What's in a name? The slow rebuild of Turtle. (1 Viewer)

[Turtle]

I hope I don't jinx myself by posting about it. I'm instead hoping to increase my motivation.
Something I've had a severe lack of for many years, for many reasons.
I'll start with some pics, and then some expletives... I mean explaining

79 FJ40 Turtle (progress… finally!!!)
76 FJ55 Junior (Holding)
85 BJ70 Falcon (450,000 km and counting)
79 FJ40 Lucky (Not so much,at the moment)

 

[Turtle]

So... Way back in 2000, I found and purchased my first 1979 FJ40. Later to be named "Turtle". Of course.
Around January 2002, I sadly introduced Turtle to two too many lamp posts. Mostly sheet metal damage, but not easily repairable.
After some minor surgery, I managed to keep Turtle on the road for another year and a half. In that time, I obtained another 79 tub from a local RMLCA member, Darren. Not sure if he's on Mud. The only catch was, it was from a JDM truck, and therefore right hand drive.
Three other RMLCA members, Marc, Peter, and Bruce, generously stored the tub for me until Marc(Shaker) had some time.
That brings us to the first picture. The freshly painted and bed-lined tub. Marc spent a large amount of time, with a little help from me, transplanting the dash and firewall from Turtle's original tub, to the RHD tub. At the same time rebuilding the body of the new tub with some reinforcements:
2x6x3/16" tubing for the rockers.
2x2x3/16" for the rear sill
1x3/8" flat bar to make a web like outline of the bodywork
New sheet metal over all that, then the paint etc.

And then... Turtle really came into his name. Sitting virtually motionless until about three years ago.

In the beginning I thought I would just reassemble Turtle. Complications slowed things even more. Including:
A very small garage
Lack of tools
Wanting to continue improving things, like Marc did with the body.
Having to fix or build a new rear crossmember, because the original got mangled in the crash.
Bought a house
Got busy doing everything else that life throws at you.

Off to work now. I'll continue this saga tomorrow hopefully.

Cheers


79 FJ40 Turtle (progress… finally!!!)
76 FJ55 Junior (Holding)
85 BJ70 Falcon (450,000 km and counting)
79 FJ40 Lucky (Not so much,at the moment)

 

[JohnnyC]

You would think a turtle would have plenty of time to steer clear of lamp posts... Who knew lol

Love to see more pics!

 

[Turtle]

Pics in time... Might be an easy day at work tomorrow... I'll try to post more then.

79 FJ40 Turtle (progress… finally!!!)
76 FJ55 Junior (Holding)
85 BJ70 Falcon (450,000 km and counting)
79 FJ40 Lucky (Not so much,at the moment)

 

[Turtle]

As I wrote the following, I realized that I'm going to struggle with writing this buildup thread, if I try to just stick to the details of the physical work I'm doing on Turtle. Because the struggles I've had with all those details are connected to the final product. And those struggles mirror the struggles in the rest of my life. As I've worked through these issues I've found, as most of you know, as you solve a problem, you expose another. And sometimes the problem you know you need to solve is the one buried by the ones you don't even know exist.

So this is a warning: as I try to rebuild Turtle, and document this build, I suspect I'll be unable to separate the results of my work from the story of how I got there. This means a lot of writing in my future. And if you're interested, a lot of reading.
Sadly this is all because of my A.D.D. Whether you believe in that or not, is up to you.

As you're wondering why I'm telling you all this? Don't worry, so am I. Problem is if I don't, I'm afraid I won't tell you anything, and end never finishing Turtle. So I guess that's why.

I hope it works.

On to the previously scheduled post.


FYI most of the following is directly related to the pic of the drawing in the first post.
So finally about three years ago, I managed to get turtle into the garage. That's Falcon on the other side. Some time before this, I had tried to build a new rear crossmember/bumper out of some 4" square tube.

But I decided I didn't like it. So it came off. At the time I don't think anyone was making repro crossmembers, or I hadn't seen any at least, so I decided to build one my self.
Problem was, I couldn't figure envision what I wanted to do. Too many ways to skin a cat.
So I made a list of ideas and options I needed to consider:

Replicate a simple full width unit like the original.
Make a short section just to tie the frame rails together.
Build or buy a Kaymar style bumper
What do I do about tail lights?
How about a tire/jerry can/cooler carrier?
Recovery points
Hitch
Extensions coming forward to the rear wheel well?
Air tank
How do I mount it?

