FJ40 roll cage, power steering, and disc brake front end

[sig]

can prob do you a swap 60 for 70 shaft if you want

[cooksworld]

Hi - I've had another chat with the certifier and also called into an engineers and they both confirmed that no steering components can be welded. Guess those who got them through recently may have had a certifier who was either not so concerned about this, or thought the fitted part was a standard component.

'sig' - thanks for the offer. I'll continue on with an idea that I have as I'm sure there will be others heading down this path so I'd like to see what I can come up with and post it here.

Does anyone know of any standard shafts extensions. I've spied this on TM [top one ]



(http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing ... =222842421)

It looks like the top shaft my be an inline extension but I'm not sure of the length and spline count.

[cooksworld]

The standard 60 series sliding joint isn't anywhere long enough to get from the PS box up to the existing 40 series steering column

My options are:
1/ Try to find a longer slide joint shaft. My 60 series one extends from approx 46-56cm in length. 'sig' showed me one from a 70 series (from memory) that was longer. I'll have to measure everything up again but I think I need something that will extend up to 65-70cm. My options are to find an extension to go onto my 60 series slide joint shaft (possibly something like this - http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing ... =222842421), hunt out a 70 series slide joint shaft - or hunt around for something else that I have yet to discover...

I've got an old 70 series one here with a flogged out UJ, it measures 815mm end to end and looks like its pretty close to fully compressed.... the slide joints seized so I cant tell the actual compressed/expanded length

I brought a 70 series tierod and draglink from toyota a couple of months ago and the list price (ex gst) was $40 each including freight from japan and they both came with ball joints on the end... might not be a bad idea to have a quick chat with the toyota man while your doing all this

Do you think there's any chance of getting this un-seized? One of these shortened and resplined could be the go.

[Sadam_Husain]

Do you think there's any chance of getting this un-seized? One of these shortened and resplined could be the go.

Yeah it should pop back out, you can see where it pulled out 20mm when I bodylifted the truck a couple of years ago. The UJ on the ends pretty flogged out though but you may be able to swap that end for your 60 series one

[cooksworld]

This is one of my other ideas - get 2x splined universal joints and combine them into one to do the joint from the 40 series column to the 'slide shaft' down to the PS box. I'd need to get the 40 series steering column shortened and splined (I understand a FJ55 column already has the splined end if anyone knows of one!)

See http://forum.ih8mud.com/co-wy-horsetoot ... ost1008695



[FJ55 standard column on the left]

[cooksworld]

I chased up the certification guy today. When I called him last week he wanted to do a pre-inspection of all the steering components, however when he found out I was in Wgtn city and he was out the Hutt we just talked through what I was doing and outlined the following (and no visit required - I'd even cleaned the garage last night for him!)...

For the power steering:

- shorten the FJ40 steering column and get it splined to take the FJ60 universal joint

- get a FJ70 collapsible shaft. Shorten it the required length from the PS box to the universal joint and get it re-splined (leaving 100mm for the shaft to collapse in the event of a frontal impact)

- weld crush tubes into the chassis rail

- weld 5-6mm plate steel on both sides of the chassis rail to mount the PS box

I'll also need to sort out the shortening of the 60 series drag links here.

For the rear seat (Mitsubishi RVR) and belts:

- lap belts will be fine (due to the year of the vehicle). Use appropriate seat belt mounting backing plates

- provide additional backing plate at mounting points for RVR seat

- padding on roll cage

Mounting of front seats:

- I can connect the front seat mounts to the roll cage front side bars

Front disc brakes:
Swap the FJ60 disc brake components over. Hope fully no modification required here.

Roll cage:
He seemed to think everything would be fine from what I'd explained...

Guess it's time to move on... the PS was stressing me as I'd been hoping to make it up from readily available parts to cut down on cost... however I haven't found the magical combination and after a couple of hours trawling the wreckers I conceded that cutting and re-splining of the components is the only way forward in my time frame. Getting a universal joint that would accept 2x splined shafts wasn't that straight forward either - I ended up buying 2x FJ60 steering columns to get the bits... there is probably a cheaper options for those in the know.

[aroma]

looking good
keep up the great looking work and keep posting

[cooksworld]

Here are some more photos from the garage...

The rear seat out of a Mitsi RVR. They'll fold up behind the front seats...





Clearing out in preparation of swapping over the disc brakes and cleaning up the engine bay...





I'll hopefully get some new bearings for the axle knuckle joint this morning and the plan for Sunday (cruiser day) is:

- get one side swapped over to the disc brakes setup

- lift the roll cage up so I can finish welding up the lower joints

- paint on the por15 on the floor around the roll cage mounts

- start the mounting of the steering box

[2MEKE]

From the first post...I wanted to have the flexibility of putting in a rear seat for passengers....

