Builds Weenie 3 - Bringing another 40 back from the dead (2 Viewers)

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wngrog

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Location
Canton, Mississippi
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Rustic Green 40's are stacking up around here in Mississippi. 3 in my group of friends alone, hence the "3" in the name. Green Weenie 3, aka Weenie 3.....

Backstory:

This 40 was bought new in Louisiana in 1974 and lived a hard life on a farm, I have a mound of registration papers stretching all the way back until the owner rolled it into a pole barn in 2005 and it just sat. And sat. And sat.

Earlier this year, a Special Forces soldier convinced the owner to let him have it. Said soldier is a killer, not a mechanic and the job proved to be too much for him. My friend Boyd, aka @GOVT MULE ....the king of all vehicle flippers moved in on it and has been peppering me with teaser photos of the "one-owner" FJ-40 for a few months.

Last week he too admitted defeat after looking at the mess his buddy made of the ignition system and called me with a Buy it Now price.

While I was away at the Cruiser Crawl this weekend the 40 appeared in front of my shop sight unseen........other than some 20' photos.

Sunday I got home early from the Crawl and took inventory of the project. Here is the before........

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sub'd. I love following your builds / bring them back from the dead threads.
 
I have to admit, the most exciting thing on this truck to me is that it is all one color and in one piece. I will tell you, this is not a full restoration candidate but a true Patina restoration candidate. Those of you that follow my builds (see signature....turn phone sideways) know this is what I love to do.

I am not even going to try to crank the truck as is. It has been sitting for 14 years so I want to take that with the right approach. Boyd spun the motor over so I know its not locked up but that is as much as I know. It is very nicely unmolested ..... other than the hapless fella that rescued it. No weird stuff going on by the original owner though. I think I can get this F 1.5 humming but that will be phase 2.

Phase 1 is getting the paint to pop.

Following the formula that has worked so well for me (see Preserving Patina Tips and Tricks thread), I washed it and started in on Weenie 3 with CLR and Fluid Film.

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Looks like the frame number has been hacked off ?

No, it has the full frame but the genius really made it hard for me to put a bumper on it......that is next.......
 
This weekend at the Crawl, I was looking over Rob Tygart's 45 and it has the same engine as this truck as well as the same air cleaner. Ive never seen this until the Crawl and lo and behold, this 40 has the same cool feature.

On the side of the air cleaner, there is a lever that closes off the front air intake horn and switches the intake to a horn on the top of the manifold to inhale warm air versus cold. Pretty cool.

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As I said, the engine compartment looks pretty good. The harness is complete.....unhacked. I've got a plan but again, that's next up. Let me get back to the outside.......
 
There is some non-OEM paint inside the tub but the outside looks all original. Rustic Green and Rust. Its really a nice combo.

The only place that was weird outside was the grill and bezel. Looks like some kid wanted to "Camo" over that white grill while using it to hunt ducks and slopped some paint on the bezel.

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I mean....what the hell? Why? I got after it with some Goof-Off and a Scotchbrite and got most of it off while keeping the patina and not losing much of the white.

I popped out the old busted lights and cleaned out the headlight buckets and treated them with Rust Converter and reinstalled some hood halogen headlights.

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I have an old heavy channel winch bumper my friend @under_psi gave me off his Green Goblin to store for future need. Its not perfect, but it gives me something to fill the frame with.

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Either way, the welded on angle iron had to go and I needed to get some bumper horns/brackets.

I went to the boneyard and yanked out the front of the frame I cut off when I made The Goat Tail trailer. Luckily it had the horns. Sadly, these things are held on with the dreaded Toyota Rivets making removing them a huge pain in the ass. Die Grinder, hammer drill and a sledge hammer did the trick. In the pic I had already hammered off one.....

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I cut the angle off. Ground all the old rivets off and had to drill a couple holes in the frame to make it all match up. I think I have about 6 hours in this......

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This is how I left it for the day.

I won't have much time to work on it until Friday, but I am making a list for @Cruiser Corps and I going to start in on the engine compartment next.

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This weekend at the Crawl, I was looking over Rob Tygart's 45 and it has the same engine as this truck as well as the same air cleaner. Ive never seen this until the Crawl and lo and behold, this 40 has the same cool feature.

On the side of the air cleaner, there is a lever that closes off the front air intake horn and switches the intake to a horn on the top of the manifold to inhale warm air versus cold. Pretty cool.

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As I said, the engine compartment looks pretty good. The harness is complete.....unhacked. I've got a plan but again, that's next up. Let me get back to the outside.......

LOL. I’ve had one of those air cleaners on my 45 for over 20 years. But you weren’t interested in looking at stock motors when I was driving it to Texas.
 
One of the cool things about this truck is the original manual and all of the registration cards going back to the 70s

There was also a very nice 1984 Specter Off Road catalog

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Love it! Great to see.
 
Sub’d...build date and serial #? Always curious how close other ‘74’s are to mine (189996)...
 
Sub’d...build date and serial #? Always curious how close other ‘74’s are to mine (189996)...

10/73.....it has an F155 (F1.5.5) and a 3 speed

Ill get the SN later for you.
 
Got a couple of hours to mess it this afternoon. I wanted to get this homemade rear C channel bumper off and get some nice new bumperettes on.

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not sure how long this thing has been on but it took lots of mojo to get it off. Check out the 30 washers they used for spacers!

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Put in a bit of time with the wire wheel and cleaned up the frame

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I only broke a couple of the old bolts to reinstall the bumperettes. Drilling those out was not fun

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Looks so much better.
 
Excellent. I won’t pollute the thread with pics, but one of my favorite 40s ever was my old rustic green ‘73.

Looking forward to following this.
Pollute away brother. You saved a pile of crap I saved once that’s become a Mud classic
 

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