- This week we're happy to welcome you to our new project car which is this Toyota
FJ40 behind me.
But it's not really that new, it's a 1982 truck so it's been around for a while.
Anyway, you get the idea.
Now given that we're kind of petrol heads at HPA and generally I spend most of my
automotive life trying to make cars go faster, you might be wondering why I'm interested
in a FJ40, pretty slow, they don't make much power.
I don't actually think this thing makes 100 horsepower and it's definitely no rocket ship
but for some reason I've always had a bit of an attraction to the FJ40.
The FJ40's also are getting pretty hard to find.
One thing that old Toyotas do incredibly well is they rust.
So finding one of these that hasn't fallen to pieces from rust is pretty tricky.
And we've been looking for an FJ40 for a fair while and we actually ended up with
two so this is our second FJ40.
The first FJ40 we bought sight unseen and it looked really tidy, the previous owner
had done a frame off or body off restoration on the frame and he had fixed up most of
the rusty panels.
But he'd fixed them up using fibreglass replacements and I really wanted to keep
this pretty authentic and pure so really wanted something that was steel.
At the time I was looking at replacement panels and these are all available,
particularly out of the US, trying to find second hand ones that aren't all rusted
to pieces, obviously really difficult.
There are some reproduction parts that are pretty good quality.
But by the time we looked at all of the cost of the new panels plus shipping them
to New Zealand plus panel plus paint, it all started getting really expensive and really
hard, that's when this one here came up for what was a pretty fair price given
the quality of it.
Now this one had had a full restoration done on the body work but the frame
was existing factory, hadn't been touched which actually works perfect considering
what we're planning to do with it.
Now first of all, a little bit about the truck itself.
Now I've called it an FJ40, and the purists will pull me up on this.
It's not actually an FJ40, it's a BJ42.
Same same but different, essentially the difference there is that this is powered
by the 3B diesel engine rather than the inline six, doesn't really matter because what we're
planning on doing is modernising this a little bit, getting it up to speed.
I'm going to talk about that but before we go through that I'll just talk a little bit
more about what these FJ40s are.
So they're basically a utilitarian vehicle that's designed to be pretty well bullet proof,
you can take them off road, you can take through paddocks, obviously were really
popular for farmers.
They're also really easy to work on and repair so they're basically designed so that
they can be rebuilt, modified, fixed in the field where you can't get to a workshop so
that's kind of the design behind them.
They're really really basic, there's not a lot of technology applied to them and these
things haven't changed since, or haven't changed much at least since the very
first models, I think came out in the late 60s, early 70s, fact check that anyway.
But the reality is that they're a far cry from our modern four wheel drives.
So what we've got here, front and rear is leaf spring suspension.
It does the job but wow it is a horrible ride and that's one of the things that
we really want to address.
Particularly on the open road, it's not a particularly pleasant drive.
Oh god.
Come on, no that's it.
You get it off road, it's super duper bouncy as well.
On top of this it has drum brakes all around, now everyone complains about
the FJ40 drum brakes and how bad they are.
So I wasn't expecting big things when we got this truck.
The reality is, I actually haven't found them too bad.
Of course they're not as good as disc brakes but they're workable for the time being.
One thing that I definitely don't like though is the lack of power steering.
Particularly with the bigger wheels and tyres that we've fitted to this, it's a bit of
a chore driving it around at low speed and you get a bit of a workout.
I'd like to say with these trucks that every drive is a bit of an adventure, you never quite
know what's going to happen next.
With that steering as well, the other problem with old steering boxes, they tend to get
a little bit sloppy so can be a little bit risky driving this anything over about 80 km/h
on the open road, you tend to be using about half a lock of turn side to side to
try and keep the thing within your own lane so fortunately it doesn't really go much
faster than about 80 km/h anyway.
Obviously that's not what it was designed for.
Not he engine in it, as I mentioned, 3B, it's a diesel engine, not a huge amount
of power, reasonable amount of torque but we're matched with the four speed gearbox,
the two speed transfer case, it gets the job done.
And particularly in low ratio for off roading around places like this, it's actually pretty
good, there's not a lot of places you can't get to.
So what have we got planned for it?
