your gonna pull the engine? i thought you just recently put a new one in.

 

haha, no. But let me put it this way. I learn most stuff by making mistakes and I look back and see lots of mistakes on this first engine swap. So I'm just saying that I will permanently fix the bellhousing when I pull the engine next which I would love to be 10 years from now but realistically will be much sooner.

 

One day a month ago or so my ground connector to my battery was loose and came off which cause the brake light and some other light which I forget now.

Today, after I raised the engine back up, reinstalled the engine mounts, I got just the brake light light on. This light changes in intensity if I pull the parking brake. This thread has some ideas:

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f115...rn-off-118639/

Tomorrow I'm gonna go into work late and try getting under the truck after sunrise to see what I can find. Probably a wire pulled loose or something.

 

EDIT: Never Mind, you already knew

 

Brake light was in because the reservoir on the master cylinder was low. Why that coincided with me raising and lowering the engine and replacing the two clutch cylinders, I don't know...

 

Ok, I re-bled the clutch today and no air bubbles but the clutch lever arm at the tranny doesn't move far enough. I'm thinking I need to adjust the clutch play?

I also removed the wipers and the cowl cover to continue working on my leaking windshield.



Next I looked in the cowl:



This is it removed:



For any city-slickers that's a rat's nest! Or at least a squirrel (tree-rat) nest or some other varmint. Oh, I was pretty excited to see no rust. What an exciting find that was... pretty much made my day.

I also yanked off the front quarter panel to see if there was any rust or obvious places for water to leak.

At this point I'm willing to bet that all the water coming in is coming in from the windshield. So tomorrow I'm hoping to finish sealing the bottom of the windshield up. I hope there's no reason not to yank off all those clips on the bottom because they are going away to make room for the caulk rope.

On another note Interlux Brightside came in today. I got 3 qts, one black and two fire red, for $82.93 shipped from http://search.store.yahoo.com/cgi-bi....html&x=15&y=7. They have the best price I could find and buying it locally would have cost me $105 plus tax. That's also some crazy fast shipping as I only ordered it on Friday and it's here by Tuesday.

The black is for some other stuff around the house that I have to paint although any leftover will get used up on the frame of the truck. The red may get some use soon as I'd like to paint the cowl area before I close it back up.

I'm still undecided on the FROR front axle. I'm having a really hard time sourcing the front axle parts. I found two axles in NC but one guy backed out and the other guy's axle is in pretty rough shape and he won't part it out. I've also tried a few guys on here with no response. Pretty frustrating...

 

Finally figured out the clutch problem. I didn't have the arm adjusted so I was only getting about half the travel I needed. Once I adjusted that arm, the clutch moves further which in turn makes the clutch itself travel further so now no problems. This arm's length is adjusted by turning a nut just in front of the clutch pedal before the master cylinder. If you get under there you won't miss it.

Next I continued sealing the windshield. Yesterday I smeared RTV in all the cracks in the bottom seal. Today I smeared more and stuck that cord caulk into the gap.


Then I smeared more RTV to cover the caulk. Tomorrow I hope to cut the vinyl flooring to fit, test fit the vinyl and cowl to ensure everything works then glue it all down.


I'm also painting the rusty windshield wiper arms. Those things were in pretty rough shape. They look pretty good now, though.

I also put in the FROR order today. I'm getting:
FROR kit for pickup calipers (no e-brake)
new wheel bearings for the rear axle (which must come from a front axle kit)
u-bolt flip kit for the rear
proportioning valve so I can cut off the LPSV

The plan is also gonna call for me to pull the diff and get it checked and retorqued. Hoping to get rid of the 'clunk' sound every time I shift gears.

Still looking for front axle parts. There is a possible donor vehicle that I may buy for parts here in Charleston. Failing that govt.mule is gonna hook me up.

 

There should be some louvered covers for most of the holes in the cowl area. My '85 has them. For the holes not covered, I used some heavy duty window screen and cut pieces to fit over the hole then glued the edges in place. Did that to keep leaves and pine needles from getting down into the blower intake. Also added a long strip of the screen on the bottom side of the louvers on the cowl cover. That sort of makes a double barrier, seems to work fine.

