I have been having a million questions with this thing so I figured it's time to start a buildup so I have a good place to ask them. That way you can also see my not so masterful masterpiece!

Bought this truck back in November off a lot here in town. People didn't know anything about it so wanted to just get rid of it. Her son isn't into trucks. I got it for what I thought was a killer price.



It's an 86, 4wd, 22r, 5 speed, IFS. When I bought it had three 35s and a 36 up front. Gearing didn't seem right for 35s, hesitated at higher speeds (55+) and of course living in AZ it had a cracked windshield. It had 3" lift blocks and cranked torsion bars. There is also a 2" body lift which in not crazy about. The clutch also was going out in it. Of course on my test drive I decided to stop at a light on a hill, some guys pulled right up to the back bumper and I had to drop the clutch pretty hard not to hit them, a little embarrassing.



First thing first cant have a daily driver without proper gear ratio. Pulled the diffs and cracked them open. Sure enough had 5:71s in it. I ordered in some Yukon 5:29s and had them installed by ZUK at gearinstalls.com. Great guy to deal with and he does fantastic work.


Photo by ZUK

While Everything was apart I took out the 3" lift blocks in the rear so it's not crazy stink bug anymore. People may hate it but I do love the front end sitting up a tad higher than the rear. Personal preference I guess.

 

When taking out the lift blocks I ordered and installed new u-bolts. I got the rear diff installed and the axle back under the truck.

While I had the front housing and everything out I figured it was a good time to install a new clutch. I went with a Marlin Crawler heavy duty clutch. Another great company to deal with. Installation was overall easy, I made sure evrything was torqued to spec. Got the tranny back in and driveshaft back on.





Once new clutch was in it was time to get the front back together. I'm not the best at taking pictures so don't have any of that at the moment.

I had some issues with the clutch pedal releasing really high. For the life of me could not figure it out. The previous owner had installed a new master cylinder and I saw somewhere that there are 2 different kinds. My adjustment bar behind the pedal was just too long. It might now have been the correct answer but I "shortened" that bar. Now clutch feels perfect. Maybe a bit softer than what I'm used to but it's going good for now.

Also ran into an issue with it not being able to go above 55mph without trying to die out. I was advised that there is a filter in the tank as well as on the inner frame. When I dropped the tank I found there to be no filter at all left. I figured that some of it may have been sucked into the fuel lines so I blew those out. I need to order a new filter but it has been running great since then.

While she was sitting I got a little paint happy and painted the wheels and axle housings. I used Walmart krypton paint and covered it in a rock guard that I bought at Home Depot. Basically seems like it's a clear plastisol type stuff. Seems to be holding up recently but we'll see over time.



Me and the wife cruised it out to go shooting.



Finally washed it!

 

Nice looking truck, the body looks really straight, guess you don't have to worry about rust down in Arizona, lol. Nice work!

 

Thanks man! It is pretty straight for an 30 year old truck! Couple dents here and there and a couple spots of surface rust.

 

Cool score, nice rig!!

 

Thanks man appreciate it!

So I'm having some trouble with vacuum/carb issues and if I understand correctly one of the easier ways to fix these issues is to throw on a weber 32/36?

My issues are idle issues and I've narrowed it down to having issues in the linkage for the choke. It keeps getting stuck idling at 2500rpm.

What's all involved in the weber swap, meaning I know the carb obviously, the adapter plate underneath and configuring vacuum lines. Anything else? Is there a way to hook up a manual choke in these?

 

alright so update time!

Decided to have my windshield replaced finally! After a long wait for a "respectable" auto glass company to be able to fit me inter their schedule. Short story is the guy showed up had me tow my truck across my yard so he could look at it then told me he couldn't do anything because I have rust on my a pillar. I understood and told him I would fix it up for him. Was not happy with this guy at all... He didn't try to take the trim off for me or anything told me it was all up to me. Then before he left tried to brag about his 94 mustang gt. The. Tried to argue with me that a 5.0 or 302 is t a Windsor motor... And left a razor blade in my lawn where he parked his van.



For the record I made a deal with my wife that if I bought a yota I would sell this. Been a few weeks that it's been gone now...





So I decided to remove the trim and do a bit of body work!





The rust spot he was worried about

You can see it a bit above the middle of the side of the windshield in the next pic as well

 

That spot ended up not being as bad as he made it seem.



There's only one major spot that I'm going to have to weld a patch in but it's tiny.

The plan for the repair is I'm going to wire wheel it all down and Dillon where I need to, or weld what I need to. Then paint a strip around it. The strip will end up being a little wider than where my window trim is but it will be the same color as the trim so hopefully won't look to funny.




Where it's currently sitting. Had to steal the wife's parking space. Living in the high desert you never know when a random rain clouds going to show up..

 

As for my issues with idling I ended up figuring out that the choke was not returning at all at first and was causing it to idle at 2500rpm. Played with that got it down to 1200rpm idle. Choke still wasn't fully returning figured out the spring for the return was shot. No one sold springs for it or even had one close. I am planning on upgrading to a weber when I can afford it so I had to ghetto rig it for now with a random spring. Today's plans to get this guy back on there as well as repair the a pillars.

 

Dude really like this truck!

 

I was surprised to see your truck being an Arizona truck to have rust in the windshield channel. Still looks to be a great looking truck. Welcome to Yotatech.

 

Thanks man, I'm enjoying it so far but the downtime vs drive time is starting to kill me haha. It's supposed to be my DD!

I was suprised too. There's a few spots it shows surface rust, especially where there was a camper shell. I don't know 100% where the trucks originally from, I'm scared to carfax it, but It came out of the show low area. There's a lot of forest and snow up in that area of AZ.

 

Back at this thing again today. Got most of the repair done yesterday. Just need to sand and clean up bottom lip then use a little bit of body filler, sand and paint!