Currently, for the last year and a bit I have been volunteering as maintenance man and shop teacher here at a school in Guatemala City, Guatemala.
We have an auto shop here. I know it would be put to shame by many backyard shops at home but it's here and it's all we got so we'll use it! There has not been an "Autoshop" class here for over 8 years so there is interest out there.
As the shop teacher I am able to decide what we are going to do in class and this year we are restoring this '67 FJ45LV that has spent it's entire life here in Guatemala. As you might imagine with a vehicle that has been in Central America for nearly 40 years there is plenty to show my students of things that are not right or how not to make repairs.

Here are just a few of the things that we've discovered in our teardown of this truck.

First off all we needed to do was open the hood to see the "mega sized" air filter! It barely covers the throat on the carb. No wonder there isn't much power here.:laughing:

Second here's an explanation for much of the banging and clanging it makes while driving. The drive shaft bolts are either loose or not even there!:eek: While we're at it, look at how "good" the seals are. No wonder there isn't much rust! Folks familiar with the Toyota driveline brake will also notice a conspicuous absence of the e-brake cable! We found later it was because there is NO e-brake guts at all!:rolleyes:

Third, this is NOT how you repair frayed brake hoses!:eek: Electrical tape is not suitable for hydralic hose repair:shaking: What about soldering brake lines?:rolleyes:

Looks like a great project. Maybe I should start an autoshop class to get mine done.:D I'll be interested in how the deisel conversion goes. What motor are you going to use?

Working on a truck that has been in Guatemala has given me plenty of things to show how NOT to repair a vehicle. These are things we found during the tear down.

For starters we need only open the hood to see the “mega sized” air filter. It barely covers the carb throat. Anybody wish to guess why we didn’t get much power?:rolleyes:

Let’s see what was causing all the clanging and banging while we were driving it. Well, well look at the drive shaft bolts and nuts. All are loose, some are not even there!:eek: While we are at it where did all that oil come from? I guess replacing leaking seals is not real high on the priority list of the previous owner. Astute Land Cruiser fans familiar with the drive line parking brake will notice the lack of an e-brake cable.:shaking:

Next we looked at the brakes. This is NOT the way to repair flexible brake lines!:eek: No, you should not solder the hard lines either!:barf:

Rev. Parsley, we'll be installing a 13B-T turbo-diesel :grinpimp: if we can find one otherwise it will get a 3B naturally aspirated diesel and we'll put an aftermarket turbo on it next year in shop class!
These are the same family of engines that power my BJ60 which I am currently driving and they also power Toyota Dyna trucks and Coaster buses which are popular here so finding an engine is not too hard. The issue is finding a turbocharged engine. Guatemalans do not like turbos!?! Looking at the way they maintain vehicles I'm not surprised since they likely don't allow them to cool before shut down and thereby coke the bearings.

that should be a great project! looking forward to watching the progress on this wagon.

Cool thread and build I will add it to the build sticky. Looking foward to this :D
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=385362

You probably thought there was no more problems to see. Well you are wrong! How do the spring pins look to you? Too much trouble to simply turn it around so both bolts can go in.:rolleyes:

How about we replace the spring hangers with TWO left hand or TWO right hand ones? It’ll keep the springs from falling off won’t it? I mean who cares if the axle is aligned right?:shaking:

Steering box mount should be strong enough if it’s simply welded together. :eek: Sure why not?!? We found the same thing on the steering center arm! :eek: I guess life is not worth much when I see the condition of these components and then the curvy mountain roads with little or not guard rails!

In addition to this we found all the steering box spacers in the grease that the steering box was filled with. Like I said earlier, the PO didn't put a high priority on replacing seals so he just filled the steering box with grease! On the entire front end I found a total of ONE intact grease zerk! We also found the rear diff cover nearly had a hole in it from the ring gear rubbing on the cover when it was replaced crooked!:rolleyes:

I'm off to the wreckers tomorrow to get two new shock towers for the front. They replaced one with the wrong side and the other one has an ovalled out shock pin hole (due to the bolt that replaced the missing pin at some time in the past).

