OEM Build, Frame Off, Cart Wheeled, Rebuilding Again (1 Viewer)

[snivilous]

I have a picture thread on here where I post my FJ pictures, considering this is more of a rebuild than just dedicated to pictures I've taken I figured I would start a new thread and maybe be able to help or inspire anyone that has a similar situation occur. So starting from the beginning:

The FJ40 I'm working on is (or what's left of it) a 77. Originally my dad and sister bought it, with the intention of rebuilding it for her as her first vehicle, a few years into the frame off and she decided she didn't want it so after that it was mainly my dad finishing it up. During the initial frame off I didn't help a lot, I have a 4Runner and some other toys that at the time I was working on and building instead. Once the frame off was finished, I started driving it, mainly as a result of my 4Runner having a catastrophic failure while I was at school so my dad swapped the 4Runner out for the FJ until I would have time to fix the 4Runner at home, so for a spring semester I drove the FJ and then during the following summer I drove it as my daily the whole time. Once school started I took the 4Runner that I had now fixed back. As it would happen, the 4Runner suffered another major failure at the end of this last spring semester, though my plan was to daily the FJ over the summer anyways as I would be spending the 3 months I had doing the modifications to the 4Runner. With the 4Runner having more issues than I felt like dealing with, I parked it in a corner of the property to wait until I had the time and money to build it (there's a build thread on T4R.org for anyone interested, though it won't be active for a long time). All this leads into planning to take the FJ back to school, and fixing it up and decking it out a little over the summer. Pretty mild plans for it, I don't think I do any super crazy offroading, but I do lots of deep snow wheeling because I live in CO and UT in the mountains, as well as quite a few overland trips and trips to places like KOH and the Mint.

So leading into the summer, I had swapped my beadlocks and 35s from my 4Runner to the FJ and removed the roof. About two weeks later I was driving down the mountain to go to a dentist appointment and came around a corner too fast. A combination of factors lead into a pretty gnarly cart wheel and roll over: I was going too fast, the tires were pretty bald, there was lots of gravel on the road (it's a dirt road), the top was off so as we all know the back end is even more squirrely with no weight, etc. Long story short, the back end started to come around on my right and I corrected and then the back end seemed to catch on some clay and I shot to the left side of the road. The front left tire went up the hillside, and from the marks in the road what appears to have happened is the truck was thrown up in the front and left the ground, completely rotated in mid air and cleared the passenger side, landed on the back of the cage/tire carrier, flipped end over and squished the hood and grille, continued over and landed and was now facing backwards and then rolled backwards across the road until it stopped with me on the brake and the back end hanging about halfway off the road over a little creek.

Luckily I wasn't hurt besides hitting my head on the roll cage, and my girlfriend had been following a few minutes behind me and I had decided earlier in the day to have her take my german shepherd (who would of surely been killed). My girlfriend locked the front hubs in, and I was able to start the truck and drive forward. I don't have any pictures from the actual crash, but this is after getting it home:

 

[snivilous]

This isn't a build thread, but I'll catalog everything my dad and I are doing to fix it. The goal is to have the truck back together in better condition than it was pre-wreck, and by the end of the summer so I can take it to school. A quick summary of everything that needed fixing:

Radiator and fan broke
Roll cage completely destroyed
Windshield frame twisted and glass broke
Hood crunched
Drag linked bent
Tire carrier destroyed
Rear drivers corner crunched
Drivers seat reclining latch broke
Drivers fender bracket bent/torn
Hilift mount broke
Grille/bezel destroyed

Additionally while it's being torn down, other things will be getting fixed. For instance my sister originally wanted the truck black, but OEM it was red, so we will be repainting the outside to red. Many parts will be upgraded to new stainless or aluminum, many parts will be sand blasted and repainted, etc. My dad and I have been working on and off for a few weeks, and in the last two weeks now have made a schedule of working from 530am to 7am everyday now that we have parts showing up.

The initial task was to take off everything was bent and see what was permanently deformed and what was being forced somewhere. This was very evident once the cage was removed because it was deforming the cowling where it bolted up, as well as twisting the body.

