Meet Betty White

[ARJMN]

As if I did not have enough projects in process, I have now added one more. Meet Betty White. Betty is my buddy Rob's 1995 FZJ80 that came into his possession with a blown motor. She is in excellent condition overall with the paint being notably better than either of my rigs. To remedy the failed ticker, Rob procured a 2009 Chevy 2500 with a Gen3 6.0 LS and a 6L90 transmission. The truck was stripped of its vitals and they were then transplanted into Betty. This swap is very close to my LS with the exception of the transmission and brakes. While mine has the 6L80 from a 2013 Camaro SS, Rob's runs the 6L90 from the aforementioned 3/4 ton truck and Rob is running a full Hydro-Boost brake system. I'll get into the details of the differences in a future post. I have a good bit to say about this build and am looking forward to diving in after I get a few other ToDos knocked out.

For now, here are some terribly framed pics of the rig. Don't judge me, I was at the end of a 20 hour drive from Arkansas.

Rob = @OlafProt

 

[OGBeno]

Nice base for a project.

 

[Mattman]

Nice project! Off topic... but is that a KTM 1290 SAR I spy in the back of the Dodge? That's what I ride

 

[ARJMN]

Nice project! Off topic... but is that a KTM 1290 SAR I spy in the back of the Dodge? That's what I ride

Yessir! I picked that up when I brought back the 80. I have been on two rides so far and am really impressed so far. Its been 9 years since I owned a bike, and have missed them. I had a 2006 950 Adventure S years back and loved to see where I could take it, and a few spots I regretted getting into. I used to love loading up all my gear, heading out for the day. I carried a cable lock to secure my paniers to a tree, and then I would ride trails with buddies on dirt bikes. It was always fun to see their eyes get wide when you cleared a nasty section or hill climb on it. I'll admit that more than once I had to smile laugh and wave them over to help me push that thing out of trouble. While I don't have any plans to risk the 1290 in the same way, I did take it up the Mt. Lemmon Control Road yesterday and it started to feel like old times. While not really any heavier than my old 950, it has so much more torque that I swear it is easier to negotiate slow chuggy stuff.

Anyway, this is not a bike forum, but I do love spending time on 2 wheels as well as 4.

My 2006 KTM 950 Adventure S:

 

[Mattman]

Let's meet in the middle somewhere and do a ride in the fall. @LandCruiserPhil might be down for that too if he still has is Dakar BMW...

 

[LandCruiserPhil]

Let's meet in the middle somewhere and do a ride in the fall. @LandCruiserPhil might be down for that too if he still has is Dakar BMW...

Devils Hwy 1000's turns in 94 miles

 

[ARJMN]

Sounds good to me, but definitely need some cooler weather! It was 76 when I left the house at 5:30am Monday, and 107 when I got home at around 11:00am. The temp swings still blow me away.

 

[RHINO]

nice 950,,, this was my trusty '07 990, amazingly capable bikes.

 

[ARJMN]

nice 950,,, this was my trusty '07 990, amazingly capable bikes.

View attachment 3366539

Agreed! The 950/990 were much closer to being purely over grown dirt bikes than the modern brethren. Makes sense as they were designed to win the Dakar.

 

[ARJMN]

Quick update. With Lexi Jo back on the road, I will be hauling Betty White home this week and taking stock of where I am on it. Keep a watch here for progress coming soon.

@OlafProt

 

[ARJMN]

Holy cow, its been 9 months since I posted here. Dang. Well, Betty White did indeed come home and she has been getting some work done, but I am not where I hoped to be at this point. My job keeps getting in the way of fun and progress on projects, but with cooler temps rolling in I will be putting in lots of time on this. Stay tuned, I have a good bit queued up to share.

 

[Funner]

Holy cow, its been 9 months since I posted here. Dang. Well, Betty White did indeed come home and she has been getting some work done, but I am not where I hoped to be at this point. My job keeps getting in the way of fun and progress on projects, but with cooler temps rolling in I will be putting in lots of time on this. Stay tuned, I have a good bit queued up to share.

 

[ARJMN]

Well, at @Funner 's prodding, I think I should do a photo dump and update here. Strap in, here we go. This may be phot heavy and text light.

I got the old girl home and winched up the driveway into the OR without much drama, but once there, work and other jobs kept getting in the way of progress.

I took a few hours to simply organize the mountain of parts we have accumulated for the build. This entailed opening up all the shipping boxes and consolidating into a couple plastic totes. The net result was taking the cabin from being stuffed front to back with partially filled boxes, down to what you see here. The recycling bin was packed like a can of sardines with all the cardboard.

Next was an overall assessment of where I was on the build. I knew I needed to add a full coolant package for all the fluids, so first small job was to knock up another set of mounting brackets for the engine oil cooler seen here below the horns. I learned the hard way on Lexi Jo to put everything in its place BEFORE you start plumbing. Hoses and harnesses are flexible, coolers and the like are not.

I had to add a little humor to the build. Found these stickers on Cleetus McFarland's website and had to have a few.

 

[ARJMN]

The real work began with the front end teardown. Betty was not built with factory lockers, so we have a set of Harrop E-Lockers to go in the diffs, so full disassembly is needed anyway. Here you can see the pre-birf soup release with a clean pan of Oil-Sorb ready for duty.