We began the rebuild with the steering box since most components were OK and the spacers were available. We had to cut our own gaskets since here in Guatemala the dealers don’t stock too many gaskets, probably because folks here make their own since it’s cheaper. We also couldn’t get the thick gaskets that are used as spacers so we cut those too!
This is where the students learned about checking bearing preload and that sort of thing. Taking the box apart several times to reset the spacers for proper preload drove the students nuts.
I decided to retain the manual steering both to keep costs down as well as the fact that our BJ60 is also manual steering and we are quite comfortable with that.

Like I said earlier, the PO didn't put a high priority on replacing seals so he just filled the steering box with grease!

Common fix.

I dig the gauges! I've never seen a landcruiser with those gauges. I would imagine the speedo is in Kilometers, but the temp/oil/amp is just cool!

I would drive the hell out of that thing. What's the wheelbase of those stock?

~106"

I dig the gauges! I've never seen a landcruiser with those gauges. I would imagine the speedo is in Kilometers, but the temp/oil/amp is just cool!

Oil, amp and temp are aftermarket and yes the speedo is in kph!

Next up was the front axle complete with mini disc conversion.
There were more issues here to show my students. The trunnion or knuckle bearings on one side had been replaced by a previous owner at some point in the past but the “mechanic” doing the work either did not realize or did not know that the load on the knuckle bearing is largely axial and thus it needs a shallow angle on the rollers to carry the load. The bearings that were installed were the standard roller bearing, NOT the type found in the knuckle. I was able to show the extreme wear that had occurred due to the incorrect loading on the bearing.
The other issue here was the pinion bearing nut. We found it to be properly secured but not properly torqued. When we attempted to torque it correctly we found that the bearing preload was excessive. Another lesson in bearing preload and shims to correct it. Another class of driving my students nuts!
I also learned something in this process and that is to use at least an axle housing that has the inner axle oil seals. The ’67 housing was still the old ball and claw style joint with simply a bronze bushing where all newer ‘Cruisers have the inner axle seal. I was told that there was a seal available for this application but when it came time to find it, it could not be found. At the time of the front axle I still had not located the mythical ‘Cruiser graveyard here in Guatemala City so I had no choice but work with the materials at hand. Fortunately here labor is cheap relatively speaking, so I had the machine shop mill the recesses for the OEM inner axle seal!
Anyways, I’m getting ahead of myself. Prior to sending the axle in to be milled I opened up the axle housing to accept the mini birfield joint since the old ball and claw joint is MUCH smaller. I took removing probably close to 3/16” or more from the lower edge of the axle housing to enable the birfield to enter the housing. You can see from the pictures the “before” and “after” shots the amount of material removed.
There was one carrier bearing that had some corrosion on it and that was replaced which meant we needed to reset the differential clearances and bearing preloads. For this preload though we have the large adjusting “nuts” so it is relatively easy.
The mini truck knuckle parts were all bolt on but we still needed to measure and set the correct shims for centering the knuckle so my students got to use the calipers and estimated the correct shim packs needed. We were 0.1mm short on both sides which we discovered by testing the bearing preload. I think they were becoming a little sick of “bearing preload” by this time! The drag link end of the drivers side steering arm had to go so we cut that off and had the tapered holes for the tie rod ends remachined to fit standard tie rod ends for ease of future maintenance (no odd or unusual special order parts).

We cleaned and degreased the frame and then painted it with a rust preventative paint to protect all our work.
Now with all new seals on the axles on both the front and rear to stop the leaks that seemed to be everywhere, we put the axles back under the truck. Unfortunately we needed to use the old, bent up, deformed and basically worn out springs.:( The plan is to find someone who is driving down from the states and can bring a set of decent springs and “U” bolts and we’ll swap springs at that time. The prices I’ve found don’t make sense to have the springs repaired here and even so I’m not sure they are the correct length! I’m told they can’t use the dimensions and specifications in my shop manual.

What kind of mini bike is that in the background? Looks like a Suzuki Trail hopper?

What kind of mini bike is that in the background? Looks like a Suzuki Trail hopper?

