Ol' Blue, my 68' fj40 project (2 Viewers)

[2fpower]

waiting

Well, I ordered some parts from Coolerman, and an alarm system on Amazon, so harness had to wait again.

So, while it sits, I have been working with my son on his pinewood derby car. This year we are doing the Mythbusters Porsche backwards 928. If you saw the espisode you know what I am talking about. Anyway, got the axles and wheels done and this afternoon got the weight done. Pics to come on that one.

Saturday, I tore open the seats, and found that this rig had some hitchhikers.... What a mess. From the outside the seats looked great.... inside a mouse urine soaked rusty mess. GREAT! Have to wait for a warm day to sandblast to get it ready for powdercoat.

 

[2fpower]

powdercoat is the word

So, I must say that having never powdercoated before, I am actually excited about being able to powdercoat.

What a cool thing to be able to take a rough part, sandblast it, powdercoat it, and have a finished part within a couple hours ready to install.

 

[mwalls54]

Whats your address? I will just start shipping you parts to powercoat. Those turned out great.

Any way here is my guage cluster. I painted it white because the PO already had it white and It just looks right.

 

[2fpower]

Yeah, don't get too excited, for some reason the trim ring for the gauges reacted to the powdercoat, and it looks pretty bad. Likely the one piece that I will look at every time I get in the rig, looks like cr&*.

Thanks for the pics. Some sweet gauges there. I think I will order that instrument cluster kit. The only thing I don't like is the colored gauges. I saw the pics of the mechanical gauges that are just black and white, and I thought that looked sweet!

On ebay I found an EL wire kit that had 5' of wire with transformer shipped to me for $6, so I ordered one to try and make some more light for the instrument cluster.

So, I am thinking about finding a powdercoater locally and have them do the dash pieces. I went ahead and stripped down three sets to do at once, that way I will have a stockpile sitting around of nice looking gauges.

Looks like a snow day for the kids today, so may be able to get out to the garage and work on the headlight bezels and bend a new fuel line.

Next up is to clean out the fuel tank (thanks Pam) and put the liquid liner in there from POR15. I saw a post the other day of a guy doing the rust removal with a battery charger by filling the tank with water, putting in an iron electrode into the tank and running it. Pretty cool idea to get rid of the rust from the inside, without having to dunk the entire tank. Need to look at this some more.

 

[tornadoalleycruiser]

I think i have the white small mechanical gauges in the 45.
Kelly if you want to order 2 sets of the gauge install stuff that would be great. I would rather have working gauges. I already have the small gauges just need the "brackets" for the cluster.

 

[mwalls54]

I am looking at a set of the electrical guages and the face can be removed. I dont have my old 40 guages at my apartment but i am thinking the stock faces can be used. I am working on fitting those guages in a 60 cluster.

 

[2fpower]

Neat idea. Delicate work trying to swap faces without distrurbing the gauge needle. I will see what I can figure out.

 

[2fpower]

lights

So, here are the headlights. Metal with yellow zinc finish. Wires to the lights are 12 or 14 gauge wires.

First thing was that I planned on upgrading the harness to a relay style harness, so the dash switch did not have to do any heavy lifting with high demand lights, and the bulbs could be brighter with the relay setup.

I bought this kit from Summitracing:

Matrix 01-133 - Matrix Upgrade Wiring Harnesses - Overview - SummitRacing.com

25.99 for a wiring kit with two relays. Basically, you don't change any current wires from the dash switch. Those two wires for low and high beams go to the relays and activate the relays, that then turn on or off the full juice to the lights.

The real kicker is that this kit is HEAVY DUTY. The wires appear to be 8 gauge.

So, I had plans for that upgrade. Here is what I started with:

 

[2fpower]

I then soaked them in simple green, and cleaned them up. Ended up there was a tiny bit of rust on each part, so decided to sandblast and then powdercoat them.

I had bought some smoked chrome color on ebay to try out, so decided this was a good test bed.

 

[2fpower]

lights

So, on the last picture, you can see the difference in the size of the wire, before and after. WOW.

The only problem was that the original grommet was too small for this wire size increase, so I found another grommet with the same OD (no drilling larger holes) with a larger ID. Perfect. (harbor Freight grommet kit) Note, the one on the left was OEM.

