October 7 2010 by Darrin.

So it’s been about a year since dragging the old HJ out of the barn and blowing the dust and rat turds off of her.  Finally, the tables have turned and new parts are going on.  During the last couple weeks, I’ve managed to reassemble the axles with all new brakes, bearings, seals, gaskets, hoses, nuts and bolts.  If it was replaceable, it’s been replaced.

The front axle was the most work, and a real learning experience for me.  I’ve never been into a Toyota Birfield front end, so I started out with a Gregory’s No.502 Australian aftermarket service manual for the HJ-series Land Cruisers.  I bought it when I was Down Under in 1996, and it’s okay, but a guy named “SteelArt” on the following Aussie website really helped out with his own forum thread here…  http://www.4wdaction.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=90889  MANY THANKS, Mate!  I owe you a Four X.

My steering knuckles, or “swivel hubs” in Oz-Speak,  were old, filthy, leaking gear oil, and in need of serious attention.  The chassis spent most of her life on railroad tracks in 2WD, but I wanted to do everything up like new.  The knuckle bearings were even a little “bindy and catchy” after 299,000 km, so it was time for a full rebuild.  Here they are before attacking the project…

The first steps involved disassembling the Aisin locking hubs, the main hubs, and the pulling the Birfield CV shafts.  The result was a big mess of parts, and a slimy mix of grease and gear oil - from the axle seal evidently being toast for a long time…

With all that stuff removed, I could knock the knuckle bearings apart by removing the lower bearing retainer and the upper steering arm.  (The hardest part of that involved getting the top cone washers to pop out - after being stuck in the same hole for 25 years.) The mess just gets bigger and bigger!

Next comes the tricky part!  The swivel bearings’ cups and cones get replaced and the knuckle itself has to go back onto the axle housing with the proper amount of tension on the bearings.  It’s measured with a spring scale at the end of the steering arm, and you’re shooting for about 3.5 to 6.0 kg of force to move the assembly.  Both my left and right sides were a little tight, so more shims were needed.  The shims simply take pressure off the bearings, and I found that an extra 0.012″ shim on the left and 2 x 0.012″ shims on the right resulted in 4.5 kg and 5.5kg respectively.  Well within tolerance!  Here’s how it looks when taking the measurements…

Next comes checking out the Birfield CV joints, and packing them with good grease.  I used Valvoline synthetic, No. 985 - the best stuff NAPA had.  It’s important to get plenty of grease in here.  If not abused, the Birfs are pretty robust, and unlike a single U-Joint so common to American stuff, these are “constant velocity” and don’t create any jerking and binding when turning with the hubs locks.  Throw in that they’re protected inside that big steel ball at the end of the axle and I think Land Cruiser’s really got the system down well.  No wonder they have such a great reputation.  A packed CV…

Et voila!  A completed swivel hub assembly, ready to go to Alaska and (hopefully) back again…

Looks great, doesn’t it, almost like new!  And if I did it right, it IS as good as new.  Oh, and by the way, the ARB air-locker is back in the rear axle, and all the new parts are in there too.  Here’s the last side of the drum brakes, before the drum and wheel go back on…

And finally, the curtain lifts and here’s the rolling chassis ready for her engine, a few other little things, and then a short trip to the other shop bay and back under the body…

Next step: Replace the clutch assembly with parts I got from Oz, then install the engine and 5 speed transmission.  Look for that pretty soon!  I’m on a roll…

Posted in HJ-75 Restoration | No Comments »

September 14 2010 by Darrin.

While waiting for the rear axle parts, I tackled the front axle.  First step, remove it:

Next, clean it with oven cleaner and a pressure washer:

That worked pretty well to remove 25 years of grease!

Next, wire brush the axle, clean it again with laquer thinner, and coat it with POR-15…

After it dries, reinstall with new Dobinson’s springs, bushes, and greasable anti-inversion shackles, just like the rear axle.  (You’ll notice my anti-inversion pins are not installed at this point.  With no weight on, I can’t make it happen.  I’ll see how it goes as I progress with reassembly, and make some new travel-stops as needed)…

Next step - rebuild front axle: brakes, knuckles, bearings, etc.  Gotta paint some house trim first!