Considering what happened, the truck actually was in pretty good shape. The main damage to the aluminum Aqualu body was where the rear tire had been landed on and crunched it.

Aqualu is very cool, and is currently building us a replacement corner piece that we will eventually weld in as well as a new bib in the front. Originally we had ordered a new hood from them, but right now I'm talking to them about canceling the hood so I can buy a more true to form Land Cruiser hood. This is the section we cut out:

As I said, from what we've pieced together the truck flipped over the passenger side entirely. Besides the cage deforming the passenger side where it bolted in, most of the external damage is on the drivers side.

 

[snivilous]

Now catching us up to today, new bucket seats were ordered off of amazon and will match the red/black theme of the truck. These ones were $240 for a pair, and are considerably more comfy than the old ones. I also have a pair of red 6 point harnesses and red harness pads that should arrive this week hopefully. When we first got the FJ it had some terrible harnesses that weren't even setup right so we got rid of them, I've been debating keeping the cheap seat belts that were in the FJ when it rolled (and albeit cheap, saved my life) but I decided to go with harnesses because I think they'll look sweet and be functional considering I do lots of offroading. Worst case scenario I take them out if they get too annoying daily driving, and put the old seat belts back in.

The lower cage we saved and will be modified to fit with the new cage. I haven't been around stock FJ40s much, so I guess this seat cage setup isn't standard but is definitely beneficial since if the truck rolls the seat and seat belts/harness all stay together instead of potentially separating from the body like the stock setup. I torched off the old seat mounts and cleaned it up and then put some coats of rust converter on for the time being. As I said, this will be modified and either bolted or welded into the new cage.

The engine as far as we know is totally fine, and could of been driven home aside from the radiator leaking. We bought a new aluminum radiator which is waiting to be installed, and after ordering the wrong fan from cruiser outfitters we received the correct fan yesterday so hopefully by the end of the week we'll have the drivetrain back together and can verify everything is working correctly. The radiator and fan shroud are bent I realized today, so need some love to align with the fan first.

The steering drag link got bent, so ordered a new one from cruiser outfitters to fit the saginaw setup we have. The drivers steering knuckle appears to be bent, albeit slightly, but the cross bar (whatever it's called that connects both knuckles) was at max adjustment to begin with so although the knuckle doesn't need to be bent back and I don't think is worth it, I had to cut down the tie rods and the cross bar slightly to get more adjustment out of it. I ordered new tie rod boots from Specter while I was at it, and at the moment the steering is almost done and just needs to get painted.

The windshield is a total mess. It was twisted but not too badly, we just stuck a 4x4 under one corner and both of us stood on opposite ends and were able to yield it back to flat pretty easy. The inside is a total mess though, the previous owner did some super ghetto bondo work and used some steel mesh he attempted to weld in or something. My dad has been working on fixing the windshield frame and getting all the rust and old fixes removed, eventually we'll fiberglass the previously rusted out sections and then bondo it.

Because the cage was tied into the cowling, when the cage bent it bent the cowling slightly. My dad was able to use a come along and bend the passenger side back where it had been pushed forward, and then I was able to get the doors able to line back up and seal correctly.

We received a new bezel from CoolCruisers that was on sale:

Finally getting to today, I removed the fender section between the fender and the hood on the passenger side and sanded it and began testing the new paint we bought.

Two days ago we drove down to Red Line Land Cruisers in Colorado Springs and picked up a family roll cage kit, so we moved stuff around in the shop and are now working on fitting the cage and getting the radiator bracketry sorted out. You can see the new fan from Cruiser Outfitters.

And finally, we put the roof on today to make sure the new cage will fit. The big task now is modifying the floor cage where the seats bolt up so it aligns with the new cage.

The new cage will be modified quite a bit because of the lower cage and we will be tying it into the cowling like the previous cage did, also we will probably run an X brace inside of the main hoop shown to increase lateral stiffness as well as create mounting locations for the harnesses.

