My Hawaiian HJ60 Refresh, Maintenance and Good Times

[pescado]

Hello all, greetings from the island of Oahu. New to the forum here and just acquired an 1985 HJ60. It's been around the block a few times, just shy of a half a million kilometers, with 494,070 KMs as of today. It drives and appears to be in pretty good shape for its age and miles. I got it primarily to learn about diesel engines, but also because I love the 60 series. It's funny, because I first saw it posted on CL about 7 months ago. I went to take a look/drive it and loved it right away, but the sellers asking price was way out of budget at the time. Plus, the diesel engine was pretty intimidating as well because I had no idea how to work on them (or any engine for that matter). I watched the CL add over the months, and the price dropped a bit, and then it was off CL and I assumed it sold. But I couldn’t really get it out of my head, so I email the seller out of the blue a couple weeks ago and he said he still had it. We made a deal, albeit still more then I wanted to spend, but it didn’t matter as I was already smitten. Hopefully we will have it for another 500,000 KM's! A few pics of when I first went to see it.

 

[Big Cruiser Guy]

Pretty clean looking 60. Any frame rust? Also, how do you plan on using it?

 

[Big Cruiser Guy]

Oh, and Welcome to the Madness!

 

[pescado]

A couple on its way to its new home.

This is the second Land Cruiser in our family, the wife has a 1995 FZJ80 that we've had for the last 9 months. She turned me on to this forum, but she mostly hangs out in the 80 section. I have messed around with the 80 a bit with some mods and preventative maintenance.... but really we are just a couple of amateurs that have no clue what we are doing. But this site has been very helpful, and I am slowly amassing a pretty good set of tools to try/attempt do all the work myself on these wonderful old rigs! A couple of poor quality poser pics with its 80 series garagemate, and new co-owner @Aloha Jen.

 

[pescado]

The plan for this old girl is to do a pretty general baselining, change out all the fluids and swap out any old rubber hoses. Then mitigate/repair any and all rust issues on the body. Refresh the interior and eventually get a good exterior paint job done. Its ok for now, really poor job by PO (terrible overspray all over the place) and a weird light primer grey color, but will eventually want a good paint job after the rust issues are all addressed.

 

[pescado]

No major fluid leaks, except of a very minor drop every couple days of what appears to be power steering fluid (or at least fluid coming off the PS pump area. Doesn’t look major, but something to look into. What's most impressive is the lack of rust, especially on the frame. The PO(s) went to some pretty good lengths to protect the frame from rust or the frame was swapped out at some point....as the frame is virtually rust free, even in the rear c channel area that seems to be problematic. The body has some rust, pretty minor, but it's in somewhat bad areas I think (roof seams and rain gutters) and will be the first issue I work on. I did notice the body panels/cavity areas all around the truck have a waxy oily coating all over there insides, so that’s probably helped with keeping rust away. Interior is so so, was redone at some point with new carpet and leatherish (probably vinyl) seat coverings, but the last owner kinda trashed the interior and is in need of a good deep cleaning and refresh.

 

[micruz60]

Wattever you spent, it was worth it! I like the front bumper sans endcaps.

Great condition. Plenty of wisdom here on the forum, if you haven't already, find the fsm on here for download

Search 'fsm downloads for a helluva price'

Aloha!

 

[OGBeno]

Welcome.

You will really enjoy the HJ.

You will be amazed at the gas mileage compared to the gasser 1FZ-FE.

 

[dukmon]

Nice score Pescado!

 

[hj 60]

Nice, rust in the roof scares me but has been repaired before and if you do everything yourself it will sometimes not be funny but mostly it is

In the beginning I found a lot of rust and broken of bolts but when everything is repaired now there is no problem at all, checked the diff fluid this afternoon and perfect and clean after 50000 km.