And in my head, all of those options, had options, that had more options, and he told two friends and so on... Blah blah blah!
I looked everywhere. Mud, pirate, the rest of the inter webs. Nothing seemed to be right. And dammit I'm just fussy! Ok? There I said it.

So I have to do it myself. So how do I build a bumper? First I needed to design it. To do that I needed to be able to draw ideas I saw in my head. I know some basic drafting, but that felt too technical.
(One of my never ending struggles, between technical skill, and creativity. This comes from working in technical theatre, doing lighting, sound, props etc. After you build a designers vision, from their plans and drawings, you start to wonder, where does their art end? And where does mine begin?)
So found a book, called, "How to Draw Cars Like a Pro", and started practicing. Here are the first things I discovered.

I want to use factory style tail lights, because I hate the cheap rubber grommet style lights that everyone seems to use. Don't get me wrong. I understand why everyone uses them. They're cheap to replace when they get broken on the trail. It's just seems too simple to me. Like it's the easy way out.
(Here, again the issue comes from my career. In theatre, and film/television for that matter, if the audience can't see it, it doesn't matter. Which leads to jokes like, "It's not just good, it's good enough!" I do "good enough" for a living, and I'm sick of it!)
I toyed with the idea of making my own tail lights. Basically use an old factory lens to make a mold, get some circuit board panels with a grid of, red, amber, or white L.E.D.s in the appropriate sizes. Find a 2-part epoxy like compound that could be tinted red, amber, or remain clear. It would also need to be UV resistant, and cure to a softish impact resistant product.
While I haven't given up on this idea, I decided to recess the factory style lights into the bumper.
In the Hot Rod world, this is called "Frenching".

Now that I know what lights I want to use, I also know I need enough vertical surface to mount them. The factory style crossmember does this fine. But, I also decided I didn't want to use the factory tire carrier. So I need to have a bumper that sticks out further than the crossmember so I have something to mount the carrier to.

This tells me I can use a short crossmember to tie the frame horns together.


I'll continue this later... I'm tired of writing.

Cheers


79 FJ40 Turtle (progress… finally!!!)
76 FJ55 Junior (Holding)
85 BJ70 Falcon (450,000 km and counting)
79 FJ40 Lucky (Not so much,at the moment)

 

[sggoat]

Pics in time... Might be an easy day at work tomorrow... I'll try to post more then. View attachment 894812


79 FJ40 Turtle (progress… finally!!!)
76 FJ55 Junior (Holding)
85 BJ70 Falcon (450,000 km and counting)
79 FJ40 Lucky (Not so much,at the moment)

That looks like a 70 on the right-----

 

[RWBeringer4x4]

Don't worry about your build thread being wordy - many of us see this as a labor of love and our passionate about our trucks. I'm often as interested to learn about the motivation behind a project as I am the project itself.

My "clustertruck" thread is the same way.

Plus - it seems to come with the territory of having a truck named turtle - go read "saving the old rust bucket" in the stickies!

 

[tlc_4play]

I like your choice of colour "Rustic Green"
Dont worry about being wordy - besides a picture tells a thousand words

Heres a pic of my Rustic green 40, "Kermit" this took me 9 months to rebuild.

And heres my most recent 40 rebuild that has already taken me 4 years

 

[Turtle]

Thanks for the support guys!!! i really appreciate it. More soon, i promise!

 

[want2wheel]

This is going to be an awesome build / story. Keep up the good work.

 

[Turtle]

So, I've made the decision to do a short rear crossmember to tie the rear frame horns together.
(One of the local guys, Behemoth60, came up with the phrase.
'If you want to do it right. Do it three times. Or at least plan to do it three times'
Something to that effect. I appreciate the theory, learning curve and all that. And Behemoth60 is probably right.
But my brain wants me to avoid this… I think. Here's the reason. I mentioned before about having too many options upon options in my head, making it almost impossible to make sense from any of it. Well having all those ideas in my head can also work to my advantage. What I mean by that, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this, is that in my head I've built, torn apart and rebuilt, or have a vision in my head for every vehicle I've ever owned or wanted to own. I'll stick to the vision for Turtle here.)
Back to the crossmember...
For the rear of the frame, I've done the whole thing in my head probably a dozen times. Sometimes imagining it out of thin air, but mostly trying to make sure that when I do it for real, I'm not missing something that will screw me up down the road. Here's the process…

If I go with the short piece, how am I going to mount the rear bumper? For that matter, how am I going to tie recovery points to the frame? How do I distribute the load of a tire carrier/rack system properly. Do I want returns on the bumper, do I tie them back to the frame, or let them hang? Should the bumper be removable, or weld it directly to the frame? How mush do I need to worry about single shear mounting vs double shear mounting? On it goes. So I looked at the frame. Before I design mounts, what am I mounting to? Here I discovered my first problem. The rear if the frame isn't parallel. Which means in order to make the bumper removable, either I modify the frame to be parallel, the bumper has to be in several pieces, or it has to be raised from underneath, with the mounts fitting around the frame.

