LJ 70 rebuild

[peter kohler]

Hi everyone,

Just bought my first Landcruiser
LJ70 2.4 TD TX version.

The plan is to restore and modify it so that I can use offroad for pleasure and onroad for business.

Because of the Dutch climate, it has some serious rust.






Some pic's of the body rust, the chassis isnt mutch better

but with some TLC it could end up looking like this

 

[peter kohler]

This week some work done on the car. Lifted the body to get the rust damage repaired.
Some pic's







Rolled the chassis out of the workshop and cleaned it with the jetwas, lots of mud and rust came outof the chassis tubes.







The upper spring mount, as you can see, it' s in a pretty shitty state.
I think i'll just cut out both tubes and replace them completely .

 

[wobbly]

Thats some work you've taken on, but it looks like youve got a good workshop setup.

I recall reading that cars in Denmark are uber expensive, which makes jobs of this magnitude more attractive than over here?

I'm sure youre already reading Bens thread.

Will be a nice looking truck when finished, photos are the key.....

Regards

Pete

 

[Ben]

Welcome to the club Peter.

Great thread, thanks for sharing.

I've never seen an LJ70 chassis rusted like that before. Can you get the rest of it sand blasted?

I think that is what I would be doing to see if any other bits need repairing.

As Pete said above, my thread might be of interest to you. The rear arches on my LJ70 were also badly rusted, so I bought weld in repair panels from Germany.

http://www.landcruiserclub.net/forums/showthread.php/42837-LJ70-Build-Thread!/page5

 

[peter kohler]

Thanks guys,
Ben, you have a awsome thread, been reading it for almost a week and i'm still half way

I'v been offroading for the last two years in a jeep ( sorry, please don't kill me for saying that ) from a friend of mine, thats probably the main reason I bought a Landcruiser .

But I must say that I find it very rewarding to work on the landcruiser, after setting up my business en building a house, it's very nice to have my own project again.

Back on the cruiser, today my wife had to work all day so a had all time to myself.




cut out the rusty parts, I couldn't drill a big hole in the chassis so i cut out a squire piece and made a matching piece out on 3mm mild steel plate, drilled a 58 mm hole in it and tacked it in place.


on the inside of the chassis I had to cut out an ever lager section, made a matching piece with alle the holes in the original place and put in a new tube to get both side's alignt,

At this point I realized that it would be easyer if I first removed engine, drive shafts and axle's, so thats what I dit the rest of the day.





I'll try to take as many photo's as possible ( workable )

cheers all,

 

[tonytoyota]

Hi looks a big job good look with it .
tonytoyota

 

[Ben]

Love it!

Great work so far.

It looks like you have a really nice workshop there, what is it you do as a job?

 

[peter kohler]

Hi Ben,

I own a small car repair shop, on employees, just mee .
Mostly car maintenance, repairs and MOT, not the most exiting stuff

I hire out the back end of the shop to a good friend of mine who specializes in building custom exhausts en roll cages.
So we have indeed a nice workshop, but it needs tidying up, it's realy a mess right now, so no pic's of the workshop

 

[Shaun]

Another interesting build thread and getting stuck into it by looks of things !
Nice fabrication keep up the good work Peter.


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[LordToy]

Amazing work!!...
I follow you interested..
Good work!

 

[peter kohler]

A question to you experts, I'd like to lift the car 2 or 3 inch. In holland there are a couple of suppliers how import complete suspension kits. Looking at most of those kits, they seem to have made in china quality shocks, not what I want. There is a german made set trailmaster made bij maas, witch is suposed to be top of the line. But they cost a small fortune 1400 euro.

I do have a set of springs laying the garage of a Jeep grand cherokee, they are almost the same as the oe toyota sprins but 3 inch higher so I'm thinking of sticking them under the landcruiser, but obvius I don't have longer shocks. I would like to mount original quality shocks, does anybody know if there are longer shocks used on a other type landcruiser witch wil fit under a LJ70 ?

Cheers peter,

 

[Shaun]

Would be interesting to see how it would sit with the Cherokee springs fitted. Are these factory springs ?


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[peter kohler]

update time.



made 2 tube's witch slide trough the hole's in the chassis, tack them so could make the string platform.


made a template out of cardboard, after some fine trimming of the template a cut out 2 of them out of 3mm steel sheet.


and one for the right side,

welded a piece of tube on the bottom side to keep the spring in place.
I decided to use the Jeep grand cherokee front springs witch I had laying around


I still need to weld a small piece in the underside of the chassis, the bump stops will be mounted on them.



with the spring in place.


Decided to make them extra strong with a 5mm strip on top of the plate
first whe could lift the chassis easily with two men, but the rear end is starting to get heavy.

with the spring in place, I could begin cutting out the last bad piece in the chassis, the rear bumper menber





Because our brake press is a very light one ( 1,5 mm max ) I had to make the chassis menber out of available metal strips.

used 5mm thick metal, so it should be beefy enough

with reinforcement plate for the tow eye.


all clamped in place and ready to be welded.


Put the rear axle under it to see how id looked, looks ok to me with the Jeep springs, next thing to do is sort out the shocks.
got a idea of using landrover shocks, because there a easy available in Holland and Terrafirma seems to make a good quality shock cheap.

thats it for this week, sunday where planning a trip to an abandoned military base in germany, http://www.furstenforest.eu/
should be fun.

 

[Shaun]

Liking the idea of the landrover shockers ! There a lot cheaper than landcruiser ones over here and there's more to choose from in my opinion.




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[Chris]

Damn Peter. I wish you were my neighbour. That is some pretty fancy work. Fantastic. Just keep going and you'll have a whole new chassis.

 

[Ben]

Wow! Awesome work!

I'm looking forward to the next update.

That disused German military base looks fun!

Would love to see some pics if you get some.

 

[AndyCook]

Great rebuild project, i look forward to the updates and more photos

Are you going to grit blast the whole chassis before painting?

It will look mint

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[doyle61]

Great read so far and great photos.
Question for you; I'm hoping to buy a 70 in next couple of months and have decided to look around Europe as any 70's in Ireland of the age I'm looking at (85-87) are total rust buckets. I've been concentrating on Netherlands and Germany but you mentioned about the climate and rust in Netherlands. Are good project (it'll be my first proper project so don't want it to be massive bodywork) cars hard to come by and what Web sites would you recommend.

 

[Ben]

I've often thought Malta might be a good place to source rust free, right hand drive cruisers from in Europe.

 

[bobo]

Amazing work!! I really enjoying !