Builds Live in Texas, drive a pickup: HDJ79 single cab build (3 Viewers)

[bottombracket]

Nate is keeping it safe. By literally laying on the damn thing.

 

[bottombracket]

Stuck the front clip back on to check spacing.

The motor is definitely too far back. The fan sits eccentrically in the factory shroud, but I think I can trim it on the bottom for clearance and not have to make a new shroud.

 

[2fpower]

how hard would it be to lower the radiator an inch?

 

[bottombracket]

Yup, going to look at that too.

 

[bottombracket]

Easiest move may be to raise both front motor mounts and verrrry slightly angle the motor upwards. It is totally flat as it sits now. I’ll check tomorrow and actually measure it.

 

[lowenbrau]

how hard would it be to lower the radiator an inch?

I've put a few 1" body lifts In early 70 series and moving the rad down was very easy. I think two of the 4 holes in the rad support were already there.

 

[bottombracket]

Moving it down 3” centers the fan in the shroud....but now the radiator bottom tank (plastic) is exposed below the frame rails and might get in the way of the steering dampener. Maybe there’s room to raise the transmission in the tunnel slightly.

Still have to check the manual crossmember.

 

[tucker74]

Should be fine like that if you’re going to run an ARB bumper, can’t see that ever impacting the steering damper-

Tucker

 

[SNLC]

You are going to want about a 2* angle on the engine.

More to the point, get it all in there, if you can put the weight of the power train on the suspension. If you can do that, get an angle of the dangle on your diff pinions. Try and match that with the tcase outputs. This way you won’t need to run DC shafts.

Cheers

 

[bottombracket]

Good progress today.

I put the seats in to make sure I would not have shifter clearance issues. There are 4 distinctly different seat rails. I got them all wrong. Multiple times. There are 4! combinations of rails (4x3x2x1), right? I’m pretty sure I did at least half of them before looking up the correct part numbers. I used the tailgate of the pickup to assemble the rails and seats.

 

[bottombracket]

Annie (age 6) graciously agreed to test the seats. For some reason, just getting the seats in place in the cab felt like a win.

 

[bottombracket]

Centering the shifter:

After carefully grinding off the welds and taping the correct shift lever cover into place, I found that I was off about 18 mm left to right and 22 mm front to back. I had an extra 80 crossmember, so that became my sacrificial test piece. I’ll make the actual one pretty, I promise. Not as nice as @c2dfj45, but aiming for respectable.

Happily, when I bolted it in I found that the shift tower was pretty darn close to the center of the hole in the cover plate. Even better, the right frame to motor mount was exactly 1.5 inches in between the two existing slots on the right frame to motor mount. Just as @c2dfj45 predicted. Right on the money here. It’ll be easy to add a third slot, and then I can modify/move the right frame to motor mount correspondingly.

 

[bottombracket]

There are so many moving parts in this build.

Joe’s fabrication is amazing. I wish I had his skills. However, now that I have the luxury of mounting the drivetrain (which Joe did not), I think it’s a touch high in the front. It really is a juggling act to get motor, transmission, transfer case, both shifters, radiator and shroud, frame and motor mounts, and hood to all play together nicely.

I think I may have to drop the very front motor mount down about 1-1.5 inches, and modify the additional ones subsequently.

I have ordered some Energy Suspension round poly mounts. The simplest solution may be to drop the front and middle cab/body mounts down while keeping the rear cab to frame mount in its same position. That should center the fan in the radiator shroud nicely. I’m pretty happy with the front to back position of the fan in the shroud at this point. That’ll be the next step.

Celebratory driver’s seat selfie. Sorry. This is BY FAR the biggest project I have ever undertaken, and it’s only with the help of at least a dozen people that I’ve gotten this far.

Thanks to @joekatana, @c2dfj45, @davegonz, @Mr Cimarron, @Spallet, @aljollano, @orangefj45, @lowenbrau and many more. Too bad that a pandemic quarantine is keeping us is all apart, or else all of my talented cruiser friends here in Austin would have helped knock out all these issues in a second.

 

[bottombracket]

All right, a week has already flown by. I’ve got a lead on a lot of the parts that I needed to finish the build. I’ll let y’all know when it actually happens.

I broke out the wiring harnesses I had to figure out what I had and what I still need. Turns out I had more than I thought. I have the main cowl harness, the engine harness, engine wire number two, and the floor wire for the cab.

It gets a little complicated because the harness I have is 2001 to 2006, and I have a 3/09 cab. A lot of things did connect in the right places. The engine harness and floor harness and engine wire number two mated up together. The fuel cut solenoid and tach sender on the IP connected to the end of the engine harness. However, whatever the heck that black goiter is on top of the FT injection pump did not.

The new turn signal switch connected to the harness, which is lucky because the old one that came with a column I got from Joe did not meet up. The ignition switch works. The new wiper motor fit as well.

The blower motor and a/c switch do not mate up. I’ll have to investigate that.

Look closely. Can you find a black rubber snake that I threw in there for fun?

 

[bottombracket]

Here are where the switches don’t match up for the blower motor and A/C.

See a snake anywhere?

 

[bottombracket]

Old column switch

New switch mates up. I’ll look and try to see when they switched over.

 

[joekatana]

Progress ! Man you are going trough this electrical pretty fast , the electrical is usually my biggest holdup and nightmare to sort .

congrats

 

[Mr Cimarron]

Galen if you need to change any connectors I should have plenty of spares of all varieties.

 

[Mr Cimarron]

And I see the snake! Couldn’t see it on my phone.

 

[bottombracket]

Joe I have to see what I have and need before shipping bunch of stuff from Canada. So I’m just taking stock!

Cim I’ve found several already. Marc may have the A/C switch. But I will need to change a lot.

That’s what wiring harnesses represent to me: a bunch of damn snakes!