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The Cruiser has kinda taken a back seat to my trailer project at the moment. But I did manage to destroy my heater blower motor trying to get the fan wheel off of it. That was an expensive mistake. The fan had something stuck in it, so I thought I'd pull it out and clean it. I figured it'd be easier to take the fan wheel off to clean and then it just went downhill from there.
lol
I found a new assembly (fan + motor), so I'm waiting for that to get here.
I did some practice welding Saturday night to prepare myself for welding the spring brackets onto the trailer. Still using flux core wire, but I'm feeling comfortable enough now to where I'll go get my bottle filled with 75/25 and start using that instead.
This axle swap has been a ton of work, especially since I'm doing it by myself. But it was super satisfying to roll it around on the civilian wheels/tires. The military wheels, tires and axle weigh a TON and it's much easier to roll around now. The axle is a 3500lb 61" (hub face to hub face) unit. I opted for electric brakes with an ebrake so I can retain the factory ebrake handles. I just need to customize the ebrake cable setup to work with the new brakes.
I'm going to make a tailgate for it next, then wire-wheel the entire thing and paint it army green. I also need to find 33" mud terrains to match my truck. Then I'll only need one size for a spare.
My rig and trailer had to take a back seat for a bit due to having to replace 83.5ft of fence, but I'm back at it again. I got the trailer all wired up, found some Method MR305 wheels for cheap to 'match' the MB352's on my rig (the trailer now has the original wheels and my Cruiser has the knockoffs haha) and some Milestar Patagonia 33" tires. Looks a lot better!
Next up on my list is getting the Air Lift bags installed in the rear of my rig (get rid of that dang sag). Then it's onto transmission solenoids and the brake controller. I'm going camping at the end of the month, so I've delayed any major undertakings for the time being (aka injectors, header, exhaust, etc). But if I have enough time, I would really like to get the trailer primed and painted.
I got a bit too excited about my wheels and tires and forgot I've actually done a few things and have pictures haha.
I replaced my heater fan with one from RockAuto. It was easy to install and I was also able to clean out the condensor box while I was in there. It was full of pine needles and a bunch of other crap. The fan wheel was also really dirty. I cleaned it best I could and while it looks better, I couldn't get all the crap off. Oh well. My AC is back, so that's all that matters.
Original one I broke on the left, Four Seasons on the right.
Before cleaning.
After cleaning and mounted on the motor.
Here's my 7-pin wiring setup. I used
this thread as a guide and it worked perfectly. Everything is soldered with heatshrink.
More tire pics because... tires.
Tonight I installed the Air Lift 1000 air bags.
After getting inspiration from another thread on here, I decided to put the valve next to the gas filler cap.
Definitely needed a cleaning. Unfortunately I didn't have a non-blurry picture.
Cleaned and hole drilled for the valve.
Valve mounted.
Bags installed.
Boom!
Fired up this bad boy and it filled it to 25 psi in seconds lol.
Now it sits higher in the back WITH the trailer attached than it did before without a trailer haha. I'll give it a test drive tomorrow.
How do you like the alltop compressor? Looking at them seem like a reasonable option.
How do you like the alltop compressor? Looking at them seem like a reasonable option.
It's stupid fast and fairly quiet. I'm loving it so far.
I tackled the transmission solenoids today.
Not sure why there was a cork gasket, but I didn't use it. Just the toyota goop. All the solenoids are Isuzu Aisin units from
Ebay. Roughly $17/each.
Pan dropped.
Drippy mcdripperton.
The pan was much dirtier than I thought it was on the truck.
Much better. But I never want to have to scrape the old gasket material off of one of these ever again. This was the most tedious part.
All gooped up and installed. More pics tomorrow when I finish.
It hit 108 yesterday, so I refrained from going outside. But I was able to get her going today. She shifts better than she ever has before! It's like a night and day difference. No more weird shifting issues. I'm going to take a look at the FSM to adjust the shifting cable, but she's already doing so much better.
Here's a before and after of the transmission skid-plate. Nothing too exciting to see, but driving it is so much better!
Nothing super exciting, but I finally got OEM hatch struts to replace the
amazon ones and I finally don't hit my head anymore!
I also got the tailgate welded up. I was in a hurry for our camping trip, so I didn't have to time to do any cleanup, but it turned out really well overall.
Had a blast going up to the Tillamook Forest up on the Kilches River and camping. The trailer did amazing and didn't fall apart haha. I did some off-roading with a buddy who brought his jeep. The most fun I've had in a while!
We did another camping trip. This time up in the Mt. Hood National Forest. Willow (our GSD) was coming with us, so I needed a pet barrier. I found a Volvo V70 one for free off of Facebook Marketplace, but it was too short. I went ahead and fabbed up the lower half with 3/4" square tubing, some metal shelving, steel flat bar and some stove piping metal.
Everything minus the brackets welded up.
Lower brackets.
Test fit and measuring for the top brackets.
Paint.
All done.
I used the grab handles to mount the tops.
And I used a blank hole that was already on both sides to install a riv-nut. Works great and is super solid.
Happy doggo on our trip.
More pics from the trip and the canopy bolted on.
Saw a black bear on one of our drives. My 3 y/o son also figured out casting with his fishing pole pretty quickly. Once he figured it out, that's all he wanted to do.
