Builds Patches - My '76 40. B3.3 Swap and some general fixin' up

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I still have all the pictures from the fan meet radiator incident if you want them. I think @GA Architect may have a few as well. Hope everything is going well.

-Noodle
 
I get the time constraints man. I think as they get older it may get a little easier.

Think the Tundy Badger needs a build thread on Mud.
It would be pretty dull, right up to the point where it meets its likely demise following an encounter with a deer or cow at warp speed on a dirt road. Updates would consist of the following:
  • frequent wallet bleedings at the gas pump
  • quarterly oil changes where I cuss the $50 worth of hot watery 0w20 splashing all over
  • overdue vaccum sessions to collect cheerios and goldfish from the floorboards
  • the occasional wash when the frequency of complaints from brushing agianst it and "ruining" clothes becomes annoying
 
I get the time constraints man. I think as they get older it may get a little easier.

Think the Tundy Badger needs a build thread on Mud.

my 3 are teenagers and sometimes I think they are more work now than when they were little. We all understand the Work life balance and time constraints.. good luck
 
Fired it up and drove up the road a bit. Where do the hours/days/months/years go?!
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Over 3 years and no update! I haven't given up, and Patches is very much alive.

I haven't done much to the old 40...I do drive it to work sometimes and around on weekend errands. It drives really nice (aside from the fuel pump/RPM thing) and has been getting about 25 mpg.

Since the last update I picked up an LX off the side of the road on a work trip, and a rusty 80 with a blown HG that I got back in fighting shape and took to Solid Axle Summit this year. I would probably have a nice FJ40 if I could ever focus my efforts to one rig at a time 🤣.

I suppose I did rattle can over the mix-match exterior so it was all the same color, and added a leaf in the rear after smacking the shackles on the frame at Solid Axle Summit a few years back. There's probably a few other things I've done in the past few years but nothing major.

I've been thinking a lot lately about blowing it apart for real paint, including lizard skin to keep the diesel racket down and some kind of liner underneath to keep the rock chips at a minimum. A/C is on the list too. I can't get past the round vents on the Vintage Air units, so I've been eyeballing the Nostalgic air unit (that looks the same as Speedways "slim line" universal unit. Whatever I do will require some accessory re-shuffling on the front of the engine, unless I did an electric compressor maybe?
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Glad to see Patches is still with us. I put the 40 to work for the first time in probably 9 months yesterday to drag a pine tree that blew down out of the yard and to the curb.
 
Glad to see Patches is still with us. I put the 40 to work for the first time in probably 9 months yesterday to drag a pine tree that blew down out of the yard and to the curb.
Very much so! Although the other 40 gets the tree dragging duties around here, the midwest woods are hard on a rig!
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Brown Santa came today.
Been looking for this for a long time.
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The above part is what allowed me to mount a "regular" VE pump (2 bolt, "long snout") to my engine, to replace the Stanadyne DB pump (3 bolt mount, short "snout.")
New pump
20250116_174038.jpg


Old pump
20250118_105404.jpg


Old pump bracket (since finding part numbers for these exercises is painful at best..)
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New pump bracket
20250118_105331.jpg
 
The drive gears are also different...
The VE pump gear has a 5/32" or 4mm half moon key aligning the pump to the shaft.
20250118_105300.jpg


The drive gear on the Stanadyne pump has no keyway, so setting timing is not as straightforward as installing the pump to the bracket, mating the gear with the key, and matching up the "C" stamp in the idler gear with the "C" stamp in the drive gear.
20250118_105308.jpg


The new pump is in and running.

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I was supposed to receive a new turbo Saturday, but no luck..

This thing is tiny.

20250120_102023.jpg

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I took it for a ride up the highway this morning. With the new pump (and no real adjustment or fine tuning of it) I have a puff of black smoke when coming under load where I didn't before. I can also make 15 psi with little to no lag in the mid rpm range. It's definately delivering more fuel. It isn't hamstrung to 1,900 rpm anymore either, as I can easily exceed 60 mph in 4th and 80 is readily attainable in 5th. Shifting between gears is more "normal" now, with the extra 700 rpm I have now.

This little turbo makes great boost at low speed, but I think it's just choking out at higher RPM's/load, as the EGT's are higher than I think they should be, say 8-900 cruising 70 mph.
 
Here are the details of the little turbo... I can't find a map for this specific one.. I have seen some literature indicating that the "KYRC" after the 10 indicates a more modern, more efficient wheel design than just a "T" or "G" etc, but hard info on this industrial stuff is sometimes tough to pin down. Suffice to say it is small!
20250121_175727.jpg
 
New pump has been for a while, pretty happy with it. I haven't played with the speed limit on it, being able to run it up to 2500 RPM has been a total gamechanger for driveability, and I'm not sure I need much more. It feels like torque is already falling off at that speed, and it just sounds angrier. I've put about 2 tanks through it deiving to work and back, which is ~10 miles of gravel at 35 mph, 15 miles on the highway at 70 mph, and another 15 miles of 2 lane at 55-60. I've been using the newfound power more than I need to and have averaged 25 mpg since the pump swap, which seems pretty good.

I did try a larger turbo, (a 2252 clone) and found it too big. Very laggy at lower speeds. I've got a 2052 I may try, on paper it seems alright.. but after driving it with a bigger laggy turbo I really appreciate the response of the little guy it came with, and will focus elsewhere for now.

I've been collecting materials to do some insulating and interior decorating. I've got Raptor liner + tint, Kilmat, Siles Hybrid mat (foam sandwiched between butyl rubber and mass loaded vinyl), foil backed foam, fiberglass cloth sheets, etc.

