The Sancha Rebuild Project

[Cdaniel]

I'm curious where you got the information referring to the diameter. I haven't seen anything on Dormans site or elsewhere that states the diameter. The ones that I got from them without the bracket are 2 inch and supposedly for Corvette too, just later model.

A few more pics of the stuff that UPS brought me tonight. The manifold is one of the Dorman ram horn manifolds from China. The price was right, and it is one of the 2.5" models used on Corvettes. It looks like I will have to cut off the end to make it fit with the serpentine setup I will be using.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

I found the part numbers from a few different threads here on Mud. They are Dorman 674-503 and 504. Listed as being for the 327 cid Corvette engine, but bolt up to the 350 as well.

Here is the link to one of them.

http://www.dormanproducts.com/p-10299-674-504.aspx

 

[Scott68FJ40]

A band saw makes pretty short work of cutting off the un-needed alternator mount tabs on the new manifolds. Thanks Keven (Tools-r-us).

 

[Scott68FJ40]

It's been a little while since my last update. Frankly, not much has happened, work has been very busy over the last 2 weeks.

Everything is heading back down to Tucson this weekend for the power steering fabrication. Once that is done and everything is finally back home for good, I am going to be tearing everything apart again to start the real cleanup.

I have found a guy here in the Phoenix area that seems pretty excited to do the frame boxing and stitching, he currently does a lot of fabrication for Tacoma's and is looking forward to working on a 40.

Once he is done, I am about 90% sure I am going to use the rust bullet product for coating the frame.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

Who doesn't love build pictures, even if they are crappy Iphone pics.

Time for what should be the final trip back down to Tucson for Tim to finish up the power steering fabrication.

Before you say anything about the customized red/orange hard top, let me explain.

Tim bought this top from a guy in Chandler and made a trip up this week to get it. This worked out really well for me as he was able to bring his trailer up and save me a round trip down to Tucson. He had other things to do on that trip so I offered to take the top that he had just bought and haul it down my my stuff.

We got everything loaded up on Saturday afternoon and decided to make the trek down as I knew I had to work on Sunday morning.

I know I have said this before, but I hope to find some time over the next week to get the garage cleaned up even more now that I have some open space in it.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

I haven't posted much lately, but there has been some slow progress on the build.

While there is still more welding to do, we have the power steering mount plate in place. We also have the later model steering column mounted to the 1968 firewall.

Once the welding is finished up, I will be tearing everything down, removing a few broken bolts, then sending the frame over to the sandblaster for final cleanup before boxing and painting.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

The power steering box is now in place.

There have been a ton of threads about the proper location position for the box. As with just about anything, there seem to be a ton of opinions on it being a little ways out from the cross member and cut back into it. At the end of the day, we decided to keep it away from it. I really didn't want to cut up my cross member if I didn't need to. I am not convinced that having it forward a couple inches contributes to all the damage that people report in some of the threads. I might be wrong, but time will tell.

Next step is to start tearing everything back down. I have a half dozen or so broken bolts in the frame that need to be removed. After that, off to the sand blaster and on to getting the rest of the frame boxed.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

It seems like I have been posting quite a few pictures of my rig on a trailer over the last couple months. Honestly, this should be the last one, and I wasn't even planning on posting it other than there is a story that goes behind it.

We drove down to Tucson yesterday to pick everything up now that my power steering fab is done. Got everything loaded up in Tucson and headed home. When we got home, I dropped the ramps on the trailer and decided that it would be a good idea to set a block in the driveway to stop the cruiser and then just push it off the trailer.

I bet you can guess where this is going. Just as the cruiser got to the end of the trailer, the front wheels turned sharply and the cruiser completely missed the block I set out. Fortunately the house was there to bring everything to a stop

Looks like my FJ40 project will now have stucco work associated with it. I wonder if that is a first?

 

[Cdaniel]

I bent my garage door with the FJ40 once. I forgot to hold the door up to slip inside.

