Builds POTM - March, 2014 - Javelina By Pablo Cruise (1 Viewer)

[PabloCruise]

Pig History, Part 3

In my quest for Pig, I finally found what would be my first Pig. Always the Pig's Maid...

Sometime in 2005, Ben found a '74 Pig in Salt Lake that had a 3FE transplanted into it. It was for sale, I was ecstatic! My job at the time took me out to SLC on occasion, so I went out in January of 2006 and met the "owner" and took it for a drive. It was not overly impressive. There was some unfinished business related to the engine swap, but I could not hold back, I told him I wanted it and would be out later to make plans and pick it up. I gave him a check to hold the Pig

At least for me, other life events are always whirling in the background. Sometime around February or March of 2006, my walks in and and says, "I think I might lose my job." So I started thinking about that. The next words out of her mouth were "And I think I might be pregnant." Ha! So that was pretty cool news, but obviously, this is not the time to buy a project Pig. I emailed the guy in SLC and told him I am out, sell to someone else.

Around this same time, my buddy Nick, @usmcruiser - USMCruiser, has been looking for a Pig. I tell him that I can no longer buy the one in SLC, and that he is welcome to it. Pretty soon we hatch a plan where I will drive him over to SLC on my next business trip and he will drive his Pig home to CO. We drive over, Nick buys the Pig and we prep it for his road trip home. We became a little disturbed to find it was not quite in the road-worthy state the buyer assured us it was. No worries, we do some maintenance, and the next day, Nick heads out on his Pig adventure.

I get a voice-mail from Nick that he is stranded on I-80, outside of Rock Springs, WY. To keep the story short, the block off plate for the fuel pump location on the 3FE had fallen off and bled out oil. Nick was worried the engine had seized. The seller of this Pig came out to try to help Nick, and ended up driving him all the way back to CO, while the Pig sat on the side of I-80 until some a-hole broke the rear window and then the State Patrol towed it.

At this point Nick wants nothing more to do with this Pig. Sometime in early April I get a message from the guy in SLC saying that the Pig is in impound in Rock Springs with what is probably a seized engine. He does not want to deal with it any longer, so if I want to go get it out of impound, it is mine. Hard to turn down a "free" Pig, so I start scheming - how to get an inoperative Pig from Rock Springs to Fort Collins? Plus, where can I rebuild the 3FE w/ 0 funds as we were expecting our first child in November...

James - Rescue Wagon - came to the rescue! He had a big, bad 1 ton Dodge and a trailer, as well as some land up in Cheyenne where the Pig could wait until I got my act together. We went off and got the Pig and parked it at his spread. Thanks again James! The Pig sat longer than I wanted it to until I could bring it down to CO and start to assess what was wrong. Finally by about August of 2007 I was able to bring this Pig down and have my buddy's shop take a look at the 3FE to advise me how bad it was.

Wait for it...

The verdict was that the Pig had run out of gas! Tank was empty, oil pan was not! They dropped that pan, and all the main caps and found all was well. So they buttoned up the bottom end, put a new fuel pump block-off plate on the block and changed the FPR. The faulty FPR led to excessive fuel consumption. The 3FE was up and running - yippee!

I started driving this Pig and quickly realized I had my hands full. This thing was rough. The rear quarters were rough. Wheel lips had been shaved. Reverse lights were some parts store special. The glass had welding slag melted in. It went on and on... I slowly realized my burning desire to own a Pig had put me in a project that would take more time and $ than I had, and wanted to put into it. I wanted to take the wife and our new son wheeling, camping, to the drive-in movies. All the things that the 40 was a little too small to do, The 40 was one thing, I got it from the original owner, and while he had neglected it, he had not modified it. This Pig was a little too far gone for what I wanted to make of it. I started thinking I had to sell this Pig and start over.

About this time I saw an ad for a '74 Pig in Santa Fe with no engine...

 

[PabloCruise]

Pig History, Part 4

On September 30th, 2007, Dave Lawrence - @2manycruisers, posted this classified here in the Iron Pig Preservation Society of MUD:

https://forum.ih8mud.com/fj55-classifieds-corner/180302-74-fj-55-pto-ac-no-motor-new-mexico.html

I bought this last year to turn into the family wheeler since the 40 is a little small. But it hasn't happened, and I've decided to get a troopy.

It is a '74 FJ-55 project. No motor, I put on fj-60 power steering, have fj-60 disk brakes ready to install. 4speed, t-case (w/transition gear to fit a 3 speed case to 4 speed transmission), pto gearbox are in the back with new seals waiting for a motor to bolt them to.
It has very little rust--the lower front fenders and two places in the driver side rocker, otherwise it is clean. The paint has worn away, leaving surface rust in places, but nothing that isn't easily sanded off.
The door panels and floors/floor mats are in good shape, the front bench, headliner, and dash pad need help. I have some pics I can email, but I need to get some better ones. Asking $1600 obo. PM if interested.
David

This is where our story gets interesting, as this is the body you see in the pictures at the beginning of this thread, combined with the 3FE from the SLC Pig.

I took delivery of this Pig in February of 2008, and the work began.

That is all I have time for this morning as now the wife, child, dogs and cat are awake. More later!

 

[nuclearlemon]

finally got to your article in tt. good, but you should've included the history you've added here. makes it a bit more personal

 

[nedtrailhead]

Nice pig and a great story to go with it. I think most of us can appreciate all the running around you did to get the cruiser you wanted. That thing looks great. -Steve

 

[PabloCruise]

I joined and never received 1 copy.

