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Home again, had to cut the trip short due to a untimely exit of the driver's side wiper arm in the pouring rain running down the highway. I lost the right side earlier in the year, fixed it with a screw, but didn't get around to the driver's side. I bought a bottle of RainX and kept on driving.

We stopped at BobM's house and enjoyed a good visit and his beautiful view of a New England lake. ( Thanks Bob! ) Didn't get to find any dirt roads, but had a blast around Bar Harbor and Acadia park. Going through Vermont, New Hampshire, upper New York and Maine in the Fall is an unbelievable trip, even got to ride a ferry across Lake Champlain!

Not many pictures this time, but with logging over 3500 miles and my wife's bum knee (no hiking) and a missing wiper arm we still managed to have a ball.

On the way up we stopped over night on the Moose River.

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Made it to the ocean, a beautiful bay right outside Acadia.

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Jordan Pond in Acadia Park

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...and the best for last. I was starting to think Bob's dogs were eyeing me up as their new chew toy. :)

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Looks like a beauty trip!
 
Thank you, it started out to be a quick put together and drive things, but turned into my personal nightmare. We're having fun with it now and I'm glad it turned out running. :)
 
This is incredible. I’ve figured out the coatings I’ll be using for sure. Awesome work Ron.
 
Thanks Glenn for reading through my testimony of insanity.

Spending some time this Winter, I wanted to fix a steering problem I'm having with my FJ60 box. It had a snagging feeling sometimes turning and started to leak out one of the tapped holes for the hydro porting. I wasn't sure where the snag was coming from, so I picked another column from 968shelbs and Mel lowe sent me an FJ80 box. Since the 60 box was leaking, I started there. My thought was to have the 80 rebuilt with upgraded 105 parts, because the 80 boxes have a reputation of breaking the sector shaft. In doing that I would have a bomb proof box, problem is the pitman arm from the 105 (80) is straighter than the drop arm of the 60 and it would hit the 55 frame. If you're wondering by now, I gave up being normal a long time ago. :)

So, My only fix to the problem would to do something similar to what Lil' John did and notch the frame, so the up graded pitman arm would swing free. In doing that I would have to build a new drag link with a 80 tie rod end in order to match the pitman arm ( rabbit hole ). With the Pig Party coming on fast, I decided to put the 60 pitman arm on the 80 box, which they both share the same 48 spine count, run it as is until next Winter. At that time, I'll cut the frame out and box it, have the 80 box rebuilt with the up graded parts and built a new drag link.

Getting back to the snag, when I pulled the 60 box off, I unscrewed the fitting (for the hydro port) that was leaking and noticed the threads on the end were totally chewed up as if something was hitting them. I tried to manually work the box and found heavy resistance going one way. I'm thinking it was hitting that fitting. So, for now I'm leaving the column alone and try it with the new box which works very smooth. The 80 box shares the same mounting holes as the later 60 box. I couldn't change that because the frame has been fish plated and sleeved. The one thing the 80 has is a bigger pump which helps steering effort with bigger tires.

Here's the 80 box with the 60 pitman arm.
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Here's the 80 pitman arm, you can see how much straighter it is..


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Sounds like you may have found the hang up there, hope it proves to be good now.
 
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