 

4Crawler, you are a genius! I'm definitely gonna do that idea. How's the FROR axle swap going? I need your lessons learned so I can make new and different mistakes

 

Okay, despite sealing the entire windshield I still get water in both floorboards when it rains. I'm really disgusted by it but lately I'm breaking stuff faster than I can fix it so the leak will probably get put on the back burner.

I also replaced a ton of vacuum lines and the carb still surges. Have a weber 34 on the way to fix that.

Two Saturdays I got called by a friend of a friend. This guy was in a jeep and buried up to his bumper. A second jeep couldn't jerk him out and he said he needed a diesel or a v8. I got in after dark so no good pictures but my 8k Harbor Freight winch yanked him out like nothing. I don't have a rear bumper to anchor so I put the front edge (where it's 1/4" steel) of my brushguard against a tree and started winching. It was nice to see that $100 winch work perfectly on the first attempt.

Last night my lights started flashing the car ahead of me with the high beams. At one point all the lights went out. I looked at 4crawler's fix here:
http://www.4crawler.com/4x4/CheapTri...adlights.shtml

There was lots of grease everywhere and as a side benefit now my steering wheel will finally be centered . I also cleaned my contact points with sandpaper as I had no thin file onhand. I also strengthened the spring that holds the small ball bearing. Last I noticed this solder joint was broken. The real question is did I do that trying to get to the contact points? Tomorrow I will get my former navy ET friend to solder it back up. I'm hoping that's the cause of the ghost lights (if not, maybe halloween?).


(look for the big yellow arrow)

4crawler, I looked at your lighting harness. Basically your harness allows low current to flow through the existing mechanical connections so no arcing to minimize wear of the contact points? If that's the case then I probably will have to order one when I save up some more moolah.

My hubs and spindles came in and I think one set is damaged. My FROR rear axle parts are also starting to come in. It's gonna be busy for the next couple of months. The first step is gonna be to install the proportioning valve and toss that lspv valve. I was about to replace the lspv valve the other day with the 90 degree elbow (front right wheel well of most toyota trucks) when I started getting worried about locking up my rear tires. I decided to wait until I had the valve.

Are our vehicles supposed to indicate a 4wd light on the instrument cluster?

 

yes there is supposed to be a 4wd light in the cluster. i have one at least.

 

Hmmm, mine never worked before... I'm guessing that dangling wire back by the tranny is probably why...

I think (for the 5th time now) that I have found the leak. I stuck a hose on the windshield and saw no drips from the windshield but I did see a trickle of water from the grommet that goes through the fender. That sucker is huge, too, so I'm guessing I will need to patch it with lots of RTV unless anyone else has an idea.

Ok, I also decided (since I had the steering wheel off) to install my SR5 cluster finally. I swapped out the oil pressure sender and then took out the old cluster.



Then I plugged a wire into this empty plug on my ignition wire.



Then I ran a wire into the cab via the speedo cable hole in the firewall



Then I connected the wire to this screw using a diagram from Sweaty:



I got the cluster installed after fooling with the speedo cable for 20 minutes. I think that thing has to be oriented a certain way.

Tomorrow I hope to get that wire soldered onto the light controls and then connect everything back up.

 

I hooked up the cluster and oil pressure does not work. Well, at least I only paid $39 for it. Already found another one for $80 shipped including the stock tach harness.

Anyone want an SR5 cluster to use with an aftermarket oil sensor?

The lights are working good, though. The solder job held and I only had to put it on and take it back off once because I pinched a wire which prevented the metal copper leads from moving. Next I need to order some horn contacts to get my horn working at more than three spots on the turn of the steering wheel.

Today I pulled both fenders and RTV'd the two grommets. I'm hoping to see this end the leaks for my cab. Some pictures:









The only frustrating portion was getting the antenna cap off. It came off but I left some marks with the pliers, even with using a rag to cushion it.

