Builds PLC build (1 Viewer)

[cruisermatt]

@Bama4door check out the rear cut

 

[FF LC FREAK]

Thanks Chad.

I had to cut the sides of my rear corner protection/bumper to match.

Before.

And after. It's only 3 inches. I would have taken more out, but it would have gotten into the corner. I don't want a comp cut on this, so I just went as far as I could without getting into the curve.

I thought I would like the harder lines on the side protection. But the more I look at it, the more I think I need to add some curve to both the bottom and top edge like I had before.

 

[yotadude520]

Honestly one of my favorite builds on mud...I absolutely love Pampa's Land cruiser! My favorite color and you've done some great work to this rig.

Keep up the great work!

 

[Bama4door]

Recently, I swapped out my 2 inch drop pitman arm with a flat pitman arm to keep the tie rod end from hitting the spring. It was clocked differently, and therefore made my drag link a little too short for comfort. So, last week, I went up to @OldRocDoc 's Frankenlab. He was nice enough to make me some new heavy duty tie rods. 1.25" x .250" wall DOM. I hopefully won't bend those. Thanks Jack!



And installed.



I signed up for Cruise Moab last week also. I now have multiple projects I want to get done before the end of April. First up was fixing my rear wheel opening. I was bumping the rear quarter panel without even flexing much.

So, I marked up what I wanted to cut out.

Cut it out and welded it back together. This should give me plenty of room. Sorry, I didn't get too many pics while I was at it.

And today, I finished up the body work and painted it.

I obviously did the other side also.

I had paint left over, so I painted my scuffed and rusty running boards and front fenders. My front fenders take a beating as work bench.

Paint and body work are definitely not my thing. I really have a hard time being patient enough with sanding and prepping. So this is a 10 footer all the way. But I'm okay with that.

How much of the rear quarter did you cut out? Inches?

 

[FF LC FREAK]

How much of the rear quarter did you cut out? Inches?

This time I cut out 3 inches. The first time I cut it a couple of years ago, I took 2 inches. Now it is a total of 5 inches stretched. It fits my 35" tires well with the axle pushed back 3 inches. I could probably even get 37s in there. Essentially, the lip of the wheel well is back to the rear sill horn.

 

[Bama4door]

This time I cut out 3 inches. The first time I cut it a couple of years ago, I took 2 inches. Now it is a total of 5 inches stretched. It fits my 35" tires well with the axle pushed back 3 inches. I could probably even get 37s in there. Essentially, the lip of the wheel well is back to the rear sill horn.

Awesome, thanks for the info and pictures! It looks awesome

 

[FF LC FREAK]

A couple of updates.

I was able to re-route my rear brake lines to get them more out of harms way. I had to make a new hard line, but it was well worth it. There's plenty of room between the shock and axle. The brake line isn't in danger of getting pinched.

I bought a driveshaft from a GX470 a while back based on White Stripe's recommendation. I'm finally getting around to installing it. The problem is that it has a different bolt pattern. The rear pinion isn't a problem, because I already had a multi-drilled pinion flange from Cruiser Outfitters. Luckily, one of the bolt patterns is the same as the 470 driveshaft. For the record, that bolt pattern is 66 mm x 66 mm.

The problem I have is that at the transfer case, I still have the parking brake drum. The pattern on that is 64 mm x 56 mm. So I bought some 11 mm studs.

The first step was to determine if the driveshaft would work. A little spray paint marked everything out for me.

Then I pulled out my caliper and measured, re-measured, and re-re-measured. There's not much room for error here. I center punched and drilled the holes. Pressed in the studs, and now have a parking brake drum with the right bolt pattern. They are also 11 mm studs vs the 10 mm studs on the earlier bolt pattern.

And the driveshaft matches up!

I did have to grind a bit on both. As you can see in the picture above, the driveshaft flange extended past the lip on the drum. A little grinding on both allowed it to sit flush. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the driveshaft shortened and balanced.

 

[FF LC FREAK]

I noticed a while back that I had a broken rear leaf on the driver's side. It was the second shortest leaf. I had 2 leaves from my front spring packs that I had taken out to get my 40 to sit level. So I swapped those in on both sides. While I was at it, I pushed the axle back another inch. It is now sitting at 96" of wheelbase. The wheel still fits in the wheel well just fine.

Last week I picked up my shortened GX470 driveshaft. It turned out great. It fits like it was meant to be there and doesn't bind at full droop.