Are you intending to get the seats cert'd?
Just wondering as I want to mine cert as a 4 seater but was told that a 6 point cage = no rear seats

[cooksworld]

From the first post...I wanted to have the flexibility of putting in a rear seat for passengers....

Are you intending to get the seats cert'd?
Just wondering as I want to mine cert as a 4 seater but was told that a 6 point cage = no rear seats

Hi 2MEKE - Yip I'm planning on getting the seats certified. I've had a chat with the LVV cert guy and he okayed what I explained to him over the phone, however he hasn't inspected anything at this stage. I'm going for the rear seats out of a Mitsh RVR, complete with all the factory runners etc. I can also get away with just lap belts in the rear (mine being a 1977 vehicle). I'll need to put the appropriate backing plates in behind the seatbelt mounts and where the seat mounts to the floor. I'd have a chat before you start to see what your local LVV cert guys requires.

One final thing he mentioned was lots and lots of padding everywhere in the back... didn't seem so concerned with the front area.

Good luck

[cooksworld]

June 14 update

Okay, thought I was going to get through a few more tasks today but by the time I'd pulled apart the RHS hub and given it a clean up the day was almost half over. I still need to get a replacement bearing for top knuckle joint but the disc brake hub is set up for a trial run and it allowed me to set things up for the positioning of the steering box.



I've only got one issue and that is the the 60 series free wheeling hub outer cover won't slide in. It appears to be hitting on the axle retaining clip - I'll try fitting my original ones off the drum brake setup as there is a bit more length in the FWH setup.

Steering box

Well I gone through the process of mounting the PS box... I kept on wanting to mount it basically where the shock mount is but resisted the urge to remove it and mounted the PS box forward of it. It now looks like I'll have to remove it as the UJ that fits on the PS box is going to hit the mount when it turns... oh well.

Positioning and drilling the initial holes - spot the lack of chassis rail where I decided to put it...



Crush tubes through the chassis rail...



Test fitting of the inner chassis plate. Decided to bend it around to the front chassis rail to give it some additional strength...



Since the front crush tubes didn't have an inside chassis rail to weld to, I welded them onto the back of the inner chassis plate...



Back crush tubes welded in to both side of the chassis rail...



Inside plate welded in...



Test fitting of the box to make sure everything still fits...



At this stage this is how I would have like to have left it, but after the conversation with the LVV cert guy on Friday he'd mentioned plates on both side of the chassis rail.. and this is where it mucks up my spacing with the PS box UJ and the shock mount - having an extra 5-6mm plate on the outside if the chassis rail spaces it further into the shock mount... and means things are going to be too tight...

But I've put the plate in place and I'll have to make up a new shock mount...



Final fitting...





I'll also need to get some shorter bolts... and I might get some fine threaded ones so I can do it up nice-n-tight.

[wopass]

your cert guy sounds like a tool if it was a normal chassis that was panel steel then yea it needs plates both sides but for christ sake double plating a cruiser chassis??

i think your cert guy needs a reality check

ohh and nice work by the way

[cooksworld]

I broke out the POR15 and 5 days later I still have it stuck to my fingers - if that 's any sign it will hopefully hold back some of the rust over the next few years...

Painting up the front mods to the chassis



and the interior... certainly makes everything look a bit patchwork... need to decide on a colour to paint everything.





Thanks to Sig, I've now got all of the steering components splined and everything for the 60 series power steering to 40 series pieced together.



I tried shaving down the original 40 series shock mount to fit the UJ where it fitted onto the PS box, but there was no way it was all going to fit in the same space so I removed the shock mounts from the chassis and got rid of the old steering box mount.



The next thing was to look at fitting the surf PS pump. I've laid out the lines and with a few adjustments managed to get the roughly in place. Since I'm moving the radiator 40mm back to fit a electric fan (push type) I decided to lay the lines in front of the radiator on top of the new radiator mounts...

[top right is where I've decided to fit mount the PS pump. The surf pump is actually no good for the chevy block due to the overall length. What I ended up doing was cutting the pulley off the shaft and reversing it so I could fit in front of the block/heads, other wise it would have meant mounting it way off to the side of the block or hunting out a smaller PS pump]



The beginning of the mounting bracket. I'll be relying on the alternator tensioner to adjust the fanbelt .



It all takes a bit of mucking around to make sure that everything it going to fit around each other...



Another up date later on in the week.

