The Honey Badger (Story/Build of my FJ62)

[Kleatus]

Before SAS2 I also built some drawers and a fridge slider with a dual top folding table under it. (Long before the bumper seen here).

Also made up a manual square tube bender and made a rack, with some hog panel mesh on the front part.

 

[Kleatus]

3000 miles for SAS#2.

en route with @NookShneer and @gt7058a

 

[Kleatus]

Just a few random photos.

 

[FJ Silver]

Great build Kleatus!
Could you share more images of your kitchen/drawer set up? Love the coffee table lift thing. Thanks!

 

[Kleatus]

Thanks @FJ Silver .
It is a double slide with a set of coffee table hinges inside the smaller slide. It has worked well and is handy.

I don't have many photos from about a 2 year stretch after dropping a hitch on my phone and cracking the micro SD card, but pulled these from old IG.

 

[FJ Silver]

Very cool, thank you.
I'm sketching out my platform extending all the way to the front seats, removing the rear seating. Thanks for the insperation.

 

[Kleatus]

Some time had passed, so naturally the truck put on some different plates..

 

[Kleatus]

In preparation for SAS#3 I wanted some lower gearing, and had recently found some metal on the T case drain magnet.. apart it came.

The output bearing race had spun in the housing and chewed up the shim. The bearing wasn't dead yet, but it needed help. I had to use a different housing off a spare T case, and of course Georg came through getting me new shims in a hurry (as they don't come in the rebuild kit.)

I installed a Terrain Tamer extended length input gear, because with the miles I was converned about wear on the A440s output shaft. The shaft actually looked great.

The case was clearanced for a set of Sumo 3:1 gears. Awesome difference in low range performance.

It was hot. It was humid.

 

[Kleatus]

SAS3.

6,800 lbs. Ooof.

 

[Kleatus]

Showed up with some other 60 series trucks to the Southern Swine Soiree 2019 in Southern Illinois.

@scrapdaddy has one awesome FJ55

Little run up to the bluffs in the fog with @rhah

 

[Kleatus]

I haven't done much with the truck other than drive it in the last 2 years or so. It just keeps on chugging along. It brought another little one home from the hospital about a year ago too, they keep us pretty busy.

Plenty of distraction by its stablemates too.

 

[Kleatus]

The old Honey Badger has found some time for a few extracurricular activities in recent past.

Bee trap installation platform:

Rust bucket extraction unit:

Large beam from the woods retriever:

 

[Kleatus]

The beam would get turned into a work bench. A proper one. I'd only ever had wooden ones, and really longed for something stable, heavy and solid. About 2,000 lbs of steel in this thing.

 

[scrapdaddy]

Great write up and very talented in the shop.

 

[cruisermatt]

Now that is a proper workbench. I like it

 

[Kleatus]

We ended up trailering my diesel swapped FJ40 to Colorado for SAS4.
( Builds - Patches - My '76 40. B3.3 Swap and some general fixin' up - https://forum.ih8mud.com/threads/patches-my-76-40-b3-3-swap-and-some-general-fixin-up.620031/ )

It was great to drive it after working on it off and on for ~10 years, but with a wife, 2 little kids and the dog a 40 is not ideal for that kind of trip. Especially when working the kinks out of a new (rushed completion) build, and with no A/C.

That means the wagon must again go this year.

There are a number of issues stacking up agianst the current drivetrain:

• It gets hot (240+) on long climbs. This is with a new fan clutch and otherwise good cooling system - except the cracks in the water jacket which leak more and bleed pressure when it's working hard.
• There is a still undiagnosed random cutting out issue that has popped up several times, sometimes not for more than a year, sometimes 2 months apart. Of course it always happens when the wife is along. I've pulled my hair out testing things looking for it, to no avail and don't feel like throwing parts at it (namely an entire harness and every sensor/electronic component I haven't already replaced.) Since I can't replicate it, and it's so infrequent I would worry if I had actually got it...
• My harness is old and crappy. I've spliced and repaired many parts of it.
• The A440 is just a mleh of a transmission. Yes it works, but it's a lazy shifter and hunts between 1 and 2 more than I'd like in snow and mud when wheelspeed is needed. It also makes a lot of heat. I have a big Derale cooler with its own fan and it still gets hotter than I'd like on the trail. I also thought I would solve my "thud" going into and between gears with the longer input gear, but it's still there.
• Possibly most damning is that the last oil sample I took showed a sizeable increase in wear metals, which corresponded to a slowly declining hot idle position of the oil pressure gauge.