Well one of the reasons that I got interested in the FJ40 in the first place was I was
following the likes of Icon over in the US who build restomod versions of the FJ40.
Albeit with Icon's FJ40s there's not actually a lot of FJ left in it, I think it's basically the
chassis tag, they're using a completely custom chassis from Art Morrison,
an alloy body and they're fitting a range of different engines but based around
the Chev LS V8.
On the other hand there's also the FJ Company who are kind of doing the
same thing, theirs are a little bit more true to the original form including
retaining the modified factory chassis rails, steel body work etc, they're putting a late
model Toyota V6 in them.
Both of those companies do an amazing job, their product is outstanding but you're
also looking at about $180,000 maybe $200,000 USD for a turnkey truck and
I don't doubt that they're worth it but first of all, I don't have that sort of money
to spend on a truck and also, we kind of like the adventure of doing it ourselves.
So we're basically going to be looking at doing something similar although on a
slightly more dulled down budget.
The other thing we're looking at as well is the Roadster Shop over in the US and they're
well known for making custom chassis to go on a range of different American muscle
cars as well as some of the trucks like the Ford Bronco.
So again they're making a custom chassis and modernising the suspension,
adding coilover suspension all around or even independent front suspension.
So those are the sort of companies that we've been following to get some ideas
for this project.
And essentially what we're planning on doing is ditching the leaf spring suspension
all around and modernising it.
We're going to be using some slightly beefier diffs to take the power we're planning
on making and we're also going to be fitting coilovers all around.
We're also going to be adding anti roll bars front and rear which doesn't really help
off road but is going to definitely be beneficial out on the road.
And that's probably where it's still going to spend the majority of its time.
It's fun putting these sort of trucks through rivers and up muddy trails but given that
the parts are getting harder to come by, I want to be a little bit mindful of not really
doing any damage to it at the same time so it's definitely not being built for
hardcore off road use.
With the rear we're going to go with a four link suspension style and we're
going to be using angulated or triangulated top links so we don't need a panhard rod
for lateral location.
The front will be a three link using panhard rod for lateral location as that's going to
be a requirement.
So that covers basically what we're going to be doing with the suspension side of things.
On top of this, the engine is the next obvious area we want to focus on.
And while the LS has been swapped into just about everything, I can't fault the
power, the torque and the cost effectiveness of an LS swap.
I really am a bit of a purist and wanted to keep the engine and chassis the same
so we needed to be picking something from the Toyota stable.
There's a range of option there and given that we're got a bit of experience now with
the 1UZ, 3UZ based engines from our racecar, made sense to go down that path.
It's a nice engine in stock form, we're not going to be modifying it, aiming for
somewhere around about the 300, maybe 350 horsepower mark so internally we're
going to be leaving it stock standard and particularly for off road use we're more
interested in getting good low RPM torque rather than trying to make lots of power
at high RPM, that's not what it's really about.
Now mating that up to a new five speed gearbox is going to be another consideration
there, haven't finalised that, there's a few options.
At the moment we're looking at the R151 which is found behind the likes of the
Toyota Hilux so a few considerations there around the transfer case but that's
basically the angle we're going to be taking.
So we're pretty early into this project, we have got the donor engine sitting in
the workshop now and at the moment it's just a case of sourcing some of the
other components that we're going to need.
We're coming into winter here in Queenstown so we're going to be pulling the truck off the
road and getting stuck into that project fairly soon.
And I'm not unhappy about that because the FJ40 certainly lacks a few creature
comforts, particularly when we're waking up to snow and sub zero temperatures.
You know that it's not going to work out too well on a cold winter's morning when you
can actually see outside through the top of the door because it doesn't close properly.
So few fitment issues that we're going to be working through there as well,
as well as adding hopefully a heater and a defrosting unit that's a little bit more
effective so you'll be able to follow that project over the coming months
as we update you on what we're doing.
So there we are, quick introduction to our FJ40 project, lots in store over the coming
months, and if you don't want to miss out on any further updates, make sure you
subscribe.
If you've got questions, ask them in the comments.
Next week we're going to be catching up with our sister company RaceCraft and we're going
to be talking about corner weighting, what that is and how it can improve the
handling and balance of your racecar.