Hello Everybody,
This is my first post on this forum, although I am quietly following it for some years. Since I found here some nice ideas during this time, I decided to give something in return and share with you some of my projects.
This thread is about a full scale restoration of a 1992 LJ73. Actually it is more than a simple restoration, it's a rebuild with some improvements, following my experience with the J7 model.
But enough introduction, let me begin with the story.
About 3 years ago I bought from France an LJ73 with the intention to use it for parts. At that moment I was working at a different project and I needed some parts. The car was not in a very good shape, the previous owner(s) did not took too much care of it. Anyhow, this is how the car looked like when I got my hands on it:
At first I did not pay too much attention to it and as my other project stalled for a while, the car was simply parked near by my garage for half year. One day I checked the French registration documents and realised that the car was homologated as "2 places fourgon" (commercial vehicle with two seats) which made it quite interesting for registration in my country (Romania), due to taxation reasons.
So I took it inside the garage, put it on the ramp and took a better look at it. At this moment I realised that the car was in a much better shape than I thought, and had in fact very little rust. What looked like rust was in fact a reddish dry mud sticked very well to the chassis and underneath the body.
But other than that, it was a complete nightmare, the engine was leaking everywhere, the turbocharger was dead, the electric harness was cut and tied. It looked like it was serviced by a drunk mechanic for the past 10 years.
The interior was equally bad, the seats were torn and especially stinky, everything was covered with a dark sticky grime.
So I started to dismantle it, while thinking how will I rebuild it. My first ideas was to swap the engine for a 3.0 1KZ-T that I had already, together with all the necessary parts like clutch housing bell and some other items. The 3 litre 1KZ-T engine is a much better alternative to the 2LT engine which is heavy and quite weak.
This is my first post on this forum, although I am quietly following it for some years. Since I found here some nice ideas during this time, I decided to give something in return and share with you some of my projects.
This thread is about a full scale restoration of a 1992 LJ73. Actually it is more than a simple restoration, it's a rebuild with some improvements, following my experience with the J7 model.
But enough introduction, let me begin with the story.
About 3 years ago I bought from France an LJ73 with the intention to use it for parts. At that moment I was working at a different project and I needed some parts. The car was not in a very good shape, the previous owner(s) did not took too much care of it. Anyhow, this is how the car looked like when I got my hands on it:
At first I did not pay too much attention to it and as my other project stalled for a while, the car was simply parked near by my garage for half year. One day I checked the French registration documents and realised that the car was homologated as "2 places fourgon" (commercial vehicle with two seats) which made it quite interesting for registration in my country (Romania), due to taxation reasons.
So I took it inside the garage, put it on the ramp and took a better look at it. At this moment I realised that the car was in a much better shape than I thought, and had in fact very little rust. What looked like rust was in fact a reddish dry mud sticked very well to the chassis and underneath the body.
But other than that, it was a complete nightmare, the engine was leaking everywhere, the turbocharger was dead, the electric harness was cut and tied. It looked like it was serviced by a drunk mechanic for the past 10 years.
The interior was equally bad, the seats were torn and especially stinky, everything was covered with a dark sticky grime.
So I started to dismantle it, while thinking how will I rebuild it. My first ideas was to swap the engine for a 3.0 1KZ-T that I had already, together with all the necessary parts like clutch housing bell and some other items. The 3 litre 1KZ-T engine is a much better alternative to the 2LT engine which is heavy and quite weak.
Last edited:
