Builds 'Little Yellowy' 1982 BJ42 LX build (1 Viewer)

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Nice LX mate, might have to get one of those inspection lamps myself.
I have seen stainless bonnet / windscreen catches for sale from Mike Ferry on 40 series Landcruiser group Australia facebook page.
I was looking to get some myself. They were about $90 a pair from memory.

Matt

Yeah the inspection lamp blew me away how bright it is.
Thanks for that I'll look that guy up! $90 is a good price.
 
Ok there has been another big delay in updates. The brake caliper kit and tie rod kit ended up taking over 10 weeks to arrive! So not a whole lot got done between then and the car was obviously off the road the whole time. It was pretty disappointing, the seller forgot to order them 3 times, that's after calling him 3 times to remind him!

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Old master cylinder, i found a brand new Toyota one in the USA. I really wanted an Aisin one but i couldn't find one. After some help of the forum i found out Advics are also the factory Toyota manufacturor of master cylinders.

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New one looked really good and seems to be of good quality. But one of the ports is different!
The current master cylinder i have has one port vertical and one port horizontal. Where as my new Advics master cylinder both are horizontal. That caused a few headaches.
I eventually bit the bullet and bought a brake line bender and completely fluked the perfect bends and it now fits good! I was resigned to the fact i was going to stuff it and i was going to have to buy a new length of brake line and bend it from scratch. I couldn't believe i got it right.
I'm pretty sure from other pictures i've seen, the Advics master cylinder is correct for a BJ42. The old master cylinder i had may have been off a different vehicle. At some point the master cylinder or booster has leaked fluid down the firewall and over the brake pedal, eroding all the paint. Maybe it was changed out then.

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Old and new side by side, makes it a bit easier to understand my port problem.

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I pulled the booster off while i was in there and re sprayed it. It come up really good. It never had a gasket between the booster and master cylinder and from doing some research there is supposed to be one. I found lots of other people also said they didn't have one there. The Toyota one is discontinued and i couldn't find one anywhere. I thought stuff it, it didn't have one before and worked good, it should work ok without it.
 
I pulled the airbox out while i was in there to give it a re spray. Again me being an idiot i was positive i had seen that airbox decal online for sale before so i thought i'd just wirebrush that one off and order a new one. Apparently nup, there isn't that exact sticker online anywhere. There are similar ones but not that exact one. Pretty disappointed again, but I'm the only idiot that's gonna know there was supposed to be a sticker from 1982 on it telling you when to clean the filter.

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I'm really happy how the booster, master cylinder and airbox came up. I want a new OEM air intake hose but they are discontinued. City Racer makes a pretty good looking replica which i'll have to order from the States. It costs heaps buy mine is pretty perished, it needs to be replaced.

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I found a brand new OEM washer bottle online, i can't remember where. I put that in while i was there.

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Another overpriced Toyota part i couldn't help myself with. A new water squirter!

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While waiting for caliper kit and tie rod ends, i thought i'd re do the number plate holder. It was pretty rough.

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Little caps

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The finished product, super easy and i think it came up really good. It's amazing how something so simple really fixed up the look. I've still got to repaint the badges at some point.

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This is a bit of a strange one. I won these on an Ebay auction for $30! They appear to be genuine Toyota and are old as hell going by the backing paper. I'm not sure why or when they decided to have Flintstone ladies sell their genuine parts. I can't find any info on them anywhere. I'm going to see if any sticker shop wants to replicate them for me before i stick them on. The Toyota Quality Service sticker and air filter cave lady will be going on the 42 somewhere.

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After a 10 week wait and multiple phone calls the tie rod and brake caliper kits finally turned up. Both are made in Japan and seemed to be of good quality.

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I layed all the brake bits out like a surgeon and finally got back in the mood to putting this thing back together. Step one in the manual is apply rubber grease to all rubber bits. I have a look and i can't find the little bag of rubber grease. I know i had it and remembered seeing it when i opened the kit up on the kitchen bench. I searched for half an hour or so then asked the missus if she had seen it. She answered no but in a strange way and i knew something was up. I questioned her more and she said 'did it look like an instant noodle flavor bag??' Yup it definately did. Turns out she threw it in the bin a few weeks ago!

I was already having a s***house day with my boat breaking down while on the water and this was the icing on the cake! So i left it all as is and went inside and drank a million beers instead, then waited till Monday when the auto shop opened so i could get some rubber grease.