I think that's everything as of now. Main tasks right now are get the engine going, get the cage fitted and tacked together, and start painting things like the fenders that we can start and practice on.

 

[rkymtnflyfisher]

Holy smokes, looks like you lucked out walking away without being hurt.

 

[spotcruiser]

Sorry about your truck. I'm glad that you made it out in one piece, which is all that REALLY matters. Good luck with the rebuild.

 

[Redgrrr]

Thats a tough deal. I have a hood in South Dakota you can have freebee if you can figure out a way to get it there. If you can wait 30 days we have a few people coming up from the denver area in july for our TLCA event that could maybe bring it down. Glad you made it with no serious injuries, Cheers!

 

[Redgrrr]

Ill send you a PM with my contact info.

 

[JBurt]

Wow, that's crap luck. With your luck with tires, I'm amazing all 4 came out okay. You and your dad are doing great work. Glad you made it out okay and you get one good Toyota while the other is out of commission.

I gotta say I'm jealous. My dad bought an 85 Bronco and he lives across the street. We are both teachers and have the summer off and getting him to work on his rig has been a bear. Cool project.

 

[snivilous]

Last week got the harnesses and shoulder pads in. They are 3" wide 6 points with a cam lock, which just playing with I like a LOT more than the latch style that was originally on the truck.

The parts (corner and bib) from Aqualu are about ready to ship. Thank you very very much Redgrrr, I've been talking to him about a hood and will hopefully be picking that up in a week or two once I stop traveling. Aqualu has been awesome and was able to cancel the hood order from them which saved over $1000, and now I'll have an actual FJ40 hood and it'll look correct which was my biggest hangup with the Aqualu one (it didn't have the front air scroop, or the high rise in the center, etc).

Today my dad and my sister's boyfriend (who came out early with us to play with the truck) started fiberglassing the windshield.

My dad spent a lot of time last week and over the weekend sand blasting the windshield frame and getting the pounds of bondo and wire mesh s*** out the previous guy had done. Through multiple phases of sanding, sand blasting, and pouring rust converter everywhere, repairs are now moving forward. The windshield frame will be fiberglassed and epoxied where the rust had eaten away, and eventually bondo'd and repaired as well as we can do. We're not body work experts by any stretch, but it should be a massive improvement over the 1/8" of bondo on top of JB welded wire mesh that was used to fix the rusted spots.

Painting is going good and bad. Steering components are in various stages of paint. Once they're finished the steering will be set to reinstall.

I don't have a picture but the test paint piece that sits between the hood and fender that we are painting red was going well on the first coat of paint, but the second coat had a terrible orange peel look to it. Yesterday I sanded it down and tried another coat and the paint got horrible jacked up and spider-web looking in some spots, it wasn't orange peel but I have no idea what was going on. We're going to sand blast that piece and start over again, not sure what happened. I almost feel like it's a temperature thing, but the paint says over 50F should be fine and we keep the shop at like 65+ minimum so not sure what's going on.... Like I said the first coat was great; though this is why we have a test piece to practice on before we move on to bigger pieces!

I spent some time over the weekend cutting and aligning the lower seat cage to the main hoop. It's not a perfect fit by any means, but the inside is a pretty tight fit and I'll just have to fill in the outer section when I weld it together. With the lower cage tacked onto the fender mounting plates and the main hoop, we dropped it all back into the truck. Today I started mounting the seats up, which once that's done I'll start with the forward part of the cage and make sure it clears everything.

These seats aren't super tall, but must be taller than the old seats since there's not a lot of room between the main hoop and your head, and there's not a lot of room between the steering wheel and your thighs. Additionally, I had to modify the lower cage's mounting holes a bit to line up with the new seats rails and the seat sits super close. It's workable all the way adjusted back, but that's it. My dad and I were brainstorming fixes and there's a few things we'll do, the biggest thing is we're gonna move the entire cage assembly (as it is right now) backwards. There's about a 2" gap between the gas tank and passenger leg mount, so we can move the whole thing backwards to give the seat more clearance, plus that will push the fender mounting plates backwards which right now they overhang the front of the fender, and it will also free up space in a lot of areas that are snug right now. Additionally there's these little 1/2" spacers on the seat rails to space the seat itself from the rail, so those will be removed, and then it looks like we can drop the lower cage down a 1/2" or so before we start having clearance issues with the tank so that'll drop the seat an inch total. Finally, we can drop the back of the lower cage down where it's tacked to the main hoop and angle the whole lower cage and the seats backwards to drop them a little.

