My 60 mods thread

[AndrewP]

I had a fuel smell in my FJ60 when I first got it. It was inside the cab, so I was thinking charcoal cannister and similar.

It wasn't. The evap lines in the right rear quarter were getting old and cracked. I replaced those and 80% of the smell went away. The other 20% was harder.

The gas cap never really screwed down right. The metal ears that hold it, especially the lower one get bent by the gas pump hose over time, and prevent it from holding the cap securely. It's not fixable except with a new filler pipe from Toyota. They do have them available for about $150 and it takes an hour or so to R&R. With that and a new Toyota gas cap and the problem was solved. I am very careful at the gas pump now and don't let anyone else put fuel in it.

You will be surprised how close to the passenger compartment that the filler pipe is,and the evap hoses are basically in the passenger compartment.

 

[ntsqd]

So wait, your GF could articulate that the distinct odor she was finding offensive was specifically raw fuel, as opposed to, well, anything else?

And she is right in this diagnoses?

Sounds like a keeper...

Yes.

Yes.

Very Yes.

If the fume smell is in the cab, many times it is a result of a vapor lock in the vent tube. If you pull the return line from the charcoal canister and blow into it until there is no resistance you may find the problem fixed.

It is in the cab. I'll check that out, thank you.

The first thing I looked at was the filler hoses and filler cap area. There is a new cap and I noted in the stack of receipts that the old cap didn't seal, causing it to fail smog. Presumably the new cap does seal, at least well enough to pass inspection. The condition of the hoses visible from underneath are such that replacement should happen in the next year or so. No obvious cracks or witness marks from leaking liquid, just generally aged and brittle looking.
I have not yet looked behind the 1/4 interior insert to see what is visible there.

 

[AndrewP]

Yes.

I have not yet looked behind the 1/4 interior insert to see what is visible there.

I'll bet you have exactly the same scenerio as me as I've seen it on several other 60s. Look at the lower tab on the fuel filler and see if it is slightly bent in. If so, that's your problem.

Also, you really can't see those evap/vent hoses unless you look behind the rear 1/4 cover. The larger of the several hoses is that one that fails. It's a weird size and I had to order the direct replacement from Mr. Toy.

 

[ntsqd]

Well I popped the 1/4 off and all but on end of one of the hoses competely dry and normal looking. The one end is stained, but not wet. The filler vent hose is robust and supple feeling.

Next I inspected the fill neck. The lower ramp for the cap's tang is bent. I made a tool that allowed me to bend part of it back into shape. I'll have to be a bit more creative to straighten the rest of it.
As an experiment I put the cap on not quite all the way, turned it enough to securely latch it without it's going far enough for the tab to pop out. Went for a longer drive than the privious drive that brought the issue to my attention.

No fumes!

Given what Mr. Toyota apparently thinks that fill neck is worth my incliination is to graft a later model threaded type opening to the fill neck. If that is possible it would cure the problem and prevent a reoccurrence.

I still intend to pursue the cannister vent hose as a "belt and suspenders" approach to the problem.

 

[ntsqd]

One of the first things my FJ60 needed was revision of the battery cables and an actual battery hold-down.

The OE cables were still mostly there, but the ground battery terminal had been replaced by one of those clamp-on getcha-backs, apparently as a permanent fix. The cable had been cut (successively?) too short. I cut the short piece of cable off the lug bolted to the body next to the battery leaving a ~4 ga. grounding cable running from there down the the engine. I then made up a grounding cable using a bronze crimp-on SAE battery lug and a copper 8mm eyelet lug. It has been my good fortune that an Electrical Contrator friend of mine had to buy a Greenlee cable lug crimper for a specific job, and then has left it with me on long term loan ever since.
The hot cable was both better and scarier at the same time. The battery lug was in good shape, but only because it had been replaced. There was a mid-span splice in the cable about 10" back that came with a little black plastic box enclosing insulator. Which was held together with duct tape. The vehicle power tap 10 ga. wire had been shortened to the point where it was under tension, and some it had been mangled in the past.
I bought an insulated stud from West Marine along with some metric SS hardware, and attached it to the inner fender support. All cables & wire were cut and crimped to meet at the stud. The stud will also give me a nice point for future power taps, though I've not yet laid out exactly what those circuits will need to be.

I broke one of my own rules, that about welding to threaded fasteners (base of the all-thread on the right), but I needed to get this done today and I lacked the materials that I would have preferred. I've done this exact weld in the past without issue. It's more the principle of the thing.

My Essential Tremor is acting up today, so unfortunately my welds are a bit knobly.

 

[ntsqd]

It was sublime

Not really a mod, but a drive. There's a saying in racing that the reason we have races is so that we'll quit improving the car and actually put it together long enough for it to run.