Posted in HJ-75 Restoration | No Comments »

September 12 2010 by Darrin.

The rear axle is finally back under the Troopy.  I’m waiting on a few seals (diff, axle, hub) and then the parts can go back together.  My brake drums were right at the edge of usable, so I got a set of meatier used ones from California.  Here’s how the rear axle assembly looked prior to removal…

The axle was removed, wire-brushed, then coated with POR-15.   The new Dobinson’s heavy-duty rear leaf springs were installed, with new greasable anti-inversion shackles, and then the axle was bolted back in…

After reinstallation, the assembly was stripped of its remaining parts, like hubs, brakes, and backing plates, and those parts were cleaned up, painted, and prepped with new Japanese bearing races…

Next comes the front axle.  That’s currently outside soaking in generic oven cleaner.  It’s time to go wash it off!  Look for Part 2 in the very near future.

Posted in HJ-75 Restoration | No Comments »

August 29 2010 by Darrin.

I’m in Towson, MD right now, having come here to join up with my old high school friend Wendell and attend the Restoring Honor Rally in Washington.  I’d never done anything like this before, so I had no idea what to expect.  There were rumors of violence and some pretty kooky comments out there, but we weren’t worried at all.

Wendell and I left Towson around 07:30 and headed for the Greenbelt Park-n-Ride, to catch the green line subway train into DC.  We were early and the line grew quickly behind us.  Here’s a shot of the folks awaiting their turn at the Metro ticket machines when we queued up outside…

As we walked west toward the Lincoln Memorial and site of Beck’s rally, it started to look like a decent turn-out:  lots of familes with kids, some flags here and there, and only the occasional political sign.  (Can’t have us “brandishing placards” as some in our media called it on the day of the House vote on health care.)  Here’s a shot of our approach to the WWII Memorial at 09:48…

We stuck to the right (north) side of the reflecting pool and tried to find a spot where we could see and hear…

It proceeded to get more and more cramped.  There was no chance to go left to the pool, so we went right again and walked over to the Vietnam Memorial where we saw this, left for a fallen friend.  God bless you both, whoever you are and whoever you were…

.

 We then “parked it” under a tree where we could hear one out of five words spoken, and sat there for the rest of the event, occasionally talking to folks that passed by.   In hindsight, we could have gone back to the lawn west of the Washington Monument, but it would have been shadeless and downright hot.  Here are a couple pix of that area just after the rally ended…

I really wanted to be a part of this event, to be “one of those faces” in the crowd.  It was a fine day for me individually, and a super day collectively for the people who attended.  There was no violence that we saw, of any kind.  Everyone was extremely polite.  A few kids walked through us with a sign that read “Glenn Beck is lying to you for profit!”  No one paid any attention that we could see.

The mainstream media description of the rally is surprising.  I heard it on NPR this morning, and then read it again in the NY Times too (click this to read it before they realize what they’ve written and take it down).  It must have gone out in the morning operative instructions to the liberal side of the media.  Stick this in Google and see for yourself…

“Like a large church picnic.”  (Darn, all those violent Tea Party members musta stayed home.  Oh well.)

Bill O’Reilly of Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor said Beck would be lucky to have 10 to 15 thousand there.  He then asked how many Glenn expected, and Glenn told him he hoped to draw 100,000 or more.  O’Reilly challenged (paraphrased), “Beck, if you have more than 100,000 in attendance, you can have my 8PM Eastern prime time slot.”

The first news Wendell and I heard on the way home reported “thousands attended rallies”.  We estimated at least a hundred thousand, but neither of us had any idea how to accurately size the crowd.  Today while having brunch at an Irish pub, I checked out some headlines and saw that Michele Bachmann (R-MN) had called it a million.  The NYT had to disagree, quoting NBC’s estimate of 300,000.  Something in the middle is likely correct.

