Maui - '89 FJ-62 Rescue from the Recycler (1 Viewer)

[60Works]

Hello All,

Two stray FJ-62's followed me home this Fall, Maui and Marcy. Marcy, most unfortunately, is beyond saving and will be a generous source of donor parts to help other Cruisers live. Much of her interior is still fairly nice with no cracks in the dash. Poor Marcy spent all her life on Cape Cod enduring both the seaside summers and New England winters. When I found her, she had been sitting directly on the ground with no wheels or tires for several years. Even her brake rotors were rusted to half moons.

Maui, however, actually started after 2 years sitting with untreated ethanol gas in the tank, showing a Land Cruiser-ish, stoic determination to "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" and not to follow Marcy to the recycler.

(Regards to Dylan Thomas)

Yes, that green tinge is moss.

 

[60Works]

Maui got his name because of the recent Disney Moana cartoon's 'You're Welcome' song.

The PO (who I met and is a great guy) had put a lot of real work into this truck in order to seriously bash it up on the trails. Much of this work was counter productive to keep it street legal and safe to drive on the highway. Plus, the work/bash ratio had been well below the necessary 1/1 ratio for some time. Anyway, the pride of the PO in his trail focused, resourceful hacks reminded me of the cartoon Maui's honest dismay in not being as appreciated as he thought he should be for his 'gifts'.

My intent is to turn this trail rig into a safe, reliable 'salt driver' to replace Louis for my winter truck. Failing this, plan B is to finally have a built trail truck with the freedom of utter nonchalance to body damage. This is new territory for me. Previously all my work has been shiny restoration with only minimal modifications.

This thread will also progress very differently than on Frankie; where much of the work was already finished and I was merely posting pictures to chronicle and save part numbers and non-OEM work-arounds in picture format for future reference. Maui will be painfully slow real-time with lots of questions posed to you all.

 

[Aloha Jen]

That's funny, Land Cruisers keep following me home as well!! Looks like a fun project.

 

[60Works]

PO's solution to rusted rear quarters: cut them off. They just drag on the rocks anyway.

Need more lift to fit the 35's: add shackles.

More than a little frame rot. You'll notice that there is no exhaust pipe.

 

[60Works]

One of the few benefits of living in New England is that the cool, cloudy weather doesn't cook the interior. The dash is not cracked.

Tough they are worn now, the PO put on SOR's very heavy canvas seat covers. I will be cleaning and reusing those for sure. The seats under them - not so much. With the rear quarters cut open and the cargo area side panels rotted and half off, the chipmunks had been living inside for years. The smell of rodent urine, mold, and wet carpet was/is overpowering. The first thing I did to Maui was to remove the sodden carpet and thousands of acorn shells. I haven't yet determined if they were burrowing in the foam of the seats.

The floor pans weren't as rusted as I expected but will still need some attention to keep water out. We'll see what's under the footrest later.

 

[60Works]

Though Maui started, he didn't run well enough to do more than maneuver to load the trailer and park; extremely rough idle. Additionally, there is something wrong with the wiring bundle from ignition to solenoid. I tried two different starters and put in a hand-me-down battery out of Lilly and only got rotation occasionally. Adding to the work list is a dribbling leak of transmission fluid. I changed the flex line where it looked to be coming from but later discovered that the hard line is rusted through next to the coupling. Pretty sure the pair of lines are to and from the radiator. (Still learning about the 62's.)

So, the engine won't start reliably, runs poorly when it does, and the transmission leaks so badly that running more than a few minutes makes a huge mess. This has to be remedied first before any time is wasted cleaning up a truck that might be scrap.

My first question to Mud is:

What is included in a Manafre 'high performance' engine? Once upon a time, a few people thought that a 3FE could be turned into a SBC. Does anyone know what lipstick Manafre put on their pigs to market them as 'high performance'?

Reading numerous 2FE threads, a couple of comments were made about the Manafre lifters mushrooming? Did they put in RV ground cams? It has Manafre's custom headers. Are they an actual improvement or just marketing?

Any information would be appreciated. If the engine is likely to be a short term runner, I'll likely leave it and put a used H42 behind it. That would solve the transmission leak.

If they were good builds, I may pull it to use on Lilly. Then build up a 2FE out of spare parts. I've always liked the concept of a 2FE but never had all the pieces sitting around.

 

[SteveH]

Good job on rescuing all this stuff. Man-a-Fre still exists - call and ask about the engine. I would just check out the engine thoroughly - oil pressure, compression, valve adjustment - and run it.

 

[HoJo 61]

Your projects are always pleasing to follow. Keep up the good work!

 

[60Works]

Thank you, All.

Was able to get the truck to start reliably last night by spending some time on the battery connections. The loose wire sitting on top of the battery hold down was what had been passing as the ground wire. Wish I had taken a picture while it was still attached to post in the 40's Forum thread for crazy bad maintenance by PO's .

