I’ve recruited my sons to help me a bit on this. We bought this FJ site unseen for a few hundred bucks. No clue what we were getting until it was rolled off the transport. So we poked our heads under the hood, and what did we find? A small block Chevy.
So I check the number on the block. It’s a mid-late-60’s 283. A little Googlin’ tells me it likely was from an early Chevelle. The speedo reads 72,532 miles, so I’m thinkin’ “Maybe I got lucky”. Probably not. We put a gauge on each cyclinder, and no pressure in #4. Could be a stuck valve, but I’m gonna do a frame off anyway, so out comes the motor. We’ll pull the head off the block and take a peek inside to see what I’ve got.
The GM bell housing looks like its from an early 60’s truck. Has a weird clutch fork and pin like I’ve never seen before, but is nicely fitted up to the stock 3-speed. Plenty of meat on the clutch.
Whoever did this V8 conversion new what they were doing. The front drive shaft is shortened 7 inches to accommodate the GM bell housing placement, the rear drive shaft has been lengthened 7 inches, and the whole shebang has been moved forward 7 inches. Whoever did this hand-fabricated a new floor plate over the tranny and transfer case, beautifully welded, but painted a slightly different red then the rest of the Cruiser. The stock radiator is there, but an oil cooler has been added. That tells me the conversion was done a long time ago, before the advent of triple core aluminum radiators. Oddly, whoever did this cut a hole in the front of the left fender and mounted the oil cooler right behind the hole. Weird.