Another benefit of moving the lower cage backwards along with the main hoop is that moving the main hoop backwards a lot, and moving the seats back not as much, will gain us more room for the cross bracing and harness bar behind the seats.

The aluminum radiator is installed, though I guess I accidentally threw away a little spicket thing on the bottom of the old radiator that I didn't realize was there, so we need to buy one of those. It also sucks because the little neck that the radiator cap goes into was bent backwards a little bit, it looks like it was just a result of packaging and nothing is broken, but still annoying.

And finally, here is a picture of some of the tubing waiting for the cage. Once the seating is sorted out I'll move on to the front of the cage and building the knee bars up and integrating the cowling bolt in locations to the new cage.

 

[snivilous]

Wow, that's crap luck. With your luck with tires, I'm amazing all 4 came out okay. You and your dad are doing great work. Glad you made it out okay and you get one good Toyota while the other is out of commission.

I gotta say I'm jealous. My dad bought an 85 Bronco and he lives across the street. We are both teachers and have the summer off and getting him to work on his rig has been a bear. Cool project.

Thanks JBurt! I was surprised none of my tires punctured either (and the beadlocks weren't hurt or bent at all either), there was this aspen tree next to the road that had a chunk of bark taken out about 8ft up in the air, and one of my wheels had a bunch of green scrapes on it where I think the wheel and tire hit the tree. The front drivers tire even bent the steering stops and buckled the drag link to the point where the tire left a big rubber mark on the frame; so I'm definitely impressed with the tires. Though I only run 25psi in them and I had the beadlocks, I think that combination kept the tires on the wheels and kept them squishy enough to not blow out, I would like to think that helped absorb some energy flying around, but who knows.

Good luck with the Bronco! We've talked about building a Bronco in the future, any old school removable roof era SUV is awesome I think, plus you get that V8 power!

 

[snivilous]

We are now full bore doing cage work! Moving on from the last post, yesterday we fitted the main hoop and lower cage into their new position. This involved a few things, the new lower cage location is based off of the front right body mount. The lower cage is slightly asymmetric and has a lot more door clearance on the passenger side than the driver side, so the front passenger mounting leg was the main constraint and was scooted back as far as it could until it was close to the gas tank cover, and then moved as far to the passenger side as possible to give the driver's side as much door clearance as possible.

We had to cut the gas tank cover a little in two spots, the first being where the body mounting leg for the lower cage overlapped the cover, and then where the lower cage was rubbing right above the gas tank sensor so that part of the cover was notched for clearance. Additionally, the lower cage was ground down a little and clearance where the rear facing breather line comes out of the tank.

After the lower cage was situated we redrilled the body mounting bolt locations and were then able to tack the main hoop back in. Because everything was shifted backwards, we repositioned the front fender cage mounting plates so they sat flush with the front of the fender instead of overhanging like the old cage did. We tacked the main hoop into the fender mounting plates, and angled the main hoop backwards slightly. The main hoop is slightly twisted and we weren't able to reverse twist it, so that would inherently make one side or both not able to be vertical and angling the main hoop backwards at about the same angle the seats are nominally at increases clearance with the seats. So there is reasoning for angling it backwards, though cosmetically I think it looks a lot better and doesn't look like someone tried to make it vertical and failed because of the twist from one side to the other.

Wrapping up yesterday we also bolted in the front body floor mounts for the knee bars, which required a little torching and grinding to fit around some of the body mount bolts, and then began test fitting the knee bars which required some notching and grinding and bending to fit nicely.

Moving onto today, we fitted the knee bars.

