Wyatt’s 40

[wesintl]

My son Wyatt really wanted a 40 as his first vehicle. He loved driving Steve’s 45 and Tim’s 40 at CM last year. My old spring over needs plates and and a ton of parts and work. We considered Dean’s old 40. It is great but drum brakes, single master, bench seating, lap belts might not be best for a 16yo. Its proper place was found with Dan and Nancy. What would be best for Wyatt is disc brake axle, bucket seats, 3 point belt, 4 on the floor etc.

Thanks to Mike and Ray we talked with Jane about her 40. Took a gamble and drove to see it. When you bring a trailer it’s awful hard not to come home without it. We checked it out and it literally needed everything but the rust is so far manageable. Running it didn’t sound bad but I didn’t bring a compression tester or vac gauge. Probably wouldn’t have mattered. We struck a deal. Jane said “you know this is a classic now”. She just drove it and for her it was a tool. She used it for the last 20 years to haul wood on her property with an occasional run to town. The bones are there it just needs a lot of work and parts thrown at it. Supposedly only 80k miles and that is probably right based on a few receipts but it looks like 180k.

Wyatt is with me on all work on the 40. He does some or I show him how it’s done. I show him how to do one side he does the other.

 

[wesintl]

She used to live in Foxton before they moved to southern Colorado in 2004 iirc. She used it for the fire dept and to get around on really bad snow days. As you know an old 40 can make it through the worst weather. It had lights and sirens at one time. That equaled a mess of wiring. Nothing electrical worked except some running lights. That was the second thing to tackle. Literally first thing was to trash the side mirrors. The wiring was a mess. I ripped out all the non Toyota wiring. There was a gaggle of rocker switches in place of the ash tray, several toggles in the dash and solenoids in the firewall and fender. You can see some of it in the very left corner of the pic.

 

[wesintl]

With all the non Toyota wiring removed it was time to get lights working. Half the fuses were blown. The rear lights were toast. The rear harness was cut up and tried to hard wire lights. A trailer harness was spliced into it. Oye. Decided a new rear harness and late model oem Toyota lights with waterproof connector were the only way to go. Found out too the rear harness where it meets the main harness had 2 wires pulled out. With that done and fixed we had rear lights. Front signals needed a few bulbs and we had everything working except the horn and wipers.

 

[wesintl]

Wiper fuse kept blowing. Ugh so I ripped out the 1977 or 78 radio shack realistic radio as it was tied to the wiper fuse and had no speaker and was generally fugly. Found a reprint radio plate. Suprised the radio hole was uncut. You can see the 4 toggle switches and I had an old ashtray to replace the gaggle of rocker switch panel that was there

 

[DanS]

Nice!

40s really are smile machines, and this one is no exception! Wyatt is going to learn all kinds of things with this!

Dan

 

[wesintl]

Now the mice. This thing reeked. I dropped 3 bait blocks in when I got home and the next day they were almost gone. Ok mice exterminated. We pulled the seats and gas tank to vacuum out all the nastyness. Few days later I see acorn remnants by the seat. We pull the passenger seat again to clean and a mouse runs out of the seat back. Ugh. Figure that’s it. Bolt the seat back in -and decide to bang on it and 5 more scurried out to a safe haven under the gas tank. Now they are fully gone and haven’t returned. I ripped the seats apart as that stench isn't coming out.

I took this time to pull the whole interior and with a liberal amount of simple green I hosed out the interior. Smells better but the heater box needs to be flushed out and cleaned with simple green. That’s for a later date.
Mouse house 🏠

 

[wesintl]

Now back to wipers and horn. Fuse keeps blowing. You know with all the mice I should check the wires. Under the dash was ok. They didn’t eat the ones in the glovebox which had mice in there. Pulled the cover and the wiper motor and sure nuff when I pulled the wires out of the windshield frame they were bare and touching each other. I temp wrapped them with electrical tape and shoved them back in. We have working wipers.

The wash doesn’t work. I parted a 76 back in 96-97 and saved a few parts. I pulled out that old wipe wash controller and with a bottle that didn’t leak a new hose and nozzle we have spray wash on a 40. That’s fairly rare

 

[wesintl]

The horn, dammit I’m gonna get everything working! Fuse is good. I check the grounds. Only 1 wire going to them. Huh new horns have 2 wiring tabs. These gotta be grounded by the mount. I clean the terminals. Nada. Now where is the relay for this before I pull the steering wheel apart to check the contacts. I unbolt the relay and it sounds like a child’s toy rattle. That can’t be good. Let me see if I have a spare from that parts truck. Patina matches but internally it’s good and now we have that famous 40 beep beep.

 

[wesintl]

Now if you’re a 40 owner, a 60 owner or even an 80 owner you feel the pain of discontinued parts. A friend of mine seems to think things when down hill after Fukushima for whatever reason. Reality is oem parts are dropping like flies. I told Wyatt we need to buy as many oem parts that Toyota still makes before that are discontinued. The Toyota ones will last another 40 years. After market while filling the gap never seem to last as long or have the same quality.

