dieselcruiserhead
04-17-2007, 09:43 PM
Been having a little trouble today focusing on banging out work versus hanging out on the forum.. :) So I thought I would be at least "slightly" productive by typing up a story of my old rig, a '71 FJ55 Land Cruiser... Sorry guys this is sort of an "article" that I thought I would post.. I would probably try to submit it to someone maybe except for a lack of high res pics. How basic is that, LOL...
I bought it from stockish with a non running motor, and sitting for about 10 years. It was in California, looked great in the pics but was pretty rotted. I attempted a restore, and did a slew of custom mods to bring to final state. The restoration went pretty badly. Looked great at first, but the rust and poor body came back/bit me back fast. Basic truck overview:
Cummins 4BT, NV4500 5 speed, NP241 New Process Dodge (and Chevy era) T case.
Spring Over Axle (SOA) conversion, this actually took a lot of work as I eventually succeeded in designing for carrying heavy loads and excellent on road handling, which is actually a little tough with a leaf spring SOA. About a 5-6" overall lift. This was also necessary to fit the 4BT, but I could have made it smaller.
FJ62 axle up front, Aussie Locker, Toyota IFS era rear axle with Tacoma V6/E-Locked housing.
Volvo Seats, custom dash with gauges and diesel specific gauges.
Tweaked the 4BT using mostly Dodge era parts to get more turbo/highway without compromising mileage or anything else.
Aluminum radiatior, Ford Taurus fan.
The purpose of this article is to describe sort of a more radical approach to custom off road vehicles for expedition purposes and some of the pitfalls with a completely custom vehicle, versus a Tacoma or FZJ80 or something similar out of the box. I took this truck all over the place, Colorado, Idaho, all over Utah, several full-on 4+ Moab wheeling trips, and never really broke down except for some minor fuel issues when I was first getting it running and some mostly minor wheeling damage, some that required immediate fixing, some that did not. I would have / could have driven it farther easily as well. That said, it was a big experiment because it was basically an entirely custom vehicle.
In the world of FJ55's, really only '75-'76 ish era and later are decent stock (a lot like FJ40's as well unfortunately) because they have the more powerful motor, disk brake front axle, 4 speed on the floor, and a few creature comforts. In '79 [the last year of the FJ55, very few of these were even imported] they went to the 3.70 axle gear ratio so they were better on the highway. But too fast for off road in "crawling" situations... The earlier models are underpowered, loud and rough, and have bad brakes. These require fairly major upgrades and you can get into a world of never ending purchases, just to have features that come in a '76-'78 era FJ55 stock. It is better to find one from this era if buying. But then I am back in the "purchase a whole vehicle" category and higher budget level. But even in that category ('76-'78 cruisers), they guzzle, their overall performance and comfort is still less than say an early FJ60 Land Cruiser (which actually is a great truck, and was my first choice at the time) but is still "rough" compared to something from the 90's or later.
I also considered pickups and love pickups (my first car was a '85 Nissan 4WD truck that I off roaded as much as possible)... But I am 6'5, so regular cabs in mini truck style do not cut the mustard, and I don't think I could really afford the later better pickups, and the earlier Toyotas also guzzle and are underpowered in my opinion. And after all that, they are still gasoline... My dream truck is probably some sort of crew cab pickup, but bigger/beefier than a mini truck or even Tacoma, and diesel. It is also harder to justify a lot of $$ into a mid 80's pickup, and making it diesel, that you may not have resale out of.
