First of all I want to say I truly dig ih8mud.com and enjoy reading about everyone's trucks and some of the wild buildups out there. I'm "gnx7" as I built up a few Buick Grand National powered RX-7's as my first introduction to wrenching/fabrication.
I thought I would start a thread about the buildup of my truck which is an '84 FJ60 with 134K miles on it now. I purchased it for $3K with a rusty roof/hood in mid 2005, stock suspension, fugly old school Centerline rims/31x10.5" tires, and a pretty clean interior. I like the classic round headlight look, tons of room, good highway ride, manual transmission and out of the box good wheeler. A friend has one also and helped get me into them. I've always been into mechanical things and have built 2 different Buick Grand National powered RX-7's, and 1 LS1/T56 powered RX-7.
First thing to do was to replace the very bouncy stock and tired suspension with an OME 2.5" lift kit and 15x8 powdercoated steelies with 33x12.5" ProComp A/T tires. The truck rode so much better it wasn't even funny. I retained the stock 3:70 gears which are bearable... it either needs more power or deeper gears now.
Next on the list as I live 1 block from the beach in San Francisco (Ocean Beach) was to tackle the rust and restore the exterior. I drove the truck down to SoCal to a friend's bodyshop where I was hoping to get a good job done on the cheap. ha ha ha. Well after seeing the rust he said he would take care of it... but it ended up costing more than I wanted to spend ($3500 which was a "bro" deal), but I'm sure it would've cost more if I got it painted here in the SF Bay Area. The roof was pretty bad and had barnacles and some small holes starting to appear. I knew it wasn't pretty. Well after 10 weeks I went and picked it up and it looks better than factory. Factory rootbeer brown with some pearl in it. aka "Mr. Hanky"
So I have been noticing that I get a lovely 12-13mpg going an indicated 55-60mph on my speedo (about 65mph) and the engine also is consuming about 1 pint of coolant every 500 miles. I assume either the head gasket is beginning to fail or the head is cracked. I'm doing a leakdown test this weekend to get a better indication.
Like all vehicles I've owned I need more power. Next on the list is either an LS1 ('99 Camaro donor) with a TH700R4 or a 5.3 ('99+ truck) motor. I purchased Waggoner's TH700R4 he had behind his LT1 with AA kit to mate up to the stock FJ60 Tcase (he went 502 Mercruiser/4L80E). I'm going to try to do the conversion as cheaply as possible. (we'll see)
Next part of the buildup will be pulling the 2F engine/transmission and dropping in the LSx style engine and TH700R4 in about 1-2 months when the weather gets a little better. I'm hoping for about 350hp/400ft/lbs tq (bigger cam/ported heads/Camaro headers) and 15-16mpg on the highway. The LS1 is all aluminum and weighs about 220lbs less than the 2F and will have 2x the torque and nearly 3x the horsepower.
So is a before pic of where I was at. The "after" pics are too big to host them here. Can someone host about 4 pics that are 1MB each?
Any website suggestions where to host some pics for free? Putfile?
I thought I would start a thread about the buildup of my truck which is an '84 FJ60 with 134K miles on it now. I purchased it for $3K with a rusty roof/hood in mid 2005, stock suspension, fugly old school Centerline rims/31x10.5" tires, and a pretty clean interior. I like the classic round headlight look, tons of room, good highway ride, manual transmission and out of the box good wheeler. A friend has one also and helped get me into them. I've always been into mechanical things and have built 2 different Buick Grand National powered RX-7's, and 1 LS1/T56 powered RX-7.
First thing to do was to replace the very bouncy stock and tired suspension with an OME 2.5" lift kit and 15x8 powdercoated steelies with 33x12.5" ProComp A/T tires. The truck rode so much better it wasn't even funny. I retained the stock 3:70 gears which are bearable... it either needs more power or deeper gears now.
Next on the list as I live 1 block from the beach in San Francisco (Ocean Beach) was to tackle the rust and restore the exterior. I drove the truck down to SoCal to a friend's bodyshop where I was hoping to get a good job done on the cheap. ha ha ha. Well after seeing the rust he said he would take care of it... but it ended up costing more than I wanted to spend ($3500 which was a "bro" deal), but I'm sure it would've cost more if I got it painted here in the SF Bay Area. The roof was pretty bad and had barnacles and some small holes starting to appear. I knew it wasn't pretty. Well after 10 weeks I went and picked it up and it looks better than factory. Factory rootbeer brown with some pearl in it. aka "Mr. Hanky"
So I have been noticing that I get a lovely 12-13mpg going an indicated 55-60mph on my speedo (about 65mph) and the engine also is consuming about 1 pint of coolant every 500 miles. I assume either the head gasket is beginning to fail or the head is cracked. I'm doing a leakdown test this weekend to get a better indication.
Like all vehicles I've owned I need more power. Next on the list is either an LS1 ('99 Camaro donor) with a TH700R4 or a 5.3 ('99+ truck) motor. I purchased Waggoner's TH700R4 he had behind his LT1 with AA kit to mate up to the stock FJ60 Tcase (he went 502 Mercruiser/4L80E). I'm going to try to do the conversion as cheaply as possible. (we'll see)
Next part of the buildup will be pulling the 2F engine/transmission and dropping in the LSx style engine and TH700R4 in about 1-2 months when the weather gets a little better. I'm hoping for about 350hp/400ft/lbs tq (bigger cam/ported heads/Camaro headers) and 15-16mpg on the highway. The LS1 is all aluminum and weighs about 220lbs less than the 2F and will have 2x the torque and nearly 3x the horsepower.
So is a before pic of where I was at. The "after" pics are too big to host them here. Can someone host about 4 pics that are 1MB each?
Any website suggestions where to host some pics for free? Putfile?
. It can get foggy/overcast for weeks at times.
