My Completely Clapped HZJ105

[Kuzmovka]

Despite the revelations of the issues on the body and frame, a new timing belt was installed. It turned out well. A Terrain Tamer kit was used with the metal impeller on the water pump. Not sure if this was 100% a necessary upgrade, but it's certainly not going to hurt anything.

Now you might be wondering "why do timing on an engine that is being removed?". The answer is the swap isn't happening immediately and the last thing I need this engine killing itself. Especially because eventually it will be for sale.

 

[John Young]

My guess is that this old government truck was bought by someone who did a diesel to gas swap and had to move the motor mounts backwards. Them the local authorities told him 'no' and he changed it back to the 1HZ. Then the local authorities said no way will they pass it looking like that and then he gave up and eventually the car was abandoned and impounded and then sold at auction where we obtained it. The bashing/cutting by the tranny tunnel and the hole torched through the firewall were not done with skill.

The poor thing has been through a lot, but this will not be too difficult to rectify properly.

 

[Kuzmovka]

So the engine of the truck has been pulled out to fix the abomination that was the right side engine mount. Whoever previously molested this truck didn't actually bother to attach the engine mount all the way. Which is both a blessing and a curse.

You can also see the damage on the right hand side of the firewall here a bit. The previously aborted engine swap left some scars to be dealt with. The frame is in great shape on this truck despite everything.

The keen eyed among you will notice that the inner frame side of this mount despite having some kind of reinforcement on it seems to have not been touched at all. I'm of the opinion this mount could likely be reused but I am told that it is in pretty poor condition despite its looks. Specifically the dimensions being off now. With that said we're now on the hunt for PN 51421-60190 (the RH side frame mount for a 105). There are a few brokers that have it available online so worst case I can go through them to obtain it. We're trying to source it locally in Dubai although that is proving difficult with the monopoly on Toyota parts there and restrictions on parts brokers.

In other news, I am told that the new body for the truck should be making an appearance at the shop today. Which means that progress can begin!

 

[Kuzmovka]

Behold! The donor body in all of it's glory
.

A couple of notes-

Good:
- The floor pan seems to be in good shape
- there are currently no known extra firewall holes (to be fair it has some awful insulation installed)
- The windshield leading edge is intact.

Bad:
- The donor has some rust over the rear door area that will need fixed, which is unfortunate.
- There is some A pillar rust that will need sorted on the left side
- The body is for a 100 series, not a 105, which means it very likely has the wrong transmission tunnel.
- The roof, while in much better shape, has some small rust holes.
- The body is not a tire carrier unit.

What does this mean? In my view it means that I very likely just traded one set of problems for another one. I am now waffling on if it's better to cut up the donor for the roof panel and keep the bones of the white body as was originally planned. This would avoid the issue of the tire carrier all together. With that said though, it is substantially easier to transplant a trans tunnel than it is a roof. All of this is food for thought I suppose. Whatever happens, the decision needs to be made quickly because the white body has been removed already.

Also of note is the need to replace the engine mount as well. The belief seems to have shifted to the viability of using an 80 series frame side mount. The only substantial difference seems to be the shape of the trailing edge of the mount being more compact on the 80 series unit. We're probably headed that direction. Compare the differences for yourselves.

80 Series 105 Series
As best as anyone I've been speaking with can tell that seems to be the only substantial difference between the two. The 105 unit also has two little locating tabs on the bottom of it but they serve no functional purpose on the truck. My bet is they are present as an artifact of manufacturing. If anyone knows anything regarding the differences in a real world application let me know please!

Last but not least comes the shifter hole. I am concerned about this on the new body because of the following info. On the GX 105 the shifter hole is different than on the GXL 105 trucks that have a different shift tower location. The only way to do a bolt in trans swap on a GXL truck is to use and H151 case from specifically an HDJ100. Now, this leads me to believe that all HDJ100 trucks are a GXL body. Is this the case for the FZJ100s though? I don't know, because they all came with an H series to begin with, and nobody seems to care as a result.

I suspect all that will need to happen is that the transmission tunnel is swapped, but then that brings us back to the question of which is better to swap and why. I think it may well be the roof because of the complexity of needing to swap over not only the tire carrier components but now also the trans tunnel. Why not do just one thing instead of two? Quite the predicament.