I can see your "31" is well loved. Its ok to sneak one of those in a well

 

Oh, yeah, haha. Were building it into a old school hot rod for my friends uncle.

 

Sweet! Nice work

 

Just found this build. Great find on such a solid truck and the improvements that you have and what you are currently doing. Looking great.

 

It's looking good!

 

Wow lots of progress.

 

Thanks everyone for the complements.

I made another round of progress this week. First I pulled the complete wiring harness and boxed it up to be cleaned up later. It is in remarkably good shape and will probably just need to be re-wrapped. Then I focussed on getting the cab off the frame. I unbolted all 6 body mounts, pulled the steering column, and disconnected all the brake lines at the frame. Then I got 4 more friends together and we lifted the cab up, walked it forward and set it on a temporary cart. I'll build a better fitting one later, but for now my focus will be on the chassis.


I'm fully committed now!


The frame is in as good of shape as you could hope for, surprising since the truck has spent it's whole life in Kansas.


I pulled the gas tank and took the frame to a local car wash to pressure wash it. I was mainly focussed on cleaning the axles as the frame itself will be blasted.




Before taking anything apart I wanted to document any factory paint marks I could find to try to duplicate them after I paint it.



After checking on a Toyota parts site, I found that these match the part numbers from Toyota, so I will be able to duplicate them on the rear springs as well even though the paint is completely gone.





Once I was done documenting, I pulled the from axle out. I will not be blasting the axles to avoid getting sand in the knuckles. They will be re-built later, but I don't like the idea of introducing sand into mechanical components.


Now I just have to pull the rear axle and it will be ready to be media blasted then painted.

 

Talk about the ultimate restore! This is so awesome

 

Lets talk about jumping in both feet first...do we have a fast forward button on this coming up build? :-)

 

Subbed! Absolutely love the care and effort you are putting into this. Wish I had been able to do this with my 81 when I had it.

Keep up up the good work!

 

Yeah. My goal is to get the chassis done before Christmas and finish the body next spring.

 

Thanks, I learned a lot restoring the 1975 FJ40 I had before this truck.

 

subbing. awesome start to the project!

 

More progress on the chassis!






I re-painted the steering box and replicated the factory paint marking that I found.





Got the frame blasted !hey did a really good gob for a good price. Definitely worth it!
Today I got all the sand out of the frame and got some primer on it.
Very happy with how it is turning out, Ill spay the semi-gloss black tomorrow.

 

Checking in 4 years later to see how this is going!