Builds Let's build a 79 Series from parts...

[c2dfj45]

Finally finished the interior.....with sound deadener. Had to get more materials to do the doors. So we went ahead and stripped those out. Looking around at the power window regulators I have from the donor 76 and trying to make sense of what we need.....I think we figured it out. Another order placed with Megazip. Seems to be happening every time I work on this thing.

By chance, in my endless searching for information, I came across this video about sound deadening a Troopy(they do a 4 door cab pick up too). Pretty basic stuff but good to see it done on a Land Cruiser...especially fitting the heavy vinyl mat. That mass loaded vinyl flooring they do for the cargo area is really neat....can't seem to track it down here though. Would be ideal for a cargo area.

 

[c2dfj45]

Working on steering.....taking a long time to dial it in but I think we're just about there.

Welded the splined shaft in so we could place the support bearing.

 

[c2dfj45]

Doing some preliminary fitting of the shaft/bearing to see what we're going to have to build. Orange trim tool is our shock tower spacer.

 

[c2dfj45]

Repurposed a bracket we had from another project......bolted right up to existing holes in the frame.

Cut some uprights

Tacked it together and wound up with this. Final weld tomorrow, do some cleaning up, put it in the pile for powdercoat.

 

[c2dfj45]

Got into the doors too...turning out to be a little trickier than I expected. Had to order some different parts for the door latches since we're going to use power locks from the 76. The windows were a bit different too. One was missing the channel assembly that attaches on to the window and the one I got was bent....maybe from the crash....ordered those. My 79 had the channel and track attached as one....the 76 power windows have a bolt on channel. Fingers crossed we get the right ones.

 

[c2dfj45]

Popped this guy in as I reassembled the dash in an attempt to get the parts in the bed organized....79 stuff, 70 stuff, 76 stuff....too much stuff. Figured the best place for the dash was back in the truck.

Trying to determine if the grab handle has some kind of under structure that it bolts to. I see a bracket in the diagrams....going to order it to see if it's what I need. This truck didn't have a grab handle obviously so it wouldn't have a bracket. Maybe there is something about airbags and grab handles? If anyone has any insight, I'd love to hear. Are these handles generally very solid on this truck? I would assume so.

I like it....and it keeps my tradition of having grab bars in all my Land Cruisers going back to my very first 40 with a ConFer chrome jobber I got from Spector way way back in the day. Still have the bar and the truck. Bar is black now. NEVER liked the chrome one. I don't even think the 40 ran when I bought the bar for it. Ha.

 

[c2dfj45]

Wish I had some interesting pics of a motor going in or some wiring or something but we've been busy in the shop this week with customer work. No time for my stuff. I've got a bad feeling now that the truck steers it's going to head on over to the storage building while we put some 3FEs in customer trucks. We'll see. I'm going to fight to keep it in the main shop!

Bought a cool stereo for the truck....this truck runs a wide double DIN style headunit. Toyota uses this size in a few of their cars I think....200mm wide. Tricky to find the right one....a lot of them are for RHD trucks so the buttons are not located on the same side as a RHD. I'm not sure if it's just a Toyota thing or not but I didn't see it mounted in anything but a Toyota. Most double DINs going in a 7" opening get fillers on the side. I prefer this setup.

Bought it from Malaysia....neat unit with all the good stuff I want. I'm hooked on Android Auto after putting in a Sony headunit in 79 #1.

I'm usually a volume knob guy, not really into headunits like this........got a little something special for this system.

Quite a bit different from a standard double DIN.

 

[joekatana]

Wish I had some interesting pics of a motor going in or some wiring or something but we've been busy in the shop this week with customer work. No time for my stuff. I've got a bad feeling now that the truck steers it's going to head on over to the storage building while we put some 3FEs in customer trucks. We'll see. I'm going to fight to keep it in the main shop!

Bought a cool stereo for the truck....this truck runs a wide double DIN style headunit. Toyota uses this size in a few of their cars I think....200mm wide. Tricky to find the right one....a lot of them are for RHD trucks so the buttons are not located on the same side as a RHD. I'm not sure if it's just a Toyota thing or not but I didn't see it mounted in anything but a Toyota. Most double DINs going in a 7" opening get fillers on the side. I prefer this setup.

Bought it from Malaysia....neat unit with all the good stuff I want. I'm hooked on Android Auto after putting in a Sony headunit in 79 #1.

I'm usually a volume knob guy, not really into headunits like this........got a little something special for this system.

View attachment 1967713View attachment 1967717View attachment 1967719

Quite a bit different from a standard double DIN.

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So the new style Toyota 76/78/79 dash uses a special wider double din ? Good to know as I almost ordered one for my 78 dash yesterday. Do you know if this one is capable of using dual cameras ?

 

[Tapage]

So the new style Toyota 76/78/79 dash uses a special wider double din ? Good to know as I almost ordered one for my 78 dash yesterday. Do you know if this one is capable of using dual cameras ?

if you use a regular 7" you can use one of these options ..

Amazon product ASIN B07174NVR4
Amazon product ASIN B011QPWMHG
and this it's among the best rated units on the market today

Car Audio, Speakers, Subs & Amps | Pioneer Electronics USA

Pioneer Electronics car audio and home theater entertainment products including in-car GPS navigation, Android Auto Enabled Receivers, Apple Car Play enabled Receivers, Pioneer and Elite Receivers, headphones, iphone car stereo, car stereos, bluetooth car stereo, car radio, speakers and...

www.pioneerelectronics.com

with rear and front ( actually not labeled for front but dual camera options )

 

[joekatana]

if you use a regular 7" you can use one of these options ..

