Build Tucker and Roma's 75 FJ40 Restore

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Worked some more on the truck last night. It seems like the accessory belt for the a/c and alternator has some abnormal wear because it is leaving rubber dust in the engine compartment after extended driving. Tucker drove it to atlanta a few weekends ago 300 odd miles and it showed a good bit of wear after that trip as well as the trip to florida. By the eyeball test everything looks like it is inline so i removed the belt and took a laser pointer and layed it in one of the pulleys and shot it across to the other pulley. i concluded the a/c compressor needed moved about 3/8 of an inch to the rear. I shimmed the compressor so hopefully that issue is resolved.
On a positive note seems like the the 5th or (6th) time is a charm because cruiser parts finally delivered a power steering gear box that doesnt leak. I was getting a bit tired for swapping them out. This week i'll be working on getting the auxillary tanks installed and plumbed so i'll try to ad a few photos of that.
Tucker also ordered a new soft top from troll hole with the new sunbrella material as well as zip out windows, they promised it should be here by the 9th of august which will give us just enough time to get the fastener system sorted out before heading in our convoy (i'll be driving my 40) to Ouray, Colorado on the 23rd for a proper test drive!
 
Ended up redoing the attachments for the corners and tucker made the call to drill the tub for footman loops. Stainless footman loops and hardware, we made a attachment system for the grommets out of aluminum.

















 
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That soft top really makes me wish I had more money and a larger garage. :cheers:
 
Ok been a fun filled couple of days so far and can certainly say nothing is better than a 4 thousand mile test drive after a job this big. To see how well all the new additions work together. Let's see....first and possibly foremost a few weeks or roughly 1500 miles ago the cruiser developed a condition where it would barely idle and the check engine light would flash erratically. As soon as you would try to drive it would die. When it initially happened I spent roughly an hour trying to trouble shoot the problem (timing, fuel pressure, map sensor, injectors etc) to no avail. Soo I started checking for bad connections at all the plugs that deal with fuel injection and when I got to the ecu plugs as soon as I touched them it cleared up and ran great. That is until this same thing happens again 1 out of every ten fifteen or so start ups and you have to open the glove box and give the ecu a healthy thump. Turns out it's not the connectors but internal to the ecu itself. So before we left Tucker called affordable fuel injection and norm promised an ecu by Thursday. Friday rolls around and still no ecu. That's the first issue which isn't too big of a problem until the ecu decides it no longer wants to respond to our cpr. I did all ready take it apart looking for a bad solder joint but couldn't find anything.
 
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Ok here is where it gets a bit more interesting...Friday night as soon as we cross the Arkansas state line west of Memphis (10:30ish) Tucker radios over the walkie and says that the headlights flickered and got dim. So we pull over on the side of the freeway and take a look. Everything seems to be fine under the hood alternator is present belt is tight etc. So we decide to go a little further. I hop in my 40 and just as I'm about to take off Tucker radios again and says it won't start. Uh oh lol so I back up hook up the jumper cables and we fire it off. Apparently running the ac for five hours took its toll on the battery because the original alternator couldn't keep up with the additional load. Up to this point we haven't ran the ac for longer than 30 -45 min. So we continue on with no ac. That brings us up to Saturday night and we arrive in amarillo texas. We check the belts and the ac belt (which now also runs the alternator) is a little loose. We had picked it up at Lowes and actually had a backup with us. The other issue with the ac is that the compressor uses a small groove pulley and the crank water pump and alternator uses a big groove pulley. I knew this spelled trouble when we put the ac system on but I waved my apprehensions to the wind. After all cool cruisers has sold hundreds of the kits. So this morning we get up a little early so we can tighten the belt up a little upon further inspection the belt looks worse than I like so we dig out the back up....run it around the pulleys and uh oh. It's a just a hair too short. So we weigh our options. It's 6 am parts stores and Lowes don't open until 8 or nine. So we put the old belt back on and head for new mexico.
 
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