 

[pb4ugo]

Ouch! Good thing you parked the house there. A dent in the house & the cruiser too. Wonder if stucco comes in 5gal buckets. Nice project. I don't know if the location of the box is detremental to anything or not. I do know that cutting a hole in the crossmember & not reinforcing it w/a sleeve or something will eventually cause cracking in the crossmember. A good front bumper may help, but didn't in my case. There's a lot of frame flex in this area. I personally would not have welded the crossmember to the frame rail. I may be totaly wrong, but thru all the yrs of repairing a poorly reinforced crossmember(by ther PO) & chasing broken welds to the next weakest link, I found it is all related. W/the steering hooked up & no bumper on, have someone turn the wheel lock to lock & watch the frame rails & crossmember move.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

My frame has had previous damage in the front from some sort of impact. I am actually not done with the work that is going to be done.

I am planning on boxing the whole frame and stitching the whole thing as well.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

I just realized that I wasn't all that detailed in my last message, guess that is what happens after a very long day at work.

The rivets that hold my cross member to the frame have been compromised in the past. It seems that sometime before I got the cruiser it hit something "headon" pretty hard. The frame was actually cracked around those rivets and were welded, somewhat poorly, to repair it.

I am boxing and welding everything up there in hopes of eliminating that flex. If that damage hadn't been done, who knows...

The other thing is that I don't plan on doing a lot of rock crawling with my rig, nothing wrong with it, but just not the type of wheeling I go looking for. I want a really solid trail rig that will get me over the rocks when needed.

 

[Cdaniel]

Get that garage cleaned out yet?

 

[Scott68FJ40]

I've made a huge dent in it. I should have the final stuff moved over to the storage unit tomorrow. If all goes well tomorrow, I might have things pretty much ready for the sand blaster to get to work on the frame.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

Time for an honest to goodness, real update.

I spent a few hours in the garage today, not only did I finish up getting all the stuff that we were storing there over to a newly rented storage unit, but I also managed to get the engine, transmission and transfer pulled off of the frame. I had to stop at pulling the front and rear axle/springs, I discovered that my jack stands are not big enough.

Should be able to get over to Harbor Freight sometime this week and pick up some bigger ones. After that, the frame is heading off to the sand blaster.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

Everything is now ready for the sandblaster.

When pulling the rear springs off, I started cleaning up around the rear spring hangers with a wire brush. It looks like I Have a crack back there, but will evaluate it further after the metal is blasted clean. Something tells me that I will be replacing a couple more frame parts.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

I got the frame back from the sand blaster today. I love seeing 43 year old steel looking almost like new.

Now that things are clean, I wanted to post a few pics that showed some of the damage that I am going to be addressing soon. Obviously there is a shot of the whole frame, but I am also including a shot of the front cross member and the front section of the frame that shows the damage from what I believe was a front impact at some point before I owned her.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

This shot shows each of my rear spring hangers. Both have been broken in the past, and both were repaired by the PO very poorly. They are certainly going to be replaced.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

I do have more to report on the build, but won't be able to get pictures of the new stuff until later this next week. In the meantime, I thought I would share a picture of the sliders I just had installed on my Tacoma. They were made by a local company, Avid Offroad.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

I spent some time out in the garage this evening, even though the thermometer out there says that it is just a little over 100 degrees, getting started on painting the frame. I have decided against the complete boxing / stitching route and will just address the few areas that actually need repair. Needless to say, paint drys pretty fast and I want to get it all done over the next week. Our monsoon season is approaching and I don't want to leave my frame sitting as bare metal when the humidity starts to climb. I also spend a lot of time photographing the monsoon, so my landcruiser time will be somewhat limited.

I do want to thank Mud member 69LC for fabricating some spring hangers for me. They should be here this week, and are a MUCH needed part to allow me to continue with my build. I am attaching a couple shots that he sent me, and will post more when they arrive.