I needed to run up to take some measurements on the buggy that is entered in BitD's Vegas to Reno so I could fabricate some parts for it. Got to thinking that my father & step-mother live near there and they hadn't seen the 60. So I drove it. On the way home I headed down Santa Ana Road. This is the curvy back road into Lake Casitas (L.A. Olympics rowing etc. site) and is still quite rural considering this part of the state. Happened to be right at dusk. As I turned onto the road the Proclaimer's "500 Miles" came on.

What bliss. If there was ever a question "why?", that drive answered it.

 

[ntsqd]

Crawled under the FJ this evening for a general looking over. It definitely needs springs. That is no surprise. I'm waiting on confirmation of some thoughts I had and whether in stock or not. Then I'll be ready to place the order. I'm being told by one source that ARB-USA doesn't have any and won't for 6 weeks so I need to find a vendor with what I want in stock.

It also needs brake flex hoses. Time to figure out what the threads used are and place an order with Orme Bros. for that stuff.

I am pondering moving the lower shock mounts to the top of the axle housing ala the Toyota Mini Trucks. Need to check steering clearences, but it looks like it would work. The stock upper mounts won't work with the remote reservoir Fox 2.0's that I have earmarked for this project. I won't change anything in shock mounts until after the springs are installed.
Side note; with it's long lever arms and small wire size it's a wonder that the front swaybar has much effect. I've read that it does and I'm not inclined to alter it, but I am surprised.

And the big thing, I measured the fuel tank area. Width between the frame rails is 37" Length from the parking brake guide on the rear axle housing to the 'turn' of the frame rail / rear-most cross member is 34" To the bottom of the frame rail from the underside of the floor is 10" and to the bottom of the current spare (of unkwn size) is 14"
The OE '79 Suburban 40 gallon tank is 33"L X 26.25"W X 11"D
It would fit very well into the void. The issue is the filler neck is about 3"-4" fowards of the stock filler neck and above the tank. Given the shape of the rear-most cross member it may well line up fore to aft. Or it may not. The up/down alignment is more of an issue.

The aftermarket 50 gal Sub tank is an odd shape designed to fit back and under a rear-most cross member as well as into the void above the tank as installed in a Suburban. I'm not so sure that it would work very well. The fill neck is too high and the rear part of the tank would limit how far up this tank could go into the FJ's fuel tank space.
I don't know for sure yet that this model (jpg below) will fit correctly. I usually make a foam-core mock-up to check fit. If it does fit it'll hold just short of 60 gallons without dropping below the frame rail. That is way more capacity than I want so some trimming down needs to happen.

 

[ntsqd]

I bought an OME medium kit, hope to start the installation on Sunday. :wings:
No idea yet how rusty the bolts will be.....
The shocks will go up FS once I have some measurements off of them. Will post them in the appropriate place at that time.

I've also gotten some early info on adapting the 700R4 trans to the stock transfer case. The AA adapter is 6.75" long and lists on their page for $745
The Klune-V "Goliath" is 7.5" long and lists out at $2142, with the benefit of offering an additional 2.7:1 reduction.
I am waiting on a quote and a length for the Toybox as my application does not have a price listed (that I could find anyway). The application is shown as available, but with no pricing.
UPDATE: I finally got the numbers for the Toybox. It is $1549 for my combo and roughly 9" long. That price includes the mini-truck hi-lo assmbly. I failed to ask what the price would be if I supplied my own (i have a couple spares).

In calculating "stupid low" the best that I could hope for without a second reduction gearset would be 61:1, but that assumes a 2.5:1 multiplication in the torque converter which is likely reaching a bit. If I could count on that it would probably be enough.
At worst it would be only 24.6:1. My 'glass buggy weighs ~1800 lbs and it's low is only 20:1. I don't see ~25:1 being enough in a vehicle that weighs around 3X+ what the DB weighs.

 

[ntsqd]

dang, dang, dang.....

Well, I finished up getting the OME springs under the FJ. Sits way stink-bug. Figured to drive it a little and see how much it settles, then decide which leaves to pull.

In the process of aligning the rear axle onto the center pins I was running out of travel in the driveshaft (a concern by itself), so I dropped it at the pinion flange. I'm afraid that revealed the source of the low grade bearing noise that I've not been wanting to hear. The companion flange is radially loose on the pinion shaft. The nut, even though it is staked in place, is free to slightly wiggle back and forth.
Toyota used solid spacers & shims to set bearing pre-load in the earlier LC's (& mini's) and then switched to a crush sleave for the later trucks. Best that I can determine off the Mud page (presently down) is the change-over occured somewhere in the '84 models. One poster of unknwn reliability says 11/84 and after got the crush sleave. Date on the Fed tag on the 60 says date of mfg was 9/84.

