PREVIEW: Troopie Restoration Projects Begins

I’m just back from southern California, having done a quick trip down and back Tuesday through Friday.  My friend Michael from Ohio rode along, and we had an uneventful journey.  No mechanical problems, good roads, good weather, and good “loot”.  The goals of our excursion included picking up:

• tools from my friend and camper customer, Dan, who’s outside of San Diego
• a used Toyota 12H-T diesel engine I’d ordered in February
• anything else I could scrounge up for the related Toyota restoration (that wound up being a new windshield, some oil filters, and a windshield gasket)

This winter, with a little luck, I’m taking a break from the big camper construction projects.  I am going to restore our 1985 Toyota HJ-75 Land Cruiser 1-ton Troop Carrier - called a “Troopie” in the Land Cruiser world.  She’s an Australian-market right-hand-drive vehicle that was imported into the USA for ultrasonic railway testing back in 1986.  She accumulated over 300,000 km in service with SS Tech, running on hi-rail gear on the train tracks.  She eventually came to me in 1993.

I played with her for four years, then retired her in 1997 when her oil pressure became too low to trust.  She’s been in storage under roof for 12 years now.  Yesterday, Michael and I managed to fire her up with a fresh battery and a tiny shot of ether.  While the brake pedal went to the floor, the clutch hydraulics were spot-on, and I was able to drive her under her own power onto my car trailer…

Now that she’s back home, I’m going to let Anna’s two kitties de-rat the car for a couple weeks while the Troopie is outside.  Next, I’ll give her a good cleaning and strip everything off of the vehicle’s interior and exterior.  The goal will be a body in my paint booth, and a rolling chassis in my other workshop bay.

 The chassis will get stripped, painted, and then:

• a new Dobinson’s (Aussie) suspension
• rebuilt axles with ARB diff-locks
• new brakes
• new wiring
• a second fuel tank yielding a near-1000 mile range
• a direct-injection turbo-diesel engine

Here are a few shots of the “new” used 12H-T engine and 5-speed manual transmission, bought from a JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) parts dealer in Los Angeles…

The above turbocharged direct-injection 12H-T engine will replace the stock 2H indirect-injection naturally aspirated diesel that’s tired and needing lots of love.  (My plan is to get the 2H rebuilt, turbo’d, and then slid with her 5-speed transmission into another old Land Cruiser we have - a 1985 FJ-60 that’s currently powered by a gasoline 2F engine with 4-speed tranny.)

 Are you seeing any pattern here?  Multiple Land Cruisers, multiple Unimogs…  Having lived off-road for over 20 years now, these old vehicles are the only ones that hold up in such severe service.  Live and learn.

This entry was posted on September 20 2009 at 21:16 and is filed under HJ-75 Restoration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.