FJ60 Land Cruiser refresh

I have sort of expanded my road trip/adventure thread (Here) in to including some of the maintenance and upgrades I've done on my Cruiser in the last few years but I've decided I'll actually do a build thread for it instead. Since i'm going to be doing an engine rebuild myself,i wanted to have a dedicated space for questions and ideas rather than clutter up the other one.

So far this is the starting point:

1987 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ60 with 277K miles.

4.2 L straight six 2F

Aisin carb

De-smogged

4 speed manual 

2.5 in OME lift 

Longfield 27 spline birfields and chromoly front axle

35x12.50x15 BFG Mud Terrains on Appliance Turbo-Vectors

She's burning oil something furious these days around 1 qt every 400 miles or so. It's time to address that and so I am doing a rebuild this winter on a spare motor while I'm still semi-daily driving the Cruiser the whole time. 30 years and 277k miles and she's still going but getting tired. It's been so good to me and never let me down. Started unassisted at -41F, taken our family camping all over Alaska, and most importantly has never stranded us. It's taken care of me so I'll take car of her.

So I picked up a spare motor from the Cruiser specialist up the road. A late model 2F like mine recently pulled out of a runner.

A couple hours later:

Stripped and ready for the machine shop.

Besides all the accessories I pulled off, I bought a few more of just about everything from a few guys who pulled their 2fs to do LS swaps. Master gasket kits new in box, heads, radiators.... all kinds of stuff. I'll hang on to it all until I have a complete spare of good parts and some extras then thin the collection later. Excuse the mess, sorting begins this week.

This should be a fun undertaking for me and a slow paced winter time project to keep me busy on the days that I'm stuck inside.

My wife has actually been excited about this rebuild so we can keep taking the Cruiser out together (and I can stop bugging her and be in the garage). She got me this shirt for my birthday this year and it is most appropriate.

Nice truck, I sold my 60 two years ago. It looked very similar to yours.

I still have a complete aftermarket efi setup for one.  It has a header,  an o2, an ecu, a harness, a fuel pump and the throttle body with adapter.  

I will make you a deal on it if you are interested.

pimpm3 said:

Nice truck, I sold my 60 two years ago. It looked very similar to yours.

I still have a complete aftermarket efi setup for one.  It has a header,  an o2, an ecu, a harness, a fuel pump and the throttle body with adapter.  

I will make you a deal on it if you are interested.

I'm not sure why the forum was freaking out when I tried to respond to you. I reallyappreciate the offer but this Aisin carb has been -41F to 80F without missing a beat and no adjustments so my plan was to keep it simple and leave it carbureted.

After taking apart V8's lately, that tall skinny inline six looks inviting. 

Following along :D

mazdeuce said:

After taking apart V8's lately, that tall skinny inline six looks inviting. 

4.2 liters of top heavy ancient tractor motor based almost directly on the Chevy stovebolt 6 from the 1930s. Fully dressed, these things weigh a touch more than a big block Chevy.

Dirt simple. Not a lot of people are building these anymore. There are some hardcore OEM 100% restoration people in the Cruiser world and then there are "Cut it up, SOA, 40 in tires, V8 swap it" dudes. 

Then there are the few in the middle like me. I want tasteful mods, simple tough and reliable. The reason these things have the reputation they have. I don't want a hack job but It's no garage queen by any means. This rebuild is happening so I can go further in to the wilderness and longer trips without worrying about an oil burner.

Great looking rig.. following along.

Great looking truck! Definitely following this one as I may be picking up a FJ60 this week myself.

Good luck with the potential new 60!

The engine goes to the machine shop this weekend but in the meantime I scavenged my giant parts bin and started tracing vacuum lines and routing it like the virgin setup on my floor. 3 vacuum lines swapped and I have a perfect hot idle which I've been chasing down for 2 years since I got the truck.  Well, damn. I wonder if at least a small part of the reason I was burning so much was sucking a massive amount of an incorrectly teed off PCV.

Also this hot air heat shield that 90% of these have missing got thrown on IMMEDIATELY with the working air intake thermostat. I had carb icing a a few times in the dead of winter that never stalled me out but I was surprised to see ice in the throat of the carb when I pulled the cleaner thinking it was fuel starvation. That shouldn't happen anymore with the OEM setup. It's amazing what you can accomplish with a bunch of stock parts that your truck was missing and about an hour of your time.  I'll be tracking oil consumption over the next few weeks out of curiousity.

And the Cruiser Gods smiled on the test ride. (Notice that steady 650 rpm idle) ;)

I've got a buddy (across the street) with a 62.  Looks like I'll be rebuilding it sometime in the near future....looking forward to following along. 

Here is my 81 I sold to my buddy.  I love the tan color of your truck it was part of what drew me to mine...

Me losing to Tommy at the challenge a few years back...