Then a quick flex test to see how the rear works. Turns out it tucks in nicely, but there's not a lot of room to spare. I said I could probably fit 37s before. Now I'm not so sure without a little more work. It's pretty close.

My next issue is the rear anti-wrap bar. I have to revisit this. It bound a little bit before, but after pushing my back axle back even farther on flipped rear springs, it is binding even more.

Over the past few days, I've done a lot of reading on this subject both on Mud and other sights. Bottom line, the common anti-wrap bars are designed for the axle to be in the center of the spring or with the short side of the spring connected to the spring hanger, not the shackle. This causes the pinion to rotate up when the springs droop out. When under compression, the pinion rotates down. For the common anti-wrap bar such as Ruff Stuff's design, this works perfect. Very little bind.

However, when you flip the rear springs, everything works in reverse. When the springs droop, the pinion rotates down. Under compression, the pinion rotates up.

This is how I have it set up currently.

Now that I understand a little better how things are working, it's obvious why this binds up. When the pinion rotates down under droop and the axle comes slightly forward, it binds up against the anti-wrap shackle. This is compounded the more you move the axle backwards (which is what I've done). So, now I need to figure out how to make a wrap bar that doesn't bind in this situation. I know others have had this problem, but I haven't been able to find any good examples of fixes. Anyone got any good ideas? Otherwise, I'm going to have to 4 link this.

Thanks!

 

[FF LC FREAK]

Loaded up and ready for Cruise Moab! Hitting the road first thing tomorrow morning!

 

[SMG]

Keep the pictures coming! Love you truck! One of my favorites!

 

[cseitz]

I like the 4 link idea. Mine is at this point right now. Its crazy looking at your build and I kid you not, they are so similar.

 

[FF LC FREAK]

Ouch. But let's back up a bit.

Over the last several weeks, I scrambled to get everything done for my trip to Moab. In my last post, I mentioned that my reversed 40 springs and anti-wrap bar didn't play well together. I ended up sourcing some FJ62 rear springs - thanks Ken @esh! I got those installed, but it still didn't push my rear axle back far enough. Here's a picture of 62 springs (left) compared to 40 springs (right). In the picture, the 40 springs are long side to the top. The 62 springs are short side to the top of the picture.

So, I ordered some Ruff Stuff spring hangers and moved the mounts back.

After testing, I added several more gussets to the frame. I also had to move my rear shackle hangers back a little bit.

After that last pic was taken, I added an inch longer shackle, and my shackle angle steepened a little bit. It gives a great ride now.

I tried a few different brake pads in the rear. Every time they got nice and bedded in, they would grab too much. So I broke down and added an adjustable proportioning valve. After some trial and error, it now locks up the rears shortly after the fronts. I should have just done this to begin with.

With time running out, I quickly loaded my gear into the back, and loaded it onto the trailer.

 

[FF LC FREAK]

We made it to Moab without incident and dropped off the truck and trailer at the OK RV park where we were staying later in the week. We drove up the to the Lone Warrior campsite about an hour and a half from Moab to do the San Rafael Swell overnight run with Kurt Williams as the trail leader. Our campsite was beautiful, albeit a little cold. The first night it dropped down to about 28 degrees.

The next morning we hit the trail and headed towards the Devil's Racetrack. Kurt was in the lead with his awesome ride, and I was right behind.

We made it to the last big obstacle on the trail, which coincidentally is only about a quarter of the way through. Kurt was spotting me when we heard a small "pop". That was it. Then things started grinding. At first, none of us knew what had happened. Kurt initially thought my locker was trying to lock, but not engaging. It seemed like I was having too hard of a time getting up the last ledge, so it made sense that the locker was having issues. After a couple of attempts, I made it up to the top and stopped to take a look underneath. Everything looked okay, so I tried to pull off to the side of the trail to let the other 15 trucks up. At that point, the rear axle bound up. After a little bit of back and forth, I was able to free it up and pulled to the side of the trail. I pulled the drain plug, and silvery fluid followed by chunks of metal came out. I pulled the rear diff cover and found this.

With a little help from Kurt and some others on the run, we pulled the chunks out, pulled the rear driveshaft, and I made it through the rest of the trail in front wheel drive. Luckily, I have rear disk brakes. That kept my axles in. The c clips fell off right away.

Here's the line up towards the end of the trail.

