Builds Machito the LBJ70 (2 Viewers)

[Tapage]

very detailed work / resto on this one ..

One old post comment ..

Venezuela never saw the LJ version of any 70 series .. neither Colombia. We saw plenty here and believe some of the Central America countries.

 

[Well Sorted]

We cheered the day that we finally put the welder away and moved on to bodywork. With all the patch panels there were a lot of areas that needed light skims of filler to deal with heat distortion. Spread filler, sand, repeat...

It's pretty cool when the primers go on and it starts to look like a finished product again. This one has been a bit of a slog so it's nice to have those moments when you feel like you're getting somewhere...

We have a rotisserie for big jobs like this which makes working on the roof and underside a lot easier...

When we got to the wet sanding phase the Colorado winter was finally starting to break and we got the luxury of doing some work outside...

Five pictures don't really do it justice, but you can imagine there's a lot of work in this phase.

 

[Well Sorted]

While body work was ongoing we got busy with the mechanicals. During the sand blast process we had both front and rear axles blasted to bare steel and planned a full rebuild. We had some problems to resolve though, disassembly revealed some pretty decent wear in the birfields and on the sealing surface of the front axle shafts...

It took a little searching but I was surprised to find that Longfield sells a full chromoly axle shaft set for these LJ's. It's an expensive solution and maybe overkill for how the customer will use this truck but we pulled the trigger. OEM parts would have cost about the same (sourced from overseas) and this way we get the extra beef...

With new axle shafts and a full rebuild kit from our friends at Cruiser Outfitters we got busy with the glamorous work of front axle assembly.

We made a few upgrades in the brake department, this one is now running FJ60 front brakes which were an easy bolt on, make service easier, and should improve stopping power a bit. The axle housing is painted in a satin chassis black and the hubs, calipers, etc are all in high temp black. We powdercoated the selector knobs red and the outer rings black for a subtle little color pop on the truck. We may toss in a few small red highlights in other places (Turbo emblem?) around the truck.

I guess I wasn't around the day we built up the rear because I don't seem to have any pics of that process. It followed a similar path - fresh paint throughout and a rebuild of the brakes (stock drums). We added an ARB air locker in lieu of the factory diff for a little improvement in off road capability. Other than that (and all the repair to the spring perches) she's pretty much a stock LJ axle.

 

[FJBen]

These South American trucks get used!

Nice work.

 

[Well Sorted]

With the frame repairs all wrapped up and the axles built and painted we started reassembling the chassis. This part goes quick and it feels like real progress so it's always kind of rewarding. The owner had brought us the truck with a full Dobinson kit on it that seemed almost brand new so we just reused those parts and put it all back together...

With the suspension on we were able to drop it on its wheels and then went ahead and put the engine and transmission back in. It's a lot easier to put it in now than when the body is back on. If you do it this way you have to be a little careful dropping the body down to not hit the engine and mark up the firewall but with a hoist at your disposal this sort of thing is much easier.

Over at the paint shop color was starting to go on. Interior panels and door jams get painted first. The LJ has a decent amount of exposed metal in the inteior so we took some time to get these clean and looking good for a fresh coat.

After that the exterior comes next. Lots of prep goes into the job of course and after a few hours in the booth you get to see the fruits of all that labor.

In parallel, lots of other pieces were getting treatments. All the small underhood pieces we fabricated are powder coated in a textured black to keep a sort of understated look. We also sent out a lot of the door latches for fresh zinc plating to give everything a factory fresh appearance. Intercooler tubes and the radiator cover back from the powdercoat shop...

 

[OGBeno]

Doug: do you do paint in-house? Or outsource?

 

[Well Sorted]

Doug: do you do paint in-house? Or outsource?

We do the metalwork in house, the filler/prep and paint work is done by local painters. We have two shops we work with in town, one for lower-end daily driver type work and one for very high quality finishes (prices follow accordingly). We took a strong look at buying a paint both and moving it in house but it's a huge investment and hard to justify unless you're pushing a lot of vehicles through so for now we outsource.

 

[OGBeno]

Nice Doug. Solid work.

 

[Well Sorted]

We brought the body home and got ready for re-installation. Working around freshly painted trucks is always a little delicate, we spend a lot of time protecting surfaces and you have to move really carefully...

After dropping it down and securing all the body mounts we put it out in the sun for a day to help the paint cure. Finally, it's starting to look like a truck again!

After a "rest day" the real work begins. With no front fenders it's a great time to install all the firewall mounted components and a lot of the engine wiring and plumbing bits that are hard to access. The brake booster and master cylinder went on right away and we started on the interior dash parts. First up was all the firewall insulation followed by laying in the OEM Toyota wiring harness.

With the Cummins swap we knew we'd end up removing a lot of the underhood sections but there are some wires in that bundle we need. Our approach is to make the necessary connections for the Cummins using the FSM wiring diagram to identify wires and then leave the rest bundled up until we test drive and fully verify all the functions we're looking for. The process starts with a lot of stripping and tagging wires, slow tedious work...

Inside the cab we started installing the duct work and evap assembly. This was originally a non-AC truck so we got a retrofit kit from @joekatana to upgrade the truck, the owner lives in Moab so this is an essential feature. You can see the AC evaporator box between the section with the center vents and the blower motor on the right. It replaces a piece of blank duct work and of course has some fairly simple wiring plus two hose pass-throughs at the firewall. The fit was pretty good but we also did our best to seal all the joints with some foam and tape.

 

[Well Sorted]

Other fun interior stuff...