The driver's knee bar required quite a bit of work to fit nicely, it needed to be bent down more, and then I ended up overbending it so we got the torch out and cherried it up and unbent some of my bending until it was good. We also heated it up and pounded in two sections so it wouldn't rub on the windshield/dash pad and the lower pad near the parking brake/seat belt light. The passenger side was fairly painless to fit, both sides have about 1/8" of gap between the doors so they don't rub. The drivers side sits pretty close to the clutch, though feels fine with my hiking boots on so I don't think there will be any issue. Not a lot of room to work with and door clearance decreases clutch clearance. Worst case scenario in the future we can pull the cage and knock it in near the clutch, or reposition the clutch pedal, etc.

After the knee bars were fitted and clearing fine, we test fit the roof to make sure everything was cop-esthetic.

With the roof clearing fine, we removed it and moved on to finishing the front cage.

The inner halo bars seemed to be cut short a little, so instead of the rear sections being parallel they're angled out slightly, I don't think it looks weird and I'll continue their lines to the rear halo. I'll have to do a lot of filling in the front though where they interface the windshield bar. We clamped a piece of wood to the knee bars and used that to reference flat, and then elevated the center where the tubes bend about an inch so the center is bowed up ever so slightly.

 

[snivilous]

(Continued)

Once the halo tubes were tacked in we tacked in the connecting bar.

There are gusset bars that go between the main hoop and knee bars (vertically gusset them), I'm not sure if I lost them or we didn't get them or what, but we have one front gusset bar and one rear gusset bar. We decided not to use the dash bar since I thought it would be intrusive, so I'll use that to make new gusset bars so that's why they're not in yet. With the front and lower cage effectively completed as far as tacking goes, we moved on to the rear.

The rear halo bar required a lot of grinding to fit well, once we got it lined up nicely we put two tacks in so it hung there and then started on the rear vertical tubes. Because of our Aqualu body, there is a chamfer on the rear corners (you can see it in the above picture), so we had to position the body mount for the vertical tubes pretty far forward relative to a stock body (I think). Additionally I gave a decent amount of clearance on the sides and rear so the mounting plate could rotate out to remove the cage. The vertical bar is angled slightly forward and contacts the halo bar near the beginning of the radius. The rear gusset that goes between the halo and the vertical bar will go along the back and connect at the other end of the radius and makes the cage look a lot more bad ass with it in I think.

Kind of a bad picture, but you can see the inward angle relative to the main hoop and knee bar.

Alignment of the body mounting plates.

Driver's side vertical bar tacked in.

The rear halo isn't perfectly level, the driver's side is slightly higher, but it was super hard to tell visually and in some instances we couldn't even tell it was out of level (like referenced against the roof) so we didn't change it.

Next we put the roof back on to make sure it cleared everything fine, I also bolted the driver's seat in to make sure everything added still fit it well.

And that wrapped up today! Still a lot of cage work to do, but all the main components are in. We are also going to some gussets and gusset a lot of the tubing, along with the tube gussets for the main hoop and rear vertical bars. The truck seems to finally be taking shape again!

 

[tnkayaker]

Great progres . I have the red line old school cage. It was a struggle to get all the parts I needed/ordered. It all worked out but took a while. Great that you can improvise. I didn't have that option.

 

[chuckles89]

Hey Sniv, I joined just for you

Nice work on the cage!

 

[Solace in Solitude]

I only just saw this thread. I'm very glad your dog wasn't onboard... And that you dodged a bullet as well!!

 

[SteveH]

Can't say you're being timid about the rebuild - good for for going after it!

 

[tls3601]

Like the harness straps; do they mount at stock mounting points????? Also, where did you source them?

 

[Michael Brady]

You guys are really attacking this rebuild full force, nice work!

 

[snivilous]

Great progres . I have the red line old school cage. It was a struggle to get all the parts I needed/ordered. It all worked out but took a while. Great that you can improvise. I didn't have that option.

In retrospect going with a cage "kit" was a bad move, would of been better I think to just buy a tube bender but oh well, at least I have a basic layout to run with.