Thanks Bob.

Bob, did you move after joining? Unless you opt for 1st class delivery, they send the issues of TT by pre-sort mail. So if you move, it does not get forwarded.

Contact the folks at TLCA to get this fixed!

 

[PabloCruise]

I read the article a couple of days ago-great write up! It was fun looking at the pics of your son growing through the years throughout the progression of the project. I saw the pig in person at the Rising Sun rally last year-even more impressive in person. The pictures don't do it justice - absoloutely beautiful. Congrats!

Thanks! It really sunk in how long I had been working on this when I saw how much he had grown over the project. Did you get to meet him at the Rally? He had a blast!

Can you post a link to this article for us interwebs deficient types?


Great looking Pig PabloCruise!!

You can see the issues online by going to: www.tlca.org

If you are a member you can download PDF copies of the Trails as well.

Pablo,


I just got my copy of Toyota Trails. Job well done! Not only did it turn out beautiful, but to me, the bigger story is how you kept the faith all those years. It's hard enough to build something like this, when all the stars are in line. To be able to piece it together alittle here and there, when you have the time and life is good, now that's the true story!


You give me encouragement to keep going and someday show up at one of the events, to meet you. Hopefully in my 55!


Best Regards,


Ron

Thanks Ron, It looks like you are well on your way with yours! It is hard sometimes to balance family, work, life, etc w/ these projects.

We'll take it. Post it up here.

Will do! I have lots of pictures...

 

[PabloCruise]

finally got to your article in tt. good, but you should've included the history you've added here. makes it a bit more personal

You should have seen how long my initial draft was! It was edited a few times before I sent it in to Todd, who had to edit it even more. I understand we only have so much space in print to devote to one feature. So I'll write all I want here.

Nice pig and a great story to go with it. I think most of us can appreciate all the running around you did to get the cruiser you wanted. That thing looks great. -Steve

Thank you very much!

 

[PabloCruise]

A few more pictures of the SLC Pig... Did I mention that this Pig was rough? When they swapped in the 3FE, they cut the top radiator cross-member to install a custom aluminum radiator. This modification also eliminated the factory hood latch!

A little careful work would have allowed for the 3FE and the factory radiator, cross-member, and latch (more on that later).

Anyway, when this Pig was sitting up in WY at Rescue Wagon's place, the gusty WY winds blew the hood up and it had to be removed. My was less than impressed having a vehicle w/ no hood when I brought it home. She thought it looked trashy

Anyway, more pics showing how little my son was when I started on all this...

 

[PabloCruise]

Here is how my current Pig looked when I asked Dave for some pictures.

First, the body pictures:

 

[PabloCruise]

Some close-ups of the rust:

 

[PabloCruise]

Body Mounts:

 

[PabloCruise]

Another thing I liked when looking at this Pig was that the 60 series PS swap had already been done (Dave wrote about it here: https://forum.ih8mud.com/fj55-iron-pig-preservation-society/129643-fj60-power-steering-pigs.html).

 

[PabloCruise]

Interior was "gently used":

 

[PabloCruise]

Dealer installed AC, I still need to get this working. It will take some figuring out w/ the 3FE and how the AC compressor mounts on the PS engine mount:

 

[PabloCruise]

PTO winch:

 

[PabloCruise]

So based on what I saw in the pictures, I thought this would be a much better foundation for a Pig project than the Pig I got in SLC. I struck a deal with Dave, and on February 12th, 2008, the transporter delivered this beauty to my friend's shop in Fort Collins.

Step 1 was to transplant the 3FE from Pig 1 to Pig 2. Would it all fit? 3FE, PS, PTO?

I was glad when we figured out the answer was "Yes!". We had to get the radiator mounts reset to move the radiator all the way forward in the engine bay.

 

[PabloCruise]

Enough clearance between 3FE clutch fan and Piggy radiator! I was thinking we might have to go with an electric fan, but when we had the mounts repositioned to shift the radiator forward, we had adequate clearance. No shroud, but Piggy never runs hot. Granted, I haven't tried to run her up Eisenhower tunnel w/ the AC on and 8 husky men at 80 MPH...

 

[PabloCruise]

When I first started going through the Pig, I found some documents that made me think the Pig sat for 2 different ~5 year periods. There was a reciept for diagnosis of a loss of oil pressure in the orig 1F.

I am bummed I lost these papers, as I remember thinking they were a cool part of the Pig story. I probably mis-filed them somewhere. Maybe I'll find them one day. As it is, I keep too much crap and need to purge. I'd like to organize all my Cruiser parts and get rid of excess items sometime soon.

 

[PabloCruise]

We got the 3FE in with time to take the Pig out to Cruise Moab 2008. I found a few more pictures of my son running around the Pig as I readied her for the journey to Moab:

 

[PabloCruise]

We made the trip over to Moab for Cruise Moab 2008, but something was clearly wrong. On the way over we had to change out the fuel filter. That made things better, but the 3FE would have problems idling.

I spent a lot of time in Moab trying to troubleshoot this, which was a bummer as my Dad came in as well as a couple of my sisters. So we hit a few trails, and did a few hikes, plus sight-seeing. You can never have a bad time in Moab, right? But there was always this nagging feeling that the 3FE was not running properly.

My Dad took some great pictures on that trip. One of them got in the Henry Brimmer calendar for 2009 (March)