Prior to owning this truck I owned a HJ60 that I imported from Canada. This is a 60 series that is diesel, factory 5 speed, instead of gas, carburetted, and 4 speed. That sort of was the dream truck but without the turbo was an absolute slug up here in the altitude (~6K feet - about 3% loss for each 1000 ft - nearly 25% loss of the 100hp it had). At sea level elevations with stockish tires, it had a surprising amount of power and was a great all around truck. But up here, even when turboed, it was still not enough power in my opinion, about the same power as a stock 2F or even slightly less. The body on it was nice (recently redone) but the frame / axles /etc were highly rusty. The truck was from Quebec originally, I bought back east before moving out. The rust and low power made planning large mods hard to do. I liked the 60 series, but once I got into the 55, I also found it very large, particularly wide. It is about 6-8" wider than the 55, about the same as a 80 series minus the fender flares... It is amazing what you can snake around in a FJ55 due to its narrowness. I also had just discovered the world of diesel swaps and got that bug so I proceeded to sell the HJ60 to try to do a swap into some sort of Land Cruiser wagon. I would have done another 60 but at the time I actually couldn't find one that was rust free and cheap with a blown motor or similar. The 55 sort of fell in my lap. It was in Stockton California (so that was a fun road trip) but was worth the trip. I actually traded a leaky Jeep Cherokee that I bought for $800 for it.
I had conflicting views about what I wanted to do with it, largely due to my influences from mostly Pirate4x4.com - which was the big site at the time, right when ih8mud.com as a forum (it was formerly a links page) was just getting off the ground... Back then (about 2001), Pirate was the next step away from the conservative and somewhat 'backwards' LCML email list that was great but limited and had a lot of erroneous information that the intellects there repeated sort of like parrots with no little real world info. This is where information like "Cummins engines can't fit into Land Cruisers" and "Weber carbs are great" came from.. I ran Weber carbs for years because of these guys. :rolleyes: But I did like the intellectual approach they had, sort of like a group of Land Rover owners, and a sense of class, a lot like here...
Pirate was very popular, and leaned much more towards radical off roaders; trailer queens, 40" tires, big V8s, chopped bodies, etc. However, there were a few of us who were a little more traditional, including a bunch of guys with FJ55's who wheeled them very hard. Typically we all had to assimilated towards the SOA on 35's (in some cases 37's), locked and geared. Some guys wheeled very hard with this setup, and kept up with the 40s as much as possible. I also had a dichotomy as I hadn't really gotten the rural road time camping "expedition" oriented bug that I have now. I should have, but it was not as popular as it is now, so I hadn't really discovered it, and was leaning more towards the off-road crowd. So, I largely overbuilt the truck because of Pirate, in that the truck was large. But they trained me (or I learned) to identify with weaknesses in design, these guys mostly think 1-ton and strength. But I was able to pull off stock, at least axles-wise.
It was actually Kurt Williams (one of my good friends who owns Cruiser Outfitters www.cruiseroutfitters.com) who first started getting into the crazy back roads/high mileage adventures. Along with Wasatch Cruisers club member Dave Connors, who is very well travelled in his former Tacoma and then his 80 series, these guys started to influence me heavily from their great adventures in Utah and the Southwest.
What I wanted/ended up building was similar to a stock Land Cruiser, but improved upon for off road, speed, and mileage, but without trying to impact the DDing ability of it as much as possible. Basically a utility vehicle in a sense. Something I could really beat the snot out of and drive it home... An all-around off-road utility vehicle....
Finances were a huge issue. I am in my late 20's and instead of pursuing the New York dream (I am from back east near New York) I moved to a ski town near Salt Lake City that offers mostly computer programming or manufacturing/engineering jobs, and I did not want to be confined to a typical desk job in Salt Lake. So, because of these choices, I never really got a an opportunity to start making a lot of money, so all of these building adventures have been on unbelievably shoe string budgets. Luckily I have no kids, just my long term girlfriend and I so I can get away with this, at least for now... I attempted to start a business in '05 as a freelance web guy, which is still what I do in addition to some volunteer positions including director of the biodiesel coop. So that was tough as well, but I did get by, for the most part, but in some cases, barely, while building these trucks.. Also, "building it," while not having the instant gratification of purchasing a truck right out of the box, allowed me to put $$ toward it as time and money allowed. So it took a lot of patience, but once I finally got done, I pretty much had a truck that I could say I had 100% built myself.
My mechanical ability prior was somewhat limited. I had done a lot of different mechanical jobs, some fairly large, but had never done an engine swap for example. I barely knew how to weld. How much did this effect the final outcome of the truck? Not too much, but there are things I could have done cleaner, and in the end I had to do some things two, even three times before I was satisfied with the quality. I did end up tearing into the front axle probably 5-6 times total and switched front axles about 1/2 way into ownership. I went through two rear axles, and had to build the t case linkages a few times as my designs never held up to the simple task of switching into 2-4HI-4LOW.
