The Holy Truck / was Trypo the trypophobia-Inducing truck / was a chopped model 80

[John Young]

So it turns out that while the fuel lines may have been blown out last year, the tanks were never cleaned and they are full of garbage. We are, of course, dropping the fuel tanks, cleaning, and replacing the fuel socks.

But there are some other unfortunate findings...

Like not cleaning the manifold or replacing the gaskets on the carb:

Here's another shot of the residue in the filter just for fun:

 

[John Young]

The guys asked me to come by yesterday to discuss the tanks.

The main tank was looking better than the sub, but both had issues.

The sub was worse than the main. I spent some time yesterday afternoon sending messages looking for a replacement for the sub tank, but so far no luck.

 

[John Young]

Yesterday afternoon I went looking in person for a sub tank and found one

Getting it out was quite an ordeal

But after at least two hours of effort the guys got it out

The sender looked bad but that is one part I have been able to get new

Here's the big reveal:

 

[John Young]

Here is a still

Hopefully that is all just dried up gas, and not hiding something worse.

The float level indicator looks suspicious on the top. Hopefully inside the tank is better. I should look for my 19 USD Amazon borescope...

I had taken Iota, the unfinished 94 to do the hunting and it served its intended purpose of being a parts truck

 

[John Young]

The old main tank cleaned up nicely as did the sub tank I found at the scrap yard.

Main tank:

Sub tank:

My son is arriving for a visit tomorrow and it looks like I will be picking him up in the Holy Truck. Should be ready this afternoon. My tentative plan is to drive to the Liwa Festival on Sunday in the Holy Truck as a little shakedown.

 

[John Young]

We collected the Holy Truck from PowerTec about a week ago.

This is me in the Omani diesel going for a test drive with my son driving the Holy Truck there behind me.

Here's the 1HZ that I will be shipping to the US for installation in the troopy whenever that gets there.

We took a long test drive in the Holy Truck out to the rather remote 4x4 History Museum. Just as an example of the oddballs we saw here is a Chinese knock off of an 80

On the way back we stopped at Emirates Auction to have a look at what was on offer

All crap, bondoed to hell

 

[John Young]

My son and I had a lovely time in Oman and Southern UAE over the holidays, mostly in the Holy Truck.

We even made it to Liwa's annual festival and saw monster trucks from the US performing

And did a little off road driving of our own until darkness and the general craziness of Liwa forced us to air up and go home


I really did not want to do too much because I knew I had bogus locking hubs on the Holy Truck. Early last year I had bought a bunch of hubs for the 70s and 80s from the Philippines. They looked really legit, but @cruisermatt notice the problem when they went to install them on the diesel 70 pickup and the flange cracked. Closer inspection showed the lack of captive washers on the cap and the lack of QC stamps.

Anyways, I had these damn things on the troopy, the gas pickup and both 80's here in Dubai. And I had not had a chance to do anything about it, so I was driving on bogus locking hubs, hoping for the best. So we were not being adventurous on this first big outing far from home in the Holy Truck.

Turned out that was a good idea....

 

[John Young]

Back in Dubai we were driving around doing normal things when the front left hub started to make awful noises. Drove over to PowerTec and they pulled it all apart and the hubs were grinding themselves to powder inside so they basically were a little weight spinning around off center making a nasty little vibration. Not having the old caps on hand any more they just greased everything up as a temp fix and I am sorting out new hubs ASAP.

My son's visit came to an end last night. He has fallen in love with Holy Truck. He did most of the driving during hsi visit. The trucks will be going over to Florida in March or April at his request. I will be doing some cosmetics and a few other things before it goes. I am going to try another shop in Dubai for this work:

Got to love a shop with a 2CV outside.

But I don't think the truck wanted my son to leave. We drove to short term parking at DXB and it was just heaving at 1 am--this is when a lot of flights leave from Dubai. We threaded our way to the entrance to the parking, the barrier raised, and ... the engine died. I opened the door to get out to push us through but my son got it started, and we got through, but not fast enough. The barrier came down on our spare tire!

