Just joined this forum so I'm gonna copy my posts straight onto here for ya'll toyotamini truckers

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Hey folks, havent been on here for a lil while but I'm back at crusty old cars so why not share it with you all.

I'd been looking for an old ute (as us aussies put it) for a while, for hauling bikes and general banter. I found this on a "popular internet auction site" and got it, only on the poor photos that the sellers had provided. As with buying anything relatively sight unseen, you kinda expect the worst when you choose to bid, and deal with it when you turn up and its completely rotten through.

Had to drive just under 3 hours to pick it up on a trailer and all went smoothly. Took it through the carwash on the way back to blast off the last 10 years of crud it accumulated sitting in a barn.

I bought it non-running, but I suspect it is just neglect and lack of know how from the PO's. I haven't tried to start it yet, i'm doing all the body work first.

Being an Australian delivered model, it has an 18R 2 litre, a 4 speed floorshift 'box, drumbrakes all round and the mighty 7'2" bed out back. Unfortunately it doesnt have a bench seat but I'l going to try and source one from an earlier model.

This will be a fairly large thread, I like to take pictures of things and share them, I like reading othere peoples build threads so I try to repay the favor ;D

Rundown of all the work needed:

Cut out all rust and weld in new metal in both sides of scuttle panel, inner fenders on the enginebay side, bottom of both front fenders, support bar at front of chassis, and a small patch on either side of the bed, towards the rear. Plus a little bit in each side rain gutter, but shouldnt be too bad I hope.

Beat out and fill dents, although this is a work truck and will be beat on anyway...

Clean up and hit fresh paint on the chassis and underside of the body and bed. (without removing the cab...) Going to try my hand at coach painting.

Fresh paint for the whole car, including an enginebay tidy up.

Lowered suspension, probably 1 leaf removed from rear and welded lowering blocks; Mitsubishi L200 springs in the front (lower about 2.5")

Sandblast and powdercoat steel rims, whitewall tyres.

Anchor points in the floor of the bed to secure down motorcycles safely.


Enough of all that, heres the start of the pics..

Just picked it up











Back in the workshop





Highpressure wash the enginebay


After cleaning the interior






Bed is nice and solid, only a few pinholes




All the rust....
















First day of working on it, stripped down the front end to see what we needed to do. Only extra rust I found was a support bar on the front of the chassis which looks like an easy repair. Started digging into the scuttle panel. This is the worst of the rust and the hardest to repair due to the shape, I don't have any special tools and never really done rust repair before. I'm gonna attempt to repair tomorrow so we'll see how it turns out I guess.



Left side is the worst.


Right side not so bad....




Inner wings are solid though







Sorry that's all for now, I haven't begun any repairs yet but I got the day off tomorrow so sparks will be flying and the pics shortly after!!!

 

Had a BIG day today... Decided to hit the scuttle panel rust on the drivers side, it is by far the worst on the car and I was dreading repairing it. Part of me just wanted to bog over it...

Ive never done proper rust repairs before, this was my first go and I didnt really think it'd turn out OK, but I cant complain. It's solid and should hold the major rust at bay for a good number of years. Having said that this is a work truck so I'm not so I'm not after a perfect finish.

Marked out what needed to be cut and made some cardboard templates




The beginnings of a replacement window section






Pretty proud of this...




Rebuild the inner pannel, this was an earlier picture and I remade it better prior to welding it in


Starting to piece it together




This was the last photo I remembered to take prior to filler. I gave it some more weld in some spots after it was ground down and sorted that hole.


Got caught up in the moment, forgot to take pictures but here it is after some filler and primed.





It's not perfect, but it's solid and its a thousand times better than an open wound. I'm pretty chuffed with how it turned out, considering the complexity of this, I'm actually looking forward to sorting out the other rust which is much more straightforward.

I still need to patch up the front edge of the scuttle here where it joins the engine bay, I ran out of time but that should be a simple job.

Stay tuned I should be tackling some more rust in the next few days,

 

Got some more work done this week, the cab is ready to rock and roll, still need to cut out rust on the front fenders.

The front support on the cab was rusted out on the drivers side, I cut it out and made a new end with sheet. This isnt visible so it doesnt matter what it looks like...



Cut out rusty bits and welded in new panels to finish the drivers side scuttle.



Cut out the front of the scuttle area as the centre had alot of rust holes, again not pretty but this is all under the bonnet!!!



Went over the engine bay with some 80 grit to get all the loose rust and flaking paint off, tucked all the wobbly bits out the way and hit the engine bay with some black, tidied it up alot and gives you a bit of a boost when something looks alot better!





Should be ready to hit it with some paint next week.... I will be rattlecanning . I've done whole cars with spray cans before and its turned out good, the paint fades after a while but thats just patina right?!