Long term, was experience building vehicles something that hindered the project? Unfortunately yes, but not a deal breaker IMO. "I knew what I know now," LOL, I would have maybe built it slightly differently. Really, just cleaner, and I have learned to identify some things I should have been able to identify before. In the end, in June of '06, I decided to sell it, to basically build a nearly identical truck from the ground up with cleaner components and overall body. That said, at the time I was planning to keep it, but rust on the body was one of my big reasons for choosing to sell it. If there was no rust, I would have probably kept it.
Before I attempted to build it, I thought there would be large value to saying "I built it all myself." While this is nice to say, I would say it is slightly overrated and mechanical ability is, well.. ...mechanical ability... I do have pride, however, mostly that I have the mechanical ability and knowledge that I think has taken me a long way in my interests and possibly in my business career, as my much of my web and marketing business sort of revolves around vehicles, biodiesel, and related topics. I would say for the general person, it is about 55% worth it for "I built it all myself" and 45% not, so really not that big an issue... There is significant value to doing these things yourself, however, as **labor** is the big cost of building a custom vehicle. Even in the state that this truck was in, I do not think it could have been built for less than $25K, believe it or not.
When I was building, also largely because it was cheapest, I chose to use a number of junk yard or common-parts-store items, that were typically for other vehicles. The fuse panel was from a Subaru, for example, I used some Dodge and Volvo parts, and tried to use common U-joints for the most part, etc, etc.
I did have some weird 1-off of custom parts, but I tried to use these as little as possible and in areas where I believed were not things that could break easily (transfer case, for example).
In all, I think it was worth it. I learned a lot and was willing to spend the time learning all of this stuff. Today, I would consider myself probably about a (edited) 3.8 to 4 out of a 5 in regards to mechanics ability. I leave the rest for the top tier guys who build some of the custom Formula 1, Baja, etc. I am definitely not one of these buys but by now, I think I could be one of these guys fairly easily if I wanted to be. My fab skills are also getting much better and are getting very clean.
I bought it from stockish with a non running motor, and sitting for about 10 years. It was in California, looked great in the pics but was pretty rotted. I attempted a restore, and did a slew of custom mods to bring to final state. The restoration went pretty badly. Looked great at first, but the rust and poor body came back/bit me back fast. Basic truck overview:
Cummins 4BT, NV4500 5 speed, NP241 New Process Dodge (and Chevy era) T case.
Spring Over Axle (SOA) conversion, this actually took a lot of work as I eventually succeeded in designing for carrying heavy loads and excellent on road handling, which is actually a little tough with a leaf spring SOA. About a 5-6" overall lift. This was also necessary to fit the 4BT, but I could have made it smaller.
FJ62 axle up front, Aussie Locker, Toyota IFS era rear axle with Tacoma V6/E-Locked housing.
Volvo Seats, custom dash with gauges and diesel specific gauges.
Tweaked the 4BT using mostly Dodge era parts to get more turbo/highway without compromising mileage or anything else.
Aluminum radiatior, Ford Taurus fan.
The purpose of this article is to describe sort of a more radical approach to custom off road vehicles for expedition purposes and some of the pitfalls with a completely custom vehicle, versus a Tacoma or FZJ80 or something similar out of the box. I took this truck all over the place, Colorado, Idaho, all over Utah, several full-on 4+ Moab wheeling trips, and never really broke down except for some minor fuel issues when I was first getting it running and some mostly minor wheeling damage, some that required immediate fixing, some that did not. I would have / could have driven it farther easily as well. That said, it was a big experiment because it was basically an entirely custom vehicle.