Amazon product ASIN B07174NVR4
Amazon product ASIN B011QPWMHG
and this it's among the best rated units on the market today

Car Audio, Speakers, Subs & Amps | Pioneer Electronics USA

Pioneer Electronics car audio and home theater entertainment products including in-car GPS navigation, Android Auto Enabled Receivers, Apple Car Play enabled Receivers, Pioneer and Elite Receivers, headphones, iphone car stereo, car stereos, bluetooth car stereo, car radio, speakers and...

www.pioneerelectronics.com

with rear and front ( actually not labeled for front but dual camera options )

Thanks I want dual backup cameras actually, one for the hitch and one for the pedestrians at the mall

 

[c2dfj45]

Thanks I want dual backup cameras actually, one for the hitch and one for the pedestrians at the mall

I'll have a look at the unit to see if it has dual camera inputs....bet it does.

And yes, the new dash takes a different radio size but as Tapage posted, there are filler pieces for the sides if you go with a traditional DIN. I think it looks kind of dumb with the fillers and having a bit larger screen is nice. You have to be really careful though that if you get the 200mm size that it has the rounded corners....some of them are square and don't fit right in the bezel. I searched and searched and that Pioneer I posted is the only one that met all the requirements for me.

If you mess around and look at what the A/V guys are doing in Australia, there are some really cool setups for the airbag dash trucks. Alpine has a really cool BIG 9" screen that requires a new bezel(supplied in the Alpine kit). I was trying to find just the bezel but that proved to be really challenging as it's only available in select regions. We had a customer with a Jeep that needed the larger bezel and I was able to source it from Alpine without having to buy the entire kit with the head unit. I think we were installing an iPad or something in the dash and figured starting with the Alpine bezel was going to be a time and money saver.

Check out this thing....

This one is cool....smaller screen.

 

[Tapage]

Thanks I want dual backup cameras actually, one for the hitch and one for the pedestrians at the mall

you can do no problem with that head unit .. by menu can select which one to view ..

 

[c2dfj45]

Finished off a very non-productive week on MY stuff....very productive for the shop which is most important.

We have decided that we want to box in the back of the support bracket we made for the steering shaft support.....there is a tiny bit of flex that we want to eliminate.

Not sure where we're going to go next with the build.....I think I'm ready to pull the body, get the engine and trans in and see how things line up. Maybe build a dolly for the body so we can easily move the body around while it's off.

 

[second skin rep]

Thank you for the kind words and shout out. Glad I could help. Thank you for choosing Second Skin products and let me know if there is anything else I can do to help.

 

[c2dfj45]

Still not much to report on #2.......the shop has been cranking with customer projects, I've been on a couple shipments to come in from Megazip and collecting parts. I bought a 60 over the winter and finally started to give it some love.....lift, wheels/tire, lots of misc bits and pieces. 1985 with about 300k on it. Truck is rust free and super original. Definitely has some character....and it's the right color combo....white over grey. Will match 79 #2 nicely. I bought it to resell but like so many of them....maybe I'll just hang on to it for a while...

 

[c2dfj45]

Got to work on my doors today....I've never had a door fully apart to put sound deadener on....not that I really have put a lot of sound deadener on doors. Having everything out made things WAY easier. I did the inner and outer door skin. The difference is staggering. It's almost as if the entire door is solid. It's time consuming but I think the payoff will be huge.

Going to do a vapor barrier then a layer of 1/8" foam.....the "decoupler" layer.....I was contemplating spraying the door with some sound deadener spray I have but I don't think I will. Maybe 1mm if I feel like masking it all out.

I will be building some plates to cover the large holes. Should make a big difference.

 

[c2dfj45]

And I finally got around to cleaning the tailgate....now that the truck is right in front of my office window, I figured cleaning it was appropriate.

 

[c2dfj45]

For anyone interested, I'm going to be placing a rather large order for the Kut Snake flares....mostly for 80/100/200 applications. I'm going to save quite a bit on shipping with this volume so I can extend some pretty solid savings to any 70 series guys that want in. PM me for pricing.

We can cover any 70 series. The only thing I think we determined was that they only make rear Troopy flares WITH sub tank cut outs. So if you have one without a sub tank, you'll have to do some work or not worry about it the indentation.

I should be able to get pics of whatever anyone needs.

Looking to order in the next 4-5 days so I would need to know by the end of the week.

 

[c2dfj45]

12 hours and this is the only thing I got accomplished today......and I didn't even mount the switch in the bezel! Loser.

Took 2 tries to get the right switch but I found it. 1995-2000 Tacoma, Tundra 2 door switch. Only $22 on Amazon prime!

Tomorrow....I attempt to find the matching plug so we can use this switch. Since I have the interior/harness for the 4 door....the connector for its window switch has a LOT more pins on its plug. This is a 12 pin connector. I think.....dangerous for me sometimes....that some one of the stereo plugs has a similar 12 pin connector. Found a Y cable that does something with the stereo that looks like it might work. Going to see if we have one around....

 

[c2dfj45]

And I found the right connector! The 12 pin stereo connector worked for the window switch. My wiring guru gets to integrate it into the 76s harness when we get to that point.