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With the cab off I was able to climb under into the engine bay and clean it up. The two corrosive zones at the battery box and brake master areas were looking a bit rough, as they usually do, so gave um some extra attention and a slather of por15.
Between coats of paint I got curious and decided to see what the main climate control assembly was all about. It needed cleaning anyway.
I cleaned all the components and got some new foam insulation stripping to redo all the seals as the originals had all pretty much disintegrated. Next thing to distract me from sanding the cab was a slick little DIY "Ventless Cowl" mod that I've seen on a few other rigs. I guess you can buy nice new fiberglass ones but I was pretty satisfied at how my "cut, patch, bondo" job turned out. The factory vent slits in the cowl allow all sorts of leaves, mud, debris, and water to collect and sit in the cowl which eventually causes rust, especially since they didn't give these channels a real coat of paint in there. This is a known rust trouble spot and my 4wd cab definitely was a victim. So I didn't want that happening again. Check out the finished cowl in future pics.
Brada came through with a windshield hookup and got it reinstalled with a new RUBBER trim, and he sealed a couple knicks while he was at it. I don't know how the rubber gasket endures in comparison to the factory chrome trim but I feel like the water/dirt seal is better and potential for rust is lower. Plus I just prefer the clean black as opposed to shiny chrome. After the topcoat paint was all finished I went back and silicone sealed under the rubber flap to give extra water seal and help hold the rubber flap down against the cab.
I had worked out a deal with a buddy who does autobody work for a living to take care of the panels and help me with the heavy lifting in exchange for the bed of the truck. I had no intention of keeping the factory bed even though it was in nice shape. I'm a fan of flatbeds and already had a vision in my head. Plus I had no desire to do any more body work than was absolutely necessary. So I took the 4wd fenders off and passed them, the doors, and hood to my friend to work on and I concentrated on the cab body. All had some minor dings, dents, or scratches to tend to. I had the option to stick with the nice factory tan and decals but I wanted to keep running the 4wd fenders which had different paint. Plus I wanted to keep my olive drab color, so the decision had been made, fresh paint all around.
The factory antenna hole got patched and filled smooth on that passenger fender. I never listen to the radio and if I ever do need an antenna it will be for a CB setup in a much better location.
I quickly realized I would need more space set up a proper red-neck spray booth and be able to hang the other panels. So I had to highjack Mom's parking spot for a couple days. Set up a quick tent, wrapped it in plastic, masked off, and even ran a fan in there, wasn't too bad really.
I started with a couple coats of cheap rattle can black on the front grille area.
Last edited by Lono&theGremlin; 04-10-2020 at 08:34 AM.
Reason: Add pics
Nice work! I'm gonna go with the rubber windshield seal also. The frame is in ruff shape and covered in seam sealer and JB Weld currently. That is going to be another huge job. like you said though , this forum has been a great help in everything. Keep on tucking.
Damion, yeah windshield is a real pain, but it all fits nice and cleanly in the end. The upper edge of cowl is not under the rubber seal and yes I could remove it if I needed to. I'll post a couple pics of it soon.
Last edited by Lono&theGremlin; 04-09-2020 at 08:36 AM.
Reason: typos
So with everything sanded down to satisfaction I wiped bare metal spots with some metal etcher, wiped everything down with acetone, then started with the primer. I did two coats of a two-part epoxy primer (Finish1 brand I believe). I hung the body panels where ever I could in my quick tent garages and used a standard HVLP gun and decent size compressor. After everything was primed and cured I did a light scuff, wiped again, and went for the Raptor liner top coat. If you don't know what Raptor liner is "just google it", but basically its a leading DIY bedliner spray, polyurethane based, super resistant and tough and tintable to any color you want. I bought an 8 quart tintable kit which came with a special gun for bedliners. It was super easy to mix and set up, and the texture from the spray pattern came out beautifully. I love it. It did cost a pretty penny since I had to special order it to the island and pay hazmat fees, but it's tough and looks good. I think I might be the first guy on island with it too. Stoked
Now that the new cab was safely painted, the time had come shift focus to the rust bucket and put my baby down. Approaching point-of-no-return!