An hour or so later, and the RH side is blown apart. There was not as much soup as I was expecting, but still plenty of need for a silicone scraper and a roll of paper towels.

Typical schmegma...

All the hardware was collected and prepped for a long soak in the best cheap solvent around, 87 octane.

First signs of moisture inside the axle...

 

[ARJMN]

Both sides and the center stripped out. Moving along.

Clean up beginning on all the steering bits. The knuckle seals were shot, if you hadn't guessed already.

A little drier, but still nasty.

More small signs of moisture in the diffs, as well as indications that gear oil changes were not a common occurrence.

Peeking down the LH side of the axle housing. I bought a case of brake clean for this project. No, I am not kidding. 15 cans of cleaner and a box of long handled brushes arrived via UPS, and then I got to work hosing and scrubbing the interior until it at least resembled a clean housing. Sorry, I don't know why I didn't take an after photo. Yes, I got filthy doing this.

 

[ARJMN]

Front third member out and ready to go to Lloyd's If you need gear or manual transmission work done in the Tucson area. Go see the folks at Lloyd's. Top notch work, and with the volume of projects I have running, it is well worth the money to drop off a dirty pile of parts and get back a hot tank cleaned, rebuilt, and painted assembly.

Locker equipped and rebuilt third member back in place with fresh gasket and Loctite Gasket Sealer in place.

We did have a small miss on the placement of the hole for the locker wires. They are fouling on the tab shown here. Very minor detail that will work out in the long run, I will bend the tab up a bit and use the weld nut to mount a ladder clip in order to secure and strain relive the harness. No worries.

If you have never heard of Loctite 518, check it out. I picked up on this stuff in the field working alongside Cat Techs. This stuff is amazing when it comes to helping to seal gaskets and mating surfaces. Fair warning, it can make gasket removal a bit more laborious, but it definitely seals up paper gaskets that would normally weep until they were fully saturated. That's my tech tip of the day. Use this stuff and be done with it.

 

[ARJMN]

The rotors would all be replaced, but the calipers would get the spa treatment. More on this in a bit.

Continuing the clean up efforts on all the misc bits, I gave the, all a good long soak in pump gas, separating the sides into two 5 gallon buckets. This is an excellent way to clean greasy/oily parts if you have time to let them soak. I did as I was traveling for work almost 7 weeks this summer.

Much to my displeasure, during my time away, the monsoon arrived in Tucson dumping a healthy volume of Dihydrogen Monoxide from the sky. This would not be much of an issue except that the outdoor storage location of my parts buckets was in direct sunlight and the plastic lid on LH side bucket cracked. The monsoon saw to it that water would be layered in under the gasoline, leaving me a flash rusted pile of parts. A blast at 4500psi from the pressure washer got the loose stuff knocked off but did not solve the rust issue.

Barf.

Luckily, there is such a thing as Evap-O-Rust. Again, if you have never used it, note this result. That stuff is fantastic! a two day soak in it and the parts come out looking no worse for the wear. Now, obviously this will not repair rust pitting to excessive rust damage, but it will stop and remove the rust on the surface. It is not a recommended fix for precision parts, as both rust and rust remover consume layers of metal at the atomic level, but for this application, its a win.

 

[ARJMN]

Any pig will do better with a little lipstick here and there, so all the steering bits got a spray of degreaser, two coats of self leveling/etching primer, and then 2-3 coats of enamel automotive paint in gloss black. I find that gloss coats well and cleans up much better than matte or semi-gloss. Just my preference. A note here: Holy s***e what happened to paint prices?!? I used to buy this same paint and primer for $7.99 a can, now they are $12.99. Inflation I suppose.

Masked and sprayed. It is quite satisfying to peel all the painters tape off. A tech tip for clean edges is to overlap the tape past the edge, and then use a flat faced hammer to very lightly tap the edge to cut the tape. Makes for precise paint lines.

Finished paint.

A set of Wits-End ABS delete plugs filled the holes left by the vacated sensors.

More cleaned, rebuilt, and painted bits for the effort.

 

[ARJMN]

I ran out of gray primer and only had red on hand, but its the same stuff so it will be fine.

Cleaned and repacked the Birfs. They checked out as being within tolerances for wear...thankfully.

I didn't like the seal groove worn into the original spindles, so I bit the bullet and placed an order with Partsouq.com. Sorry, I didn't take a pic of it.

About a week later, the box showed up and the new spindles were fondled.

Betty had the original spindle from the 1995 model year. Those had only a bronze bushing in the spindle, and have since been updated to include a needle bearing.

 

[ARJMN]

Marlin Crawler and Wit-End served up another does of new parts for the reassembly. All new bearings, seals, and SS braided brake lines are on the menu. I did this same treatment on Lexi Jo and the brakes lines with the ABS delete made a big difference in the braking.

Laying it out and taking account of it all.

RH side was up first. Knuckle in place and the preload checked, I was ready to move forward with birf installation.

Fully cleaned, packed, and ready to fly home.

Nearly complete RH side with Powerstop Rotor installed.