There may still be a wire bundle issue but it didn't present last night. Idle was still rough but I couldn't spend any time on it because the transmission leak became a spurt. Probably lost 2 quarts before it even warmed up.

 

[60Works]

Also found these two problems to solve.

 

[vipergrhd]

I would be interested in that A pillar grab handle, does it have a B pillar grab handle? let me know when you want to part it out.

Save all that you can including vacuum switches etc. and all emission related junk too.

 

[cruisermatt]

That grey one is my kind of truck. I like the wheeling plan.

 

[mongoose2231]

Hey Jugg, how many cruisers have u bud??

 

[bentonrover]

I have that same trans leak. Not that bad. Like anything underneath all the salt and dirt get caught in those brackets and rust away. Are those cooler lines?

 

[KLF]

It's usually the hard lines right at the mount brackets. I had to replace mine.

Curious where you are in NH, if not too far off I would be down with coming to give you a hand, i kinda miss wrenching on my 62.

 

[60Works]

It's usually the hard lines right at the mount brackets. I had to replace mine.

Curious where you are in NH, if not too far off I would be down with coming to give you a hand, i kinda miss wrenching on my 62.

That's exactly what happened, lines to and from the radiator.

Manchester area; thanks much for the offer, KLM. PM sent.

 

[60Works]

Not much of an update, as work has been all consuming this week and Louis has demanded attention with a transfer case leak at the rear output. Seemed like a simple seal replacement but there is play between the splines of the shaft and output flange. There is no visual evidence of wear, the machining grooves are still there both where the splines contact and where they don't. And no oil leaking along the splines either.

Bizarre.

Maui - 3 hours of work produced very little progress. I sourced replacement hard lines from Lilly (who's due for a H55F conversion soon) and went to pull the lines off of Maui. Would not budge. It's tight up in there and a long wrench won't swing far. A full hour produced only grunts, curses, and a little blood sacrifice.

And this

Finally cut it off so it would turn without spiraling. The spiral was work hardening the line making it impossible to continue to rotate it. Regret letting the shavings fall into the pipe but couldn't think of any other options. The second line is also rusted solid. I'm going to try an impact and a crow's foot and see if it goes any easier.

In other news, I've moved most of my Land Cruiser work into a smallish garage instead of at the hangar where all my good tools are at. Getting by with only a basic 2nd level shade tree tool box has been a challenge. Hoping to get outfitted a bit better soon.

 

[60Works]

It's funny how when you actually get work done, there aren't as many pictures to prove it.

This truck has been a lot of frustration without much progress. The transmission leak is fixed and the engine will usually start, still a contactor issue but a tap on the starter will get it going. I've got a replacement but am not going to bother installing it until I've determined to keep the truck. Once it cranked a long time before firing, then died. Repeated this several times until it kept running and stumbling. Once warmed up it did fine. I figured the cold start injector had a hissy. Seems to have cleared because recently, even with the sub freezing weather, starts and idle are consistent and tolerably smooth.

I pulled a hodge podge of exhaust parts off three trucks and cabbaged them onto Maui. Good enough to continue with troubleshooting without upsetting the neighbors and stinking up the place. Pretty much everything had to be cut apart because the rust is so bad.

Now its throwing a 21 code for O2 sensor and stumbles, nearly stalls, off of idle. Trying to drive up a hill is impossible (meaning in 4 low up my driveway). The mixture is all kinds of wrong. There aren't any obvious vacuum leaks. Any suggestions about where to start? Im green on the EFI.

More and more I'm convinced the engine is worth saving, even if the rest of the truck is not. I just need to find out which EFI parts are malfunctioning. The oil was opaque and black as a witch's heart with dribble of froth floating on top but there was enough in the pan. No knocks and no smoke.

Here are some of the other problems to solve:

 

[60Works]

Here is an idea of how rusty Marcy is:

 

[60Works]

I've sporadically been digging a little deeper into Maui. One of the rear brake cylinders failed catastrophically and the system wouldn't hold enough pressure to move him around the driveway. With the E-brake bell cranks frozen up, the lack of brakes became a priority to fix. Examining the existing brakes it became immediately apparent that there weren't any quick, cheap fixes. I'm still not certain any money spent wouldn't just be thrown away later. So, I opted to swap the whole axles from Juggernaught. When I parted Jugg out, the brakes were good and the seals and bearings were 4-5 years old. The alignment was good too. This will replace Maui's bent relay rod and provide a known age to all the rod ends. The bad is that those axles have 330k miles, are 3.70 gears, and are even more rusty than Maui. For now, where the goal is to get the engine running tops then work on the lights, wipers, minimum rust repair, and clean the interior. A good running engine can be pulled and saved even if the wiring and rust is found to be beyond economical repair.

All the U-bolts were a PITA.

But they weren't as bad at Jugg's, which had to be cut off.

I wonder how long I was driving around on this broken spring?

Good enough for now.