A friend mentioned he had an old land cruiser sitting in a barn and said he'd talk to his sister about us going there and moving it... he parked it 6+ years ago... Months go by (where I read tons of mud forum posts, day dream, and work on my 100, making every mistake there is to make), and I say hey man, you said you had a FJ in a barn? Ya. Wanna get it running again and update it a bit? Ya.
Some methheads stole all the wheels... no problem. (Literally, the least of all our problems).
Step 1: Meet a cool dude in parking lot of HD w/ 5 old FJ Toyota wheels and tires on em. Give him $. He gives me tires. This is in Orlando, FL. The truck is in middle Georgia, he lives in Atlanta, I live in Orlando. Not exactly the perfect circumstance for a revival, but hey, who cares, this'll be a good time (so far so good, to date).
Step 2: Drive to GA with my GF (after changing my heater T's... on the side of I-4). Meet them at the barn, which is hiding on the property... arm ourselves with chainsaws, new distributor cap/plugs/oil/battery/jack/jackstands/who knows what else, I don't even remember. Hack this thing out as GF rolls eyes, his dad had the chainsaws charged, we go into the barn with flashlights, slap the wheels back on the hubs, and change out battery. Look to change distributor cap/wires/plugs... oh look, someone already changed those! My boy forgot, but this is good news. Fluid levels all look good, (I know we shouldn't have done this, but did it anyway)... new batt placed in. Fire it up after the trees that weren't there 6 years ago were cut down. Back it out, and drive to bigger barn a few hundred yards away. Never seen a man smile so big. His high school and college rig...
Where we currently are: We have an issue with the following: carburetor choke operates in sync with the accelerator pedal, when they should be independent. Possibly rust seizing the cable. And also looks like a grommet or connector is missing where the linkage* from the carburetor (Not sure what it's called) is free floating when it looks like it should be attached to something else (another piece of metal in the back- so we zip-tied it until we see what the heck this looks like). So we need to track us down a bona fide working FJ40 somewhere and see what the heck we're missing. I thought I had video but don't at moment. Current plan is to put that in the universe and working on removing carburetor for clean/tune. To be continued...
Some methheads stole all the wheels... no problem. (Literally, the least of all our problems).
Step 1: Meet a cool dude in parking lot of HD w/ 5 old FJ Toyota wheels and tires on em. Give him $. He gives me tires. This is in Orlando, FL. The truck is in middle Georgia, he lives in Atlanta, I live in Orlando. Not exactly the perfect circumstance for a revival, but hey, who cares, this'll be a good time (so far so good, to date).
Step 2: Drive to GA with my GF (after changing my heater T's... on the side of I-4). Meet them at the barn, which is hiding on the property... arm ourselves with chainsaws, new distributor cap/plugs/oil/battery/jack/jackstands/who knows what else, I don't even remember. Hack this thing out as GF rolls eyes, his dad had the chainsaws charged, we go into the barn with flashlights, slap the wheels back on the hubs, and change out battery. Look to change distributor cap/wires/plugs... oh look, someone already changed those! My boy forgot, but this is good news. Fluid levels all look good, (I know we shouldn't have done this, but did it anyway)... new batt placed in. Fire it up after the trees that weren't there 6 years ago were cut down. Back it out, and drive to bigger barn a few hundred yards away. Never seen a man smile so big. His high school and college rig...
Where we currently are: We have an issue with the following: carburetor choke operates in sync with the accelerator pedal, when they should be independent. Possibly rust seizing the cable. And also looks like a grommet or connector is missing where the linkage* from the carburetor (Not sure what it's called) is free floating when it looks like it should be attached to something else (another piece of metal in the back- so we zip-tied it until we see what the heck this looks like). So we need to track us down a bona fide working FJ40 somewhere and see what the heck we're missing. I thought I had video but don't at moment. Current plan is to put that in the universe and working on removing carburetor for clean/tune. To be continued...