Oh yeah, forgot to mention since I had to remove my 4wd fenders to paint them I had a chance to run the 2wds for a bit and that just reinforced that I definitely did not want to do that in the long term. Throwing mud at me constantly go old quick and the dreaded tire clearance crunch was cringe-worthy. Might be cool on a mall crawler or exoskeleton rock crawler, but I hated it.
Removing the flatbed was a breeze, four bolts, couple wire connectors, then lift off. The interior and engine bay was much more smooth also as I had pretty much done it all once before just a week or two prior with the 2wd truck. I did crack that damn copper oil pressure sender line again though yet another unexpected thing to replace. As for the removal of the cab itself, this time was interesting. I had some friends over and was fully expecting to have to muscle this thing up and over the engine until my one freind who's somewhat of a guru at these kind of things was like "bra just use the ladder method"... And I was like "the whaaa???"... Enter: Redneck Ingenuity at it's finest.
So the "ladder method" is simply lifting or tilting one side of the cab at a time and then sliding a Two-by-Four or similar under it and resting it on the rungs of a ladder on either side. Then tilt the back half up and slide something under it, and going back and forth doing that same thing basically see-sawing the cab up until it is high enough to clear the engine. Then simply roll the chassis out and the cab is left floating. A bit sketchy no-doubt, as you can see we did not have four ladders and instead had to get creative. Note the saw-horse stack and truck tailgate being used as the rear props. But hey, it worked and now I could start work on that beautiful brown mint condition chassis
LOVE THIS BUILD! Keep the pics coming! I am digging that you're sticking with the flatbed. I'm in the process of restoring an '84 - paint, interior, everything EXCEPT the factory bed... It's getting a custom flatbed!
wow, this is progressing pretty quick. I had an 84 Xtra-cab i sold to buy a 97 Tacoma. Always wanted another 2nd gen x-cab to throw on a short bed frame, the cab has to be reworked slightly for the gas tank but it would be a cool little truck
Manhattan - thanks man, I'm all about the flatbeds too. I welded on some square tubing to box in the wood a few weeks back but I can't wait to finish building the rack and gates on top of it.
Dropzone - Guess you missed the part where I said this project was actually all finished and I was just going through backlogging it all. This cab swap endeavor took me 4 months to complete. But yeah 2nd Gen xcabs are where it's at! (1st gen runners too) I can't stand the newer rounded body styles. I didn't have a problem with gastank clearance but there were some minor firewall differences that I'll post pics of shortly.
So the first thing I did with the chassis was drop that crusty gas tank to see what evil lurked behind it. And oh boy was there some evil...
Brake lines removed, fuel lines removed, one cracked off at the bend it was so corroded. Add it to the unexpected replacement list Cleaned up the area with a wire wheel and marked out where would have to cut out.
I went big. And oh, if anyone is admiring that pretty little 87' samurai in the background, it has a brand new motor and is for sale DM me for deets
Some fancy 1/4 inch galvanized plate for the patch.
Wasn't the prettiest welds but it'll hold. Couple trouble makers on the outer side of the frame too so they got the same punishment.
With the frame patches done, I continued on to keep stripping down the chassis to clean it up and do some of the mods on my list. The first up was the Triangulated rear shock set-up, which I went back and forth on whether it was worth it or not, but you tell me what you think...
I cut off that brake line bracket my hand is on and welded it back on the other side of the gas tank mount its on. It would interfere with the passenger side rear shock for the configuration I was designing. Just needed it moved a few inches, worked out well.
I thought about mounting the top of the shocks straight through the crossmember pipe but it looked a bit rusty inside and drilling through a round pipe sounded challenging so I opted to use some scrap angle iron to fab up a mounting bracket. Glad I did. Much stronger and added an inch of shock travel than it would have been on the crossmember.
Cut out some lower mounting brackets out of that nice quarter inch plate.
Got it all welded and mounted with some Grade 8 hardware. Oh yeah and freshened up those shocks while they were off.