As I intent to add A/C in the near future (leaning towards the Nostalgic Air unit), I've made some DIY insulating coating, using elastomeric flat roof coating and microballoons. I mixed some 50/50 (took some mixing!) It is too thick to spray, but can be brushed on pretty easily. Initial testing seems positive; I painted some (plain and mixed with the balloons) on a piece of painted 16ga sheetmetal and poked and pried on it as well as hitting the backside with a torch to see if the balloons made a difference. It's definately lighter, a little more "squishy" and easier to scrap or tear with a screwdriver with the balloons in it. With a torch to the backside of the steel, the difference in heat getting through to the front of the coating was very noticeable. The side of the steel with the balloons in the coating I could hold my hand on easily vs. the other side being burning hot. I kept going until the unaltered coating began to bubble up and lose adherance.

I'm very interested in how durable this stuff might be under raptor liner on interior wheel wells, floors, etc. Too thick and I think point loads would crack the raptor over it.

I think I'll take an old hood or something and do some experimenting. I'll put some epoxy down, do an area with the coating at ~1/16" thick, another at ~1/8", and try some strips of kilmat (roughly the width of the floor ribbing) and then coat everything in raptor liner. This will allow some experimenting to see if either the coating or the kilmat might hold up under raptor liner. I intend to drag the hood down the gravel road, beat on it, pepper it with some #7.5's, etc. If all goes well, I'll have a coating I can put under the raptor to help insulate the rig and be able to keep sound down. If it doesn't hold up as well, I'll probably just confne the coating to the underside of the roof cap (to be covered in headliner anyway.)

I've also got an MR2 intercooler I'm going to get plumbed in, and need to rework the intake side to use a real aircleaner vs. this cone filter I've been running.. that's after I've removed the heater box and made a battery tray to sit close to the firewall on the passenger side to free up some room for the AC compressor and filter housing.

At the least, I'd like to have the A/C done and interior surfaces coated/lined/sound insulated before August so we can take this thing to Solid Axle Summit. Best case, I'll have some time to get the doors and hardtop off and blown apart (some minor rust repair work is needed on doors and some hardtop pieces) and get the whole thing painted... we'll see!

I also finally installed the grille guard that @NookShneer nabbed for me in Seattle and delivered to SAS a few years ago, along with some Kioto fogs from CruiserCult.
20250312_180341.jpg
 
New pump has been for a while, pretty happy with it. I haven't played with the speed limit on it, being able to run it up to 2500 RPM has been a total gamechanger for driveability, and I'm not sure I need much more. It feels like torque is already falling off at that speed, and it just sounds angrier. I've put about 2 tanks through it deiving to work and back, which is ~10 miles of gravel at 35 mph, 15 miles on the highway at 70 mph, and another 15 miles of 2 lane at 55-60. I've been using the newfound power more than I need to and have averaged 25 mpg since the pump swap, which seems pretty good.

I did try a larger turbo, (a 2252 clone) and found it too big. Very laggy at lower speeds. I've got a 2052 I may try, on paper it seems alright.. but after driving it with a bigger laggy turbo I really appreciate the response of the little guy it came with, and will focus elsewhere for now.

I've been collecting materials to do some insulating and interior decorating. I've got Raptor liner + tint, Kilmat, Siles Hybrid mat (foam sandwiched between butyl rubber and mass loaded vinyl), foil backed foam, fiberglass cloth sheets, etc.

As I intent to add A/C in the near future (leaning towards the Nostalgic Air unit), I've made some DIY insulating coating, using elastomeric flat roof coating and microballoons. I mixed some 50/50 (took some mixing!) It is too thick to spray, but can be brushed on pretty easily. Initial testing seems positive; I painted some (plain and mixed with the balloons) on a piece of painted 16ga sheetmetal and poked and pried on it as well as hitting the backside with a torch to see if the balloons made a difference. It's definately lighter, a little more "squishy" and easier to scrap or tear with a screwdriver with the balloons in it. With a torch to the backside of the steel, the difference in heat getting through to the front of the coating was very noticeable. The side of the steel with the balloons in the coating I could hold my hand on easily vs. the other side being burning hot. I kept going until the unaltered coating began to bubble up and lose adherance.

I'm very interested in how durable this stuff might be under raptor liner on interior wheel wells, floors, etc. Too thick and I think point loads would crack the raptor over it.

I think I'll take an old hood or something and do some experimenting. I'll put some epoxy down, do an area with the coating at ~1/16" thick, another at ~1/8", and try some strips of kilmat (roughly the width of the floor ribbing) and then coat everything in raptor liner. This will allow some experimenting to see if either the coating or the kilmat might hold up under raptor liner. I intend to drag the hood down the gravel road, beat on it, pepper it with some #7.5's, etc. If all goes well, I'll have a coating I can put under the raptor to help insulate the rig and be able to keep sound down. If it doesn't hold up as well, I'll probably just confne the coating to the underside of the roof cap (to be covered in headliner anyway.)

I've also got an MR2 intercooler I'm going to get plumbed in, and need to rework the intake side to use a real aircleaner vs. this cone filter I've been running.. that's after I've removed the heater box and made a battery tray to sit close to the firewall on the passenger side to free up some room for the AC compressor and filter housing.

At the least, I'd like to have the A/C done and interior surfaces coated/lined/sound insulated before August so we can take this thing to Solid Axle Summit. Best case, I'll have some time to get the doors and hardtop off and blown apart (some minor rust repair work is needed on doors and some hardtop pieces) and get the whole thing painted... we'll see!

I also finally installed the grille guard that @NookShneer nabbed for me in Seattle and delivered to SAS a few years ago, along with some Kioto fogs from CruiserCult. View attachment 3872145

Sounds like it's time for compounds lol
 

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