Working On My Willy (A Terrible Build Thread) (1 Viewer)

[DeepBarney]

So I'm starting this thread to chronicle the tribulations of taking my 1988 FJ62 Willy (so named because he was free) and fixing it up so it can used for a Lemons Rally. I may cross post what I've already covered in my introduction thread, for the sake of completeness and being able to easily go back through it all someday when I'm older and bored.

For those that don't know, a Lemons Rally is a long distance road trip/navigational challenge/scavenger hunt in which you're encouraged to compete in the hooptiest vehicle you can get your hands on and trust to make a 1000-ish mile trip (plus whatever it takes for you to get to the starting point and then back home, about 2k extra in my case).

After regaling a coworker about the rally my brother and I competed in last year over a few beers, and talking about how we missed out on an old Toyota camper pickup for this year's rally, my new favorite coworker told me he had an old Toyota truck I could have if I promised to do something cool with it. I told him he shouldn't joke because I'd show up with a car trailer come Saturday. He insisted he was serious, but said I'd have to go get it from his buddy's body shop where he'd left it like 7 years ago. Said shop was about 3 hours and $80 in gas away. Totally worth it for a complete if not fairly crusty FJ62.

Thankfully the tires held air and we were able to roll it out and get it pointed at the trailer so it could be winched up on it (despite half assed efforts it wouldn't start for us when we tried jumping it).

 

[DeepBarney]

My brother and I started by going through the truck and cleaning out the interior and engine bay with a shop vac (tinkering on old stuff is a lot more enjoyable when you're not getting crap in your eyes or sticking to you). Unfortunately while doing so I managed to break a filter off one of the little VSV switches on the driver side fender. Will fix it later with some epoxy.

Went and got a new battery for it and dropped that in. Cranked over strong now, but wouldn't fire off unless you gave her a snort of the ether. And it wouldn't run unless you kept the stuff flowing. We'd already drained the the old fuel out of the tank and put in a few gallons of fresh 87. So we deemed the issue to be it wasn't getting any gas. Checked voltage at the pump and got nothing. Traced the wires for that circuit from the front to the back and found all sorts of wiring hackery. Lots of crappy splices with inline fuses added (a telling sign). Tried hooking a jump pack directly to the fuel pump, but that didn't get us any flow either (by this time we'd disconnected the line at the fuel filter in the engine bay to check for flow). Checked the pump with the multimeter and got a lot of resistance. Went ahead and ordered a replacement.

A week later with a shiny new pump in hand I started the process to get the old fuel pump out. Yeah, I can see why that might not want to work.

Still Hadn't gotten power back to it yet but we were able to use a jump pack to run the pump and start it up. Wanted to idle around 2000 RPM. So we pulled the idle air control valve off, took it apart, manually adjusted it to the fully closed position, and then reinstalled it. With that done it would idle around 700-800 RPM. Even managed to take it for a short drive around the farm. Definitely going to need some suspension work. Got a hell of a death wobble around 45 mph. This gives a pretty good example of the general state of the suspension.

I did manage to identify and (temporarily) sort out one of the rattles though.

The entire bung has sperated from the pipe and the O2 sensor was just dangling. Need to figure out how critical this reading is for proper engine tuning if it just informs the computer to throw up a check engine light if it's not seeing results in the acceptable range. That will dictate the level of effort given to fix it.

 

[DeepBarney]

Checked the wiring as @diesellibrarian suggested and now we have power back to the pump (even though I didn't fix anything...), Probably just the crappy connections responding to being wiggled.

Checking voltage to the pump via the exterior access panel (driver side quarter panel rust hole) I'm seeing 8v at startup and when the throttle is brought up off idle it increases to 11v. Looks like I need to recheck everything between the relay (it's a constant 11.9v).

Somebody has been at the fuel pump circuit with shoddy crimp connectors as I've since found several inline fuses added. Most annoyingly this one,

which I didn't see until after we took the thing for a drive (note it was unhooked like this when I got all my earlier mentioned voltage readings and drove the truck around).

The truck will now die at random times when driving and won't restart until I let it sit a minute while whispering sweet promises of a rebuilt suspension and new(er) tires. Something it didn't do when powering the pump via a jump pack. I'm suspecting that it's linked to the inconsistent fuel pump voltage and possibly still yet unidentified wiring gremlins).

 

[DeepBarney]

More wiring hackery found, some of it addressed.

Truck is staying running now, starts right away, though it occasionally it idles a bit too low. I should probably revisit the IAS stuff again. Time to start sorting the suspension. Suggestions on where I can get all the rubber suspension bits? Not wanting poly bushings.