I carefully picked a parking spot where a flatbed could get to us:

So I take my son with with two big bags loaded with camel leather, an ATV seat that he is recovering, and a sub tank binnacle for the diesel pickup at Matt's place and we get him checked in and through security.

Here, BTW is the ATV seat we were working on:

Anyways, I went back to the truck and was able to get it started. Sub tank showed full, sub tank light activated. Main tank intermittant low fuel warning. Google maps said I was 10 minutes from the nearest gas station. I think I know what went wrong.

The last time I drove the Holy Truck for any real distance was over a year ago on a trip to Oman and back. I don't remember any strange fuel behavior, other than just as we were returning to dubai the engine started to loose power and have trouble starting. Then a long period where the truck was either being worked on or idle, and then recently as per the posts above, when we discovered the state of the fuel tanks.

We had gone stem to stern on the fuel system and I had -assumed- the two sub/main solenoid valves were ok. But on this trip the sub tank would drain even when not activated. I noted this and occasionally switched the sub tank on and off, thinking the valve was just stidky. But after our last fill up in Liwa the sub tank level stayed pegged at full. And I congratulated myself for having 'fixed' the issue of a sticky set of valves. Turns out, probably not.

Before driving the 40 minutes to the airport I had noted the main fuel tank level and switched to the sub tank. When we reached the airport the sub tank needle was still pegged on full. We were drawing on the last little bit of fuel from the main tank, I now beleive.

I drove out of Dubai International Airport in very heavy traffic praying that I would not stall out and have to call a flat bed at 2:30 am, and I drove gingerly to the closest gas station. The truck stalled out three times on the way, the last time just as I was rolling to a stop at the pump. I put in 30 bucks of gas and it took a bit to start with that dry mechanical fuel pump on the carb'ed 1FZ, but it did start. And had no further stalling issues on the 40 minute drive home.

I'm now going to try to find new valves for the main/sub tanks.

 

[John Young]

So my friend Travis and I have been chatting about getting him a 70 series pickup, but he wants a 1FZ EFI engine and those don't seem to exist in this market before the 2000's, so they can't be imported. I asked him why he can't just swap in the engine he wants from a carbed 1FZ. @Bardiya and I were just discussing the same thing. As I (imperfectly) understand it, the EFI engines require a pressurized fuel deliery system. I own a 93 80 with EFI and I really don't like the 6v/12v relay system, and I have had problems with it, and it gives me headaches to think about.

And more recently with the diesel pickup, @cruisermatt ended up replacing those main/sub valves. I don't think he used the OEM part number valves. But these are just 2 and 3 way valves--nothing special so anything probably should work.

Here is the diagram:

The two original OEM valves are:

77720-60020 for the valve on the upper right of the diagram that Toyota calls "VALVE ASSY, FUEL TANK SOLENOID RETURN". There seems to be some availability on this valve.

The other one, 77710-60070, which Toyota calls "VALVE ASSY, FUEL TANK SOLENOID MAIN", seems to have little to now availability. I can't even find a decent photo of one; this is the best I can do:

But at least I can tell it is another 3-way valve. I really would prefer to replace both valves.

 

[John Young]

@cruisermatt used these on Golden Boy, the diesel 70:

77710-60040 is the feed valve, with larger diameter inlets and outlets
77720-60010 is the return valve.

 

[cruisermatt]

The valves we used on your HZJ75 are the correct ones for your HZJ75, not sure on the availability of the 80 series valves but if one/both are NLA you should be able to just swap the electrical connector, those are definitely common connectors on both the 80 and 75 valves

 

[John Young]

The valves we used on your HZJ75 are the correct ones for your HZJ75, not sure on the availability of the 80 series valves but if one/both are NLA you should be able to just swap the electrical connector, those are definitely common connectors on both the 80 and 75 valves

Looks like they were also used in gas trucks too according to TOYO DIY

So there is that....