 

[tornadoalleycruiser]

interesting. looks great!
I was actully planning on using the newer style headlight buckets in an older bib but doing something very similar. I really need to start playing catchup and start a thread. Not sure why I wanted the newer style buckets other than the ability to change lightbulbs without pulling headlight out when I go H4's I think. it's all sitting in the back of my head somewhere.

 

[2fpower]

Looks like a productive weekend. The UPS found me finally! Got the new body mounting kit, the alarm system, and coolerman's electrical parts!

Found a powdercoater over in Bonner area (KCK acutally) Cross link Powder (behind Eagle stripping) that will powder 3 sets of dash pieces, and both seats for about $160. Not cheap, but says he does real nice quality stuff; the metallic needs clearcoated, so it is not an easy one coat job. However, he wanted a bunch for sandblasting, so I am thinking about firing the sandblaster up during the heat wave today. 30 degrees YEAH!

 

[tornadoalleycruiser]

I used eagle for my blasting on the tub. they did a great job. Pd cash which helped. I'll need to do the bed sometime as well so if your making trips back and forth maybe we can work something out.

 

[2fpower]

Well, got the sandblasting done yesterday, so parts are ready for the powdecoater. Don't know if I am being taken or not, but he talks his quality up a bunch. $225 for bench seats (including all the springs) all the small parts for seats, and three sets of dash trim. Seems stiff for powdercoating, but who am I to say??

 

[kc_chevota]

had a bumper done for a customer ran $350 for sandblasting and powder coating, it was too heavy to get in my oven.

 

[2fpower]

question on bench seat mount.

Question on the bench seat on the passenger side.

I am going to move the driver seat back about an inch for some extra room, but I never heard about people moving the passenger side back. Wondering if I should go ahead and weld tabs, or make it easy to do so.

Also my front left tab (center) of the seat, does not line up to where i thought it would. I had to remake the floor and build that tap, so it could be in the wrong spot by an inch, but I had thought I had good notes on where to put it, so I wanted to get a measurement to see what went wrong.

Anyway, it appears that I could move the seat back an inch with no worries. Any thoughts?

Also the far left side that sits on the back corner of the tranny tunnel. Does this straight post sit on anything? Maybe rubber stop? It does not appear to be bolted down. See pic below, it is "floating" now because the tunnel is not on.

 

[tornadoalleycruiser]

Set the filler neck in place and the gas tank cover before you move the pass seat back or think about it. I think you'll have a possible issue. but that year didn't have the cover on the tank just "straps" so possibly ok.
I can yank a spare set of seats and take a look at that rear post. I think it just sits there but not positive. my truck is at the other house. A crutch tip type cover might be in order to avoid it "rubbing" thru your bedliner. but I don't think it's going anywhere once in place.

Take a few away shots.. I think it's good to see your progress. Gaining floor space!

 

[2fpower]

Thanks Erik-

You may be correct on the tank. I need to work on it anyway, so it comes down next.

I will work on some pics, after I blow the layer of dust off it. First thing is to run a tap through all the holes, before I get too excited about bolting stuff on.

 

[tornadoalleycruiser]

From my recollection the difference in your seat and the one I have in the FJ45 is a notch for the filler neck in the bottom of the seat. So you MIGHT? be able to come back but get the tank in first. I'll be honest. I haven't pulled the seats out of their hidy hole to put them in the tub in the garage.
OR if you think that the "notch" for the filler neck would give you some extra room I can dig those seats out and you can test fit them in the 40 and then "replicate" the notch. It just might give you leg room.. BUT then you can't use normal old seatcovers, they'd have to be modded to fit that notch.

 

[2fpower]

I decided to push this idea to the side. Powdercoater has all the parts now, will post up results when he is done. I was going to go use Rob's oven, but decided to call in a favor with him another day. Also, the reaction issue I had on the trim, made me seek professional help.

On the seat mount issue, I was able to "urge" the seat post about 1/2 over and it aligned perfectly, so all is good on that now.

Short list is to:

work on the fuel tank - sealer inside
finish the wiring harness with alarm
tap all holes on tub
bolt tub down