Last year's and this year's Lemons Rally rigs. Care to guess which is slower? Haha

 

[DeepBarney]

Another weekend of pulling the truck into the garage for a session of wrenching, cursing, and bewilderment.

More wiring hackery found, some of it addressed.

Truck is staying running now, starts right away, though it occasionally it idles a bit too low. I should probably revisit the IAS stuff again. Time to start sorting the suspension. Suggestions on where I can get all the rubber suspension bits? Not wanting poly bushings.

Last year's and this year's Lemons Rally rigs. Care to guess which is slower? Haha

 

[DeepBarney]

We also managed to sort out why the transfercase was stuck in 4wd and got it disengaged. Until the replacement VSV from Amazon arrives we have to pop the hood and switch vacuum lines to change in and out of 4wd, I can live with that.

Somebody was really paranoid about fuel pump circuit over amperage (this makes the third? inline fuse that's been hacked into the various circuits are related to the fuel pump). Which considering the state of the fuel pump I removed, probably not unwarranted, just the wrong way to address the issue. For the time being I'm going to go through and tidy up these fuse additions rather than remove them entirely since there may be more I don't know that makes having them there a good idea, but at least I can eliminate the s***ty connections as a possible source for future head scratching/roadside troubles.

Just like with the Contour, we have formed our list on the best media for such things, scrap cardboard.

Several items have already been ticked off. I feel like having a visual progress aid like this helps a project from stalling out.

 

[DeepBarney]

Replaced the faulty VSV switch for the 4wd on the Land Cruiser (engages and disengages right away and the 4wd works great now). Then set about replacing the fuel sending unit because the gas gauge no worky. I should've known when the box was labeled "Super Amazing Fuel Sending Unit Land Cruiser 1980-1991" that I was getting something extra special.

Seems that the $15 spent on Amazon for super amazingness was worth about 2 extra inches that completely render it unable to perform it's function.

Well I've got a set of pliers and so little invested in this I might as worth it to see if I can modify it to make it work, since it's been dipped in gas and can't be returned.

Success! Managed to remove the lever arm from both units, and then the floats, swapping the new float onto the old lever arm after cleaning the rust and scale off it. Had to modify the pivot mount for the lever arm on the new sending unit as it was spaced too widely for the old lever arm. Minimal cursing needed surprisingly, and it works as it should now (plugged it in and manually manipulated the float while eyeing the gauge to confirm). Woohoo! Now as soon as I get around to checking and likely replacing the coolant temp sensor, I'll have a fully functioning gauge cluster.

 

[DeepBarney]

Next task was to unfuckulate the wiring to the fuel pump and one yet unidentified circuit. Crappy butt joint and wire nut splices were removed. Three now (that the fuel pump and associated wiring isn't a lump of corrosion) superfluous chintzy inline fuses were removed and the connections properly soldered, heat shrunk and taped over.

I'd like to punch whoever thought it was a good idea cut the wire this close to the plug/ECM.

Circuits are now functional and not a point of concern for taking this heap on a several thousand mile trip.

 

[DeepBarney]

Also replaced all three wipers and the burnt out driver side high beam. Now the only light left not working is the dome light, and its time draws near.

And that catches us up to today. Probably won't have any progress to report for a week or two as I'm getting ready to go on a week long canoeing trip starting next weekend and any free time I have this week will be used to prep for it.

 

[DeepBarney]

Well I ****ed up.

While replacing one the shocks on the Land Cruiser I discovered some previous hamfisted bastid had seriously stripped the threads in the lower shock mount. So I consulted the tap chart and had at it with appropriate drill bit for the next size up tap/bolt. The leaf pack didn't leave enough room to make more than half a rotation, so I turned it back at the end of every half turn to break the chip before resetting and progressing it further. Well it was going alright, albeit slowly, until it was about an inch or so in, when it got tight before the end of the half rotation. So I thought I'd reverse to break the chip. Nope. Too tight for that. Try a little harder and the vise in the tap wrench has shears. No big deal I have another. It breaks even more catastrophically. Out come the vise grips. No dice there either. The way I see it now I either have at the mount with the propane torch and try the vice grips again or I weld several nuts to the shaft of the tap and try extracting it with the breaker bar and a socket. Note: the zip tie is so I have a reference when I get this damn thing out of just how long a bolt I can use.

The broken tap wrenches:

The old busted parts vs the new hotness (note I also replaced the no longer functional front sway bar links):

Annoyingly, the steering stabilizer and front shocks weren't as worn out as I thought (still had plenty of dampening when manually opened and closed, also the shocks hadn't lost their nitrogen charge either), so I don't know if the new ones will make much of a difference.