GOD BLESS AMERICA

(AP photo below)

I was a part of that, and there’s a smile from ear to ear that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

No mater how you look at it, Bill O’Reilly better get used to doing his show at a new time.

Posted in Misc. Travel, Politics and Economics | No Comments »

August 21 2010 by Darrin.

After a couple days wire-brushing all the dirt, loose paint, and loose rust off the HJ-75 Cruiser chassis, she looked like this…

 Three hours more with a 2″ brush and a can of POR-15 yielded the following…

It’s the first time I’ve used POR-15; I’ve heard great things.  If it sticks to the metal like it sticks to my hands, legs and face, it ought to be superb.  Wearing black shorts was a good idea.  Wearing black shorts was a bad idea.  I think I’m going to look filthy for a while!

Anyway, the chassis is now ready to go back together, and it should be a lot of fun to reassemble it.  The next step will be to remove and rebuild the axles.  I have everything I need except for the front brake rotors and calipers - and they’re on the way.  When I reinstall the axles, they’ll mount to an Aussie-manufactured Dobinson’s one-ton suspension.  Everything will be new - springs, shocks, shackles, bushes, etc…  It’ll be really nice to get all the piles of new or rebuildable parts back into a vehicle.  My shop is a cluttered mess…

And then we see if the JDM engine Michael and I brought back from California is worth a crap!

Posted in HJ-75 Restoration | No Comments »

August 15 2010 by Darrin.

The tank fabrication is finally complete.  This has to be one of the longest small projects I’ve ever done, as I managed only a couple days a month for about three months!  Here are a few photos of the tank in place in the old spare tire location.  (This was more recently filled by hi-rail gear for use on the railroad.)

 This tank adds about 30 gallons of fuel capacity, and will function as the main tank.  The original 18.5 gallon tank will effectively become the auxiliary tank, and it will pump its fuel into the new main tank when the main tank is depleted.  This was done because the original tank does not incorporate a fuel return port for fuel coming from the engine.  The original 2H diesel did not bypass any fuel, but the newer 12H-T does.  The simplest solution was to build the new tank for the newer engine, and transfer fuel from the original tank into it when needed.  The combined fuel capacity should easily provide a 1000-mile range

All that remains to totally complete the tank is an interior POR-15 fuel tank coating and some external paint.  I’ll hold off on that until the body is back on the frame.  I was careful to consider any potential interference, but there’s no test like actually putting it all together!  If I need to modify something, it’ll be much easier BEFORE paint.

What’s next?  Paint the chassis, rebuild the axles, and install the new suspension.  At the rate I’m going, look for that in, say, 2013.

Posted in HJ-75 Restoration | No Comments »

August 12 2010 by Darrin.

Summer’s been pretty hectic here. In May, our 20-year Mexican ranch hand finally left us and our “bunk house” modular home - after getting a job with the local billionaire.  On his way out, the vaquero walked off with some family heirloom furniture, most light bulbs, and an unpaid balance of heat and rent from the year he lived in the house and worked for someone else.

Mom decided to clean and redecorate the modular home in June and early July, before she was inundated with guests in late July.  Anna and I had friends coming from Germany about the same time as Mom’s family was to arrive, and Anna’s dad, Frits, visited last week from Holland too.  We did get to make a couple little trips here and there with Frits - most notably to Devil’s Tower and Mount Rushmore…

We made the trip just a few days before the huge Sturgis Bike Week in South Dakota, so as you can imagine, most traffic was on two wheels. Here’s a photo from Deadwood on Aug 5th…

 Back at home, I got a few hours per day of welding in on my new fuel tank for the old Land Cruiser.  It’s taken forever to get it done, and I’ve been procrastinating for a couple reasons…  1) I wasn’t sure how I was going to fill this tank at fuel pumps, and 2) I’m not an accomplished TIG welder.  I’ve had this machine for over a decade now, and only used it to build about 60 Unimog engine block heaters back in 1999 or so.  That’s a decade of dust…