On another sad note, the hubs and spindles I ordered had a bad hub and spindle. The spindle was damaged by a spun bearing and the outer seal trashed the hub:





Currently talking to a guy on pirate who says he has what I need. So far I've been safe by only posting in the classified section.

Next project is to get the proportioning valve in and get rid of the lspv valve.

 

ya i dont post on pirate4x4...im too afraid lol.

 

My lspv is gone!



I got the proportioning valve kit from FROR. It was well written and actually saved me some work from what I had planned on doing by making my own kit. I installed the valve up by the master cylinder.




Then I rerouted some brake lines by the right front fender.



Then I removed the lspv from the system.

Lessons learned:
1. If the brake line nuts won't budge, use heat and PB blaster. If they still won't budge, use a large adjustable wrench. This gave me a tighter fit compared to a 10 mm or 12 mm wrench and prevented rounding off a few nuts.

2. Work quickly and if you're having problems connecting something up, refill the master cylinder so you don't have to bleed it. (I watched this one carefully)

3. When bleeding brakes, use 1/4" vinyl tubing so it doesn't fly off in your face under pressure (did that last time) and feel free to use vice gribs on old nasty bleeder valves (easy to replace valves once off). Also always route the tubing up above the bleeder valve and then down into your cup to make it easier to suck avoid sucking air into the calipers.

Afterwards I bled the system and flushed all the old brake fluid out with synthetic. The old stuff looked almost like dirty oil. I also had lots of air in the rear right drum and the left drum had a clog. Today with the valve all the way open I had some slight braking ability on the rear right tire but none on the left.

I sold my 33" MT's a month ago for $300. This past weekend I found some 33" BFG's on rims for $200. One tire is pretty worn but the rims are actually better than anything I currently have. The backspacing puts the rim far enough away from my tie rod to allow me to use wheel weights on the rim again.



And today I replaced the cluster (again). The oil pressure now works which is pretty exciting.

Still waiting on the weber carb. Also working on painting the hubs and spindles that will be going on the rear axle. I plan on painting any exposed surfaces with ceramic paint to minimize the rust.

 

aside from carb problems, any issues with the motor?

 

I changed my cluster too long time ago.

You dont need to run an extra wire to feed up the tacho nor the oil pres. sender, the tach wire is there, in the blue plug, black wire. All you need to do is to cut it out and plug it where it should be, on the far right plug.
The pinout is just a bit different in between the non-tacho cluster and tacho cluster.
Sorry i dont have more details but i can get out my wiring diagrams if needed.

jfyi.

 

It runs kind of loud but maybe all rebuilds do that. I am still impressed by the level of support Oregon Engine Rebuilders provided over the phone. The quality of the workmanship always looked good, too.

If I had to do it again I'd probably just take it to a local machine shop as I've learned quite a bit since then. But if you are like I was, and unsure about doing it yourself, then I'd recommend them. Oh, and I have over 6500 miles on the rebuild.


patallen, I think some trucks came with it wired. Mine didn't have anything running from the tach plug and the cable that contained that wire only had 2 wires which are for something else (I think).

 

My 3rd set of hubs came in to replace one of the two pairs I had that was damaged. This set was damaged by the gorillas that run DHL. The hub had a cocked stud and the spindle had a pit on the threads.

For the stud I put two nuts on it and hammered it back out or straight enough that the locking hub slips on it easily.

The spindle required over an hour of work. I used a file to file the threads in the pit down and then put sandpaper on the point of a flat screwdriver to further sand down the bent threads. Last I used anti-seize and a clean spindle nut to finish up the job. I figured the anti-sieze has enough grit in it to finish the threads which it did.

Now the questions I have is this. I want to use ceramic paint on these hubs and spindles to prevent rust. I even have a propane grill lined up to cook them Can I paint the following areas? They rusted because there was no metal to metal contact so I think I'm okay. Obviously I'll tape the edges to prevent paint on the critical areas. I'm also gonna use one coat of primer and one coat of paint, probably the leftover silver that I have from painting my stock headers.









I want to use ceramic paint because I'm sure it won't rub off although the downside is once it's on, there's no coming off. Any opinions?

 

Looks good to me.