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It all went back together pretty good, pretty easy job really. I rekon at least one or two of the pistons were seized so the brakes should work a bit better now.

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Everything finally back together! Im super happy how it turned out. I was a bit unsure what measurements to set the steering arms too. I measured it before i removed the tie rod ends but the manual has some pretty exact measurements that didn't really match up with mine. I ended up doubting myself and reverted to the FSM measurements. I thought the wheels looked pretty straight, at least straight enough for the 5 minute drive to the wheel alignment shop. The shop rekons they were out by a fair bit, but not too bad.

It drives really straight and the steering feels super tight. I'm always suprised how good this car drives for its age. I imagined before buying a 40 that the steering would be sloppy, it wouldn't really brake and it would be super slow. It's completely the opposite. It turns on a 10c piece, it stops super quick, i can easily lock it up if i want and it zooms along fine.
 
I needed to take the '42' for a few test drives after i did all the work to it. I was going to just drive to work and back and see how it went but after reading through @cbmontgo latest update i thought stuff it, lets take it on a proper trip and back my mechanical work!

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We took it pretty gingerly to start with. It was hosing down rain and forecast for potentially over 30mm of rain throughout the day. I'm still pretty cautious with the rear auto Aussie difflock/Lokka in the back and slippery wet high speed roads with mud tyres put me on edge a bit. It has passed with flying colors so far. It can get a bit funny on sharp corners but as long as i take it easy its no big drama. We stopped at the Nowa Nowa store and I bought a T shirt and some socks. The whole of East Gippsland has been hit really hard with first the bushfires then the Covid stopping all the normal tourism. So i thought i'd blow some money at the store to help out.

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Just out of Nowa Nowa on the 'Old Nowa Nowa-Buchan' Road. You can see the tree's bushfire recovery in the background. The tree's that burnt but didn't get too hot have re-sprouted and are covered in what almost looks like a fur of leaves. From past bushfire experiences most of these tree's should make a proper recovery. Areas where the fire really blasted through the tree's doesn't seem to re-sprout and they are done for. The fire got crazy close to the Nowa Nowa township.
 
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Thought i'd mention the Covid situation here. Australia was doing really well but it all turned to s*** in my state of Victoria. A few different things went wrong but i'm not gonna go into it, it can get pretty political. The end result is Melbourne city is in stage 4 lockdown which is no travelling outside of a 5km radius of your house, masks mandatory, an 8pm curfew and all non essential business without an exemption is closed. Its pretty brutal, but on a global scale we are still doing really well.

I'm from regional Victoria and we are on stage 3 lockdown. I am super lucky to be out here at the moment and we only have pubs, clubs, cafe's and resutrants closed except for takeaway and masks are mandatory. Exercise and recreation is allowed for regional Victorians so we planned to go to Tulloch Ard Gorge in Butchers Ridge which requires a small hike and in my mind that is exercise!

My misus moved to East Gippsland while the fires we're happening and as soon as they finished, the Covid stuff pretty much started, so she hasn't been able to see stuff all of the area.

We stopped at the Murindal Pioneers memorial. Stunning view, the rain was belting down and it was pretty gloomy.



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Next stop was the W Tree falls. The area's name is W Tree. When i first moved here i thought it must have been some sort of abbreviation, but nup, its called W Tree! The falls are pumping with all the rain.
During the fires when i first saw the falls this was just a trickle. We had been going through a monster drought and that was the reason why the fires were so intense/brutal. Unbelievably once the fires had started to slow down, the skies opened up and we have had some absolutely huge rainfalls since. If the rains came 4 weeks earlier most of the devastation never would have happened.


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Just put this in to show bushfire damage here. It looks a bit better in this photo then i feel it does in real life. This section got pretty scorched. I think also with the rocky ground the shrubbery doesn't bounce back as quick so it can look pretty desolate.

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Nice write up I’m from newborough a couple hours down the road from you far east Gippsland is such an awesome spot to go to for a getaway especially up around Omeo benambra area, seeing this thread makes me want to find a bj40/42 to tinker with in addition to my hj61s
 
During the fire work we stopped at the Butchers Ridge picnic spot and there was a couple of koalas about. We stopped again and they are still there! It was good to see a couple of survivors, this spot was almost a little oasis and didn't get burnt, i don't have much hope for the critters outside of here. The photos are pretty junk but if you can use your imagination there are two koala's sleeping.

