Builds Mouldy Mario gets defoliated. (5 Viewers)

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Joined
Oct 7, 2006
Threads
23
Messages
781
Location
Warragul, Victoria, Australia
G'day Mudders,

I thought it was high time I started a thread about my own project. Actually, it a very cold and wet night in southern Australia, so I have the perfect excuse for not heading down to the shed.

The truck is a Land Cruiser tray, or cab chassis as they are often called in Australia. I think the reason was that when you purchased these trucks from Toyota, you got the cab and a bare-bones chassis. You would then have head off to a local company who would manufacture the flat bed tray to your specifications.

Specifically, it 1984 model HJ47. The attached image is probably the earliest I can find and was taken shortly after I got it home in 2014.

The truck has been nick named, Mario. He is still a long way from hitting the road. But I'll do my best to try and document his resurrection.

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So a bit of background about Mario and how I came to be his care taker. I was at work back in 2014, and was having a bit cruise on the internet. Sorry boss.........what I mean, was I doing work based research and happened upon a photo of an old Landcruiser for sale in South Australia. It was a '74 model. Which is my favourite year and struck a conversation with a work about old trucks............I mean research.

My work mate tells me a tale about an old truck. He said his father has an old Land cruiser tray stashed behind the shed at home (It's strange how all blokes seem to stash stuff behind sheds) and that his wife has been at him to get rid of it to make way for a chook house. My work mate doesn't know anything about the truck other than it is covered in mould and rust and hasn't been driven in years. I didn't think much of it and a couple of days later I get a few blurry phone pics and a description, "It's an 84 model, diesel with 176,000 km on it and a fairey overdrive."

Next thing I know I standing in my work mates, father's backyard and the deal is done. It is very rusty. But, I really liked my workmates dad. He's a good honest Aussie bloke and we had a couple of things in common and he didn't want to sell the truck to someone who was going to part it out. It seemed like it had good karma or planets aligned or something like this.

It just felt right, so I happily handed over $1000.

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Nice find!
 
A bit more about Mario and his history. Mario is a one owner truck The bloke I got him from purchased him new in 1984 and fitted the Fairey Overdrive at the time of purchase.

Not long after buying Mario the owner started a family. Because, it is illegal is 6 out of 7 states in Australia to transport your family around in the back of your ute, the truck get used intermittently to run the owner to work and for the occasional camping and hunting trip.

This all sounds good. , except for one thing. The owner of the truck lives in the Latrobe Valley in Gippsland, Victoria and works at a coal powered, power station. The weather is often wet and the power station environment toxic and Mario contracts a near-fatal bout of rust.

Cheers,

Ben

P.S. I you were wondering. It is still legal to transport your kids and wife in the back of the ute in Tasmania (However, dogs must be restrained). Recently, it became illegal in Queensland....... but they still do it up there (They don't care much for the law and do it as a form of protest.)

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G'day Guys,

I couple more quick pics before I call it a night. You might notice the flat bed has been replaced by a style side tub or ute body. I picked this up for $50 in the hills of East Gippsland. I thought the bloke I got it from was running a wrecking business, because there was cars and trucks and crap as far as the eye could see. It turns out he was just hoarded stuffed and I spotted this among the weeds as I drove passed and knocked on his door. Deal done. You beauty.

It came from FJ45 or HJ45, the holes in the tub don't line up Mario's chassis. Not a major issue, it needs to be pulled to bits and should fit pretty well with a bit of love.

Cheers,

Ben

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Fast forward, May 2016. If you thought this was going to be one of those very satisfying before-and-after threads you will be very disappointed. I have rebuilt lots of sub assemblies, but still have plenty of hard work ahead of me. This week the chassis goes in for sand blasting and hopefully I'll get it painted next weekend and I can start the reassembly process.

P.S. One of the reasons it has taken so long is that I have no bloody idea what I'm doing.

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G'day Cult,

Thanks Cult. You my friend are the post master. I love your truck and the clear/patina is all class man. Kinda of like a an Icon Derelict.
Thanks mate :) that's exactly what I was going for.

That 47 is pretty tidy man! Once you get that frame blasted and painted and get some axles under her you'll be well underway. What are your plans?
 
Styleside for the win!

There's a lot of people who would be very jealous of the deal you got on that tub.

Good to see another 45 moved to inside the shed.
 
G'day Again,

I dug up a thread I posted in September last year about restoring an old Warn 8274 winch. This was one of the first things I did after getting Mario home. I've included the thread title below. Unfortunately, I can't work out how to attach a hyper-link. So, if you are interested in seeing a few more pics of the winch being rebuilt, you'll have to do a search on the title.

I also knocked a winch bar, but I'm not overly happy with how it looks, so I'm planning on chopping it up and remaking it. I don't like the chrome fairlead and think the powder coat colour of the bar is too close to the colour of the winch.


Warn 8274 - Rebuild and Brake Assembly




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Here are a couple of pics of the winch bar.

P.S. If you get the chance to rebuild an old Warn, do so. It was a good fun project and overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Parts are readily available and guys at Warn Industries in the States were great to deal with and posted me a heap of original decals for nothing.

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I got an hour or so in shed tonight. Just finishing and test fitting a couple of bits and pieces to the chassis. Generally, speaking the chassis is in pretty good condition. There was rust in the two brackets that hold up the radiator support and rust around the bracket that holds up the spare tyre. So i drilled out the buck rivets and dragged out the welder. I had a local machine shop turn down the head of some high tensile bolts to look like the original rivets. i reckon once i get it blasted and perhaps a bit of filler here or there it should come up alright.

Cheers,

Ben

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Thanks mate :) that's exactly what I was going for.

That 47 is pretty tidy man! Once you get that frame blasted and painted and get some axles under her you'll be well underway. What are your plans?
G'day Cult, I want it to be a neat old truck. I don't have any pre-conceived notions of what the final product will look like. As I stripped it, i would fix bits up and try to get them to look similar to how it looked new. I'll post a couple of pics of the speedo cluster so you'll get my drift. Cheers Ben
 
Ben,
Great work on the winch mate! That looks sterling. We're just the rivets a problem on your rad support? I didn't see any through rust on them. I have through rust on my supports and the panel they are riveted too on my 78' which is from QLD btw. I'll be working on replacing that panel this week.

Cheers,
Michael <><
 
Ben,
Great work on the winch mate! That looks sterling. We're just the rivets a problem on your rad support? I didn't see any through rust on them. I have through rust on my supports and the panel they are riveted too on my 78' which is from QLD btw. I'll be working on replacing that panel this week.

Cheers,
Michael <><
G'day Michael,

No the rivets were fine. The supports brackets were really rusty. I'll dig up a photograph for you. The panel they connect to is not too bad. I decided to go for stainless steal bolts with a dome hex heads on these rather than turning down the head of h/t bolts. I reckon with a coat of paint you would have to be a pretty keen observer to notice. Cheers, Ben
 
G'day Michael,

No the rivets were fine. The supports brackets were really rusty. I'll dig up a photograph for you. The panel they connect to is not too bad. I decided to go for stainless steal bolts with a dome hex heads on these rather than turning down the head of h/t bolts. I reckon with a coat of paint you would have to be a pretty keen observer to notice. Cheers, Ben

G'day Michael, Image of the rusty radiator supports.

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G'day All,

A quick update. I took the chassis and bunch of miscellaneous bits and pieces to the sandblaster yesterday. Getting a 4.5 metre long chassis onto to a 6'X4' trailer on my own was an interesting experience. I managed to get it there without doing much damage to chassis or to other motorists.......remarkable really.

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