My '64 FJ40 Build - Cave Cricket

[Ramination]

So to get back up to current, a bunch of time has been spent on the tub floor and the trap door in the floor to get to the storage. You know how it is, even when you're not "working" on the rig it is still on your mind...this is true for the build in general and this tub floor is no exception. Because of the trap door I've really avoided this bit of work for quite some time, but I think I have it beat!!! Hoping to finish it yet this week and move on by the weekend.

So far here is where we are at; with the holes drilled for the seat I moved on to placing the fuel cell which will sit tight up to the crossbar which connects the shock hoops - this is directly behind the rear seat. With that in place I laid out the requirements for the fuel cell straps and then the framework underneath the sheetmetal to support the fuel cell plus the strap bolt requirements.

And so it'll be something like this with the seat and fuel cell in:

To take this back to the seat, it wont be super roomy despite the stretch in body but at least there will be enough room for my small people, at least until they grow legs!

In reality I can fit back there OK by myself - it isn't the most ideal place to sit as my knees can hit the X brace but the foot area is actually quite open. It'll be fine for kids or one adult cruising between obstacles.

That's all, up to speed. Have a list of about 15 things to be done before painting begins and hoping to cross about half of them off in the next week!

 

[White Stripe]

Cruise moab happens the same time as Bronco week. U must have been their earlier in the week, the cruisers come out later in the week pretty big.

 

[Ramination]

We were out there on Wednesday I think! Were you there?!?

 

[White Stripe]

We were out there on Wednesday I think! Were you there?!?

I showed up late Wednesday afternoon as did the majority of cruisers.

 

[archie73]

I was there last Wednesday thru Sunday(after Cruise Moab). We were biking, but I didn’t see a single 40,55 or 60. Couple of built 80’s, but that was it. Seems the UTV’s are even outnumbering the jeeps these days.

 

[Ramination]

So in the last update post I mentioned I had a list of 15 things to do before painting, and that I was going to try to get through half of it in the week...did NOT happen.

But! We have progress. The list has grown from 15 to about 25 things to be done before painting, but I was able to check 3 off last weekend.
Taillights are ordered, arrived and installed. Ended up going with basic 6.5" oval LED units mounted in the middle like I had outlined a while back. Ditched the reverse light in the middle though, too weird. Going to not have any reverse light and see how that works out? Can always add one later if needed.

Also got the fuel cell mounts DONE, included the straps. Using a bolt up through the body (and framework for strength) as a stud so I can tighten the straps on the cell as needed, same on front and back.

And finally, the trap door for the storage area. To recap, I really avoided this part for as long as I could because even though I am came up with the idea of the storage space and door in the floor I didn't really want to do it! Ha! But, in the end it was a fun engineering exercise and turned out better than I had figured in my head.

To go back a bit though, the reason the trap door was killing me is because I had a certain criteria that I needed it to meet. In just a few words (because I could probably write 1000), here are the criteria I am trying to meet with the door:
- The floor needs to lay flat when closed, obviously
- No hinge or pivot above the floor surface
- Door must open to ninety degrees
- Hinge to also act as the stop to keep door from going beyond ninety degrees
- No gap (or very minimal) between tub floor and trap door

All of them are important but the last point was the real sticking point for me through all of this - a traditional hinge would have a quarter to three eights of a gap and I am just not willing to accept that. A traditional hinge could also violate point two depending on how it was built if a small part of it breaks the plane of the tub floor. So I spent some (a lot) of time designing it - this actually happened weeks ago - and then more recently revising the design after a couple of prototypes.

It sure doesn't look like much, but here it is. (you may have noticed the drawing a few picture ago...)

Mostly closed:

And open, hinge stopping the door from going beyond ninety degrees

The door is held closed by a flush mount "slam latch" like you find on boats. It is lockable too, but the lock is only plastic...:laughing:

Parting shot:

 

[Ramination]

So in the last week a lot of things got done! Finally!

First the tailgate - this FJ being a 1964 had the bi-fold door on top and two swing outs on the bottom originally. Since this doesn't have a hard top anymore the bi-fold part is irrelevant, and unfortunately my swing outs were both in pretty bad shape (no surprise though, right?)