Yes I believe it is. It's owned by the mesigero (messenger) and night gate guard. I've seen it run once in a year and a half!

Today I was at the wreckers and was able to find a steering box mount that I can replace the welded together one with. Unfortunately it will mean changing the box for a slightly different one but still much of the same components so it shouldn't be too hard. I'll get my other class to do it this week. Grade "8" bolts will hold the new box to the frame. I also found new front shock towers for the truck as well. Fortunately much of the mechanicals are the same as the common '40 series.
I'm waiting on transmission parts from Honduras before I can proceed with the rest of the drivetrain. Once those parts arrive I figure a couple of weeks and I'll have the engine in the chassis and we can start on the body in ernest. There will be some cutting away of rust but mostly just getting rid of the thick layer of bondo that is on so many Central American cars and fixing whatever we find underneath. I don't anticipate much rust as the underside looks pretty good. Probably more dents than anything else.

I want to tag along on this one as well!! You in Guatemala with a group or missionary type thing or what? Really awesome that you are helping the kids learn at the same time!! keep us posted!

I want to tag along on this one as well!! You in Guatemala with a group or missionary type thing or what? Really awesome that you are helping the kids learn at the same time!! keep us posted!

Yes, we are here working at a school that primarily caters to kids of folks that work at the orphanages, relief workers, folks that work with short term teams, missionary doctors and nurses etc. etc. You can read about the school at www.christacadguate.org There is even some pictures of me on the site but I'm not telling which ones.

As I was saying we rebuilt the 3 speed transfer case. It was in dire need of rebuilding too. Attached is a picture of the bushing that fell out of the low speed gear when we took the case apart! It's shown next to a new bushing which we pressed into the low speed gear as the gear was still fine. You can see how the oil clearance grooves in the bushing are nearly completely worn away! The output shaft was also worn slightly and we were able to locate a replacement shaft. In hindsight we likely didn't need the new shaft as we had to hone the bushing to fit the shaft. We probably could have polished the old shaft and been just as sucessful. Again, all seals were replaced and the driveline brake assembly will be installed later (it was completely missing when we opened it up and apparently is very hard to find here in Central America).

Now we are going to redo the steering box as the mount for the original steering box cannot be located (the one on the truck was welded together in the past and I do not feel comfortable with that) and the mounts that can be located are not compatible with the steering box we have. I found an early '70's FJ40 in the wrecker and we now have the mount and box from that. I'll try posting photos of the steering box tomorrow.

I hope to start with the rebuilding of the H41 low range 4 speed next week. My friend who will be sending me the missing parts is having a bit of a problem dismantling his old tranny so we'll see how fast the parts arrive. I have the required crossover shifters, bearing and output gears as well as a PTO drive gear if I am lucky enough to find a PTO winch for this truck.

good luck on the parts search. i dig this thread!!!!!

Not too many pictures but here it is anyways. I had to use an early FJ40 steering box and mount because I was unable to find the mount for the FJ45LV steering box (the one on the truck had been broken in the past and was welded together :eek: ). We replaced the seals bt kept the bearings as there is not alot of load on these anyways and they looked fine. We got the play and bearing preload all set up again and it works well.
Heading off to Honduras this weekend to get a rust free frame under the BJ60. For the price it's costing me I can't refuse. I hope at that time to pick up the remaining parts for the tranny so that we can get the engine and drivetrain in early in the new year.
We moved the body into the shop last week and we'll be starting on that also over the next few weeks.

i have the old steering gear off my old 67 fj40 if you want it. mount, box, linkage, bellcrank. etc. box mount i cut the rivets off and the mount and box is in good shape. i also have some older textbooks if you want them. i think 94-ish publish date but i have the teachers workbooks for them as well... pm me if interested.


cool build!



chris:cool2:

Well school is back in and the tranny was in the process of getting put back together. This is an H41 tranny, that's the low range non-USA tranny found in many of the third world trucks and desired in the states. I'm coupling it to the original 3 speed transfer case so I'll have a decently low range with all stock components. I found part of the tranny at the local wreckers here in Guatemala and got the remainder of the parts (primarily the "B" series input shaft and 3rd/4th shift ring) from my buddy in Honduras. We're going to mate this to a 13B-T turbo-diesel engine.

wow what a great project!...... keep up the great work!

