My on going HJ61 adventure (1 Viewer)

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Hello-
I'm Dave from New Mexico.
I fell in love with toyotas as a kid, seeing the pure, unadulterated abuse a rancher friend of the family put his trucks through on a daily basis without them giving up. 800 lb feeder in the back with 800 pounds of feed, down an incline covered with football sized rocks, spinning the engine so fast in 1st gear the headlights got brighter, on a daily basis. All of this with 3 different oil weights in the engine.

A couple trips to africa where I got to drive diesel 70's and defenders and I decided thats what I wanted.

In 2014 started talking to Chris Spaulding and in the early spring of last year I bought a manual transmission 1989 Hj61 with about 84,000 miles on it that was originally sold in France from him.

On its way to the ship.

I drove it about 1800 miles in two days, from Florida to New Mexico with no issues, it started faster than any vehicle I've driven before- this is a 26 year old vehicle that sat on a ship for two months.

When I got home, the dog immediately jumped in and went to sleep. I think she approved (the picture is from a few days later, she still approves).
About 10 minutes afterwards, there was a phone call and it participated in its first search and rescue mission.

 

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Had quite a bit of fun with it, ever since I got it registered (which was a bit of an adventure in of itself), it has been my daily driver.

 

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Upgrades so far-

Cheap 16x8 wheels, as the stock wheels were 6" wide, with 255/85r16 cooper st maxx tires.
Very quiet even at 80mph for what they are. Have held up to rock well. Originally got them put on at a local backyard tire store and almost lost a couple lug nuts and they didn't balance them.

OEM 2.5-3" heavy lift. Rides a little rough unloaded in the rear, but with 9 people and their gear in it or a trailer its pretty nice.

Brake pads on the front were OK, but I threw on some modern pads which really helped stop it with a lot less raised hair.
Discs were still in spec so I left them alone.

The lift gate springs barely sprung in the winter, so I took a dull hacksaw and cut them off, replacing them with some 75lb JR gas springs that lift the hatch all the way up out of forehead range even below freezing. I managed to snap the head off a 12mm wrench while taking the original struts off...

Then, while visiting the waterfall in the above post, I backed very slowly into some salt cedar and found someone had cut a 6 inch branch off in the middle of the thicket and blew out my rear window. So, I got to replace that.

 

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After fixing that, I built a 24-12v step down logic controller for it based off this post: Trailer Lights Logic Circuit & Step Down Voltage Converter

In another post someone had used a towing wiring kit for late 90's tacomas- the connectors fit into the wiring connectors for the rear lighting system on 60's series cruisers and that eliminated the need to splice any wires, just had to flip the positions on a couple pins in the connection.

With an extra relay from the brake switch to a 12v brake controller and a 12v power line for trailer brakes. I also wired in a switch so I can shut the power off to the voltage converter when I dont need it.

I wound up getting 3 bad voltage converters of various makes during this build, so I finally sprung for a samlex and I'm pretty happy with it so far.

 

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Future works-
Chasing down a few wiring gremlins including non-functional oil pressure wiring, the rear glo screen relay being permanently on if it is plugged in, and one of the headlights not working in high beam mode.

Also getting some serious heating issues if I'm up a steep hill at freeway speeds- as soon as it noses over it starts cooling off rapidly.

Putting in an air conditioner, radio, speakers, and a front locker. Been considering an ARB, detroit trutrac, or powertrax (though it seems like I should upgrade or replace the birfields if I do the last one).

 

[HoJo 61]

Jeez, what a beauty!
All you need is factory fender flares, and it! Oh and it's missing red turbo badge from grill.

 

[dukmon]

Nice stuff!

 

[Mr Tibbs]

Welcome to the HJ61 club!! For the overheating issues I would check the radiator. My mechanic friend (that also owned a HJ61) stated that most 60 series have issues with the radiator getting plugged. Somehow I have escaped that fate, but I expect to have issues in the future. That is a good looking rig with low miles! Keep up on the maintenance and I would expect over 500K on the ODO before any major issues!

 

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Thanks

I didn't even realize it was missing the turbo on the front- oh well :/
its a bit banged up around the edges, but thats ok, its working for a living.

I flushed the radiator but didn't check for pluggage- I'll have to check into that. I kind of assumed it wasn't because I can run it at 75-80mph when its 105F and the temperature gauge only goes up to about 1/4 and stays for hours on end. But as soon as it starts up hill like that it would go close to red within a half a mile if I didn't let up on the right foot.

Looking at lunchbox lockers right now for the front, would it be a good idea to upgrade or replace the birfs at the same time?

 

[Mr Tibbs]

Looking at lunchbox lockers right now for the front, would it be a good idea to upgrade or replace the birfs at the same time?

I replaced both birfs and axle shafts along with a knuckle rebuild just for piece of mind.

 

[mongoose2231]

Welcome to the diesel club buddy. Enjoy...

 

[Major Nelson]

beautiful rig.

 

[Oldtoy74]

Good looking rig, congrats, can't go past the 61, they are such a fantastic machines, you gotta sort that heating issue out,
Have you replaced thermostat, refilled fan hub with toyota oil, flush block and even look at new radiator,

 

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I flushed the block out two months ago and it helped some (coolant was fairly rank) but it's still heating up substantially on uphills, though not quite as much.
Drove it about 4 hours ago, spinning the fan clutch yields about 3/4-1 turn.
Planning to flush it out again, check for blockages more carefully and check the thermostat.
If that doesn't fix it, I'll do the fan clutch, though reading this, maybe I'll just do it anyway. Tuning and Understanding your Toyota Viscous Fan Clutch

 

[sgiandubh]

Awesome truck! One day I will have a diesel cruiser. What waterfall is that in the last pic? I'm assuming it is in New Mexico?

 

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Thanks, I love it.
Was going to keep my tacoma as the daily drive but the HJ is too reliable.

Its bridal falls, near Tularosa. Popular rock crawling playground to get to it, or a couple mile easy hike.

 

[NM Frontier]

Awesome to see another diesel cruiser in NM! Where in NM are you at if you don't mind?

I'm up in Cloudcroft, my 74 is always looking for a friend.

 

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Cool, I'm about 75 miles down 70.

 

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After a lot of delays and having to take a grinder to a couple screws, fan clutch cleaned out and replaced the oil with some 10,000cst oil. I seem to have the blue hub model. Its cold and rainy today so will have to wait to really test if that fixed the overheating.

The oil in it seemed to be separated, half of it ran like water and the other half was roughly the same viscosity as motor oil.

 

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Blew the highbeam filament in one bulb and was sent 24v bulbs for a newer truck. The little retaining ring is different and won't work. The new bulbs are 75/70W vs 55/50W as well and I'm not sure how that will play out. Briefly searched for LED lights and there doesn't seem to be bulbs for the headlights that just plug in...

Old bulbs are held into the ring by some solder and the new ones by some sort of riveted/welded set of fingers.

So I took a dremel to the fingers and a heat gun to the solder!
Then soldered the ring from the old bulb onto the new bulb.

and I've now got one 70/75W headlight.