I've been offered my stepdad's 1986 Toyota pickup. It's 4wd, lifted. It's my dream truck, which I've offered to buy before. I'm psyched! However:

My stepdad had a stroke and has dementia. After his stroke, he hasn't driven, but he continued to work on his truck for five years. My mom says that he thought it has a problem with the steering column. But after his stroke, he thinks a lot of things.

He and my mom live in a small city 200 miles away from me. I am trying to decide what to do first:
1. Have the truck shipped to me. I have a mechanic I trust will try to save me money. He's creative and in the past has worked around my kludges and offered to do things like pull used parts from salvage yards & install them for me, when I needed to be very frugal. However, I don't know if he has experience with lifted trucks.
2. Have a mobile mechanic look at it where it sits & advise further.
3. Choose an off-road specialist in the city where the truck is (I could stay with my mom for a week or so)

I don't think my mom knows of a mechanic she trusts. My stepdad always did all the work himself.

I've read in another forum about a Tacoma with a suspected "steering column" issue that was actually caused by the lift kit being installed wrong. The whole front end was messed up. The repair bill was $10k, that poster said.

I don't want to invest a lot of money into a vehicle that I may not be able to afford to repair. (Right now, my total assets are about $3K.) For me, it may be smarter to just sell the vehicle as-is. (I could arrange the sale online & then travel to close it.)

Given what I've said, what would you do? If cost were no object, I should probably have it shipped to me as-is, right? Here, in a larger city, I can have my trusted mechanic, off-road shops that acquaintances can recommend, and the possibility to get to understand the situation slowly.

I have minor diagnostic skills, mostly for electrical issues. If the issue is just that someone tried to hotwire it & damaged he ignition switch, maybe I could fix that myself. Otherwise, I have no experience, I don't have an indoor place to work on it, and it's about to get very hot where I live.

 

Do you think the “problem” is electrical or mechanical. The lift is minor and shouldn’t cause a problem as far as i can see. Test all the electrical functions of the column- lights, blinkers, wipers, key, highbeams, horn, then tilt it and test again. Maybe you can narrow it down to one of the typical-for-the-age failures.
Looks like he may have been trying to bypass something with those blue and pink wires.
Truck looks solid. Good body.

 

Where are you located? I'm in Marana, AZ. (NW Tucson). I'm building an 86 and might be able to help you out. I'm a retired mechanic and have owned a bunch of 2nd gen pickups. Not much to go wrong with the columns. You can get switches if needed. I actually have a good spare tilt column from an 86.

Sorry about your dad.
Scott in AZ.

 

Thanks to both for replying!

@aztoyman : The truck is in Prescott, but I live in in Tucson, near you. That's lucky for me!

@Melrose 4r : Potentially, nothing was actually wrong, originally! My mom just wrote me "He hadn’t been driving it much in 2019, not at all since his stroke in 2020. He occasionally tinkered with it and seemed to enjoy that. He could pretend that he would drive it again. He thought a vandal had attempted to steal it and that led to his cutting the plastic off the steering column. That’s where it stands."

My mom says that late May (after the 22nd) would be a good time to visit and stay with her while I look at the truck. I think meanwhile I'll get a manual and study it so that, when I see the truck, I'll have a sense of what I'm looking at.

 

@az86 When you get the truck to your place in Tucson, hit me up. I'm retired and usually working on my build. If other projects quit popping up that is.

Great idea getting a manual. Factory manual and wiring diagrams are best if you can find them. I bought mine on eBay years ago. Maybe this forum has resources to download? I'm also on IH8MUD forum and that has a very helpful minitruck section. There's a guy that always helps out with service manuals and diagrams. I think he is a former Toyota tech.

Maybe arrange getting a trailer to get it back to Tucson and make sure to get the title transferred. Sometimes the MVD here in Tucson can really jack you around. Took me over a year on two different trucks. Both of those were abandoned titles though.

Sorry about your step dad. I know what it's like to deal with dementia in family and friends. Pretty horrible.

I'll PM you my contact info.
Scott in AZ.
This is my 86. Well, mostly 86.

 

I got the truck home last July (I disconnected the rear drive shaft and we used a tow dolly) and have been working on it very intermittently and slowly. After ohming out many parts, I replaced the 80A fusible link cartridge and that was the only electrical change needed to get it to turn over. I flushed the fuel tank and replaced the gaskets, fuel intake screen, and rubber fuel hoses. Now I have the tank under the truck ready to mount. But it's been many months since I dropped the tank and I am having trouble remembering how it was bolted in.

This tank has no straps. just sets of 3 holes in the flange at either end. I have the skid plate too. I also have a small bracket that goes in the back. I have the factory service manual and see its diagram of the tank, skid plate, and that bracket. But if there was anything in there about the frame members to which it bolts, I don't remember.

Maybe you'll recognize this type of tank, if you have one. Photos of the tank are among the latest and are at the end: https://photos.app.goo.gl/54X5RoeT5MMVHWCQ8

@aztoyman has been helping me with advice, encouragement, information, and even parts. But I can't assume he remembers everything about these trucks or even had the same type of tank, so I figured I'd ask in here. Thanks in advance if you can point me to any resources that would help me re-install the tank!

 

If you have the parts diagram, it pretty much bolts like the pic. On the front side the bolt holes are in the frame/crossmember....whatever is straight above the tank. The rear spacer bracket has the scalloped flange with the weld nuts and the other flange just has holes. The flange with holes goes up against the tank flange and the bolts go through the bracket and tank flange and screw into the frame bracket above since it has weld nuts in it. The upper flange of the spacer bracket holds the rear of the tank to the mounting above it. I think you use a 12 mm socket. The SKID PLATE (corrected what I wrote) bolts to the lower side of the flange with the scalloped shape and weld nuts. The scallops let you get an extension and socket past the flange to tighten the tank and spacer bracket bolts. Going by my old man memory since I cut my frame off behind the cab and can't go look.

Edited to hopefully make sense.

 

I don't remember the method for the front of the tank. Obviously no spacer but I think some of the tank bolts can hold the tank in place while the ones that hold the skid plate can still come out so you can pull the skid and keep the tank in. The biggest suck is having to have the tank hanging and trying to get the hoses and wires hooked up. You can always pull the bed but I know you don't have a way to do that in your work area.

Good luck with it, a little progress is better than no progress.

 

Thank you! I got the hoses and electric hooked up when the jack was under the tank. The rear made sense, thanks to your explanation.

But the front still does not! My tank's front flange has 3 holes, so does the skid plate's front end, and I am pretty sure that I removed the skid plate (last July) without removing the tank's bolts. And maybe the two shared one set of bolts, but I think not because the clean area I see on the front cross member looks consistent with direct contact by the skid plate and not the tank!

I got the front figured out, too. There were two sets of holes (each with welded nuts) on the transverse frame member: 3 on its bottom surface, for the skid plate; and 3 behind it, a bit higher up.