Isuzu Rodeo seats almost directly bolt in...

Nice! Twins. Any idea what year range Rodeo  seats just about bolt in? That's the first I have heard of that and they look much more comfy than my stock seats.

Since that first picture I have bedlined the bottom half and picked up some old school Appliance wheels:

I would say they were late 1990's to early 2000's.  To get them in I just had to wallow out the rear bolt holes.  

I was able to re-use the rodeo rear back rest as well, I had the stock fj60 bottom recovered in leather to match.

I was originally going to swap manifolds/carb/ distributor/ accessories from my engine that's currently in service but I think I'll try to just get it as close to 100% ready while on the stand to have less down time when its actually swap weekend. Here I've cobbled together a complete spare head from my parts bin. Now that I know I have everything, it's machine shop time.

Rolling up to the local Cruiser specialist. Always a nice collection outside.

After changing in to my bosses truck, I was now prepared to take on the megahoist. 

Well, that was easy. Rolls through tall grass and gravel dangling an 850 lb longblock with no issues, lift up, back under it, set it down. Everybody needs one of these.

Off to the machine shop so we will see how it looks when everything is torn down and inspected.

Very nice! Sixes are fun, and when they're unmuffled, they make a divine ruckus!!

Doing some work:

Free spare 4 speed I acquired. Everyone up here is doing swaps. LS, Cummins, you name it.  Me, I'll take any and all used OEM parts and use them myself.

Flywheel before:

Flywheel after:

The old school clutch rebuilder shop in Anchorage. Grizzly old dudes that know everything and look things up in "the book" when they don't remember. True experts and a dying breed. 

The oldball throwout bearing that napa wanted $100 bucks for? Oh you have it for $30 installed on a cleaned and painted fork? Well hell yeah.

Replacing the seals on the oil cooler. NASTY!

And uh ..oh yeah! The engine is done from the machine shop!

I have all of the internal work pictures that I'll be getting from the machine shop on Monday when I pick it up but here's a little teaser:

Sooooooon.

All accessories boxed up and ready to go.

Scanned in 4x6's from the engine builder since he is old school and gave me a little photo album when I picked up the motor. The photos look like 1982 but it's actually this motor, Ha! .040 over, port/polish, Delta Cam and a few other little odds and ends.

And ready to start swapping in a few weeks:

I really like those Wheels....A lot

Love the grainy photos from the old timers

Awesome rig. 

That's a fine looking engine. Hard to believe that's the same flywheel.

bgkast said:

That's a fine looking engine. Hard to believe that's the same flywheel.

The flywheel was a work of art. I had several to choose from in my stash but after I dropped it off I realized I gave him a pretty crappy one to start with. It comes back looking better than new. Beside him being  a really top notch machinist, he has the best parts washer I've ever seen. This engine was truly nasty and after seeing how some of the parts came out before finishing and painting, I couldn't believe it.

The day to pluck the old motor out finally came on Thursday night so I got my clutch disc rebuilt on my lunch break and that was the last of the things I was waiting for.

And out:

Everything swapped over and time to stab it all in:

It took a few days just half assing around to get it swapped over. It did get settled in after putting the transfer case in 4L and rocking the truck forward a little to line up the splines. I was too tired to get a picture of it resting in its final place last night at midnight after work.

Monday is radiator, hoses, fluids, set timing, adjust valves hot and it should be ready to go.

Here's a frustrating moment. I drive out to the shop and the Cruiser tech has the truck running great off the carb but the fuel pump isn't working. Maybe air in the lines? Did I forget the spacer after triple checking it?

Pull off the mechanical pump and operate it by hand and it's perfect. As it it should be since it's basically new. Then it hit us.

The cam. 

The new cam's fuel pump lobe is either for an EFI 3fe or just machined all the way down for no reason. SO, the easy button is a block plate and an electric fuel pump but that really irk's me. Everything is is clearly for a carbed 2f, I'm not sure why the supplier would have sent a cam like that. Even for an EFI cruiser, they could have just made one cam and put it in everything.

Anyway, the truck runs and sounds very healthy but just another minor setback and we are good to go.

Pablo Escobar approves of this build.

A 401 CJ said:

Pablo Escobar approves of this build.

Narcos is a fantastic show for old Land Cruiser fans. And drug war fans. And mustache fans.

Electric fuel pump wired in using the old mechanical pump as a block off for now until my little block off plate comes in. SO MANY VACUUM LINES GONE NOW. She's running real strong.

As I do with all new engines and clutches with zero miles on them, I do a quick burnout in the Bass Pro Shop parking lot after hours to uh...properly seat the rings.

No idea how to make that any larger on here. Anyway, now that's back together, it is time for more shake down miles and adventuring this spring and summer. In fact, I still have plenty of winter left here.

outstanding work!  sucks about the fuel pump cam lobe, but you adapted / improvised / overcame.