The rattles this thing has you can only appreciate as a 40 owner. First thing to tackle is replacing window runs. They were really shot. Dried and windows rattled like crazy. We pulled the door panels and there was no plastic liner either.
We cleaned out the pine needles from the bottom of the doors, showed Wyatt where the drains were and made sure they were free. A couple were clogged. We installed all new Toyota runs and showed Wyatt how everything works. We applied new butyl tape, had new plastic liners from ga-architect on mud and decided we should replace the door panels with oem Toyota even thou they are gray.

We have oem weatherstrip but that will another post when we clean up the rust spots on the doors

 

[wesintl]

Oh the bezel, black F NO! Luckily it was right side up. We pulled that. It had some rust but my little sand blaster sucks ass and then we tried to hand sand it. That didn’t work either. So we took it to blast tech. Of course there were 2 holes drilled for a plate or who knows what. We took it and had it tig welded. The 2 of us monkeys would have burned bigger holes. With a rattle can of Cygnus we have a proper bezel

 

[wesintl]

Since we ripped the hideous mirrors off I swiped the oem mirrors of my truck with new Toyota heads.

I dug through my parts and sho nuff I had a spare radiator over flow bottle. Just had to get a new top which is available from Toyota, the the bottle is long gone. City racer has repop bottles if anyone needs one. The original bottle was filled with mice feces 🤮

Had to replace the original emblems as they only had 1pin holding them on. It’s the little things that count.

 

[wesintl]

While this thing moves under its own power it could run better. Time for a tune up and show Wyatt a valve lash. It easier with 4 hands as you know. Set the valves and adjust the timing. He needs to know this stuff if you’re going to be a 40 pilot. The distributor bolt twisted free tightening after adjustment. Found an old one I had and were in business. I used to be pretty good as adjusting carbs but driving a diesel for the last 20 years I haven’t don’t much with carbs. I pulled out the vacuum gauge to show him how it’s done.

Problem is it really just does’t run better. Barry stopped by and wanted to see it. So we pulled the plug wires while running. 1 and 2 with no spark didn’t change the motor much at all. That’s not good 🤨. I guess I should compression test and Barry has a bore scope. Well compression test yielded less than 100 on 1-2. Omg that blows I can’t remember if it was 80 or 90, or less but I didn’t want to remember. That’s why it doesn’t run great. A few squirts of oil in the cyl get up to like 110. Oh you know what I have a spare open chamber head from that parts 40. Off to Gunn for a valve job. That’s got to net us some psi too and we don’t have to be down for a month.

 

[wesintl]

Now from the last pics above this thing has no emissions. The air rail is still on and that’s bad news cause it’s just going to burn up with hot exhaust leaking into it. It doesn’t help the motor run any better either. Wonder how long they drove it like this. So I set out to find emissions. I just need it for the visual. I can tune the carb to pass leaning it out. Well maybe I can’t now that 2 pistons basically don’t fire. My sprung over 76 is desmogged too which it part of the reason it doesn’t have plates yet. Fml and the boondoggle which is emissions. Now, the early years of emissions it changed almost every year too. So EGRs are specific to 75-76 etc which making parts harder to find. I basically pieced things together calling people like john pardi and mark algazy. A couple parts from mud and eBay and I’m in business. I don’t know if any of it works or not but I do have the emission manual if I want to verify. I also had to fix some wiring to the VSV as it was cut at the harness.

 

[wesintl]

Now when I pop the head I think I’ll do a farmer rebuild. Take the pan off pull the pistons and slap in new rings. With new rings and valve job should get me to acceptable range. We’ll see how bad the cyl are scored when the head comes off. I can decide then if we really need to rebuild or let it eat. If it doesn’t work I’m out a head and exhaust gasket and Wyatt can break it down again for practice 😁

 

[simps80]

Great build thread!
I still have a bucket of emissions stuff somewhere from the 76 project if you need something let me know

Cool to work on with your son!!

 

[subzali]

Is that rear harness from coolerman? Mines a mess and needs to be replaced sometime.

 

[RDub]

I’ve heard other folks here talk about leaning out the carb to help pass emissions. Are you talking about rejetting it?

 

[DanS]

Now the mice. This thing reeked. I dropped 3 bait blocks in when I got home and the next day they were almost gone. Ok mice exterminated. We pulled the seats and gas tank to vacuum out all the nastyness. Few days later I see acorn remnants by the seat. We pull the passenger seat again to clean and a mouse runs out of the seat back. Ugh. Figure that’s it. Bolt the seat back in -and decide to bang on it and 5 more scurried out to a safe haven under the gas tank. Now they are fully gone and haven’t returned. I ripped the seats apart as that stench isn't coming out.

I took this time to pull the whole interior and with a liberal amount of simple green I hosed out the interior. Smells better but the heater box needs to be flushed out and cleaned with simple green. That’s for a later date.
Mouse house 🏠

Grandpa Gus.

The little scent packets have worked for my folks. We bought a box of 30 and put them in all our trucks. They don’t smell bad, and if they are a decent deterrent I’ll be overjoyed.

Dan

 

[MDH33]

That's awesome Wyatt and Wes! Great 40 and great progress so far👍

 

[MountainGoat]

This is the most awesome thread ever! Keep up the great work Wes.