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Once we got to Tulloch Ard Road things started getting interesting! My misus being from a cattle farming familiy wanted to look at the calfs at the property. So i parked the 42 to check out the cows but it didn't want to turn back on! It took 4 or 5 go's of turning the key before it fired again, the car was just clicking every time i turned the key.
I put on a brave face and pretended this was normal but we were a long way from home, and because of Covid restrictions there is minimal traffic and there is no one to help if things go wrong.

I kept driving and found a steep down hill and parked it up and turned the car off. Worst case it won't start again via the key, but i could roll start it was my theory.

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So my car has one of these terminals on my Negative post. If you remove the green jigger it disconnects the negative to the rest of the car and nothing will work. I spose its a bit of an anti theft device. The day before my clock was really wrong and i re set it. My misus noticed the clock was wrong today and it was out by an hour.

I rekon the green knob must have made a dodgy enough connection that it had disconnected the negative from the battery and reset the clock.

This was installed by a previous owner and it has played up once previously in the past. I unscrewed it and re-screwed it a few times and the car fires up instantly again. I'm real suspect on this thing and im gonna get rid of it in the next few weeks.
 
So we kept heading towards Tuclloch Ard Gorge and got to North Fork Track. I checked my map and it says there is a bit of a lookout at the end so i thought lets go down there. Things started getting pretty sketchy! This trip was supposed to be a simple shake down, but the track started getting steeper and steeper.

The gradient was probably a medium to steep downhill and wouldn't normally be that bad, but with the massive rains and the bushfires burning away all the stuff that keeps the erosion away made the track pretty sketchy. Still i thought its nothing the 40 couldn't handle, i had packed all the recovery gear for the winch and the tyre deflator in case things got bad, but i was thinking more a tree across the track bad. This was just supposed to be an easy shakedown!!

The track got progressively steeper and past a point of no return, we were in low range 1st then there was a massive crack at the front left wheel and i s*** myself!

I thought it was almost too loud to be just a stick, then i looked down at the dash and the brake light was on. I started to brake but the pedal was rock hard but the car didn't want to stop.
I think i have one of the only Landcruisers in the world that the handbrake actually works and i ripped it on and it come to a complete stop.

I'm pretty rattled at this stage i'm thinking i must have ****ed something up during the axle rebuild and i've blown the hub up or something.

I hopped out of the car and popped the bonnet and the master cylinder was overflowing with brake fluid. I'm pretty confused at this stage, i have a look under the car and sure enough a big ass stick was jammed up under it. I removed it and checked out all the brake lines but they were all ok.

I'm getting a little bit worried at this stage, we are deep into this track, its steep as hell and pretty boggy and we don't have any phone reception. I don't have the rest of my recovery gear because we were never supposed to get into a recovery situation, let alone one where i don't have brakes on a steep as **** hill!

I didn't want the missus in the car in case the brakes really failed so i booted her out and got her to help me do a dodgy Austin Powers 12 point turn on the middle of the track.
Once i was facing up hill enough i booted it and didn't stop till i got to the top.

It was pretty sketchy and it struggled for grip pretty much the whole way up. Once i got momentum i wasn't stopping and i went for it but i never got a chance to tell my missus that, i hoped she understood she had to walk back to the top and she eventually showed up a few minutes later, a bit more wetter than the last time i saw her!

So i got to the top and had a bit of a better look, i still had barely any brakes and im thinking i must have ****ed up during the caliper rebuild/bleeding somehow. Then i noticed 2 vacume hoses had blown off.

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It was these two guys. Like i keep saying it was absolutely raining in sheets but i had no other option but to lay down in the mud and get them back on. Once they we're plugged back on i started her back up and the brake light turned off and i had normal brakes again. Wowee what a massive relief!

Vacuum is probably the aspect i understand the least on the Landcruiser and it was a good kick up the ass i probably needed to start doing some more research and get my head around it a bit better.

It must have just been an amazing turn of events, that stick i ran over must have just flicked on the perfect angle on the steepest part of the track and smacked those two vacuum hoses off. Pretty unfortunate but a good easy fix/result in the end.

So i high tailed it off that track and headed to the proper gorge carpark.

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Nice write up I’m from newborough a couple hours down the road from you far east Gippsland is such an awesome spot to go to for a getaway especially up around Omeo benambra area, seeing this thread makes me want to find a bj40/42 to tinker with in addition to my hj61s

Yeah Gippsland is awesome, the whole reason I moved here was to be closer to the high country, the snow and the beaches/lakes. We have everything on our doorstep here.

