1964 FJ40 build up=Childhood dreams coming to life

fj40offroad

New member
Hello all,
I would like to introduce my baby to the community, some of you may recognize her, and may remember some of the extended story, I hope you enjoy this! I have been asked to put up a thread of this build up for several reasons, most of all I need to keep myself motivated to keep turning the wrenches. I love it, however over the past few years working on a chemical engineering major and life has gotten in the way. I am going to try to use this as a revitalization to finish this project that lives in my dreams, has donated more iron to my blood then anything else, is practically a phlebotomist with how much blood it has taken from me, and left several memorable scars across my body. She has been a work in progress in my hands since 2002. At the age of 15 I begged my father to allow me to start fixing up the Land Cruiser that hadn't been running since the 1980's it had been simply sitting in the yard as an ornament for years. Bringing it back to life, and cruising it down in Moab had been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember.

Growing up I loved to sneak out and sit in the cruiser in which I imagined to be on any number of adventures, driving her down a trail, outrunning banditos in Mexico, or doing recon in the military. The very least I can say it was a very prominent part of my early years.

Well enough of the nostalgia, in 2002 I knew the Cruiser needed:
-New brake lines
-Exhaust
-Complete fluid change
Of course at the age of 15 I was dreaming of doing the basic fixes, getting it registered and having it drivable by 16! YA RIGHT!!!! LOL

Now in 2002 the cruiser was sporting some mods my father had done years before the family put a damper on enjoying the cruiser. He had outfitted it with: an International inline 6 turbo diesel adapted to a 4-speed MT that he replaced the old 3-speed with.
Custom front and rear bumper
I honestly cannot remember all of the modifications he had done to it. You will probably see some in the tear down photos.

Well a couple weekends after first pulling the cruiser out to the driveway, we had new filters and fluids in the engine. Tossed a bucket of diesel under the cruiser, connected the battery, and turned her over. After several attempts, black smoke came billowing out of the chopped exhaust, and the old engine roared to life. I can't say I could have been any happier to see her turn over, see the smoke, and immediately thoughts of having the cruiser as my first vehicle filled my head. How cool could it be to have Land Cruiser, that I could spend time building up and take down to Moab.

Well lets just say reality took a little while to kick in, not to mention I am the son of an engineer, an engineer whose baby had just roared back to life after sitting for 15 years dead under a tarp. To say it lightly the gears in my dads head went into overdrive, and my brain was quickly aligning itself with him to do the rebuild correctly!

So into the axles we dove to fix the brakes. The first obvious modification would be to toss out those old worn out drum breaks of course!! Well this is the beginning of the long haul, here is a photo of when I first pulled out the cruiser and a couple teasers.

Well its getting late so I better be off to sit down with my textbooks!
Cheers
 

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LJ_24

Adventurer
Awesome story! I plan on replicating a BJ40 that my dad had when I was younger...except with more mods! I was only 10 years old the last time I saw the BJ40 but I still remember all the plans I had for it. For now, I will stick to building up my 100 series daily driver lol

Goodluck! Keep us updated with progress :)
 

Topgun514

Adventurer
This story is from is Bovee, I pursuaded him last night to post up on this because of his awesome rig.



I will let L.Bovee tell the rest of the story but I will give a few numbers


6.5L
 

fj40offroad

New member
Yes sir Kurt, Leighton Bovee at your service, good guess by the way, although how many 40's are that full under the bonnet!!! lol It has been way to long in process, hopefully I can get you all up to speed fairly quickly, but I will try to keep enough detail, that its an educational venture! ;-)

Here are some more of the original look of the cruiser! I am currently searching old files looking for Cruiser photos, since they all got scattered to the wind over the years. enjoy!!

Oh and since you spilled the beans Colin, lol jk its a Chev 6.5TD mated to an NV4500 and split with an Orion from AA!! But we will get there soon!!! ;-)
 

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cruisertoy

Explorer
Fun. My 40 has been sitting for at least 8 years now. My 5 yr old keeps wanting to get it running. Maybe I should just tell him to wait until he's 15.
 

fj40offroad

New member
Well its been forever so I am sorry for the delay, Chemical Engineering is keeping me way to busy. So I will try to cover one topic our fabrication of the dual caliper rear disc brakes. We wanted to have the dual calipers for the sincere ability to if the need arose to be able to lock the rear wheels up with the emergency brake. So we designed and built a bracket that would hold one 1982 Chevy Monte Carlo caliper, and a rear caliper off a 1980 Cadillac, both fit nicely with the the 1970's F150 disc, the Cadillac caliper allowed us to incorporate a dedicated caliper to the E-braking, with the Monte Carlo running the hydraulics.
Here are a couple photos to show you what we did! Enjoy

We first build a wooden mount to make sure everything was going to fit properly
P001270.jpg

The rusty rear axle housing
P001257.jpg

The refurbished caliper is the Monte Carlo here we made sure everything fit perfectly
P001282.jpg

Used the wood model as a sketch
P001285.jpg

Spent painstaking time to get it cut out perfectly, many of you will think this was a waste of time but remember our tolerances had to be right, and the mounting holes were very close to the cuts.
P001288.jpg

Before installation
P001299.jpg

Had to fabricate a small 1/8 spacer for the mounting hardware to fit properly as seen here
P001941.jpg

On the axle
P001603.jpg

Mounted before the axle was swapped to spring over configuration
P001597.jpg

After spring over conversion
P001945.jpg

Hope you enjoyed this post I will try to continue adding more of the build
Cheers
 

1911

Expedition Leader
Cool project and creative thinking.

How are you going to activate the emergency brake calipers, a line lock or what?
 

fj40offroad

New member
Cool project and creative thinking.

How are you going to activate the emergency brake calipers, a line lock or what?

The original idea was to use a cable direct. Most reliable, however this has not been installed or really worked on, so its up to discussion! Any ideas will be evaluated.
 

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