What have you done to your rig today?

[SteveH]

Wrapped up installing a 1974 AM radio in my '78 FJ40. I even had the OEM factory radio brackets in my truck, folded over and bent out of the way, but intact. I had the radio clean/tested/inspected by Engineer8000 on Mud (he does excellent work) and I installed it over the weekend.

I now have the sonic purity you can only get with an AM radio with a single speaker. Since this requires a 4 ohm speaker, I may run two larger 8 ohm speakers in parallel and see if I can get a little better sound quality. I will eventually touch up my dashboard paint, too.

 

[Hulk]

I now have the sonic purity you can only get with an AM radio with a single speaker.

I have always been a proponent of ripping out old radios and installing the latest stereo head unit. But I have to say, damn, your FJ40 dash looks sweet with that old push-button radio.

 

[J1000]

Not my "rig" but my daily. Did some bodywork fixing some rust on the fender. First time ever using bondo and painting on a car and I think it turned out great! There is a little blend line that you can see but only in direct sunlight and if you really look for it.

I followed this video step by step and it worked! This video was the best instruction I was able to find:

 

[Notyourmomslx450]

Wired up an ARB plug in the 4Runner using the dead power outlet space.

 

[SteveH]

@J1000 - excellent rust repair job!

Suggestion: be sure to slather the back side of that with axle grease (literally) to seal out water, or else that repair won't last 1 winter, even in Colorado. If you can't get grease in there with your fingers, then hose it down with Fluid Film or white Lithium aerosol grease.

 

[rushthezeppelin]

Ordered a seal kit for my elocker actuator yesterday so I decided to take it all apart and see what I was up against. Pleasantly surprised that the seals held 27 years on this bit they were definitely showing their age, particularly the seal on the motor housing. The Body Grease W was also very crusty as expected. Seal kit comes with superlube dielectric to replace that thankfully (body gear W makes you wonder if it's actually an anti aging face cream with the $50 price tag for a small tub of it).

I also messed up and took it apart the wrong way and the commutator/coil decided to come out with the stator, showing the brushes to pop out of the holders. Thankfully with some trickery I managed to get them back in and held back while I got everything back in is proper place. I'm super happy that the glue for the stator magnets appears to be in excellent shape, that's a somewhat common cause of failure for those.

 

[BritKLR]

Prepping the Working Pig for winter. I noticed a couple of missing bolts on the old Warn Hubs and decided to replace them....turns out they were snapped off inside the hub. So, pulled the hub and found a DPOR.....(dreaded previous owner repair). At some point they over tightened and snapped the locking hub bolts and then tried to drill and extract the broken parts. On one they broke the extractor and just left it and on another they miss drilled and went down the side of the hole and chewed up the threads and ovaled out the hole. The last several I drilled and pulled the broken pieces out. In the end I replaced the old bolts with new ones and will try to locate used hubs and just replace them.
I then got the back window cleaned up and working.
Now I'm just waiting on a new fuel pump and should be all ready for the first snow!

 

[Johnny Utah]

Did my first knuckle rebuild on the 80 this weekend. Started tearing it down Friday after work. Continued working through most of Saturday (with a break for my son’s basketball game) and finished up Sunday morning. I didn’t run into any problems but I took my time and consulted my service manual and a couple youtube videos. Overall not a bad job, just time consuming and messy. I spent quite a bit of time cleaning and scrubbing parts.

Before:


After:



Very satisfying job after many hours crawling around on the garage floor.

 

[J Kimmel]

Replaced a leaky inner axle seal. Removing tires filled with water is an art by itself. I will say unit bearings are awesome, quick and easy to take apart and reinstall

 

[mikedrom]

Fitted headlights to the little 40 series. The trick-or-treaters loved it. Happy Halloween!

 

[Notyourmomslx450]

Fitted headlights to the little 40 series. The trick-or-treaters loved it. Happy Halloween!

Man that's awesome!

 

[rushthezeppelin]

Didn't work on my rig today. Have a buddy at my parish, we were all helping another parishioner move today. He has a jeep jk and was asking me about some brake problems he's been having and he's not super mechanically savvy. Grinding and pedal to the floor were his symptoms. Had him come over to my place. Looked at front first, looked fine, then passenger rear, pads getting low but nothing obvious. Look at driver rear and notice fluid, didn't smell like gear oil so I suspected a brake fluid leak. Pull the wheel off to discover no inner pad and a half shattered piston grinding on his rotor. Well shoot that's your problem lol. Took him to parts store and got new a caliper and rotors and pads for both rears as well as fluid. Got everything buttoned up and man that was a pita to bleed completely. Thankfully I don't think his master cylinder went completely dry. Anyways now his brakes are much better and I had fun working on Mopar and shaking my head at those engineers. I had to pull the damn sway bar links just to get at the caliper bolts lol. Everything was a pain to unbolt and get torqued back up. Toyota rear ends feels infinitely easier to work on lol.

 

[SteveH]

After a week of troubleshooting, I fixed the fuel pump wiring on my 100 series. A long, hard slog after getting stranded on I-25. The best part of this was driving my FJ62 all week in place of the 100 ;-)

Included obligatory tow picture.

Details here: https://forum.ih8mud.com/threads/fuel-pump-wiring-failure-and-the-fix.1325429/

 

[KC Masterpiece]

Played does it fit in the garage?

Just barely! Need to remind myself to never remove any accesories while its inside.

 

[rushthezeppelin]

If I fits I sits. Little jealous of your garage lol. I have a 1 car that's barely big enough to do any jobs that don't involve my truck getting wider like pulling rear axle shafts.

 

[KC Masterpiece]

If I fits I sits. Little jealous of your garage lol. I have a 1 car that's barely big enough to do any jobs that don't involve my truck getting wider like pulling rear axle shafts.

We feel very blessed to finally have a garage. I did the full suspension on the 80 in the winter on the snow. Nothing worse than loosing a bolt or nut in fresh snow.

Got the job, got the garage, now limited time to wrench because of the job.

 

[rushthezeppelin]

We feel very blessed to finally have a garage. I did the full suspension on the 80 in the winter on the snow. Nothing worse than loosing a bolt or nut in fresh snow.

Got the job, got the garage, now limited time to wrench because of the job.

I feel you my garage had not been usable for a while now because of my elocker project and now my bumper. I've done a few jobs in the gravel part of my driveway and with all the leaves on the ground ruyst bolts and nuts hide very well. I've found my magnetic parts tray to be super useful for finding them

 

[Cruisertrash]

@rushthezeppelin I replaced the factory original suspension (seized, rusted) on my previous 60 in an unshaded gravel parking lot in July. I was seriously considering selling the stupid thing by the 4th day. Wrapped it up on day 6 - and those were 10-14 hour days. The things we do for these trucks….

 

[SteveH]

Installed a new Walker stainless muffler on the '99 LX 470. The front flanges to the cats fit pretty well, but the extension to the tailpipe was all wrong and too short. Finally used a spacer and 2 clamps and got it under control and the truck is quiet. Exhaust work is, chronically, no fun. This is a typical domestic product for a Toyota - workable, but under-engineered in many ways. Good thing I own a cutting torch and a welder.

 

[Notyourmomslx450]

I drove my 80 with no death wobble today.