I've got two colours floating around my mind, either Sky-Blue or Mint... with white accents: wheels, bumpers and tailgate lettering.

 

Today I pulled the doors apart to paint. I want to "jam" the car so I will be painting the inside of the doors and the jambs on the body. It seemed easier to take them all apart than fart around with masking, and it will look better in the end.

Took a bit of fiddling to work out how the locks and quarter windows come out, but after the first door the other only took 10 minutes to completely strip.





And I bought paint today! Having done some digging online and speaking to a few friends who use it frequently (on more stationary objects ) I picked up 12 cans of Montana (MTN 94) Freedom Blue, which is a matt paint, uv resistant and apparently sticks on anything like shiiii to a blanket.





And something I found on ratsun.org, just what I had in mind, but I reckon my paint is a shade or two darker, and I'm doing white steelies, and double whitewalls.

 

Had some sun after work today and got some more work done, but got a bit carried away and didn't take any pictures until it was all said and done.

Last night I whipped off all the bolts for the bed, and me mate came round today to help me lift it off. First attempts to lift it off failed, then we realized that things generally come off easier when ALL the bolts are undone. I left a 5mm bolt that attatched the filler neck to the bed and that was causing alot of trouble.

Once the bed came off, I cut off the headboard thing, I don't know what its called exactly. Should look alot cleaner, more simple.

The chassis underside is solid, just very dusty and dirty from spending its life on a farm. Next few days we will blast it with high pressure then paint everything.



Also got a decent amount of painting done. This paint smacks you right in the face when you see it. The solid colour on bare panels really is quite intense, but I'm hoping once i've got everything assembled and some white to break it up, it'll work nicely.

Got 2 coats on both doors, front valance and tailgate. This paint goes on real thick, two coats is plenty but I'm going to leave the doors for a few days to harden before I assemble them again.

Can't wait to get that white tailgate lettering done, will be doing it by hand with a nice Mack brush and lettering enamel.







Hit the aircleaner while I was at it, not sure if it'll "work" with the engine bay but we'll see how it goes.



Put to bed for the night, just as it was starting to spit down a bit.
Got some supplies to get tomorrow afternoon and I'll try to take some more pictars.

 

Got some more pics today, didnt do much work on it though. I filled a dent on the bonnet, had a quick clean up of the fuel tank to see what It was like under all the dust, and painted my tailgate letters.


Some pics of the chassis with the bed off.





It's had a new exhaust at some time. It hasn't been road registered since 2001 but maybe it continued to be used on the farm...



Where the headboard was cut off. On the ends that are hollow, I'm going to weld on some steel plate with a captive nut on the back, so I can thread some mounting eyes in when I need to strap something down.


This is how much room i've got in the back. The bump stop will be removed or considerably cut down. Going of other peoples work on the toyotaminis forum, 1 leaf removed and 3" lowering blocks does a good job of bringing it down. I have a set of Gabriel airshocks that I might install with onboard air, once its running and the bugs are ironed out.



Also got the tailgate letters painted. I used some oil based enamel gloss white, and a good Mack brush, designed for this sort of work. The paint I used goes on a bit too thin but I'll go over it again tomorrow and that should be plenty. Turned out pretty good I think, considering I aint no signwriter...






I went over the edges of the embossing in a few places, I could sand those back but I don't really care, It adds some character, plus you wont notice unless your head is right up the toyotas backend.

Hit the fuel tank with a wire brush just to have a poke, came up pretty good! Everything under here will be brush painted with a gloss black industrial enamel

 

Trucks looking great, good job!

 

good work so far man! i'm really impressed with your welding.

 

Nice patch panels man I'd say u got that under control trucks lookin clean

 

looks good

 

Good job..

 

Love the blue

 

Nice find, looking good so far

 

nice build. i like the blue and white

 

Update time folks

Masked up the silly front end pieces, they are 1 black plastic with the body colour painted around the edges. No idea why toyota wouldnt just make a 2 piece job but anyway







Sprayed the underside of the bonnet black to match the engine bay.


And then hit the topside with the colour. I got some tigerstripes from the cans on this, I guess because its just a big flat panel. Once the car is back together i'll give it a light wetsand and it should flatten out, this paint goes on real thick so there is plenty to work with.


Went over the tailgate with another coat of white, brought out the gloss in the paint and looks pretty good. Also took a close up of one of the letters so you can see my attempt at brushing





In other news, I wirebrushed the radiator back and then hit it with the flat black.


Finally got the rust repairs done on the front fenders, they were both rusted through in the bottom door corner, but I found another sneaky bit that had been patched up rather well in the past. I didnt even notice it until I accidentaly dropped the fender on the ground and the whole lot fell out!!!









Cracked open a tin of gloss black anti-rust paint and hit the chassis chassis with it. It was going quite well until I found out how much of a poo job it is to paint the underside of the car with a brush in one hand and a tin in the other. After I spend a while getting a good coat on everything It dawned on me that most of the stuff you see in this picture will never be seen again because the bed covers all of it....