Just looked at my HZJ80 version of this:
VALVE ASSY, FUEL TANK SOLENOID MAIN 77710-60030
VALVE ASSY, FUEL TANK SOLENOID RETURN 77720-60020

Looks like Terrain Tamer has the 60030 unit available for an eye-watering 394 AUD

And the return seems available on ebay and elsewhere

They have different connectors but that is not a drama.

 

[John Young]

I decided to look at the diagram for my 12/1997 HZJ80L-GCMNSV

And compare it to the Holy Truck, which is a 9/1996 FZJ80L-GCMNUV from the same source, japan-parts.eu:

The gasser sure looks more complicated....

I am going to take a flyer and just get the parts and try them. Worst case, I will just put the new valves in the Omani diesel.

 

[John Young]

The guys did have some trouble with the substitute valve: "Functionally [its workable]. And we can get it to mount however cause of the orientation the one pipe is now up against the chassis" What they ended up doing was cleaning up the old valves, which now seem to be working after the cleaning, so here is what they did:

Hey John, so we checked the fuel valves and both the old ones seems to still be functioning fine. We have installed the one new one.
Will clean out the fuel lines again and then jan will get into the carb
Also the rear View camera system is going into the Holy truck and show be completed by tomorrow

 

[John Young]

Aside from the fun of the new rear view 200 series mirror, the guys have been busy in the engine bay. They found an age-cracked hose that appears to have solved the slightly rough idle. Before I went on a short trip to the US, The Swede (kind of an Ancient Mariner sort of guy) and I looked through the engine bay and we agreed on several suspect items that had to go. Mostly corroded water inlets and outlets. That's done now too and the engine bay is starting to look and behave much better:

It is going to get some more cleaning and general sprucing up before going to have the interior looked after in preparation for shipping to Florida in the MAR/APR timeframe, where it will become a daily driver for my younger boy.

The engine really does sound much better and is much better behaved. The little hesitation on the throttle is gone, and the idle is rock solid regardless of AC compressor activity.


I realize now that the Holy Truck is the one that really has not had a material amount of attention to the engine. It now has a completely redone drivetrain and exterior, but I've just been kicking the can down the road on the engine... But now The Swede has decided he likes the truck.

"The Swede"

 

[John Young]

So we've had some goings on with the Holy Truck. The rear suspension was equipped with new and quite heavy duty Terrain Tamer springs and shocks. While I did not notice anything complaints were raised by others that the rear was unreasonably bouncy. This will be a daily for my younger boy so it is something I paid attention to.

Here's the Terrain Tamer catalog:

In consultation with TT's reseller we picked the progressive heavy duty for the 80s and comfort progressive for the 105 because it was to serve as a daily for me here in Dubai. Apparently the progressive heavy duty were not deflecting much at all and stayed at top of range, causing the bounce.

What we did was swap the springs from the 105 which had a very nice ride onto the Omani diesel 80 to see the effect.

I am headed over now to give the Omani diesel a try to see if this is a viable solution for the Holy Truck. If it is I will order the same progressive springs for the Holy Truck and a set to put back on the 105.

And in the background I have been working on the dash for the Holy Truck, and it turned out very nicely:

And the instrument cluster:

 

[FMC80]

Nice work! How many LCs do you own in total? How many would you say you’ve owned over your lifetime?

 

[John Young]

Nice work! How many LCs do you own in total? How many would you say you’ve owned over your lifetime?

It's more like they own me... It's too many to be sensible. I'm embarrassed about it I really only started getting into them after moving to Dubai about 10 years ago actually now that I think about it it was 12 years ago...

 

[FMC80]

It's more like they own me... It's too many to be sensible. I'm embarrassed about it I really only started getting into them after moving to Dubai about 10 years ago actually now that I think about it it was 12 years ago...

Embarrassment was what I was going for. Don’t be shy.

You’re in good company.

 

[John Young]

We are getting close to sending the Holy Truck to the new world. The mechanicals are all complete. Winch work is prepped and ready for final installation.

And would you believe that a friend of mine found a new old stock bumper for the Holy Truck?