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Gappy

Gappy

10 Year 15 Year 20 Year
Joined
May 24, 2005
Threads
241
Messages
3,734
Location
NE Indiana
My brother and i have the identical Cruiser's except for color, 62's. He visited me here in Indiana from Minn over Labor Day weekend. I have a 9K# hoist in my barn so he drove down his cruiser with Dakar lift kit packaged up in the back. He needed to leave Monday morning to be back at work on Tuesday. So we started to tear into it Sunday at 11:00 am thinking it would be a straight forward swap and be done Sunday evening. Well things didn't go as planned. We ended up not going to bed on sunday night, finished about 8:00 am Monday. We finished and dropped the truck and fired it up for a test drive. Well about that time we realized he sprung a oil leak in the oil line right below the radiator. All the banging and shakin on the vehicle rubbed an already rusty area of the oil line. So we figure this should be an easy repair. So little bro goes to cut out the bad area of the oil line and punctures the new $400 Toyota radiator with the sawsall. Well, you can probably figure the frustration after the sleep deprevation. I run to get the quick radiator fix and of course this doesn't work. We ended up having to wait until Tuesday when a shop opened. They pulled the radiator, did a repair and he was on his way by 4:00 PM Tuesday.

Any way, the whole thing was worth it to him. He loves the result and I can't wait for spring when I will do mine!!
 
Spring swaps appear very straightforward - its just bolts, right? Unless you've got a rig that has had a spring swap done in the last five years, expect the worst. If you're lucky, you could do it in a day. Bummer on the rad damage.
 
We had 2 problems, the bolts in the hangers were a bitch. I will buy a 4" grinder and a bigger torch before I do mine! Also, when we put the first rear spring on, the axle would not line up right, it pulled it forward on the new spring side. When we pushed the other side forward it looked like it pushed the drive shaft to far forward so we figured that it was wrong. Well we figured wrong, because we actually pulled the spring off and turned it around to see what it would do and it was worse in the opposite direction. So we turned it back around and made it work. We felt a little tarded after that, but relieved that it worked. Does anybody ever do this with out a lift? I can't imagine.
 
Here's my first trail story...

The short version of the story is that behind the campsite where I stayed on Saturday night is an old logging road that the locals turned into a 4WD / quad trail. I decided that it was necessary to cristen the LC in with a bit of mud, and possibly some damage. I took my uncle, his son, my uncle's friend and his kid way out back into the woods. We did some powerslides into huge flipping mud pits, where I came within two inches of owning a tree. We came up to a bridge and couldn't tell if we could fit, so I decided to take the more interesting trail through the river. The only thing that stopped me was a boulder that I bounced onto in the middle of the stream. I got out to evaluate whether or not I would be able to get the truck out w/o a rope or a winch, and I noticed a muffler sitting in the river right next to my truck. I said to myself, "Geeze, I hate people that leave their s*** out in the woods." Then it occurred to me that my truck sounded different, so I looked under the truck and there was a gap in the exhaust system where the muffler should be. s***!!! HELL YEAHH!!!!! My first trail damage by a boulder in the middle of "Muffler River."

After going over the previous bridge, after I backed out of the river, we encountered a huge muddy hill that the trail went up, definately going there. Went up, slowly at first, but after going through a ditch in the middle of the trail, I needed to gun it to keep from going back down, ALL FOUR TIRES SPINNING!!!! 2F POWER!!! I went up to the second ditch and stopped to evaluate whether or not I could clear it. While I was walking around, my uncle jumped in and pinned the throttle, breaking ALl FOUR TIRES's traction again!! This time though, he overheated the clutch, so we had to let it cool down.

After another couple of miles of good trails and mud pits, we turned around because we decided that we'd been gone for too long. On the way back, we did it all again!!!

:beer:
 
My brother and I were embarking on our 2nd annual "weekend road trip" which was taking us from New Mexico to Colorado. On that Sat. we rented a couple of snowmobiles near Salida for some fun in to snow. We then drove to Ouray via Gunnison to try and capture the Rocky Mt. views as much as possible. It was mid winter and we decided to camp out in the FJ62 right outside of Ouray past Black Canyon (I think that's the name). Anyway, if you're heading up into the mountains towards Yankee Boy Basin and all of those great trails, you'll probably remember the steep path directly out of Ouray heading that way. We reached a good spot a few miles up the road to camp for the night, but decided to head back to town for some cold beverages. I was driving, the road was completely covered in ice, and as we descended down that steep section of road (had it in 4wd Low), the tires began to slide on the ice. Needless to say, we both thought we would end up in the bottom of the canyon. Interestingly, as we began to slide down the road, my brother already had his door open and was about to bail out...I thought, "what the h*ll?!!" He was going to ditch the cruiser and leave me to fend for myself! I realized that you can learn something every day--Every man for himself!!
 