Instead of the trail run on Thursday, we trailered back to Moab. Kurt had his guys bring everything I needed to the vendor show Thursday night to get me back up and running. He totally hooked me up! Thanks Kurt @cruiseroutfit!

I talked to a shop in Moab that said they could get it done on Friday, so I pulled the 3rd and dropped it off Friday morning at 0800.

The shop in Moab (that I won't name) charged an arm and a leg and promptly got it done by 6 PM Saturday night, not Friday as promised. We put it back together enough that night to get the wheels on. Sunday morning, we hooked up the trailer and headed for Twin Falls Idaho. More about that shortly. On a side note, Kurt borrowed my short side axle shaft for a stuck 60 on Porcupine Rim. So we stopped at Cruiser Outfitters on our way through SLC to pick one up that Kurt had at his shop. He mentioned that the Land Cruiser Heritage museum was open, so we had to stop by. It is definitely worth the stop!

Since we were playing "stupid tourists" anyway, we also stopped by Sparks Motors (i.e. Diesel Brothers) for a couple of pictures. Unfortunately, they weren't open.

We made it to Twin Falls Idaho that night. A junkyard there had a couple of 60 series that we wanted parts from. But, as we were pulling into Twin Falls, the trailer was not happy. It seemed a tire had separated. We dropped it off at a tire store (popular NW tire store) Monday morning to have them check it out. To add insult to injury, all 4 tires were shot. But, we got some good parts of the 60s at the junk yard.

Wheeling wise, the trip sucked. But otherwise, we made the most of our trip. Kurt was awesome, and as I said, he really took care of me. And being in Moab is better than being at work anyday.

 

[archie73]

Wheeling wise, the trip sucked. But otherwise, we made the most of our trip. Kurt was awesome, and as I said, he really took care of me. And being in Moab is better than being at work anyday.

Good attitude, I was wishing I could go. I was down there at the end of March. Kid was to scared to do any wheeling-Warm Springs Rd out of Arches had him walking the section by the dinosaur tracks. So no wheeling ever really happened for me either. Still my favorite place after all these years.

 

[boots4]

Sucks about the carnage and then the trailer tires. Glad you got to go though. I know the owner's son of the Land Cruiser Heritage Museum. He served a mission in my area and I worked with him doing churchy stuff for a couple month. Good kid and he loves Land Cruisers.

 

[FF LC FREAK]

Good attitude, I was wishing I could go. I was down there at the end of March. Kid was to scared to do any wheeling-Warm Springs Rd out of Arches had him walking the section by the dinosaur tracks. So no wheeling ever really happened for me either. Still my favorite place after all these years.

Thanks! I love Moab. I've been a few times now, but this was the first time taking my 40. It was a bummer missing out on all the wheeling, but it could have been way worse. And a bad day in Moab is still better than a good day at work!

Sucks about the carnage and then the trailer tires. Glad you got to go though. I know the owner's son of the Land Cruiser Heritage Museum. He served a mission in my area and I worked with him doing churchy stuff for a couple month. Good kid and he loves Land Cruisers.

Funny story. During the raffle on Thursday night, Kurt asked to borrow my spare short side axle shaft to rescue a 60 off of Porcupine Rim. Of course I gave it to him. Turns out, it was the owner of the Land Cruiser Heritage museum that broke down - on a nasty ledge from what I hear. That's why I stopped at Cruiser Outfitters' shop on Sunday on my way home. Kurt had another axle shaft for me. For the record, Kurt offered to ship it to me, but I told him I would stop and pick one up rather than making him pay for shipping.

The museum is pretty sweet. Definitely worth the stop if you are ever travelling through SLC.

So, here's my theory on the carnage. Back in December during our club's Christmas Tree Run, I had a little issue with my cross pin backing out. Go back a couple of pages in this thread for info if you're interested. The retaining bolt backed out and then the cross pin came out a little bit and smacked the pinion. At that time, I took the whole third out, inspected it, fixed it, and re-installed it. I thought about swapping it to the front, and in hindsight, I probably should have. I used red Loctite on the new retaining bolt after using lots of brake clean to ensure clean threads.

Kurt was spotting me when I tried to climb that final obstacle. There are 2 ledges to get up. I made it up the first and then got my front tires over the second ledge. When I tried to climb the second ledge with the rear tires, we all heard a small "pop". Not a "bang!" like an axle breaking. I thought "that was weird." I kept at it, and started hearing grinding from the rear axle. I asked Kurt what he thought, and he actually thought my locker was trying but not engaging. I finally made it up the ledge with way more difficulty than it should have taken. Y'all know the rest.