 

[DeepBarney]

Got around to sorting out the tap stuck in the shock mount issue. Zeused a couple nuts to the tap, grabbed a socket and something to turn it with, squirted a little oil in the hole, wiggled it back and forth and backed out right out.

Success! New shock in place.

Then I moved on to replacing the rear shocks. The driver side of which was totally shot (which means I had no working / connected shocks on the driver side previously). The washers for the lower shock mounts were beat to piss and I didn't want to use them with the new bushings and tear them up. So I felt totally vindicated in keeping a bunch of shock bushing washers from previous project vehicles.

 

[DeepBarney]

New tires mounted yesterday! Not going to say they fixed it, but I haven't noticed any death wobble since replacing the 20yo dry rotted rubber that was on it.

Went with 30x9.50R15, which has the speedo reading accurate to my phone's GPS indicated speed. The 225/70R15 were ~4mph off at 60-65mph. I figured this size wouldn't make the already anemic motor feel down on power, or tax the transmission too much, while looking well proportioned to boot. A new set of "never heard of those before" all terrains and and a never before mounted Bridgestone AT I picked up off of Facebook marketplace. All in $600 (plus the $40 I paid for the Bridgestone) for all them to be mounted and balanced. Think that's more than I've spent on the truck to date.

 

[DeepBarney]

Fix one thing and another thing starts melting for seemingly no damned good reason.

Ok well it had a good reason. The bolts holding the inboard O2 sensor rusted and the sensor popped out, pumping plenty of heat up into the trans tunnel...

Temporarily fixed.

 

[DeepBarney]

My brake warning light came on in the Land Cruiser. Reservoir was getting low on fluid, which I traced to a leaky wheel cylinder in the passenger side rear drum brake. Thankfully Toyota uses the same part in other models, so the local autoparts store actually had some in stock. Then I realized I didn't have metric flare nut wrenches so I said this project can wait until tomorrow and made a harbor freight run.

Fast forward a day: Finished the brake repair on the Cruiser. Did both rear brake cylinders, because I figure if the one started leaking the other probably ain't far behind. Use a quart of O'Reilly's finest house brand DOT 3 and flushed all the old brake fluid, which was nasty ( dark orange-brown and contaminated with flecks of rust). Had a buddy come help me do the final bleed the ol' fashioned way. Huge difference in pedal feel. Pads look good front and rear as do the rotors and drums (thanking god I don't have to dump money into that right now).

Need to sort out the idle (currently too high). OBD is giving me Code 51 so I need to investigate the TPS next.

 

[DeepBarney]

Brakes are spongy now. Bled them again with the truck running this time and now change. Thinking I must have air trapped in the master cylinder based off the way it behaves.

Also, got around to adjusting the TPS based off the FSM steps. Old gasket tore so I had to make a new one. Still wants to idle high. The idle air control valve seems to keep opening up all the way and causing it to idle like 1500 RPM. So for now I've manually adjusted it to be all the way closed and unplugged the harness from it. Idles right about 650 RPM now. I can live with it until I have more time to figure out why the IACV is doing what it is.

And I assume this is part of the EGR system which is why it's so coked up. Should I bother doing anything about it?

 

[DeepBarney]

Also did a transmission flush. Also had to make a gasket for that job (for the filter). Lot of mud and crap packed around the pan and skid plate. Thankfully no glitter awaited me in the pan. Seems to shift at least as well as it did before, maybe slightly smoother on that 1-2 transition.

 

[DeepBarney]

Forgot to grab a picture of the gasket, but believe me it looks better than last one (it's like I'm getting practice at this or something).

 

[DeepBarney]

Anyone know what size the line fittings are for the master cylinder? Going to need to pick up a few to make some dummy lines to bleed the master cylinder.

 

[DeepBarney]

Finally decided the cheap replacement fuel pump from Amazon had behaved itself long enough that I could go ahead and close up the hole I opened in the floor to get to the old one. Up until now I'd just folded the metal back down in place, but not actually secured it either side of the cut. Didn't have enough thin sheet metal on hand to rivet along/across the cuts to do a proper job of reattaching/sealing it up, and besides I'd still like easy access if need be while on the road trip.

So for the time being its old license plate and some sheet metal screws will do a good enough job of firming up the floor in that area.

While I know it's a hack-job it still bothers me I didn't have enough identical sheet metal screws to do all 12 with.

Carpet back down and trim replaced. Can barely notice the screw heads thankfully, and the patch is strong enough to put my full weight on.

While looking for screws for the patch panel I found enough smaller ones to use to put the rear wiper motor access panel back on as well.

I'll go back sometime in the future and replace the license plate with something I can live with knowing I was responsible for.

 

[dbleon]

Great thread! Seems all we get here are high $ “resto” builds anymore. This is refreshing

Keep up the great work