 Good, clean TIG welding takes talent and skill - neither of which I possess.  I learned the basics of stick welding in junior high some 28 years ago, and have been welding with MIG for most of my years fabricating in Wyoming.  I set a goal to TIG this tank together, and that’s exactly what I did.  By the end, things were looking okay.  The real test will be if these joints hold #2 fuel oil without leaking…

Before I could locate the tank in its final position in between the rear frame rails, I had to solve the fuel fill problem.  My friend Paul in MD cut a fuel hatch and fill pipe from a car in his tow yard, but it turned out to be for the wrong side of the vehicle and a big pain in the butt to reverse.  I went to our local wrecking yard and found this donor - a 1983 Suburban…

A couple cordless tools and 30 minutes is all it took to get what I needed (plus a trip to NAPA for a new locking fuel cap)…

Back at the shop, I check the location for the new “Aux Tank Fill”, added a 2″ fuel filler pipe, and then located the tank at a good spot in the frame…

  All that’s left now is a tank vent, and the mounting brackets.

(Thanks to Mom for snapping a few pix at the junkyard, while watching for rattlesnakes - and sparks, that might light up the grass.  Thanks to OK-Wrecking owner Dave for charging me $0 for the old Chevy parts.)

Posted in Local Trips, HJ-75 Restoration | No Comments »

July 28 2010 by Darrin.

I’ve tried really hard to keep the politics off my blog.  There are enough idiots out there commenting in the “sphere” and I just don’t need to participate in it.  That said, here goes my two cents on something that’s really been bothering me lately.  I’m a politics/news junkie, and what I’m seeing is driving me nuts - yes, even from my trusted source, Fox News.

I don’t understand why the anchors and guests keep saying that “the Bush tax cuts for the rich” will expire December 31st.  These cuts were NOT just for the rich.  If the cuts are allowed to expire, the LOWEST BRACKET at 10% will go up to 15%.  For a person or family making $40K in taxable income, their taxes will go from $4K to $6K.  That’s not a 5% increase (as I heard yesterday), it’s a 50% increase.  On the LOWEST BRACKET!!! (Read this article from Investors Business Daily if this is “news” to you.)

Sure the top bracket goes up too - from 35% to 39.6%, but that’s only an 11.6% increase.   Yes, it’s a lot of actual dollars for those rich folk, BUT the percentage is what you feel - and the lowest income earners WILL feel the most pain where it hurts.

To “the rich” with that 11.6% tax increase, they’ll forgo additional investments and savings, or a new Lexus, or maybe a few spa days - but not the staples of life.

To that family making a taxable $40K, the lost $2k in additional income tax will amount to Christmas, or vacation, or groceries, or IRA/401(k) retirement savings when they really need to be saving it.  It’s really going to hurt them, while the high-earners will simply complain about needing a fresh coat of bottom paint on the yacht. (I’m not knockin’ the wealthy - just putting it in perspective.)

Why doesn’t anyone talk about that?  Maybe it’s because just a few years ago, over half of our high school students failed to correctly answer the following question…  “Is 50% of 10:  a) more than 10, b) less than 10, c) equal to 10, or d) you can’t tell from the question?”

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

June 18 2010 by Darrin.

It’s almost 22:00 on Friday night, and my friend Pete and I have been mostly “on the go” since Tuesday at 17:30.  During that time, we logged around 1030 miles traveling from Wyoming through Colorado and back home.  Pete had some medical tests to take care of in Denver, and then we went to see some other Wyoming friends now living back in Colorado between Florissant and Cripple Creek [below, green square “1″].  For those unfamiliar, this is just west of Pike’s Peak, and about an hour and a quarter west of Colorado Springs [red square “2″].