After thinking about it, and the fact that it was such a low volume "pop", I think I had some hairline cracks that I just didn't see in the locker housing from my incident in December. I'm guessing it's been a ticking time bomb since then. So far, I haven't talked to anyone that has seen an ARB fail like this. At least I did it up right!

Here's a couple more pictures for those that are interested.

 

[FF LC FREAK]

So, it seems I have not added anything to my build thread for a year and a half. I figured I'd might as well update it a bit if anyone is interested.

After Cruise Moab 2019, I decided to fix my air intake. I was getting really hot intake air temps (165*ish) when crawling in Moab. I tried a couple of different iterations.

This was my first attempt:

It turned out that the filter I used was too small/restrictive and caused a rich condition and DTCs to pop up. That's despite the filter being advertised as good for a 5.3 Vortec.

Second attempt, I again used my Spectre Air filter and built more of a box to see if I could get lower temps.

This actually worked fairly well at first. But then again, I didn't do any wheeling for awhile with this setup. Over 15 mph or so, it worked great to keep my temps down. Even in stop and go traffic, it would be slow to start heating up. And yes, it was a test, so I didn't spend a lot of time making it look nice. It drew air from in front of the radiator and around the steering gear box.

Next up, I decided to put some fender flares on. My tires stick out a good 2 inches, and I was tired of the mud on everything. I bought some Smittybilt tube flares for a Jeep TJ.

After hacking them up, they looked like this:

And after painting, mounting, and all around spending too much time on them, they ended up like this.

To be honest, I don't love them, but they do a great job of keeping the mud off the side of my rig.

 

[FF LC FREAK]

Around that time, I started smelling gas inside the 40. Then I found this.

So, a new tank went in.

With Cruise Moab 2020 looming, I decided I needed better gearing for this year. So, after a visit to AA's website, this showed up.

After putting it together, I had problems with it popping out of high range while decelerating. After 2 new shift forks, a new output shaft, and multiple tear downs, I'm currently only popping out of gear in 4 low on really steep downhills. I thought it was fixed until this hunting season when I went down a very steep descent (think sliding down a steep ass road on dry ground for about a 1/2 mile) and it popped out three times. So, I need to tear it apart again. But other than the popping out of low range, I love the gearing. I probably would have found all this out sooner, but Cruise Moab 2020 didn't happen. I was hoping to redeem myself after last years' miserable failure. Maybe 2021 will be my redemption year in Moab. We'll see.

 

[FF LC FREAK]

While hunting this year, I did a little bit of crawling up some steep hills. It was very apparent that I was still getting too much heat into my intake. My IATs were still getting up to the 165* mark and even higher on long hill climbs. I've been contemplating a fix for this for the last couple of months. I was just about ready to pull the trigger on a snorkel, even though I really didn't want one. I was afraid I would tear it off on a limb or tree or something. I was running out of ideas for cool air until a buddy of mine said he had an extra heater vent from a 69 FJ40. I had seen in cseitz's thread that someone had used a heater vent for fresh air. And cseitz used an F150 air filter housing. So, this is what I'm going for.

I bought an air filter housing from a 1997 F150. Since I really do need my heater here in the Pacific North Wet (er, I mean West) I'll put in a new vent.

I cut this out of his spare/rusted out cowl.

The idea is to run the F150 filter housing to a flexible tube to the vent. Kinda like this.

Then I cut a big ass hole (big ass hole ) in my cowl and welded this in.

And after welding fully and a little body filler, I don't think it looks too bad.

Hopefully, it will look like the passenger side when it's done.

That's as far as I made it today. Hopefully by the end of this week, I'll have a functional cold air intake.


That's it for now. It's not as good (or technical) as Boot's update , but it is something. And Mike, we need to get together soon!

 

[boots4]

Hey, looks like you've figured out getting cold air where I haven't yet so I'd say it's great tech! It gives me more ideas the different setups I see. I'm pretty sure metal cutting will be necessary in some way. You going to use some "heat" tape on your intake tube?

What is the ratio that your new gearing gives you?

We definitely got to do something, I haven't even wheeled with your V8 converted race car yet. If I ever get my torque converter back we should do some snow stuff... once the snow really gets here.