Hello and welcome to my first thread!! Over this weekend we picked up 1 1973 FJ40 (red) and 1 1970 FJ40 (green). My name is Brayden, from South Dakota. It is quite possible we are in over our heads with these projects, ha!! But I can tell you this, we are going to give it everything we’ve got. This will certainly be a learning experience for me, and I hope I can use this forum to record all of our progress and to reach out for wisdom.
These units have not seen sunlight for 30+ years until this weekend. We winched Big Green out of the seller’s barn with little to no issues, on Friday. Then came Saturday, Big Red‘s two front wheels would absolutely not rotate. Conveniently the seller had a friend down the street who dropped by with a tractor and managed to pull it up onto the trailer (to note, this was one of the more sketchy things I have ever done, but it made it on the trailer.. ha!).
The plan is to start with Big Red. The front wheels still won’t turn, so we need to do some tinkering there… if you have any ideas, please drop me a line. These are drum brakes FYI.
Where do YOU start with a restoration? Disassemble everything? Try to get the motor to fire? To note, Big Green has half a motor in the engine bay with the other half in the back seat, ha! These appear to be original motors. Big Red has a 3-speed F motor, just missing the top half of the carburetor from what I can see. I believe Big Green is a 3-speed on the tree!? I’m totally thrown off by it…
Anyways, I look forward to being a part of the forums here. Cheers!
These units have not seen sunlight for 30+ years until this weekend. We winched Big Green out of the seller’s barn with little to no issues, on Friday. Then came Saturday, Big Red‘s two front wheels would absolutely not rotate. Conveniently the seller had a friend down the street who dropped by with a tractor and managed to pull it up onto the trailer (to note, this was one of the more sketchy things I have ever done, but it made it on the trailer.. ha!).
The plan is to start with Big Red. The front wheels still won’t turn, so we need to do some tinkering there… if you have any ideas, please drop me a line. These are drum brakes FYI.
Where do YOU start with a restoration? Disassemble everything? Try to get the motor to fire? To note, Big Green has half a motor in the engine bay with the other half in the back seat, ha! These appear to be original motors. Big Red has a 3-speed F motor, just missing the top half of the carburetor from what I can see. I believe Big Green is a 3-speed on the tree!? I’m totally thrown off by it…
Anyways, I look forward to being a part of the forums here. Cheers!