Our friends, Rod and Getta, were originally from Colorado, moved to Wyoming for the employment opportunities, and headed back to Colorado six or seven years ago to be near their kids again.  They both found new jobs at the Cripple Creek & Victor Mine - a South African-owned gold mining operation.   Originally, the area was underground stope-mined and boomed in the early 1900s. Old derricks and huge winches like you see here are all over the hills.  Rumor has it they lowered foals down these shafts with the winches, and the young horses were put into service, never to see the light of day again.  They grew to be too large to ever lift out.  (This particular example was electric, and the photo on the right shows some early braking resistors.)

 There are still a few ‘mom and pop’ mines in the area, but CC&V is the Big Dog.  It’s now surface (leach) mined by crushing rock and soaking it with a solution of sodium cyanide and some other “good stuff”. In the following photos, you can see the surface mining process as the rock is blasted out (left) and hauled to the leach pit on top of a rubber liner (the black in the center photo).  The aurocyanide solution drips through the crushed rock, runs down the liner, and is then pumped up to the refinement building by the pumps at the bottom of the pit (right).

Things are still pretty low key, and Rod gave us an incredible tour of the business, even though he officially retired as a CC&V electrician less than a week ago!  Here’s he is (right) with Pete (left) as we’re about to go inside the building that processes the aurocyanide solution and refines it into gold…

 It’s too late for me to Google it and figure it all out, but the solution runs down these little “pools”, all the while becoming more concentrated.  Here are some photos from inside.  Naturally, DON’T drink the water (or lick the soles of your shoes after you leave).

 The solution is refined and refined some more, and then eventually makes its way into some electrolysis tanks where electrical current deposits the leached metals onto a steel wool type material.  This stuff is then eventually thrown into a 3,000,000 BTU furnace where it melts and is poured into a little cone called a button (right, covered in slag)…

Once cooled, it’s sampled, weighed, and put into a safe.  Here’s Pete with the button we just watched pour out of the crucible…

And another shot of Pete, Rod, and me as we stand on front of the safe door…

So, what’s in that button?  Well, this one weighed 940 Troy ounces (~64.5 lbs).  It was 82% gold, 17% silver, and 1% copper.  We won’t worry about the silver or copper; 82% of 940 oz is 771 oz of gold.  And on that day, gold was $1245/oz.  That’s around $960,000 in gold.  In one lump.  And they produce 4,000 to 5,000 oz per week, 52 weeks per year.

Now if you think you’re about to get into this “easy money”, consider that it takes about 350 dump trucks to make one of these buttons.  And these dump trucks haul 300 TONS of rock at a whack.  (That’s 105,000 tons, or 210 MILLION pounds of rock.)  This mine burns 25,000 gallons of diesel per week.  (Pete points out that his coal mine in our beloved Wyoming burns up 600,000 gallons of #2 diesel per week.  Yeah, SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND GALLONS per week.  And they use 400 TON trucks.  They ship a hundred million TONS of coal per year.  Now THAT’S mining.)

So what’s a 300-ton capacity gold-minin’ haul truck look like?  Check it out, and BE SURE to stop at the stop signs when you cross the haul road…

Of the 350 loads per button, about 250 of them are overburden and other rock that doesn’t contain the good ore.  It’s dumped elsewhere.

Oh, one final note: The crucibles from the furnace last about 30 buttons.  They’ll do a few more, but it’s pushing it.  The bottoms start to burn out, and the gold can leak out onto the floor.  Shaun, the final production manager (red shirt, standing by the crucible) said, “Yeah, we don’t use ‘em for more than about 30 pours.  The boss gets kinda pissed when you spill a million dollars of gold into the concrete below the furnace.”

 For what it’s worth, the crucibles (made in Germany) run about $1500 each, and after 30 pours, they’re crushed and also smelted off-site, where they yield 5 or 6 ounces of gold.  (~$6,800)

Posted in Local Trips | No Comments »

June 15 2010 by Darrin.

June’s been “Spring Cleaning” month, and in between a bunch of old DOS software, I found this photo of the Troopy sporting her Hi-Rail gear.  Just some cool old nostalgia.  I have no idea if this is here or Down Under…

Posted in HJ-75 Restoration | 1 Comment »