[cooksworld]

Okay so the other day I was looking at the photo I'd posted here of where I was going to put the PS pump and realised one minor detail... the fan belt was going to miss the waterpump... minor oversite! I'd been too focused on getting all the pulleys aligned. Oh well. There was no option on moving the PS pump back any further so I looked at moving the alternator to run on the 2nd pulley. I ended moving the alternator up and backwards so it clears the tappet cover - not too much of a major in the end. I had to build an adjuster into the PS pump mount...

I also pulled apart the RHS hub and put in the new bearings for the knuckle joint. Still had no luck fitting the 60 series FWH onto my outer short axle shaft so I cleaned up the ones from the 40 series drum brakes and they fitted on with no problems. The final thing was testing out and measuring the 60 series drag link and drop link for size - I'll get these into an engineer next week to get one end on each shortened and rethreaded once I swap over the LHS disc brake setup.

The final final thing was sorting out what colour to paint the vehicle - I'm quite keen on a fairly std colour... and was thinking of red for starter as my last one was red before it got stolen, however I'm thinking the '416 Dune Beige' looks okay, esp once all the side bar work etc is done... something like



or I quite like the olive green... but it will show up every imperfection... and perfection I can't be bothered with as it's still a club truck

[cooksworld]

Fitting of the front seats:

I've needed to make some new seat mounts as every time I took the vehicle in for a WOF I was always expecting to get knocked back on the original ones - they we made up from all sorts of random pieces that had been tacked/bolted together to mount the seats. I'd seen on another site in the states how they'd tied the seat mounts into the roll cage which is what I've decided would be a nice to have item. The only hassle is that since the petrol tank is below the drivers seat I've decided to ensure the seat frame can be unbolted from the cage.



Being quite tall I need all the leg room I can get so i'm trying to maximise the seat position. Rear seats folding up behind drivers seat:



Basic's of the frame:



Other than that... all I managed to fit in over the w/end was fiddling around with the front drives hub and adjusting the wheel bearing, and tidying up the PS pump bracket, just need the paint to dry then on she goes:



I've also been talking to a paint shop about mixing up some paint.. probably just go for the Dune Beige.. easy enough to touch up and won't show up the flaws in the body so much I'm hoping.

[sig]

lookin good stefan

[cooksworld]

lookin good stefan

- slowly getting there... looking forward to piecing it all together and enjoying it! Thanks for your help the other week getting the steering parts sorted.

[cooksworld]

... no progress over the weekend. Headed away for the weekend and now have a heap of work on - still will try and take a day off mid week to push things forward. Aim for this week:

- LHS disc swap over

- steering links to engineer for shortening

- organise paint

- finish seat mounts/interior

we'll see how we go though... work seems to be getting in the way!

[cooksworld]

okay... another progress update:
I had some time over the weekend and managed to get through the following... (photos to come).

- radiator has been moved forward. Brackets for fan added and new holes taped in chassis for side stays (supports)

- Seat mounts made up and the best part was that the battery fits under the passenger seat. I thought I was going to have to cut the floor to lower it down to fit in the battery box. There weren't any other choices on where to move it.

- Final supports for alternator made up (not that flash but hopefully functional) and some minor slotting of holes to improve alignment with pulley and clear the bottom radiator hose.

- Power steering pump mounted and hoses connected. Still need to mount the reservoir.

- Back seat mounting holes drilled once the roof was all back on to ensure the back doors were going to close. I've still got to sort the backing plates.

- Passengers side disc brake set up swapped over.

- Steering components (drop arm and linking arm) measured up and at the engineers to be shortened.

I was surprised when I took the steering parts into 3 engineers and none of them had the appropriate sized taps for the job (one size being 21x1.5 and the other 23x1.5 (from memory)). Not standard sizes which was interesting to all that I talked to. I did however find a specialised tool shop that thought they had the right bit... hopefully I'll hear back from them later on this week. I'm still waiting to hear back from some paint shop about the colour - '416 Dune Beige' (http://forum.ih8mud.com/attachment.php? ... 1132790990). Does anyone know of a Dulon equivalent?

Also... if anyone reading this knows of a drivers side door in fixable condition (within Wgtn region) I'm looking for one.

Cheers

Stefen

[cooksworld]

Update 17 July...

Setting up the front seat mounts... Looking back this is all a bit overkill but the original mounts had been cut and changed several times and never felt that safe so I decided to tie it all into the cage...











Some of the other tasks:

Moving the radiator back and mounting the fan...



