NQCruiser's "Chief - the Blackening..."

[NQCruiser]

My cheapie EBay LED taillight globes arrived today - been a month in the mail. I saw a few threads on these regarding having to grind down the heatsink in order to make them fit, so I knew what needed to be done. I used a hand file to take out the offending material without making too much heat

The modified version

Results....I forgot to take a photo with the incandescent's in, but everyone knows they're crap...

And with my LED spotlight.....BOOYAH!!!

And the reason they might have been a bit dull in the first place..

Nice enough additional lighting and will be a bit more in my line of sight in the mirrors. Will be sweet to light up a campsite by just having the key on and the shifter in reverse.

 

[samguert]

Nice! What a difference with the LED!

 

[Finnyfam60]

Nice work!

What led spotlight do you have?

 

[NQCruiser]

It's a cheapie E-Bay one as well - 27W for about $30 from memory

Same as this one

 

[NQCruiser]

Been a while since I've been home to work on the Chief, but I managed to squeeze in a night time brake light install before I left for my last stint down south for the Field Day circuit. Wife & children left a couple days earlier than me, so I had 2 nights at home by myself. I've been a bit concerned about getting pinged for not having a number plate lamp since moving it to the tyre carrier - it's only been 2 years or so since doing it, so my time must be coming up sometime soon. Also, the taillight on the left side gets obscured by the spare tyre. I found this LED lamp on E-Bay for cheap which fitted the bill and fitted in in a half hour or so.

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Looks like this in operational mode

Unfortunately the first lamp had a dodgy connection in the cable somewhere which stopped the brake light working properly - my friendly HK supplier sent me another for no charge after checking the cable properly - so far, so good!!

I've also been having some interesting times with my work trailer recently - one of my bosses had a close call with rolling this trailer 12 months ago, and since then we have been doing bearings and tyres like they're going out of fashion. This thing took me 13.5 hrs to cover 700km (>450mi) with a blown tyre, failed trailer wiring (hi-lift squashed some wires in a toolbox) and finally a failed wheel bearing at 5pm on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of nowhere near Injune....

I started pulling the show apart to try and change bearings..... before realizing that the spare bearing had been swiped from the toolbox....

Q: WTF do I do now??? I'm 10km from the nearest town and 350km from where I'm supposed to be.
A: Go all MACGUYVER on it!! Stripped down the aforementioned hi-lift jack and fashioned it into a makeshift axle support with a bunch of ratchet straps....

Add 1x block of wood & about 6 zipties to stop the spring pivot from dropping back down, and we're off!!! The sandbags you see in the photo are used to try and stop erosion on roadwork sites & cuttings - the ground was so soft, it was the only way I could stop the jack plate from sinking into the ground under the weight of the trailer....

I drove the 10km to the next town and checked all my repairs - no movement or breakages. I then chanced my arm and decided to attempt the 350km journey to Emerald. Being a Sat night and not much traffic on the road, I was pretty OK with the fact that I would be only able to do about 70-80kmh at best. I finally rolled into Emerald at 12:30 am and parked up for the night. I stripped the entire axle off the next morning and brought it home to be rebuilt - next week's job will be to put it all back in again!!!

 

[NQCruiser]

So I've been hearing a bit of a weird scratching noise coming from a wheel while driving. I haven't been able to figure out which one, and the bearings all seemed to be OK. Anyway, I took it for a drive the other day and when coming to a stop in a hurry, I could hear a bit of a groan.

Hmmm, interesting? Try it again....WHOAH fawk, we're really not washing much speed off here. Roll around to work and jack it up, knock the wheels off and have another looksee.

Passenger Side... yeah, looks OK... rusty, but OK...

Driver side...yeah, looks....wait WTF is going on here???

Turns out the scratching noise was the rotor chewing its way through the wear indicator on the pads. Looks like the PO must have put new pads in the Passenger side to pass roadworthy and left the half worn ones in on the Driver side. I haven't been paying enough attention to the noise (actually thought it was coming from my wheel trims), and was lucky not to figure it out the hard way!!!

One of the pistons was a bit seized, so I took the caliper out and used the hydraulic press at work to "encourage" it back in again. Quick bleed and we're back on the road. I might have to bleed it again after driving it, pedal is a tad soft, but it stops at least now!!

 

[NQCruiser]

A couple of photos from the weekend just passed, first time I have driven the Chief in anger for a while. We had a ball in the conditions, just wet enough to get a bit of extra grip on the rutted climbs and for there to be a bit of mud to get through on the way there. I went out with a workmate in his LN106 Hilux - thankfully he got stuck first (he's got the bigger ego!) and then again as we left, leaving me to get stuck the worst when I slid into a rut that I was trying to straddle. Both our winches took a giant dump when we really needed them, but we ended up improvising with a couple of straps and a snatch block to get me out without tipping over. Good way to burn a couple of hours on a Sunday morning!!

This was definitely as steep as the inclinometer showed, but what it didn't show was the side angle I was on as well - I just couldn't get it to unlock on the side axis to show it!!






We managed to get a bit futher forward so we could unhook the dead winch, where I proceeded to fall in deeper again...



Finally got out and went to head home just as the Hilux decided that the mud "wasn't that deep" on the opposite side of the hole we had driven through on the way in...


Good to find some good tracks nearby now, and having someone else to travel with makes it a bit less of a drama to go out every now and then.

 

[maat]

looks like a fun sunday

 

[NQCruiser]

Wow, it has been a while since I updated this thread. Life gets pretty busy at times, and the poor old Chief hasn't been doing a lot of work. I decided to get back into it again recently and have been doing a fair bit of needed maintenance. I've had what I thought was a rear main seal leak that has been getting worse for a few years, so I took the gearbox/clutch out and was ready to go before I discovered that the rear main seal was perfect - the tappet cover gasket was leaking at the back of the motor and running down into the bell housing. Put the box back in after installing a new clutch, fixed the tappet cover gasket and went for a drive. Oil leak is now worse? Turns out after removing & re-installing the 33 yr old box, the input shaft seal decided it had had enough and cracked in half. $16 and another day in the shed and she's good as new again.

I had it back together just in time to do a trip with a few mates to Fraser Island for a week's drinking fishing and general shenanigans. Great stress reliever and I hadn't been on one in a few years.

I did an alternator on the trip, and so it sat in the shed again for a couple of months before I gave myself a kick up the arse and started showing it some attention again. Fixed the alternator, pulled all the flooring out and cleaned & rust-proofed the floor. Then I came across a set of sweet VX Sahara electric bucket seats (the "Turbo" ones) and made that my recent project to repair, modify and mount them in place. Theres a fairly major change in the floorpan from my late84/early 85 model to the later 88/89 models, so I had to modify the old seat mounts to take the new seat base, and while I was at it, I mounted them about 35mm back from the standard position so I can stretch out a bit. Makes a hell of a difference to drive now, that and the lumbar support, bolster adjustment & raise/lower seat base functions.

 

[NQCruiser]

I also found a website that had some cool Toyota bits (and a lot more weird stuff) and found these black door handles to replace all the chrome ones. They are from a HJ75/79 ute - the front ones fitted perfectly, the rear ones needed some modification to fit the cam/hook arrangement for the rear door latch. Otherwise they were pretty good quality, considering I paid about $40 for all 4x of them.
Before:

After:

Also, final product with the Drivers front seat fitted. Still got to remove & modify the seat bracket for the passenger side, hopefully that will be next weekend's job.....