Hey Sniv, I joined just for you

Nice work on the cage!

Thanks chuckles!

I only just saw this thread. I'm very glad your dog wasn't onboard... And that you dodged a bullet as well!!

I completely agree!

Can't say you're being timid about the rebuild - good for for going after it!

Thank you sir!

Like the harness straps; do they mount at stock mounting points????? Also, where did you source them?

I'm gonna try to mount the two lap belts to the bottom two seat belt mounts for the previous 3 points, but the two anti submarine belts and two shoulder straps will have to be custom. Since my seats mount to part of the cage, I don't know how easy or practical it would be for a stock setup (or even for mine keeping the previous mounts). The 6 points I got off ebay from here: 2PC 3" JDM Red 6 Point Shoulder Quick Release Camlock Harness Racing Seat Belts
They're about $90 for two, no denying they're cheap but the quality seems totally fine and the stitching looks good, I couldn't justify spending $600 on fancy harnesses that have a date printed on them and everything. Since this won't be a race truck these should work just fine I think.

You guys are really attacking this rebuild full force, nice work!

Thank you sir!

 

[snivilous]

I was traveling over the weekend, thus the lack of any updates. Today I am picking up some tubing to build the harness bar, pick up a castle nut for one of the steering tie rods, and some more coolant. Depending on what happens I might be able to drive the truck around the property by the end of the day since the steering just needs that one nut and the engine just needs the cooling system filled.

In the mean time I've started painting more. I put the final coat on this section of this piece today, after that I need to flip it over and do some red and then tape it off and paint the back side black.

I didn't feel like screwing with the cage until I got the harness bar pieces in, so took the passenger fender off which was unharmed in the roll and prepped and painted it.

The inside sections of the fender where it mates to the body panels are obviously pretty beat up, since they are covered I decided not to go in and fix the fiberglass. However I will be painting the engine bay portion of the fenders, I just won't be filling in the rubbed locations.

I started off by cleaning the whole fender and then using the orbital sander with some 120 grit to get any rust stains or rough patches cleaned up more.

I then went over the outer sections where the fender is curved by hand with 320 grit to roughen the surface. Since the fender isn't metal, and already been painted, I decided not to prime it--the roughness from the 320 grit should be enough for the paint to adhere well. After that I cleaned it with window washer, and then wiped it down with rubbing alcohol. I'm not sure if that is needed, but when we work on pieces in aerospace we clean it down and then use alcohol to remove any residue left by the cleaning liquid, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to do the same here. To reiterate from previous posts, I am not a paint or body work expert in any way, so if something can be done that I'm not doing to ease or better this process please let me know.

Next I taped off the inner portion of the fender that will be black, I overlapped the seam where the body panels looked like they came down since I would rather paint black over red that extends too far instead of having to go back and touch up or extend the red paint.

First coat

I'm not sure what the "best" technique is since we're just using rattle can. After the issues with the previous body piece that sits over the fender and the paint getting destroyed, I'm trying to use very light coats of paint and not flooding the surface. I'm slowly working from one side to the other with light sprays, and then repeating, with the idea that the light coat can dry out a little before I come back to help stop dripping but the following sprays will happen before it's too dry and orange peels or does something weird. Like I said, trying to fully spray everything to a shiny consistency, but being very cautious to not overspray and cause any weird effects.

That's it for now, I'll be picking up the tubing for the harness bar in a little bit. I was planning on having two bends near the edges of the bar to push the center of the bar away from the seats a little for clearance, since I don't have a tube bender I'm trying to figure out how to go about that and I don't feel like making friends with someone an hour away for two little bends. I had looked into "sand bending" where you pack the tube full of sand and use the torch and bend it, but that sounded hard to do. Right now I'm thinking of just taking the cut off wheel and doing a bunch of cuts where I want to bend it, and pull it around like that. Won't look as good as a bent tube, but one side will look bent and the inside I'll just weld up and can grind and sand it down flush and shouldn't look too shabby.