I wasn't against building some swing outs, but was kind of leaning towards a "normal" tailgate like trucks have. Then I realized that when I built the back part of the tub last year that I didn't account for this, and so my tailgate would be higher than the tub floor when down - s***!

Then while working on this hunk o' junk one night I dropped a bolt and couldn't find it in the (sort of) clean garage and that got me thinking about how much trailside repairs SUCK, working in the dirt, mud, sand, etc and then it hit me!

So it'll be dual purpose, normally a tailgate but also a catch-all for trailside repairs!

It slides down and around the tub framework to stay in place forward and back. I NAILED the fitment so it fits nice and tight. To keep it from flying off I decided to go with a rubber strap on each side. They are actually the kickstand holder things from the KTM dirtbikes.

This picture is looking from the top down at the sheetmetal that I did a "S" bend in to make a nice fit around the vertical tub rail.

And the strap setup

Super happy with how it turned out, although I did warp it a little bit when welding the edges closed since I got a bit impatient. It was 95 degrees outside, even hotter in the barn and I was OVER welding so I went a bit too fast. Oh well, I still love it.

So here we are, yet another element of the forty which I have completely changed...please don't ban me yet!

 

[Ramination]

And then...

In the quest to complete this sooner rather than later we did not take a break this week when it was 90+ degrees and 100% humidity. Nope, instead I fab'd the exhaust system. What was supposed to be 3 hours one night after work ended up being 8, 9 maybe 10 hours and A LOT of sweat. But, so happy it turned out.

We have four parts to the exhaust - first are the headers which have been covered already and installed since the motor was put in.

Next, we are reusing the Magnaflow high flow cat that was already on the motor. Right behind the cat I cut the existing system off, and now have a 10" flexible piece followed by the post-cat O2 sensor.

I went with the flexible thing because I thought the right thing to do would be to solid mount the rest of the exhaust behind this point so it would be the buffer when the drivetrain rotates under power. I did not end up solid mounting anything but kept it anyways since I had it and because it was nice to have some flexibility in the design.

I WANTED this thing to be relatively quiet, however space is an issue...

So it's going to be loud! LOL! It's a Magnaflow 4" round, 14" long, 2.5" in/out straight through "muffler". Part 10416

The fourth and final part is from the muffler to the back of the vehicle. I made this out of an old Flowmaster dual exhaust setup that I used to have on the white Dodge way back in the day. I had to dig it out from under some pine trees and knock a squirrel's nut stash out, but was happy to find it because I spent (wasted) a lot of money on a mandrel bent exhaust back in the day AND saved it to be reused someday. I'll admit I didn't know what I'd ever use it on but knew SOMEDAY I would. Mission accomplished. Sure is nice to have land to hide old car parts on.

So, after hours of cutting, test fitting, cutting again, testing again, etc...here we are. Five bends in the XYZ planes.

And the path:

The only tight clearance ended up being the upper control arm at full droop - it is within a quarter inch. No issues at full bump.

Full system:

You can kind of see that I ended up using a bend cut at 50 degrees for the tip. The original plan was to do a straight shot with a 45 degree cut but after seeing it I was put back into the early 2000s when every 1500 on the planet had dual exhaust with this tip style...no thanks! So I went with the curved one which according to the old lady fit better "because it looks like something that would be on an old car". I agree, its perfect.

And lastly, as a bit of a public service announcement - these band clamps are SO MUCH BETTER than the stupid u-bolt style exhaust connector things. This is my second time using them I and do not plan on ever going back.

Ok that is it for now. Lots more going on but either not picture worthy or not done yet! Bye!

 

[Ramination]

Are there any weld in tie down points that I should be looking at to put in the tub? I feel like a few would be really beneficial, just not sure if there is something out there worth buying or just fab some?

 

[Ramination]

The push to get things done that are critical pre-paint is real.

The tub floor is finally welded in place, and that completes the new body fabrication.

Just for fun I counted the number of plug welds on the body.

Front Floorpan: 104
Tub Floor: 113
Inner Fenders: 48/side
Total: 313

I'm not sure if that is an absurd amount or not, but I did one every three inches and drilled every one of them by hand.

Also got some things wrapped up in the control center.

Shifter boots and center console.

Overall I am more pleased than expected with the center console, at least so far. It matches the material of the front and rear seats pretty close, and the size is damn near perfect to fit the space. The lock seems pretty good too, at least to keep the lazy ones out.