Don't try to print the manuals below, it is to much, better to only print pages that you use. Also you might want to download them because I dont know how long I can keep this list available, good luck.
The maintenance manual is a very good read for starters, the rest is scary

1986 Maintenance 26 pag.pdf


hj60.freeforums.org • View topic - HJ60 Model/Parts finder,maintenance PDF 1000 pages

 

[pescado]

After the 20 minute drive home....which was an awsome, slow, cruizy, diesel smelling experience.... I got right into it and gutted the interior. Trying to chase down any hidden rust issues on the interior.

Again, very suprised how little rust there was....but plenty of 30 year old stink and grime in there, and about 10 bucks in change!

 

[pescado]

Door cards and side panels are pretty much shot, so am looking at remaking those.

Don't know what was growing on there, but it's got to go.

 

[pescado]

Next was to start stripping all the exterior trim to search for more hidden rust and freshen all up with a deep clean and repaint.

Just found some minor surface rust hiding behind the headlights. So cleaned, sanded, primed and painted.

Also started in on tracking down the rust areas in the rain gutter seams. Decided to remove seam sealer in the rain gutter....but turns out what I thought would be the pliable seam sealer in there was really some kind of concrete-like fiberglass resin. Needed a hammer and chisel to get it out bit by bit. Long and tedious process. But I could see where the fiberglass had shrunk or cracked and allowed water to get in there and start to rust. Is this normal to put fiberglass resin in the gutters?

Not too bad after cleaning it out, but a few areas of rust in the seams that will need to be addressed. Then it will be epoxy primed, sealed with new seam sealer and then temporarily spray painted until the truck gets a full paint job.

 

[pescado]

Pretty clean looking 60. Any frame rust? Also, how do you plan on using it?

The frame is nearly rust free, at least in all the typical problem areas you can see when getting under it. Don't know about on the frame under the body or behind the bumpers where I can't see, but hopefully it's clean there too.

As far as using it, would love to use it as my daily driver. No air con in it right now, so may need to sweat it out in the Hawaiian heat for a while. Other then that, just pretty tame trails and casual beach/sand cruising. Just want to have fun with it.

 

[jgoptions]

Congratulation on the new Hj60.. Looks pretty clean. Nice to have one with little rust.. Painting it the same color?

 

[pescado]

Nice, rust in the roof scares me but has been repaired before and if you do everything yourself it will sometimes not be funny but mostly it is

In the beginning I found a lot of rust and broken of bolts but when everything is repaired now there is no problem at all, checked the diff fluid this afternoon and perfect and clean after 50000 km.

Don't try to print the manuals below, it is to much, better to only print pages that you use. Also you might want to download them because I dont know how long I can keep this list available, good luck.
The maintenance manual is a very good read for starters, the rest is scary

1986 Maintenance 26 pag.pdf


hj60.freeforums.org • View topic - HJ60 Model/Parts finder,maintenance PDF 1000 pages

Thanks for those, they should be very helpful!

 

[pescado]

Congratulation on the new Hj60.. Looks pretty clean. Nice to have one with little rust.. Painting it the same color?

Thanks. No, won't be the same color....havnt decided on one yet, and will probably be awhile before it's ready.

 

[Aloha Jen]

Well, it's been about a year since this was last updated, but a lot has been accomplished since then. Here is what has been finished in the last year and how it stands today. There is an obscene amount of pictures that will be posted, so know that going forward!
All rust was hunted down to the best of our abilities on the exterior, interior, frame and body cavities. All rust was either treated, primed and painted or cut out with new metal welded in. We are very fortunate that the rust was minimal throughout the whole vehicle.
The front grill, headlights, mirrors and trim were removed and freshened up with a good cleaning and new coat of paint.

The area behind the grill, turn signals and headlights was also inspected. Any rust at all was sanded, treated, primed and painted.

Here it is back together to see how it looked. Turned out really nice and clean looking.

 

[Aloha Jen]

And since the rear vent grills were getting cleaned and painted, the vent tube and flaps got refreshed.

 

[Aloha Jen]

New rubber vent flaps were cut out and stapled in. New rubber vent seals were also traced and cut out to fit nice and snug up against the body. The old ones had all but disintegrated.