It still starts up fine at 10 below zero, and probably has more life in it than I am willing to admit.

For the reasons above however, given that I want to be able to continue to use it for cross country family 4-wheeling trips, it needs a new (or newer) engine and transmission.

So many options. I've been fortunate enough to be able to drive quite a few combinations and feel them out a bit; of course the 2F and 3FE, 12HT, 5.3, 6.0, R2.8, 4BT.

 

[Kleatus]

My preferred engine choice is the 12HT. If they grew on trees in corn country, I'd have one...or three.

The cost to do the 3FE up right and buy an H55 seemed to be more expensive than other alternatives.

I do have another 4 cylinder Cummins, but making all the accessory drive stuff work is more time consuming than a guy would think, and it would need some fuel pump tweaking like my FJ40.

If I was going to swap an engine, I may as well have some torque..

Torque. I started looking for a 1 ton Chevy with a Gen VI big block, with factory roller cam and less leaky aluminum covers. For a heavy 4x4 vehicle, they are hard to beat. They're pretty cheap in these parts. Plus the truck would already have a 4L80 or NV4500...Mileage...? Mleh..

I was looking on CL and FB Marketplace for a suitable truck and came across this:
A 2000 Silverado Grandpa Edition. LM7, 2wd, body kit, window louvers, brown leather.

140k miles and ran awesome, well aside from missing 3rd and 4th gear...

One owner truck with the original 2 mile title, all paperwork, original purchase docs and maintenance records in the guys name who it was registered to, who is in his 80's. That would be pretty cool stuff to have for an old cruiser instead of a 2wd Silverado, but at least it supports a good maintenance history.

Best part is that it's a Florida truck. A still wearing valid Florida plates Florida truck. Not the usual Missouri definition, where they bought a 3 or 4 year old truck from down south 20 years ago and still call it a "southern truck." This thing is clean underneath. Factory frame wax still present throughout. No rust (ok aside from that diff cover). Thought I didn't really care about the body, I hate breaking bolts. The engine and associated components were also clean.

The clean cab and body would help me out later.. most of these around here (and plenty of the newer GMT900 trucks) are devoid of rockers, cab corners, and the sheetmetal above the rear wheels.

The price was right, and became even righter as I bargained him down... Tailgate? Nah, you can keep that. Alloy wheels? Keep em! Your son wants the radio? Take it! Where we at now ?

 

[Kleatus]

Turns out somebody had a little run in with something.. totally jacked up the front end, it had different fenders and hood and none of it lined up right. There were a lot of zip ties used. .The trans cooler was looped out. Trans fluid in the rad. The cooler broke inside and burned out the trans.

I think the old mans kids got the truck after he got in a wreck, and tried to fix it up before realizing the trans was crap.

Time for organ extraction.

One nice thing about rednecks is that when they put a front clip back on a Silverado, including the bumper, they only use like 7 bolts. No joke.
(** we all know that 4 harbor freight zip ties = one M8 bolt.)
With that in mind I guess they did OK. It came off quick.

(**) If you use the good USA ones from Graybar, its a direct 1:1 substitution.

 

[cruisermatt]

I love pulling the motors out of those. I've got it down to about 30 minutes now

Sawzalling everything, of course

 

[Kleatus]

Once I had the engine out, I needed to scare up a transmission. The 4L60 was short 2 gears and they're too light duty IMHO anyway, so I put the carcass up for sale.. or trade, and scored.

The dude with this 94 K3500 really liked what was left of the white truck, so they traded places. He said the 6.5 was no good. Mice had claimed most of the plastic and wiring under the hood so I never bothered to find out.

Here's why that was a good deal..