I've been out exploring the Wonangatta region in the 80 series the last few months, I cant wait to get the 40 up there soon.

Mate buying the 40 has been the best thing I've ever bought. I love working on and driving this thing around! 60 series are pretty awesome though, I think I'll be buyin an auto 61 down the track for my misus one day.
 
Definitely do yourself a favour and go poke around limestone creek up into Davies plain track once they open up again it’s probably the best part of the high country in my opinion
 
Definitely do yourself a favour and go poke around limestone creek up into Davies plain track once they open up again it’s probably the best part of the high country in my opinion

Yup will do, thanks for the heads up!
 
So after the dramas of the no brakes we made it to the Gorge. It was supposed to be an hour and a half walk return but i rekon it was probably half that. The gorge had been pretty badly burnt out, but some sections were bouncing back pretty well, others were showing no real signs life.

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You can see the really badly burnt area of the bush in the bottom right, the valley floor looks to have done ok. I spose the valley didn't burn as it would have been more moist from the river. The river is the Snowy River, its a pretty iconic/famous Australian river and its flowing pretty hard at the moment with all the rains.

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Big ass 80m tree! Even it burnt all the way to the top. It looks to have survived.

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So yeah that was it for the trip. Really good day trip and I'm rapt with how the Landcruiser went. The two problems we had wasn't really the cars fault and im super happy i was able to find the disconnected vacuum hoses. The car still has a bit of a clunk in the front end, its exagerrated on dirt roads. I'm at a bit of a loss as to what it could be, i've replaced so far:

The leafs and shocks
The steering dampner
All bearings and seals in the front axle
All the tie rod ends

All i really have left to replace is the uni joints but i doubt they would be causing such a loud clunk. i was thinking it was the trunion bearings on the passenger side knuckle as they were stuffed before i replaced them but it hasn't solved it. It will require more investigating.

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i got a torch out and checked out the vacuum hoses that came off, it definitely was the stick, you can see the where it jammed in and took some of the paint off. I can't believe the chances of that happening! I've ran over a billion sticks and never had anything like that happen.
 
Fantastic build!

Unless you are seeing something that I am not, I would not touch the sheet metal.

Yeah im not going to touch it for the time being. This is the worst of it. The bonnet is actually a lot worse then it looks, just in that section it has nearly rusted the whole way through. I rekon if i hit it with a screw driver it would go straight through it. That section looks like it would be a pain to replace so ill try and forget about it for the time being.

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Ok so this is the latest update. The 42' has been at ARB for the past month or so getting a sub tank installed. While it was in there i asked them if they could replace the seal between the gearbox and transfer case. I attempted to replace the oil in the transfer case a while back and oil came pouring out of the filler plug as soon as i opened it, so i concluded that the seal that always goes must be buggered. It would have been too tricky a job for me trying to drop the gearbox and transfer on the shed floor without a hoist so i got ARB to have a look at it.

Well it opened up a bit of a can of worms, but a good can i suppose. They had a bit of a look while they were in there and the clutch was absolutely stuffed. I remember when i picked it up for the first time and driving it onto the trailer thinking the clutch was stuffed. But after a while i either must have got used to it or maybe it improved a bit somehow after some driving around. So we ordered a new clutch, we couldnt find a Toyota one so we went with Excedy. This is the old clutch.

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This gearbox output shaft spacer had a hairline crack in it.The ARB guys seem to think this is what caused the seal to fail. We got pretty lucky as Toyota Australia didn't have any, but the ARB guys found one on Amayama. While they were getting the flywheel machined at the local diesel shop they asked the guy there and apparently he is a bit of a 40 nut. Turns out he actually had a new one out the back. That was a good outcome! Parts from Amayama lately have been taking months to reach me so that solved a headache.

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The throwout bearing was completly cactus and was ready to fail.

I had already bought a brand new clutch master and slave cylinder and was going to fit it when i got it back. But as they we're replacing the clutch i got them to do it at the same time. I found some genuine Aisin ones from City Racer.

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Im really happy with their gearbox work. They also gave it a really good clean and a quick paint job. It was covered in oil and dirt 5mm deep in places, i couln't even begin to tell where oil was leaking from there was so much gunk. I'm actually really happy they found all those problems while they were in there. I doubt that clutch would have survived a big 4wd trip and it would have left me stranded somewhere.

Old master and slave cylinders

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New slave installed with a new genuine boot i found on Ebay a while back.

