the phoenix my 70 fj40 rebuild (1 Viewer)

[southern jeeper]

Long story short i recently ended up rolling the 1970 40 i picked up this spring. I just picked a 67 parts rig to use the front end and part out the rest. More content and pictures to come.

 

[southern jeeper]

Here are few pics of my rig before the roll over

 

[southern jeeper]

And here the after photos

 

[southern jeeper]

And here’s the parts rig I’m working with

 

[southern jeeper]

So my tentative plan is to take the good parts from my 70, mainly the drive train and tub and put them on the parts chassis along with its front end mainly the hood and fenders and end up selling the rest of the parts rig.

 

[southern jeeper]

So the parts rig is a 65-67 era and fj40 as per the owner. Apparently he got started on it and got it down to the frame and gave up on it. It has an ome suspension kit on it as well as some fancy rims and tires. I personally think the frame looks great and is going to be a great starting point for the rebuild of my truck. Also I’m no sure if this work of the po or just the vintage of the parts truck but I didn’t see a vin in the frame so I’m assuming that shouldn’t be a problem rebuilding my truck

 

[southern jeeper]

So I made some progress this afternoon got some of the front end taken off. Also anybody know what this wires go to? They weren’t connected and wasn't sure what to label it.

 

[KingAir Driver]

Should be the brake sensors on the bottom of the brake master cylinder.

 

[southern jeeper]

So I made some more progress on the tear down and started getting the new frame prepped to reinstall the engine mounts. More to come

 

[Kschep]

How’d ya roll it again?

 

[Greek Cruiserhead]

I gather no people or dogs have been injured.
All the best with the rebuild mate!

 

[justbecause]

It looks like that roll bar might have paid for itself. I hope everyone is ok.

 

[southern jeeper]

I gather no people or dogs have been injured.
All the best with the rebuild mate!

It looks like that roll bar might have paid for itself. I hope everyone is ok.

Yeah everybody made it ok.
I reckon it is time for an update. This spring, watching fuel prices steadily rise, I decided to go ahead and do the diesel swap I've been wanting to do for the last five years. About 4 years ago I bought a Mercedes e300 with the om606 with the intention of eventually pulling the motor to swap in to something. So this spring I finally got around to pulling the motor and getting it set up for the swap. I converted it to a manual injection pump from an earlier om603 and also converted it to a rear sump with an oil pan and pump from a newer om648. I still need to source a few small parts before I can test the new pump but it is 95% there. I'm planning on reusing my stock 4 speed transmission by using speed gems om606 adapter and an advanced adapters sbc bellhousing. Currently Advanced adapters has been my hold up since they're nearly two months out on the bell housing so if anybody they don't need let me know... The tentative plan is to get the drive train together and get it set in the new frame and then mount my power steering bracket from 4x4labs and then plumb up the radiator and intercooler and hopefully have it back under its own power sometime this winter.

 

[southern jeeper]

Finally got the bell housing to adapt the engine this week thanks to @Stuckinthe80s. After a couple hours of sweating and cussing i was finally able to wrestle the transmission in to place and get it all mated up. From what I measured the whole om606 set up is only 4-5 inches longer than the stock 1f and h42 so drive shaft length should be no concern. The next step is to figure out some sort of transmission mount. Looking at the transmission I was thinking I might could make a kind of cradle that would mount to the tranny on the two lower trans to bellhousing bolts, with longer bolts of course. As of now thats about the only idea I have.

 

[cruisermatt]

I think the best thing to do would be to just bite the bullet and go FJ60 H42 and splitcase, that way you have much easier provisions for a transmission crossmember.
Even better would be a 85-87 H42 and a H55 would be a easy swap for later

 

[southern jeeper]

A few photos of the adapter set up. So went om606 -> speed gems sbc adapter kit -> Downey sbc bellhousing adapter -> h42. The long tube sticking out is the dipstick tube I'm working on making since the originals are NLA. it is simply a piece of 14m od tube sanded down to fit. I plan on welding a flange and a bracket on to mount it.

 

[southern jeeper]

Turns out I had the wrong throw out bearing and hub for my adapter so while I am waiting on that to get here I started mocking up the front end a little bit to try and figure out how to set up the inter cooler.

I was thinking about reusing the original Mercedes intercooler and I think it could be made to work but I decided to go with a bigger aftermarket one instead incase I want to turn up the engine in the future. I settled on a universal 20x8-7/8x2-1/2 air to air intercooler in hopes of matching my radiator with pretty closely. For transmission mounts, I talked to Downey about the adapter I have and he informed me that these bolt holes above and below the fork window were intend to be for a transmission mount that never came to be. So I plan on fabbing up some mount that bolt in there.

I also plan on test running my engine with the new mechanical IP tomorrow now that I’ve gotten the last part I need to completely button the engine up.

 

[southern jeeper]

Finally got the engine running with the mechanical pump. It was a bit of struggle trying to get it primed once it finally did get primed the pump was barely pumping fuel. I suspected that the plungers were sticking from the pump sitting up for an unknown amount of time so I opened it and sprayed some seafoam in it and manually cycled to the plungers a bit and then followed that with some wd40. After that I had 4 of the 6 pumping fuel well, so I repeated the same steps on the final two again and they finally started pumping a little bit better. I then put some seafoam into my fuel filter to hopefully help clean the bit of corrosion or whatever that was gumming up the pump. I gave it a little bit of starter fluid, bumped the starter and she roared to life. She seemed to run and idle a bit rough but after rechecking the timing I believe that is the culprit. I also noticed the dipstick tube I made was leaking a bit so I'm probably going have to rework it.

 

[southern jeeper]

So it’s time for an update. I’ve spent the last few weeks collecting parts and I finally got my throw out bearing and hub. So once I got the engine timing back in spec I got the engine and tranny mated back up. I decided to just use a propeller style rear mount but I’m still waiting on it so in the mean time I decided to go ahead and drop the drive train in the frame and start mocking everything up. A few things I noticed are, the turbo is going to need to be clocked 180 degrees, I’m going to need to run an electric fan since the stock fan is way off center of the radiator, the oil cooler should fit below the intercooler once I figure out some different lines for it.

 

[1969FJ]

I really like your dedication to the drivetrain you have chosen. Well done. At my age I would go 2.8 Cummins because of the details. They created that just for this type of change. All transformations are interesting.