Hahaha good stories....nice one about your bro bailing out of the truck...


Keeping with the brother stories...

Spending all summer looking for a cruiser for my brother we found one in Atlanta GA, Checked out over line and pinged a few e-mails...

We set off to pick up the cruiser in Atlanta (fj40)...take it for a test drive and everything seems to work great, so we so the final sale and take off for the shipping company. Well the directions we got where from the dude that sold us the cruiser, turns out they we're way off. Not a bad thing but crappy when you have been driving all day and just want to be done with it. While on the highway getting lost the cruiser started to lag....turned off as the brakes started to heat up at stick at all four wheels. So, we pull into a gas station and see if we can remedy the problem....no dice. Seeing as we were both super tired from the long drive up and messing with the 40 we decided to throw it in 4-low and drive it with a locked up front tire a few more blocks to the shipping company.....turns out that the directions were wrong and we about 11 miles away from where we should be...We said screw it, found a garage called a diffrenet shipper and shipped it from there.....lesson learned.
 
60wag said:
Unless you've got a rig that has had a spring swap done in the last five years, expect the worst..
Click to expand...
i'm assuming you mean "hasn't" had a spring swap. my wagon's been swapped so many times courtesy of the whole pinnacle crap that i can swap a front spring in about 25 minutes. the 45, on the other hand, hadn't been done since it was built in 1965...i bent my high lift and went through a lot of gas on that one.
 
nuclearlemon said:
i'm assuming you mean "hasn't" had a spring swap. my wagon's been swapped so many times courtesy of the whole pinnacle crap that i can swap a front spring in about 25 minutes. the 45, on the other hand, hadn't been done since it was built in 1965...i bent my high lift and went through a lot of gas on that one.
Click to expand...

I think he's referring to how the bushings get stuck the f*** on after a few years
 
On the way doen to Baja 900 miles south of the border, the water pump blew just before we were to descend onto the coast of Baja California and the Sea of Cortez. I hitched a ride into the nearest town (1.5 hrs away) leaving friends with all the beach camping gear and cold beers until my return. 3 hours later we found ourselves at the end of a tow truck hook coming down the nastiest grade you can imagine popping beers on the way down to the coast.

The name of that stretch of highway is "Hell" or "Devil" something or other for a reason. The beers helped calm the nerves but it was a wild ride to say the least. One week later a new water pump was in and we were on our way back home.
 
hehehehehe...water pumps can suck can't they. just before i was to leave colorado for wisconsin to tow some 45's home, the w/p on my dodge went south. i tried to deny it thinking it was the crusty old hose. (really, the hose easily could;ve been the problem.

our caravan was a friend in his 1970's fritolay van reject, one car trailer and my dodge...we were bringing back 2 1/2 45swb pickups. we towed my truck out, then loaded one cruiser onto the trailer behind my truck, flat towed one behind the fritolay van and the other 1/2 was split between us. almost made it home with topping off the radiator every time we stopped for gas. then, near western nebraska, it was top it off halfway between tanks. by the time we got to the edge of nebraska, it was use up the four extra gallons we had between tanks....then in eastern colorado, it was the four extra gallons, all the ice out of both our coolers and the two 2 liter bottles of dr pepper...

made it a few miles from where i worked, called my ex, had him send a co worker with a couple gallons to make it to work. next day, switched it out in the parking lot.

nothing like an adventure.
 
nuclearlemon said:
hehehehehe...water pumps can suck can't they. just before i was to leave colorado for wisconsin to tow some 45's home, the w/p on my dodge went south. i tried to deny it thinking it was the crusty old hose. (really, the hose easily could;ve been the problem.

our caravan was a friend in his 1970's fritolay van reject, one car trailer and my dodge...we were bringing back 2 1/2 45swb pickups. we towed my truck out, then loaded one cruiser onto the trailer behind my truck, flat towed one behind the fritolay van and the other 1/2 was split between us. almost made it home with topping off the radiator every time we stopped for gas. then, near western nebraska, it was top it off halfway between tanks. by the time we got to the edge of nebraska, it was use up the four extra gallons we had between tanks....then in eastern colorado, it was the four extra gallons, all the ice out of both our coolers and the two 2 liter bottles of dr pepper...

made it a few miles from where i worked, called my ex, had him send a co worker with a couple gallons to make it to work. next day, switched it out in the parking lot.

nothing like an adventure.
Click to expand...

holy crap! very resourceful...dr.pepper
 
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