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The sub tank is another story!
 
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So the whole reason i took the 42' to ARB in the first place was to get a 120 litre Brown and Davis sub tank put in. I thought it would be too hard to do it by myself on the shed floor so i got them to install it. Its a massive tank and its a bit of overkill, but there is a bit of a theory to it.

I usually go on 4 day trips so i definitely need more fuel than the 80 litres the stock tank holds. I mainly go 4wding in Victorian high country and there isn't much in the way of fuel! Jerry cans is the obvious answer but i don't really have anywhere to put them.

I hate the idea of them on the roof rack, the 40's are rolly enough as it is, i learnt my lesson with the roof top tent i had on my 80 series. I hated what it did to the body roll and handling of the car, so i want to keep all weight as low as possible.

I didn't want jerry cans in the cab, i hate the smell of diesel and its going to be full enough as it is with all my camping gear. Also a diesel spill/ leaking over everything would be a disaster.

I could have gone a Kaymar rear bumper with swing outs but i really like the look of the original bumper and i love the Toyota spare tyre holder thats mounted to the door, with the Kaymar bar the Toyota tyre holder has to go.

So that left me with a sub tank. I really like the idea of the fuel/weight of it down low, almost like adding extra ballast, and i'll never have to worry about fuel range when camping considering full i can hold 200 litres!

Brown and Davis is an Australian company and they're based out of Bayswater, not too far from where i grew up. I would have rathered have them install it but with Covid making travelling back to Melbourne impossible i got it done in Bairnsdale.

The tank itself fits really well and appears super solid. It shouldn't cause any ground clearance issues and i have no concerns about it getting smashed by rocks, it seems like it would handle it no dramas.

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I also chose Brown and Davis as their tank utilizes the same fill up point. LRA tanks wanted to cut a new filler into the side of the car and i didn't want that. I know its got the wrong fuel cap on it!


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It does it by using a Y pipe, one side goes to the original tank, the other goes to the sub.


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They had to modify the exhaust so it now comes out the side. I call it the sidewinder.

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The tank comes with its own gauge and changeover switch, i have them sitting in the roof console at the moment. I'll mount them properly in the console when i stripe the whole thing back and make a switch panel for it..

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So everything looked all good when i picked it up and i drove it straight to the nearest servo to fill it up. The way the Y pipe looked it appeared i needed to fill the main tank up first then the overflow should start running into the sub. Well that didn't work and just foamed up and i could't get any diesel into the sub tank.

I thought i must have done something wrong, next i thought i would try using some fuel in the main tank then try and angle the bowser filler towards the sub tank input. Well that sort of worked, but it took about 10 minutes to get about 60L of fuel into it as i had to hold the bowser filler on a crazy angle and at half speed otherwise it would foam up. This definitely wasn't good enough, its advertised to be able to use a high flow filler, i can't even use half speed on a standard filler!

I got the car home and stared at it for a bit and noticed its leaking diesel heavily out of the main hose from the Y adapter to the sub tank. I check the hose clamp and its super loose and i tightened it. It appeared as though it had already been over tightened and was stuffed. I put the next size down hose clamp on it and cranked the s*** out of it but it still couldn't compress it enough to stop the leak. The hose supplied seemed to be too big for the pipe it was mated to.

Also the fuel gauge wasn't working, one minute it would read empty, next minute it would read full then next minute empty again.


Obviously all this isn't good enough! I was pretty disappointed considering i have spent a lot of money there lately. I took it back and was a bit flat about the whole situation.

That was 5 days ago and i gave them a call today to see how they were going. The fuel gauge is fixed, they had wired it incorrectly.

The leaking hose is also fixed, it was the wrong hose and had steel reinforcement in it, it wouldn't clamp down no matter what.

The filler neck Brown and Davis supplied is wrong. Apparently they don't make the filler neck for the tank i ordered any more (they actually don't keep any stock of the tank either, they made my one specially for me as not many people are putting sub tanks into BJ42's these days!) and they thought the one they supplied to us would work.

ARB is now trying to get Brown and Davis to make us the original one or get us the plans so we can have a local guy fabricate one up.

So i'm much happier now, they have been honest with me through the whole setup and as long as it eventually comes back to me working i'll be happy. I don't mind if people make mistakes, as long as they own them and are honest about it it's all good.
They were super helpful with the gearbox work and they charged me a pretty fair price. Hopefully it all gets sorted over the next couple of days.
 
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