Hey everyone, thanks for the input on the dieseling. It's definitely near the top of my annoyance list, as is the hard hot start issue, and I'll keep plugging away with both. Putting an Aisin back on, or even going with a Holley EFI, are both on the table as options.
HOWEVER...........
Today was a big day for Kaylee, a good day with some happy news. But we also have had a big re-sort of priorities. Hubby and I took Kaylee over to the awesome folks at Torfab in Everett, which is only 30min away from us. I had spoken to the Torfab folks about doing a pre-purchase inspection of Kaylee and they'd been game, but the PO lived too far away to drive Kaylee all the way down to Everett without some guarantee of a purchase. And honestly, the PO offered us such a low price on Kaylee (the final purchase price bordered on theft, it really did) that we took the gamble of not doing the inspection beforehand. That being said, we have seen things and become concerned about a few things since purchase which had us feel like a Torfab once-over was a really good idea. Today was that day.
The very best news is that Kaylee is actually in really good shape for being such an old gal. Remarkably little corrosion save for one section which I'll talk about in a minute, generally good mechanicals, generally good interior, and the guy laughed when I said she'd been in Colorado most of her life. His response was "oh, yea, I could tell. Cuz we don't get sun fade like that up here!"
The more sobering news is that Kaylee has an issue smoldering with her steering in particular and front end in general. Her steering knuckle bearings are extremely worn, and the knuckles in general are badly in need of service. It's not a safety issue yet, but it's getting close. And the power steering pump is also on the way out. I had started to suspect issues with the steering because she'd groan and shudder sometimes when I turned the wheel, worse on the right side. And there's a fair amount of side-to-side play in the front wheels. So that work has now gone to the top of the fixit list. Hubby was pouring over the manuals tonight looking at what's involved, and we're probably going to have Torfab do the work. It would be an awesome project to get into, and we'd learn a whole lot about how that truck is put together. That's a lot of why we bought the FJ60, was to be able to do that sort of work. But I just started a new job, hubby is about to change assignments at his, and for the moment we have nothing but a dirt driveway to work on. The real-world logistics were just starting to look ugly. But Torfab would do an awesome job for us way faster, and we'd know it was done right. So that's now the first priority for Kaylee. We're hoping we can get that done within the next few weeks, and Kaylee is on injured reserve status until then.
The other good news is that another concern I had has been laid to rest. I have spent a fair amount of time now crawling around under the rig looking at the frame, and most of it is in surprisingly good shape. But the C- channels behind the rear wheels, and several of those cross-pieces, were starting to look dicey. The further back you go, the worse it got. The cross piece immediately behind the rear bumper looks like it's just been shredded by corrosion, and the bumper itself has a crease in it which has rusted out. I wasn't sure if those problems would doom Kaylee to an early grave. Happily, the answer is "not even close". Turns out, the culprit wasn't corrosion. The cross-piece immediately behind the bumper was damaged a long time ago by the incorrect installation of a trailer hitch. Whoever installed the hitch mounted it directly to that cross-piece, rather than using braces to go out to either side and mount up to the C-channels directly. So that little cross-piece was subjected to all the stresses from that hitch, and all the weight and bouncing around from whatever was being towed. At some point, that metal finally gave and started to crack and warp. Then corrosion kicked in and did the rest. When Torfab saw that, they said yea, they've seen that before, but no worries. They've pretty much worked out a tried-and-true way to cut all that crap out and replace it with new metal such that we get correct structural support and solidity again. He said we'd lose that particular trailer hitch because it was never intended for the FJ60 to begin with, but we could replace it with something better if we wanted. He wasn't concerned at all about the rest of the frame, and it's not even a priority right now. That was a HUGE relief. No more nightmares about having to do a frame swap or hearing that Kaylee wasn't worth saving.
So I'll keep dinking around with the carb until we take Kaylee back in for her front end work. Then after that's done, we'll schedule the frame repair. I'm just relieved to finally have expert eyes go over Kaylee and let us know that yea, we have a solid truck that just needs some help here and there. I'll be sleeping way better tonight.
Kathryn and Kaylee, who is probably heaving a big sigh of relief too
www.cruisercult.com
Dave
. There is a good group of Cruiserheads around if you are ever in a place where you need a hand or second set of eyes. 