The steering links have all been fitted and adjusted and basically all the steering is done... finally...! One of the main tasks finished



The disc brakes are all finished. I was going to use the 40 series brake lines as the mounts on the diff housing were in the wrong spot for for the 60 series hoses... however I decided to keep it all 60 series so I remove the brackets and moved them to fit the 60 series bits.

Finally... picked up the paint today (Dune Beige) so I need to get everything back out of the inside so I can get it ready for painting.

[wopass]

looking good mate, but you really want to either get an 70 or 80 series pitman arm to get it flatter and closer to chassis so spring pack doesnt hit it when goin over bumps.

[cooksworld]

looking good mate, but you really want to either get an 70 or 80 series pitman arm to get it flatter and closer to chassis so spring pack doesnt hit it when goin over bumps.

Yip... will be looking at that once I get it back on the road and I can test the flex/distances. I've calculated that it should have 10mm clearance on basic compression but I'm not sure what it will do once you start adding in angles etc...

[Pedro]

looking good mate, but you really want to either get an 70 or 80 series pitman arm to get it flatter and closer to chassis so spring pack doesnt hit it when goin over bumps.

Yip... will be looking at that once I get it back on the road and I can test the flex/distances. I've calculated that it should have 10mm clearance on basic compression but I'm not sure what it will do once you start adding in angles etc...

a good looking build, i like the seat mount setup,


10mm clearance on flexible springs to moveable steering is bugger all, personally if it was closer than 40mm i would be concerned.


Cheers

[cooksworld]

Okay... getting things ready to spray up this weekend. I'd found myself a replacement drivers door from a club member that looked fine when I picked it up... just a couple of bubbles. Once I started on it with the wire wheel I couldn't see my hand after a couple of minutes. There was very little steel and around 5mm bog on the inside and outside of the door. Who ever had 'touched it up' last time was a big fan of bog and not removing the rust. I've done a quick fix on it as I just need a door for now. I'll track down something better once the cars back on the road. The bugger was it wasted about 4 hours of my time over the weekend...

This is it fixed up (believe it or not)!





The next bit was the front headlight surround - I couldn't find a replacement one of those so fixed up the bottom sections:



and sides...



Rust wise, there's still the following:

- passengers door

- other side panel

- back doors

- body areas

That's fairly much the entire vehicle to be prepared by this weekend. I picked up the last of the thinner for the paint today and a new spray gun. The last time I painted it, it was with a gun from one of those $60 sets (tyre guage, duster, gun etc). Going upmarket this time around. I may end up hiring a compressor with a greater CFM as I only have one of those cheap 40l domestic compressors.

One final thing was that I fitted the drivers side guard back on for the first time. Of course the air box mounting bracket was right in the way of the new steering setup... out with the cut off wheel and there's now about 10mm clearance... Oh... and once the painting is done this weekend I'm hoping to bend up a new bullbar and sidebars... I've got from midday Fri - Sunday to get all this done

[cooksworld]

looking good mate, but you really want to either get an 70 or 80 series pitman arm to get it flatter and closer to chassis so spring pack doesnt hit it when goin over bumps.

... if anyone knows of a 70 or 80 series pitman arm going cheap let me know, alternatively has anyone an idea of price from Toyota? I'll track down these things after the weekend. I've been keeping an eye on TM but nothings' appeared yet.

[wopass]

from toyota i think about $935,067.95...Lol

pm Jafa and get a price for the T.G ones, 3 bend options i think and about 200 notes? cant remember...or keep watching TM and grab a bargain if you see it, even but a whole 70 or 80 series box just for the arm then onsell the box?

[wopass]

snr4x4.co.nz

and i was close, $158 buks

Pitman Arm - Drop
Model: 130005-1
Solid one piece design. Features FJ80 tapered hole. One piece, forged design. Extra strong, wide design. Ideal for use with crossover steering. Same drop as factory pitman arm. No questions asked, lifetime warranty.
NZ$158.00



Pitman Arm - Flat
Model: 130020-1-K
Solid one piece design. Features FJ80 tapered hole. One piece, forged design. Extra strong, wide design. Ideal for use with crossover steering. Flat arm, no drop. No questions asked, lifetime warranty.
NZ$158.00

[sig]

you can borrow my comp if you want 16 cfm

[cooksworld]

you can borrow my comp if you want 16 cfm

Awesome offer... I've decided to hire one for the Sat... saves on time running around Thanks though. Will have to come for a wander out your way once things are up and running.

S

[skid]

hey dude, I painted my cruiser with a shitty $100 repco compressor and one of those guns in the set

got a regulator and water trap and away I went and it turned out fine.

did you buy a good gun, coz I got one you could borrow if need be