In the world of FJ55's, really only '75-'76 ish era and later are decent stock (a lot like FJ40's as well unfortunately) because they have the more powerful motor, disk brake front axle, 4 speed on the floor, and a few creature comforts. In '79 [the last year of the FJ55, very few of these were even imported] they went to the 3.70 axle gear ratio so they were better on the highway. But too fast for off road in "crawling" situations... The earlier models are underpowered, loud and rough, and have bad brakes. These require fairly major upgrades and you can get into a world of never ending purchases, just to have features that come in a '76-'78 era FJ55 stock. It is better to find one from this era if buying. But then I am back in the "purchase a whole vehicle" category and higher budget level. But even in that category ('76-'78 cruisers), they guzzle, their overall performance and comfort is still less than say an early FJ60 Land Cruiser (which actually is a great truck, and was my first choice at the time) but is still "rough" compared to something from the 90's or later.
I also considered pickups and love pickups (my first car was a '85 Nissan 4WD truck that I off roaded as much as possible)... But I am 6'5, so regular cabs in mini truck style do not cut the mustard, and I don't think I could really afford the later better pickups, and the earlier Toyotas also guzzle and are underpowered in my opinion. And after all that, they are still gasoline... My dream truck is probably some sort of crew cab pickup, but bigger/beefier than a mini truck or even Tacoma, and diesel. It is also harder to justify a lot of $$ into a mid 80's pickup, and making it diesel, that you may not have resale out of.
Prior to owning this truck I owned a HJ60 that I imported from Canada. This is a 60 series that is diesel, factory 5 speed, instead of gas, carburetted, and 4 speed. That sort of was the dream truck but without the turbo was an absolute slug up here in the altitude (~6K feet - about 3% loss for each 1000 ft - nearly 25% loss of the 100hp it had). At sea level elevations with stockish tires, it had a surprising amount of power and was a great all around truck. But up here, even when turboed, it was still not enough power in my opinion, about the same power as a stock 2F or even slightly less. The body on it was nice (recently redone) but the frame / axles /etc were highly rusty. The truck was from Quebec originally, I bought back east before moving out. The rust and low power made planning large mods hard to do. I liked the 60 series, but once I got into the 55, I also found it very large, particularly wide. It is about 6-8" wider than the 55, about the same as a 80 series minus the fender flares... It is amazing what you can snake around in a FJ55 due to its narrowness. I also had just discovered the world of diesel swaps and got that bug so I proceeded to sell the HJ60 to try to do a swap into some sort of Land Cruiser wagon. I would have done another 60 but at the time I actually couldn't find one that was rust free and cheap with a blown motor or similar. The 55 sort of fell in my lap. It was in Stockton California (so that was a fun road trip) but was worth the trip. I actually traded a leaky Jeep Cherokee that I bought for $800 for it.
I had conflicting views about what I wanted to do with it, largely due to my influences from mostly Pirate4x4.com - which was the big site at the time, right when ih8mud.com as a forum (it was formerly a links page) was just getting off the ground... Back then (about 2001), Pirate was the next step away from the conservative and somewhat 'backwards' LCML email list that was great but limited and had a lot of erroneous information that the intellects there repeated sort of like parrots with no little real world info. This is where information like "Cummins engines can't fit into Land Cruisers" and "Weber carbs are great" came from.. I ran Weber carbs for years because of these guys. :rolleyes: But I did like the intellectual approach they had, sort of like a group of Land Rover owners, and a sense of class, a lot like here...
Pirate was very popular, and leaned much more towards radical off roaders; trailer queens, 40" tires, big V8s, chopped bodies, etc. However, there were a few of us who were a little more traditional, including a bunch of guys with FJ55's who wheeled them very hard. Typically we all had to assimilated towards the SOA on 35's (in some cases 37's), locked and geared. Some guys wheeled very hard with this setup, and kept up with the 40s as much as possible. I also had a dichotomy as I hadn't really gotten the rural road time camping "expedition" oriented bug that I have now. I should have, but it was not as popular as it is now, so I hadn't really discovered it, and was leaning more towards the off-road crowd. So, I largely overbuilt the truck because of Pirate, in that the truck was large. But they trained me (or I learned) to identify with weaknesses in design, these guys mostly think 1-ton and strength. But I was able to pull off stock, at least axles-wise.
