Hey Guys, bare with me, I have been wanting to start a build thread but I am not too forum savvy.
I bought my 76 Fj55 from CruiserMax in the Seattle area late winter in '09. He had done a lot of work to it (body and paint, sliders, rear bumper, etc) but finally realized he needed a 40 for the PNW trails. My wife was on her 3rd Fj60 and told me that she wanted something "brighter and with more character". I showed her a 55 and she was hooked.
Brought it home and pulled the manifolds to install new gaskets, and then rebuilt the carb and gave it all new vacuum hoses. It was a real hard start, but ran great when you could get it running. It got to the point of unpredictability that I decided to yard the 2F.
The truck came with a Ranger Torque Splitter (with electric shifter), so I did some research and then went and found myself a 350.
When I put the new engine in place, I found that the mini-truck poser steering was going to get in the way of the manifold, so it all came out. I never really like the design anyway, so i went with the much simpler Fj60 set-up. I was a little gun shy to do this, but it proved to be really straight forward and i really like how it has turned out. Much cleaner, less parts to wear out etc. I figured since the PS bracket was going away, so was the shock mount, so I cut the shock tower off the other side and installed F-250 towers.
Here are some pics of patching the fender well back in.
After that, I had the front inner clip all sandblasted and powdercoated off-white and painted the inner grill black. Also some of the misc brackets were blasted and PC'd. Here is the end result with the IPF headlights installed.
Next I needed to build a fan shroud. I have to say that there was some heavy opinions from the locals as to whether this design would work, but it works really well. I needed to fashion a top clamp for the aluminum radiator, so the fan shroud does double duty as a clamp and a shroud. Had is all PC'd after it was done.
More later.
I bought my 76 Fj55 from CruiserMax in the Seattle area late winter in '09. He had done a lot of work to it (body and paint, sliders, rear bumper, etc) but finally realized he needed a 40 for the PNW trails. My wife was on her 3rd Fj60 and told me that she wanted something "brighter and with more character". I showed her a 55 and she was hooked.
Brought it home and pulled the manifolds to install new gaskets, and then rebuilt the carb and gave it all new vacuum hoses. It was a real hard start, but ran great when you could get it running. It got to the point of unpredictability that I decided to yard the 2F.
The truck came with a Ranger Torque Splitter (with electric shifter), so I did some research and then went and found myself a 350.
When I put the new engine in place, I found that the mini-truck poser steering was going to get in the way of the manifold, so it all came out. I never really like the design anyway, so i went with the much simpler Fj60 set-up. I was a little gun shy to do this, but it proved to be really straight forward and i really like how it has turned out. Much cleaner, less parts to wear out etc. I figured since the PS bracket was going away, so was the shock mount, so I cut the shock tower off the other side and installed F-250 towers.
Here are some pics of patching the fender well back in.
After that, I had the front inner clip all sandblasted and powdercoated off-white and painted the inner grill black. Also some of the misc brackets were blasted and PC'd. Here is the end result with the IPF headlights installed.
Next I needed to build a fan shroud. I have to say that there was some heavy opinions from the locals as to whether this design would work, but it works really well. I needed to fashion a top clamp for the aluminum radiator, so the fan shroud does double duty as a clamp and a shroud. Had is all PC'd after it was done.
More later.
That is one heck of a rack! Hope you don't mind me copying your tire carrier! History is always cool. Keep it coming