Man, typing this on my iPhone sucks. I'll be back.

 

[Turtle]

I'm back. Just for fun, here's where I am...

So, building several pieces, or building to fit around the frame both sound like a pain in the ass.
Instead I went for short pain, long gain. I cut up the rear of the frame a bit, and made the last 4-5" parallel.

Then I checked it all to make sure I hadn't just screwed myself.

So far so good!


79 FJ40 Turtle (progress… finally!!!)
76 FJ55 Junior (Holding)
85 BJ70 Falcon (450,000 km and counting)
79 FJ40 Lucky (Not so much,at the moment)

 

[Turtle]

That looks like a 70 on the right-----

Yes, that 70 would be Falcon. Here he is today

79 FJ40 Turtle (progress… finally!!!)
76 FJ55 Junior (Holding)
85 BJ70 Falcon (450,000 km and counting)
79 FJ40 Lucky (Not so much,at the moment)

 

[Turtle]

Here are those welds cleaned up.

I need to radius the corners, and run a bead on the inside a well.


79 FJ40 Turtle (progress… finally!!!)
76 FJ55 Junior (Holding)
85 BJ70 Falcon (450,000 km and counting)
79 FJ40 Lucky (Not so much,at the moment)

 

[Turtle]

Meanwhile... 11 months later.
I did all you see, not long after my last post. I was having a hard time figuring out how to fit things together in my head.

Out of frustration, I decided to start building pieces, whether they were right or not, just so I could see with my eyes, instead of my imagination. I also chose pieces that weren't 100% critical to be right the first time, or could be modified to be correct, depending on which way I go.
Then I got industrious, and decided to get the frame flipped right side up.
I had to build extensions for my frame stand though.

I was going to start tacking the boxing plates, and rear crossmember in, but then I got thinking about my suspension...

Next post.

Cheers

 

[Turtle]

By the way, if you see anything in my pics that you have an idea to improve, I'm open to that.
Speaking of ideas, I need to fish for some now, in regards to the suspension.
Here's the situation:
In order to stretch the wheelbase, I decided to try the 60 series springs. So, I got a set of Belton lift springs from the guys who used to import them. (Behemoth60, Lowenbrau, and Shaker).
When I started thinking about the suspension last year, I did some measuring, and found that the Belton springs would not fit in the stock FJ40 mounts. After some research, I found http://www.ruffstuffspecialties.com , they make and sell spring and shackle mounts, and other stuff for Land Cruisers.

What I can't figure out is what to order!
On their website, the FJ60 hardware is for springs that measure 2-3/4" wide without bushings, and 3-3/16" with the bushings. My Belton springs, measure, 2-7/8", and 3-7/16", respectively.

From the picture, you should see the reason why. Belton has a 1/16" sleeve in the spring eye so the bushings fit properly.
This is what stopped me.
Should I...
Remove the sleeves
-then I need new bushings
Order spring hangers in a custom dimension
- I think I still need new bushings because the ones I have assume I'm using stock style hangers and the stock style spring pins, which have a large shank and a smaller threaded section, that works with the stock style hangers, to prevent over tightening, and squishing the bushing.

I tried to call them but I don't think the person I talked to understood what I was trying to figure out.

So, suggestions?

Cheers

 

[alberta mac]

Nice build ! Are you galvanizing the frame ?
Its reading of one's motivation that makes us read - on !
Nice work !

 

[Turtle]

Haven't decided on how to finish the frame... Thinking of the poly-urea coating that Jonathan Ward of TLC/Icon, uses.

 

[JohnnyC]

About your spring/bushing dilemma

Have you figured it out yet?

I had an issue (similar I guess) where it was really tight ... Just a bit too big ... We sanded down the bushings slightly and then fit nice

... Btw ... Galvanizing will last forever if you are going to be driving alot on road with winter driving... It's something to think about