It came out pretty good, I was happy with it. About an inch more travel than the stock setup I estimated and it looks way better in my opinion. Aaannnd this allowed me to do the rear U-bolt flip since the lower shock mount is not on the leaf springs but now protected on top of the axle.
While I was in the business of cutting and drilling plates I figured it was a good time to make my own EGR block off plates too. Plus the engine was very accessible so that helped.
And of course while I was in there I was like "might as well" pull off the intake and check out the injectors. I sent them out for testing and cleaning. I had run bad gas a handful of times by now and was kind of concerned. Not a bad 80 bucks spent for the peace of mind if nothing else, IMO. Test results had one under-performing but they came back good as new.
Whats not in these pictures is the nearly two straight days I spent with a needle gun, wire wheel, and flap disc going to town on every inch of the chassis rear of the engine. At least the results look good after 3 coats of POR-15.
With the chassis as good as I was gonna get it, it was now time for the "put it all back together" part. First was cab. 6 dudes made light work of that. Installed with some nice new Energy Suspension body mount bushings.
@Manhattan Haha I worked my way up to this one. But yeah it was either restore it all now or run it until it rusted to death, which was happening very quickly. I'm glad I did it. Taught me sooo much about my truck and general grease-monkey stuff. For instance, to fix the big bendy fuel sending line I broke while taking off my gas tank I opted to cut out majority of the line, flare each end, then clamped a rubber hose to each side. The line/hose still runs pretty much the same route secured under the cab on the passenger side.
The next thing was to reinstall the wiring harness. But I then noticed that the new cab did not have the same hole in the passenger side firewall which it needed to run through (see picture 2 below). I'm still not sure if it's a difference in 4WD vs 2WD cabs for the '85, or if they used different cabs for 22R vs RE models? Anyway, I referenced my old cab and measured the exact hole size and location, then a quick squeeze of the trigger on a hole saw bit and that was that (see picture 1 below). (Picture order got messed up during the upload somehow). While I was there, I noticed another difference between the two cabs. The new one (2wd '85 xcab) also lacked the same holes for mounting the charcoal canister for the 22re. I pulled off the bracket to trace the bolt hole locations and drilled it out (see picture 3 below). All worked out well. On to running the wiring harness back in. (Way easier than taking it out).
In case you were wondering about how that factory spare tire jack mount thing I had cut out earlier turned out. Por15, waterproof tape, rubberized sealer spray, called it good.
Next up was reinstalling the heater core assembly. But first, I wanted to add a simple DIY air filter to the main inlet since these trucks weren't equipped with cabin air filters.
I put a fresh foam gasket on and got some cut-to-size air filter material to go between the assembly intake and cab mating surface.
Installed. So how does it work? Hard to tell really, but the fan doesn't struggle which is key, and no dusty smell when I'm on the trails, which can be really dusty around our neck of the woods. I'd say it was a worthwhile mod
Soon! We're gettin there bud. Anyways, the steering wheel was next to reinstall, but as you can see in the pictures, I found it was an inch short of reaching the box for some reason. So I took a torch to it and melted out the plastic pins, then stretched it that last inch until i could bolt it. Then I gave it a couple small tack welds at the surface between the inner and outer steering shafts. Worked pretty well I thought, and hasn't failed yet
04-07-2020, 11:41 PM
yet another unexpected thing to replace. As for the removal of the cab itself, this time was interesting. I had some friends over and was fully expecting to have to muscle this thing up and over the engine until my one freind who's somewhat of a guru at these kind of things was like "bra just use the ladder method"... And I was like "the whaaa???"... Enter: Redneck Ingenuity at it's finest.
Cleaned up the area with a wire wheel and marked out where would have to cut out.
Anyway, I referenced my old cab and measured the exact hole size and location, then a quick squeeze of the trigger on a hole saw bit and that was that (see picture 1 below). (Picture order got messed up during the upload somehow). While I was there, I noticed another difference between the two cabs. The new one (2wd '85 xcab) also lacked the same holes for mounting the charcoal canister for the 22re. I pulled off the bracket to trace the bolt hole locations and drilled it out (see picture 3 below). All worked out well. On to running the wiring harness back in. (Way easier than taking it out).