It was actually Kurt Williams (one of my good friends who owns Cruiser Outfitters www.cruiseroutfitters.com) who first started getting into the crazy back roads/high mileage adventures. Along with Wasatch Cruisers club member Dave Connors, who is very well travelled in his former Tacoma and then his 80 series, these guys started to influence me heavily from their great adventures in Utah and the Southwest.
What I wanted/ended up building was similar to a stock Land Cruiser, but improved upon for off road, speed, and mileage, but without trying to impact the DDing ability of it as much as possible. Basically a utility vehicle in a sense. Something I could really beat the snot out of and drive it home... An all-around off-road utility vehicle....
Finances were a huge issue. I am in my late 20's and instead of pursuing the New York dream (I am from back east near New York) I moved to a ski town near Salt Lake City that offers mostly computer programming or manufacturing/engineering jobs, and I did not want to be confined to a typical desk job in Salt Lake. So, because of these choices, I never really got a an opportunity to start making a lot of money, so all of these building adventures have been on unbelievably shoe string budgets. Luckily I have no kids, just my long term girlfriend and I so I can get away with this, at least for now... I attempted to start a business in '05 as a freelance web guy, which is still what I do in addition to some volunteer positions including director of the biodiesel coop. So that was tough as well, but I did get by, for the most part, but in some cases, barely, while building these trucks.. Also, "building it," while not having the instant gratification of purchasing a truck right out of the box, allowed me to put $$ toward it as time and money allowed. So it took a lot of patience, but once I finally got done, I pretty much had a truck that I could say I had 100% built myself.
My mechanical ability prior was somewhat limited. I had done a lot of different mechanical jobs, some fairly large, but had never done an engine swap for example. I barely knew how to weld. How much did this effect the final outcome of the truck? Not too much, but there are things I could have done cleaner, and in the end I had to do some things two, even three times before I was satisfied with the quality. I did end up tearing into the front axle probably 5-6 times total and switched front axles about 1/2 way into ownership. I went through two rear axles, and had to build the t case linkages a few times as my designs never held up to the simple task of switching into 2-4HI-4LOW.
Long term, was experience building vehicles something that hindered the project? Unfortunately yes, but not a deal breaker IMO. "I knew what I know now," LOL, I would have maybe built it slightly differently. Really, just cleaner, and I have learned to identify some things I should have been able to identify before. In the end, in June of '06, I decided to sell it, to basically build a nearly identical truck from the ground up with cleaner components and overall body. That said, at the time I was planning to keep it, but rust on the body was one of my big reasons for choosing to sell it. If there was no rust, I would have probably kept it.
Before I attempted to build it, I thought there would be large value to saying "I built it all myself." While this is nice to say, I would say it is slightly overrated and mechanical ability is, well.. ...mechanical ability... I do have pride, however, mostly that I have the mechanical ability and knowledge that I think has taken me a long way in my interests and possibly in my business career, as my much of my web and marketing business sort of revolves around vehicles, biodiesel, and related topics. I would say for the general person, it is about 55% worth it for "I built it all myself" and 45% not, so really not that big an issue... There is significant value to doing these things yourself, however, as **labor** is the big cost of building a custom vehicle. Even in the state that this truck was in, I do not think it could have been built for less than $25K, believe it or not.
When I was building, also largely because it was cheapest, I chose to use a number of junk yard or common-parts-store items, that were typically for other vehicles. The fuse panel was from a Subaru, for example, I used some Dodge and Volvo parts, and tried to use common U-joints for the most part, etc, etc.
I did have some weird 1-off of custom parts, but I tried to use these as little as possible and in areas where I believed were not things that could break easily (transfer case, for example).
In all, I think it was worth it. I learned a lot and was willing to spend the time learning all of this stuff. Today, I would consider myself probably about a (edited) 3.8 to 4 out of a 5 in regards to mechanics ability. I leave the rest for the top tier guys who build some of the custom Formula 1, Baja, etc. I am definitely not one of these buys but by now, I think I could be one of these guys fairly easily if I wanted to be. My fab skills are also getting much better and are getting very clean.