yeah, everlasting....'cause even if it ever get it on the road, it will never be done
so, only about seven years late in starting this, but it began when ron, the former owner of rocky mountain cruisers, called my up and said he had a pig that someone gave him that he didn't want and i should come get it so he didn't have to send it to the scrapper. it was a sad little thing. no powertrain, no hood, no rear window and the seats were crap, but otherwise complete and not in to bad of shape rustwise
the start was cleaning it all up and assessing things. it had been sitting in a field for a long time. with no hood, the sun had baked a lot of stuff and what it didn't bake was rusting. if you look closely at the clutch reservoir, you can see how crappy anything plastic under where the hood should be was.
the interior took a lot of work. it had become a storage area for all kinds of car parts and junk. thankfully, they can clean up well with a lot of scrubbing. i pulled the seats out and removed the floormats to scrub them with westleys and coat them with a rubber conditioner.
now, keep in mind, these pictures are seven years old. this all began april 2005. but, it's not much different today. even the radio is still in the dash.
this was going to be a budget build. as cheap as possible, while still being capable. that meant it was severe back burner. so, while i was waiting for deals to pop up, i started cleaning up what i had a little bit at a time. unfortunately, with eight cruisers, time was rare, so i didn't get much done quickly.
but little projects at a time, i got stuff looking better. the two piece booster which was bad and had a rotten hose connection went in the trash for an fj60 booster that i had laying around and the clutch master got a quicky rebuild and paint job
with it in the garage, i started scraping at an area of layered paint...from that, it became an obsession. soon the garage floor was covered with little remnants of the years of my pig. i didn't take it to bare metal, but i took it to the initial primer and reprimered over that, then rattle can for now (and probably forever).
while in the rattle can stage, a deal came up on a 35x12.5 ssr swamper. it had been someone's spare, but he had stepped up to 37s. $30 later, it was mine. yup...one tire, but that's ok. i already had one, so now i had two...know what that means? SPRING OVER!!!!
keep in mind, that at this point, i still really didn't have a clue where i was going with this rig.
without knowing my plans or powertrain, all i could do was rest the springs on the unwelded perches...wouldn't be able to weld for a while. it held enough to move the cruiser and it's stupid little tyrannosaurus rex front tires out into the sun
over the next few months, i managed to find two more tires, all the same situation...had been someones spare and now not needed. all around the same price range. $30. score! managed to gather up rims from people that didn't want them until eventually, i had five drum rims and three disc rims. the discs and one drum would hold the tires for now and the rest i would cut the centers out to one day weld into wider chevy outers. i spent an entire evening seperating tires and rims and the next hauling them to the community center for their free tire scrap day. not a pleasant thing to do. the next night, i mounted the final two tires and the pig made it's debut a mere four months after i got it. https://forum.ih8mud.com/fj55-iron-pig-preservation-society/57711-pig-blanket.html
in the meantime, i'd decided i would pull the powertrain from grandpa (my 65 v8j40) and that would go in the pig. grandpa would move to the back burner so the pig could step up. here's where it becomes a bit more involved. grandpas heart was mated to a 465. while i had my old crappy classic cruisers plate, i really didn't like the 465. it's clunky. but the summer before, i'd parted a 76 v8j40 with a locked v8 that was mated via an old school plate adapter off the chevy bellhousing to a toy 4spd setup. so, after robbing a few things, i junked that motor, took the chevy bellhousing and toy stuff and swapped it onto grandpas motor.
didn't want to get into a full rebuild, but i did lower bearings and replaced the timing chain with gears, new water pump, new oil pump, new fuel pump.
as an afterthought, i should've done rings, but i didn't...that can be done later i guess...we'll see if it ever gets done. but again, i had another perfect time call from ron while all this was going on...he had a set of brand new chevy heads and a belleview winch on a heavy duty bumper. $300 later, i had more score! the winch would require either frame mods or bumper mods and i never got around to them, it's since been sold. something else will happen later.
one of the guys who helped me during all this said i was not allowed to paint the engine chevy orange, so i settled on detroit diesel green
now, we were into a new year and time was coming quick for the first annual rising sun rally. treeroot and i didn't have a clue how much of a success it would end up being and we had our hearts poured out into this event, so we decided that we would make it an event if it meant towing all our junk down there. and we did just that. between us, we brought eight rigs, only four of which ran, so we towed four down. but if we were going to tow the pickle down, i wanted the engine in. so mike came over one day and we got it assembled and tacked in.
mike helping assemble the v8 to toy four speed, the pig ready for it's heart, grind off the old mounts and making sure the frame was clean and good to go
after mike left, i got the skidplate on, everything fit perfect and the next day, the panic of trailering dead rigs began at 4am...the rally has been a success every year since.
but, there was one issue in our panic to get it done. i had overtorqued a bellhousing bolt and snapped it off. i'd actually overtorqued all of them, but the rest just stretched. i would fix them later when i pulled the motor to finish the welds on the mounts.
august 2006, the pickle makes its public debut (in the first pic of the rally, those are the rigs treeroot and i brought to the rally)
at the rally, i scored the next step. i pair of fj60 axles. they were not in the best of condition, but they were cheap. the cleanup began. wire wheels, plasma to take off all the brackets and finally flapper wheels for the final gloss shine, then primer and rattle can
i started watching the classified and eventually found new shoes for the rear and a caliper rebuild kit for the front. i acquired a set of decent pads from a guy who had me do a front end service on his rig and wanted new pads put on while i was at it. the calipers were the worst i've ever seen and flat out would not come apart. both calipers, air blew out one piston and the rest had to be coerced out. but in the end, they ended up looking pretty dang good
