My First Landcruiser Project Journal

[sitesbyjoe]

Got off work early, snuck over to Lowes and grabbed a 3/4 wrench and went to battle on the BVSV.

Removed and replaced!

 

[sitesbyjoe]

With the BVSV installed, it's PS Pump time.

 

[sitesbyjoe]

Pump is in and hose connected!

Moving on the air pump belt. Holy crap is it hard to get on there!

Guess that can be tonight's battle.

 

[sitesbyjoe]

PO was nice enough to leave a fresh set of belts in the trunk for me.

 

[sitesbyjoe]

Got the pump all hooked up, belts on and fired her up to see how the steering was gonna react to the new pump. I didn't have a lift jacks so I just turned the wheels back and forth sitting in the garage while the engine idled. There was a HUGE difference! I would have never been able to easily turn the wheels while standing still before - seems the PS pump had more problems than just the leak!

At any rate, everything seems the be running great! I'm extremely pleased to have survived my first "big" job on the landcruiser and I'm feeling much more confident about tackling tasks like this - and of course I learned quite a bit from taking all that stuff apart and putting it back together again.

Still REALLY wanting to do a desmog - and feeling like I could pull it off!

 

[87CRUSR]

Good work!

 

[erse]

Joe let me know if you decide to desmog. I am strongly considering it for mine also. Excellent work on the PS pump

 

[sitesbyjoe]

I'll let you know. I want to do much more reading on it before diving in.

 

[sitesbyjoe]

And thanks!

 

[sitesbyjoe]

Been lucky enough to take the FJ60 out on a couple runs with the family over the holidays. Ordered some miscellaneous parts which arrived after Christmas to install. Just little things like lenses, new spark plugs and wires etc.

Started with my front passenger side market light not working - then discovering that both front marker lights were totally beat

 

[sitesbyjoe]

Been a while since I added anything but some cool things have happened recently. My truck is from Utah, so it's got some rust around the bottom and worse, the drivers side doors and front fender have been dented up and heavily bondo'd.

I got lucky and found a guy down in Tucson parting out an 83 FJ60. I managed to get both driver side doors, a front fender, a new front bumper and best of all, the back to the bench seat with my matching fabric!

Now I can get my driver seat reupholstered with the right fabric!

 

[sitesbyjoe]

 

[sitesbyjoe]

 

[sitesbyjoe]

 

[sitesbyjoe]

My bumper is missing a cap but now I got a whole new bumper!

 

[sitesbyjoe]

I thought this was cool. The 83 rear door panel has an ashtray. Mine (an 84) doesn't. Well maybe it did once.

 

[sitesbyjoe]

One door off

 

[sitesbyjoe]

One door on!

 

[sitesbyjoe]

Yeah, the 60 looks a little Frankenstein-ish with the mid matched doors, but the door has no rust and it actually fit way better that the previous door.

I was surprised how easy it was to swap the rear door. It got really lucky with not having to swap Windows, all the trim is intact etc.

Next is the front door swap. I'll have to swap out the lock so that will add a little complexity but the PO left me two extra tumblers that match the current keys so it shouldn't be too bad.

 

[sitesbyjoe]

Then there's the front fender. That'll be a major project.

For one thing it, while being in better shape than my existing fender, still has rot along the bottom. That'll need to be fixed.

Furthermore, well there's all the engine stuff bolted to the inner fender.

Should be an interesting adventure. I'll be sure to document it here.