We tried to quiet this thing down as best we could. It will never be a GX470, but at least we can do some sound deadening. Dynamat in the quarter skins...

On the roof we did a layer of dynamat for deadening and then melamine foam for absorption. The full roof has foam in it, this shot was just taken after the first panel went in.

Headliners aren't available for the 70 so we reused one of the existing ones we had. Before installing it we had to clean a lot of mildew off the back side and generally scrub dust and dirt out of it. Simple green worked well to get it looking pretty close to new.

For the windows we decided to strip and retint everything since it was starting to turn purple. We had purchased all new weatherstripping from our friends at Cruiser Outfitters so the old gaskets were quickly cut off, the glass cleaned, and all these panels dropped off at the tint shop for a fresh tint job.

The biggest interior change is the seats. The owner wanted an upgraded bucket plus more leg room so we opted for Bestop seats including their rear bench. We also added a Tuffy console for secure storage. The Bestops are mounted on the factory sliders with a custom bracket we made to mate the two. I originally tried ordering 70-series brackets from Planted but they didn't fit, after some back and forth with Jeff at Planted we figured out that the BJ/LJ70 seat mounts are different than whatever other 70-series he used to develop his bracket, beware of that if any of you want to go that route.

 

[joekatana]

70/71/73/74/76/77 floor pans are different then the pickup troopy 75/78/79 models , the planted brackets where developed for troopy's I believe.

 

[SNLC]

70/71/73/74/76/77 floor pans are different then the pickup troopy 75/78/79 models , the planted brackets where developed for troopy's I believe.

Correct and a Troopy with buckets. They don’t work on anything else.

Cheers

 

[Well Sorted]

Assembly continued. A lot of time was spent hanging fenders and working door alignments. I am curious what the exact procedure was at the factory for assembly and paint on these trucks, anybody know? The method we used was to install the upper fender, hang the door and get the alignment where we thought it was good while we could easily access the hinges. Then pull the door, install the lower fender, rehang the door and check everything again. Repeat as necessary You get constrained by access to the door hinge bolts and fender bolts when the lower fender is on so this seemed to be the best method? I think we've got it down pretty well now, next time we build a 70-series it should go a little faster.

And more wiring...

 

[steve729]

Hey Doug,
I sure wish my LPZJ 70 was as far along as your build!! Mind my asking what the wheels are from and whether you had to use spacers on the LJ

 

[Well Sorted]

Hey Doug,
I sure wish my LPZJ 70 was as far along as your build!! Mind my asking what the wheels are from and whether you had to use spacers on the LJ

We've tried two different wheels, the ones in the pic above are FJ Cruiser steelies. I generally like the look of those, but they just didn't quite work for the truck, too much offset. The front was okay but the rear would have needed at least a 1" spacer to look right and the owner didn't want to go that route. Instead we chose some American Racing alloys which look similar and have a more appropriate offset.

 

[Well Sorted]

As usual I've done a pretty bad job keeping this build thread updated. But hey, the truck is done...

 

[Exiled]

I've followed this buildup here and on IG, amazing work! No Venezuelan 70 series ever had bodywork like that even from the Cumana assembly plant!

I have two guesses for the origin of this truck:
1. Imported to Venezuela from Aruba or another Caribbean island, where there were diesel 70s. Venezuela never got snub noses, diesel or even gray interior until MUCH later, for that matter.
2. Possibly a one-off test vehicle of some sort imported from a different market by Toyota de Venezuela? I went to school with a guy who's father was heavily involved in product testing for Tocars (largest Toyota dealership there at one time) and he would occasionally show up driving some cool, oddball off-market vehicle.

Congratulations on the final results, the truck looks amazing!!

 

[Well Sorted]

I'll try to quickly fill in the gaps on the last portions of the build so you guys can see how we wrapped this one up. As noted in the earlier post we were deep in wiring and assembly. We finished integrating the Cummins into the Toyota harness and tied all the excess branches up out of the way so we could test fire and debug the system. The interior stayed very stock, we just added a couple switches for the ARB and rear locker plus the Murphy gauge for the Cummins.

Underhood we kept working away to get all the Cummins components installed and everything clean and tidy. I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out...

Next up was the front bumper. We purchased a weld-together kit from Coastal Offroad but quickly ran into problems. The wings of the bumper aren't designed for the BJ style fenders and in as-delivered form it was going to leave an unsightly gap between the bumper and fender.

After a little brainstorming we decided the best thing to do was fill that gap with some custom panels. A few hours for templating and plasma cutting and we were back in business.

We added the winch and hoop then installed it on the truck. It's a very tight fit, we had to make multiple clearance cuts to fit the Warn M8000 in there. It came out looking pretty good though, so off it came and we sent it out for powdercoat to match the rear.

 

[Well Sorted]

The rear bumper came from @cruiseroutfit based on their Project LXXIV build. This is a really nice unit, we especially love how the swing outs are attached to the doors so access to the rear storage area is super simple and doesn't require unlatching any secondary systems. It makes me wish I had barn doors on my 60. The guys were kind enough to hook us up with the brand and color code of powdercoat on this unit so we are able to get an exact match on the front and rear bumpers.

The last step before putting some miles on it was to fabricate an exhaust system. That's generally not interesting however I figured you all would appreciate seeing the forward section. It's a pretty tight fit to snake the pipe out of the DPF and the driveshaft and radius arms. We were able to keep the bottom of the pipe even with the trans crossmember so it doesn't become the low point on the chassis.

Once the front bumper came back we did final assembly and checks. Ready to head out on our first test drives...

 

[OGBeno]

Spectacular work Doug.