth are damaged or broken. None of the bearings sound bad either. The one thing I really hope to be OK was the input shaft, as everything else is (was, in the case of the fifth-gear components which have recently been discontinued) easy to obtain.

Here is the input shaft. After considerable looking, feeling and reaching out for other opinions, I realised that the gear teeth are very worn, with sharp edges and signs of abrasive wear (that dirt which likely entered through the perished gear lever boot, or just sloppy workmanship).

While the shift sleeve teeth were all nice and sharp, three adjacent teeth have had the shift-sleeve limiting shoulders broken off. I don't think this is a major problem (you could probably get away with just a handful of teeth around the gear), but it is to me a classic sign of monkey mechanic work - specifically, forcing out the input shaft without removing the countershaft bearings. Very tempting to a bodger who lacks the tools to remove the countershaft bearings.

I decided that I needed a new input shaft, but there was a snag. Those f***er accountants at Toyota decided, long ago it seems, to discontinue the 1987-89 B series H55F input shaft. I scoured the internet, got in touch with Terrain Tamer in Australia who claim to sell the part, but have actually never sold anything other than genuine shafts in the past. I wasted time with an Italian vendor, OffQuattro, who wanted an outrageous sum for a new shaft, reckoned he had sold one recently and had more on the way but ended up with nothing (and I think was either mistaken or there was something lost in translation about selling one recently). I even got in touch with the a Fujiwara-san of Joint Fuji in Japan, who very politely apologised that whilst they had the blueprints to make the shaft, there was not enough demand to put it into production.

This left me in a bit of a sulk and rather killed my enthusiasm for the project. Why would Toyota stop making such a critical part, even if demand was low? There is no way I see around this shortage for BJ owners (other than getting lucky with a used shaft), other than an engine and/or transmission change.

Finally, after about a year, it was a wanted ad on good old IH8MUD that came through for me! I was offered a used input shaft from a low mileage 1988 Japanese BJ73 that had had a 1HD-FT swap. The shaft came from Canada to Brunei and made me very, very happy. Apart from a tiny wear groove on the seal surface, the shaft looked like new. Thank you so much Akella!

With my shaft in hand (lol), I was ready to properly tackle this transmission!

EO

 

[cruisermatt]

I can't imagine waiting a year to be able to put a 3B back into a vehicle

 

[Eurasiaoverland]

I can't imagine waiting a year to be able to put a 3B back into a vehicle

Yes, that thought was not lost on me! But remember that any B series engine will fit the transmission and chassis. I am currently tackling bodywork on the car, but in the coming months I will head down to Malaysia and look at buying another engine, either a 14B-T or a 15B-F/-FT, which are both in another league from the 3B