Picked up the engine today! I had a choice of several 3B engines at the Japanese engine wholesaler (being that this is Guatemala the 3B is probably easier to get parts for than a Chevy 350!):D. This 3B is from a Dyna or Coaster and it tested out at 400lbs+ on every cylinder when cold. Next week we'll connect the tranny to the engine and then when I return from my trip north we'll be installing the engine into the chassis.
This is a 24v engine so we'll be rewiring the FJ45LV with 24v! More power with less amps. Unless someone has 12v 3B engine parts for trade!
We've been a little sidetracked lately with tracking down and buying the engine so we've been working on getting an '85 Suburban running that's been sitting for 5+ years! We had it running on Thursday and hope to be able to have it roadworthy (at least for Guatemala) next week just as soon as we can find a shop that has the right air filter (350 parts are not too common):eek:!

Looking good!! That is crazy about 350 parts. Any idea how much $ total it would be for us to buy a 3B from down there then ship it here? I dont have the $ for it but am just curious.

As always keep up the good work you are doing down there. On the trucks and with the kids!!

Looking good!! That is crazy about 350 parts. Any idea how much $ total it would be for us to buy a 3B from down there then ship it here? I dont have the $ for it but am just curious.

As always keep up the good work you are doing down there. On the trucks and with the kids!!

No offense to the engine importers at home but the markup here in Guatemala is less than at home. Shipping would be the deal breaker though. I've got 35lbs of parts going to a 'Cruiser head and DHL or UPS want $250 to get it stateside from here!!

It looks like the FJ45LV will remain 12v after all! I've found someone who'd like to get my 24v stuff in trade for 12v stuff. Suits me and suits him so we're both happy!

I'm needing a turbo that has an orientation similar to this one. Lot's of folks use turbos from a Chrysler LeBaron 2.5 or 2.4? or a Volvo 2.?. It needs to have the down turn too if it came with that as the outlet ends up really close to the firewall. I'll be down the I-5 corridor in the middle of February and could pick it up at one of the wreckers.
This is my '82 BJ60 but right now there is an exhaust leak at the turbo outlet that's making everything BLACK with soot.

Here's the engine and tranny transfer about to be joined up. I hope to mount it in the frame next week. I found engine and tranny mounts from a BJ40 so we should be OK as far as mounts go 'cause I think the '40 and '45 series probably have the same frame width. Bellhousing is also from a BJ40.

Very cool. :cool:

Cutting off the old "F" engine mounts, no going back to the "F" now! Here's also a picture of the complete engine/tranny/transfer bolted up less the starter and altenator.

We'll be getting the engine in on Tuesday and Thursday when I have these guys for shop class. They are all looking forward to it.

Nice. :beer:

Well we now have the engine mounted into the frame! I found BJ40 mounts for both engine and tranny at the wrecker and got a new tranny rubber isolator from a 'Cruiserhead at home. We welded the engine mounts to the frame after bolting them in a couple of locations. The tranny mounts were simply bolted in to allow easier clutch replacement. Now I need to find a new driveshaft end for the parking brake drum since I've got two and the good one has a different pattern (I assume it's newer). The second one has significant scoring from a bad oil seal so I don't want to use that one.

If you look carefully at the picture showing the front axle you can see that the bump stop and the axle do not line up!?! Another good reason to replace the springs (thanks Georg for the spare LV springs).

While my springs and other stuff makes it's way down through Mexico this coming week I've moved the body of the FJ45LV into the shop to start fixing the rust issues. We've laid the body on it's side since the body has relatively straight lines. Here's some of the rust issues that I'll be dealing with. Probably about 20% of the floor/underside needs to be replaced.

They must have put some really sticky gooey undercoat on this from the factory because that stuff is HARD to remove. I'm using a wire wheel in the angle grinder because bead/sand blasting is not done here.