I painted the diff and drums too while I was there and they came up OK. I did not paint the leaves because I gotta pull them out soon anyway to drop the back end.





Speaking of the back end, I found myself a little surprise today. A while back when I built my Beetle, I bought some airshocks and fittings to do air ride on the front of it. Alas I never did it and the stuff was pushed under my cupboard. I was doing some cleaning up and found em stashed under there, and as it turns out the shocks are a perfect fit on the rear of the Hilux.

So for the back end I will be pulling a few leaves and fitting some blocks to sit it at its lowest height, then it can be raised back up and stiffened up to carry something with the airshocks. The setup will be adjustable from within the cab, but I'm doing it as simply as possible without a compressor. The plan is to fit an airtank to chassis underneath the bed somewhere, then run a shrader valve in the fuel filler to inflate the tank whenever I need to. Airshocks do not displace a lot of air so once the tank is full there will be plenty of up down up down unless I have an air leak.

1 fully compressed and the other fully extended. Full length these are about 1" shorter than the stock shocks.



I plan on fitting this manual paddle valve for height control in the back of the centre console, this makes it out of normal view, but easy to access and also offers the shortest route of airlines, straight through the back of the cab...



Last thing, got paint on the cab! Thought id try a white roof

 

Back again folks.


Got to work more on the cab today, and got alot done!!

First up was to fit the doors back on, so I could reassemble the doors without scratching them all up working on the floor.



Put all the wiring back to where it should be after painting the enginebay, and fitted the headlight clusters back on. The lights are sealed beams and some need replacing (bits rattling around inside). You can also see I put the painted air filter back on, and fitted the radiator in.




Ready to start putting the doors back together, Installation of everything is a reverse of removal - If you can remember how you took em apart a week ago!!!


There is a strict order to assembling the glass and all the rubbers, or you'll find yourself fitting and removing bits all over again!

After a bit of fiddling and hopefully no broken glass ya end up with this!





And repeat for the other side......

Hit the front parker/indicator lenses on my buffing wheel, far less than ideal with a dirty old cloth mop thats full of crap from years of polishing alloy... Well it was an improvement but maybe better still with some fine wet&dry.




Dining table shot of new parts waiting to go on, I still have radiator hoses on order and need oil/filter, coolant and a battery.



A few pics of my massive sound system. I am keeping the original AM radio and speaker in the dashboard, it will be operational like normal. I am also fitting this little thing under the dash, Its a simple little amp to run a mp3 player (my phone) with a couple of speakers that I need to hide somewhere. These are on ebay and a cheap as chops, I paid about $10



OMG, Made in China


Mounted the fenders back on, but theres a big unsightly hole in this one....



Not anymore with an original style retro aerial



;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D


Lights, Valance and Parkers/Indicators mounted


Add the grill



And the icing on the cake!



Thats it for another long post!

 

i'm curious to see how its gonna look with the peep mirrors... but you're making great progress dude!

 

Thanks, Im curious about the mirrors too. They usually get mounted on the A pillars or hanging from the roof gutter. But I might get them on and they'll look out of place in any position so we'll see.

No progress to report today, but I got some more stuff in the mail. Top and bottom radiator hoses, radiator cap, a 9litre air tank and the rest of the air fittings I needed. The airtank will be mounted underneath the bed where the spare tyre originally mounted, and I'll make a mount to bolt the spare tyre inside the bed

 

Got my airtank mounted temporarily. It's a solid mount that I'll use to see if everything actually works, If it does then I will weld on some steel plate mounts. It's a 9 litre tank which is 2.3gal, however air shocks don't displace anywhere near the volume of airbags. You can see all the fittings here. 3 of the bungs are plugged for now. Facing forwards is a 3/8" PTC fitting that goes through the cab into the paddle valve. Line then runs from the paddle valve through a Y piece into stock 1/8" lines for the airshocks.

On the bottom of the airtank is a 175 PSI Safety valve, which has a ring-pull to drain the air. On the right side of the tank is another 3/8" PTC fitting that will go to a brass schrader fitting in the fuel filler door. I'll be able to feel whenever air is low because I won't be able to inflate the rear end as much, then its just a matter of pulling into a servo and filling up the tank again. I do want to add an onboard compresser eventually, To do that all I need to do is remove one of the blanking plugs and plumb in a compressor. The airshocks are rated at a maximum of 100psi (I think, it's written on em) so I should hook up a guage as well I guess.









Close up of my sandwhich mount, 3mm alloy bar with some 3/8 bolts and nylocs (My local hardware doesn't sell metric nylocs...). This would probably last forever, but I'd like to do a neater, more finished mount later.

 

Where did you get the paint from???