I'm leaning towards the evidence saying I'm looking at my 3rd crush sleave failure in 3 vehicles.

If I have to open it up to fix it I can either just deal with what I find, or I can plan to go clear to the rear axle that I want. Which will probably significantly delay getting the V8 installed. My ideal rear axle would be an ARB'd 4.11 geared floater. With gearing to match in the front that is ~3K. I really want it driveable by early Sept. for an event in JT (EDIT: Joshua Tree).

The problem is that the pinion gear rear bearing is not salvagable, it is junk when it comes off, so if new pinion bearings then should go to the ratio I need anyway (4.11). The other problem is that the floater ARB is a different p/n than the non-floater. I think the difference is that the non-floats use C-Clips (which is why even though being a drop-out axle design that they still have an inspection cover on the rear hsg). If that is the only diff then I can eventually use a c-clip ARB in a floater hsg.

It's been suggested that I find a serviceable whole diff & drop it in for now. then I'd have the spare to build up the way I want. Anyone know of a 3.7 FS?

dang, dang, dang........
didn't want to deal with gearing etc just yet.

 

[89s rule]

Keep driving the OME they will settle out some. But most all springs give a stink bug look so that when you load down its leverl, not sagging.

I have a set of 4.11 R&P if you decide to go that route. Drop me a PM if you are interested. I should have bought some 3.73 3rds when I did my 4.88 swap but didnt. So I have my fj62 R&P's.

 

[ntsqd]

Thank you for the offer. I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do, but I will keep it in mind.

I tried just tightening the nut to see how tight I could go before starting to gain bearing pre-load. I was able to get it quite tight (no torque wrench though), so I staked it and intend to see how works. Worst case is that I'm where I'm at now plus a bunch of metal shavings to clean out. There is no evidence that this diff case has ever been out of the housing. With 270k on it I expect that a full set of bearings is pretty much a given and I'm OK with that.

The driveshaft is not looking good either. Nearly had to pry it's centering pilot over the end of the pinion shaft. There should be a lot more movement in the slip than that. This is with weight on the springs. At first I let it sit there with some force on it hoping that excess grease in the slip was causing a hydro-lock situation. No such luck.
Compression should pull the axle back, but I'm not sure what the net result of extension might be.

 

[ntsqd]

Dumb Luck?

Forgot to mention, last weekend I was sitting in the passenger seat just surveying the whole truck. Thinking about seat options etc. I idlely was trying the shift levers and discovered that this fairly stock and unmolested truck has the 2WD-Lo mod! I've no idea if this was intentional or not, but I could clearly feel the neutral and low range detents by just pulling the lever sideways from 2-Hi. It will not go into 4-lo from 2-lo without going back through 2-hi, but the (2)N & 2-lo positions align with the (4)N & 4-lo positions.

 

[adventureduo]

Wow what are the chances? That's awesome.

 

[ntsqd]

Time for an update.

I wanted just the OME springs and a few other bits, but it became obvious to me that buying it piece meal was far less cost effective than just buying a kit and selling off the parts I didn't want. So I bought the OME Med/Heavy set-up and just today sold off the bits that I didn't want. I probably should have gone with the Med/Med as it sits way stinkbug. In my view the second overload leaf is entirely unnecessary and will be removed. Which leaf to pull is the question. These are fairly well integrated springs and pulling the wrong leaf will certainly cause fatigue issues down the road. The shortest leaf will have the most effect, but the most logical to remove is the second longest in the pack.
No pics because my driveway is too narrow for a decent shot and I'm about to pull the radiator.

the radiator has a pinhole leak in the top tank, but looking at it carefully the top tank is about 50% solder. So, what to do? Long term plan is a V8 (likely to start this winter) so I'm really tempted to fit the cross-flow 4 core from my '79 Suburban in there as it was recently recored. The spigots are in roughly the same places, but further apart. The real issue, after some preliminary measuring, looks to be the front body mounts. They may force the radiator either up too high or back too far. It's a given that the battery tray will need to be rebuilt with the battery re-oriented 90* from current.

 

[ntsqd]

Well, the 79's radiator is just too wide and a bit too tall. I had the leak in the stock unit fixed, so it goes back in for now. I am thinking that my best bet is to find a complete Tuned Port Injection V8 donor car and go from there.

Some other updates; I now have all of the bits to replace the front brake hoses with braided SS. I will be building them from scratch as I need to move the tab on the axle housing for the new shock mounts. I also now have received a complete set of wheel bearings & seals from Cruiseroutfitters and a set of the V6 4rnnr calipers from the local brake supply house. The plan was to tear into all of that this weekend. Then life intervened. Oh well......

Pictures when there is something worth taking a pic of.