Where to start????

[glcmranger]

I have my 74' FJ40, can anyone give me some advise on where to start on my restoration. I am planning on tearing down to frame and will rebuild everything. I guess I have a lot of questions;

what is best way to keep track of everything?
Do I take pictures and notes prior to take down?
Where can I get Shop Books for FJ40, 2f Motor, Transmission, Etc?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[JohnL]

Buy and use lots of ziplock bags and label the parts as you go...will make visuts to the machine shop/hardware store for replacements easier.

Haynes and toyota manuals are good

several owners here in cluding myself are in mid-restoration on our 74's so just post or watch the board for updates. Start with the recent post titled "painting and sanding on july 4th weekend" or something like that, there are lots of good pics and guys posting there.

john

 

[nocents]

Take lots of pictures. A digital camera is a good tool at time, like when you can remember "what is this and where does it go"? Be sure to clean thing up real good, retap holes and chase bolts (old one you reuse). Take you time and plan to break a few bolt.

nocents

 

[sherwood]

http://rzeppa.org/resto/cruiser1.htm

 

[Archengine]

If I could do it all over again, and I'm sure I will, I would start off taking about 250 digital pics, covering every square inch of that truck, so I would have a good library of info before I even start, especially important if this is your first time rebuilding a cruiser. Then prepare a good, clean area to do the work in, and buy lots of shop towels, paper towels for packing things away for a few months, (or years) zip locks of many sizes, and labels with a good marker. Start dissassembling your truck, one part at a time. I prefer to clean and repair parts as I take them apart, so when they get pulled from their bag when I'm reassembling my truck, their ready to bolt up. Other wise, you have a million pieces to clean all at once. Go buy a cheap sand blaster and a decent paint gun, doing these yourself will save a lot of money. If you have more money than time, take all your junk to an acid bath, for a cost of around a grand, you will get everything stripped to bare metal, no rust, grease or paint left anywhere. So good luck, take your time, don't get too frustrated, and expect it to cost double your estimate, and atleast twice the time you estimate.

 

[65swb45]

Make friends with another 74 owner so that when you forget where something goes, you can look at his.

I am not kidding about this. When I had an electrical fire in my 68 about 12 years ago, I called all over town about getting someone else to rewire the truck. The unanimous consensus was that even if I had never done one before, I was the best qualified person to do it. The rationale: I could easily get someone else with a 68 to drop by the shop and take a peek.

They were right.

Mark

 

[jesterb]

I'm in the same boat as you. I just purchased a 74 last week. I will be doing the same project including rebuilding a 2F, rebuidling a 4 speed tranny, rebuilding a 3 speed case and adapting it to the 4 speed tranny. The body is also coming off. I cant give any advice that has not yet been givin but feel free to email or private message me with any questions. Odds are we are going to be helping each other out alot.

 

[fj40_rico]

First, If you're going to wheel it, make it look nice but don't restore it, cause it will ruin your nice work.

Second, what I did to keep track of my stuff is zip lock bags (the large ones) and wrote on it what it went to. then I went and put the bags in multiple boxes depending on what part of the truck it went to. The other thing I did is when I was going to do an upgrade (like power steering) I put all of the pieces for the upgrade in one box.

just my 2 cents.

Good luck with the restoration.

- Rico.

 

[desertdude]

Digital camera and ziplocks helped a lot, ordering new stainless steel bolts/nuts/washers -boltdepot.com- made the assembly very smooth and IMO worth the money. You may also find your wiring need some repair after you get it all apart, and replacing all the rubber grommets for the wireharness makes for a nice assembly. One last note, after painting ( and especially herculiner and POR15) the threads need to be chased, even when I had old bolts in the holes. So allow some time to go through that process. In the end spend as much time as you can stand on the prep, you will be well rewarded

Good luck, and post pics