I thought a lot about the hood latches. In the end I decided to go with hood pins because I couldn't find any latches that I liked (and the original ones from this thing were trash, and I think on upside down?)

Also got the radiator overflow bottle in and installed, flag mount (for sand dunes) welded on, skid plate designed, and some other stuff too.

Got to get driveshafts on order real real soon, oh yea and paint...

 

[White Stripe]

Bezel is upside down man.

 

[Ramination]

Just checking to see if anyone still looks at this!

 

[76 PTO]

I hope to see this at Silver Lake in the future. There needs to be more fj40s out there.

 

[Ramination]

Definitely, too close to not go at least a couple times a year!

Is there any FJ takeover or meetup event out there?

 

[77landsitter]

What type of center console is that? Looks like it matches with the seats well. Read you're entire build impressive work.

 

[Ramination]

It’s a Rampage model 32001.

Got it on Amazon for $55, which is about $20 cheaper than I saw it at the normal parts site like Jegs for example.

 

[77landsitter]

Thanks. Looking forward to seeing this thing completed.

 

[Ramination]

Been a while, but we're back!

Since the last post it has been a lot of un-noteworthy detail work, but I do have a couple things to share.
This is not the ideal way to mount the shock reservoirs up front but it was the only easy way to get them on the crossbar without hood clearance issues. I'll try it for a while and see how it works, I suppose I could always put sort of bolt on support on the crossbar to support the reservoirs if they rotate too much while driving.

And then I FINALLY finished the upper radiator hose. It was a bit of a deal because the OEM unit points straight up out of the block, so you have to 90 to make it horizontal then over to the radiator. Probably similar on a lot of other vehicles, but what made it a pain was that by the time you got a 90 hose on there it was now the highest point in the system instead of the radiator and cap. And it wasn't just by a little, we are talking multiple inches. I toyed with options of adding a bleeder up there in the high point or some crazy adapter setup but ended up cutting the OEM unit at nearly 45 degrees, rotating and welding it back up then BOOM! Radiator now the high point and an easy 18" run to the radiator. Sweet.

Next I made the skid plate - no pictures because its just a flat piece of steel but I did snap a few of the engine portion of the skid. Not complicated but did take some engineering as it is 3 dimensional and not symmetrical. But the real reason is to show off those notches...

The JD2 Notchmaster is like cheating, I do love it.

This welds to the chassis skid and I am in process of making an attachment point up near the motor mount too, just as soon as I drop the front suspension to full droop to make sure I don't interfere with the upper link.

Maybe this is already known, but I finally found a good way to get proper rotations when setting up for the next bend on the tube bender. Most of the bends on the rollcage required a 90 degree rotation which isn't too hard with a normal level, but for this skid I had to rotate 31 degrees - a little more than I am comfortable eye-balling and a couple degrees either way would make for a poor joint...or waste a piece of DOM.

I had a hunk of 2" rectangular stock that I had cut lengthwise sometime ago and found that if I tack that on prior to any bends I could "zero" it, then when setting up for bend two I could twist it JUST right.

And then...driveshafts. Small miscommunication during ordering so the rear was too long but they made a new one and shipped it to me the same day and included a return label for the wrong one, so they won me back.

All 1350 joints, at the axles and in the CVs. This is great, but did mean that I had to redo my transmission crossmember AGAIN! You may recall I redid it once already which I was OK with because when I made it the first time I was planning on a two piece shaft at that time. However when I redid it I used a 1330 CV...this one is a 1350 so it just EVERY SO SLIGHTLY hit at full droop. That's OK though, it's stronger now anyways.

And happy to report that front and rear I can use all 14" of travel with no driveshaft bind. I expected that in the front, but was pleasantly surprised on the rear because I figured the CV would bind in the last few inches.

For reference, the front shaft is 41.5" at ride height and the rear is 29.5" - these are measured from the flanges on the t-case to the u-joints on the axles.

And at this point there is a list of LITERALLY five things to do before I am ready to start painting. Here's how we sit for now

 

[White Stripe]

Won't the shock reservoirs be hot mounted in the engine bay?

 

[Ramination]

Yes probably, hopefully not too hot though!