1977 Toyota Chinook 4x4

Beachboyy

Adventurer
Well I hope this is the right place to post this. I know its a camper but the truck itself is what I seem to have a couple questions about. This is my first Toyota pickup (if you can call it that). I bought the truck back in September sight unseen in Utah. Being that I work in Alaska I wasnt able to go pick it up until last week. It seems to be in pretty darn good shape for a '77. No significant rust at all. The old owner was in his late 60's and used the truck a lot during the summers until his wife passed away about 5 years ago. I drove the truck about an hour back down to SLC (mind you on the same day they had the biggest wind storm they have had in 10 years!). The truck did great but had 3 different tires on it including 1 mud terrain. It like to pull pretty hard. I dropped it off at a local mechanic in SLC and did a simple tune up, 2 new rear tires, oil change, checked breaks, etc... I took off at 5:30am heading for the oregon coast 856 miles away. The truck did great. As long as there were no hills I could cruise at about 60-65mph. Throw in a hill and i was doing 40-50mph. I got 17.9 mpg and figure i have over a 600 mile range. I made it all of 839 miles when suddenly my headlights shut off. Our area where we live in oregon is pretty rural and I was coming out of the mountains, needless to say driving the beast at 60mph in the pitch dark was a little scary, even if it was only for 10 seconds. I was able to make it to a pull out and being as tired as I was I did little more than make sure it wasnt a blown fuse and then call a friend to come pick me up. I went back and got it the next morning and it is now officially sitting in my driveway! I few more tidbits about the truck. I was told it originally came with the 20r but has been upgraded to the 22r. My only toyota experience has been with an fj55 with a chevy 350 so I dont know how to tell the difference? I believe Wolverine did the 4x4 conversion. The front axle says "Low MFG" on the diff cover. I have never seen this kind of axle and tried looking it up but couldnt find much on it. I would really appreciate if anyone could give me some more info on it. Everything on the vehicle works that I have found so far (except the headlights now). It has aftermarket A/C. The biggest downfall to it was just that it was really dirty. It looked like there had been a dog living in it and had collected a good amount of leaves inside it. I know there are some guy on here that know toyota's better than they know themselves and I am sure I am going to have a million annoying questions. Here is a short list of what I need to do to it:

-Strip old carpet out of the cab and replace with new carpet kit. Any idea of were I can get a carpet kit for it?
-Strip old shag carpet out of living area and replace with some sort of vinyl flooring.
-Figure out headlight issue
-I would really like to do a power steering conversion on it. You forget how nice it is having power steering until its gone. I have no idea where to start with this though.
-Mostly I would like to figure out were to source parts for this rig. Being a '77 Im not sure were to find parts. I would like to redo the suspension (springs and shocks)

I am really happy with it so far and see my family and myself having a lot of good times in it. If I should post this in a different section please let me know. Here are a few pics of the outside after I got home. After I clean the inside I will shoot some shots of it also.
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Owyhee H

Adventurer
Nice find. I have never seen a front axle like that either, weird they didnt use a toyota axle. I assume they did the conversion in 77 so maybe that was before toyota had brought in the 4X4.
If the engine was converted to the 22R, easy conversion, it will say 22R on the front dirvers side of the block about 1/3 the way down on a flat spot. This might take some cleaning to get to.
Depending on what 22R block they used the power stearing conversion should be easy. There are lots of 22R power stearing brackets to be had and depending on the front axles stearing setup you can either hav a push pull stearing or HI-stear options.
You look to need springs bad, the cheapo helpers on the back are junk.
Looks like you have a great project and lots of work ahead of you.
Good luck
 

randito

New member
That truck is awesome! I was wondering how they kept the suspension so low, then I saw that it was SUA in the front, interesting.
 

Beachboyy

Adventurer
This vehicle was listed on KSL (kind of like Utah's craigslist) and was discussed in the classified's section yes.
Owyhee H - Thanks for the info. Much appreciated. I found the "22R" stamped on the block and will be looking into the power steering. The hi-steer conversion would be awesome.

So i started tearing into the cab today. It had "newer" carpet over the original vinyl over......rust! I was pretty disappointed when I found some rust in both the driver side and passenger side floor pans. Both have small spots that are rusted through. I will finish cleaning up the cab tomorrow and see how bad they really are. I will be putting some new steel in though.

When sourcing new springs where should I start? Not like I can look up '77 4x4 chinook. I measured the rears and they are 48" long and the fronts are 36". I weighed the vehicle at a closed weight station yesterday and it was 4600 lbs. This is all i have to go with on springs. Shocks should be easy once I take them off I will have a compressed and extended measurement with the weight of the vehicle.
 

Beachboyy

Adventurer
Well ran into another hiccup (i'm sure there is going to be tons of these). The engine is sometimes cold blooded on the cold mornings. But has started every time and is great once warmed up. However, today there was no starting. Even with starting fluid still nothing. Not sure whats going on? Ran fine yesterday evening when I parked it. It is parked on a hill with the nose uphill (not sure if this would do anything). Any suggestions?
 

zolo

Explorer
Well ran into another hiccup (i'm sure there is going to be tons of these). The engine is sometimes cold blooded on the cold mornings. But has started every time and is great once warmed up. However, today there was no starting. Even with starting fluid still nothing. Not sure whats going on? Ran fine yesterday evening when I parked it. It is parked on a hill with the nose uphill (not sure if this would do anything). Any suggestions?

Start with the basics Fuel and Spark....Make sure the choke is working. Thats a simple set up.
 

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