Friday night I met up with a couple of Cruiser buddies Lance Williams and Rob Blumel and we headed down to Lance’s farm about 3 hours away in Farmville (pronounced Fahmvul). Once there we went directly into the garage, inside which sat a 1969 FJ-40. It had been idle for about 2 years, rarely moving at all. It had been sitting in a field for a long time and had been in the garage for about 8 months. The next words I heard were Rob saying “I think we can get it running”. No way I thought. I thought wrong.
Rob threw in the battery from his FJ-60 and we gave it a couple of shots of Ether and after a couple of unsuccessful tries, it cranked over and started! Not for long, but by God it started! We decided it would be prudent to change the oil and check the plugs. The plugs were a little dirty, but not bad. The oil however, OH MY GOD! This substance (and I say substance because we’re still not sure what it was or what planet it came from) that was roughly the consistency and color of “3 crème coffee pudding” glopped out into the oil container. We had no new filters, so the old one would have to do. When we started it up this time, it was still running a little rough, so we looked around. What we saw next was amazing. We had left the distributor cap hanging half off and 2 of the plug wires unplugged….but it was running! What an amazing machine! It was almost a religious experience.
So, about 8 hours, many many beers, a valve job, a McGyver-like fabbing of a new oil routing tube thingy to the rocker arms, an attack by a wolverine (or was it just a mouse Rob?) that had been living in the engine bay, a cleaning of the gunk on the valves and rockers and the excavation of what seemed like about 2 pounds of crud out of the carburetor float bowl later, we took it out for a spin! It stalled a lot and knew only 2 speeds, go and stop, but it ran! We even got to take it wheelin’ a little through some mud! (embarrassing part about me sticking my 4Runner in the mud due to only being in 2WD omitted….or not).
We got back to the farm and had project #2 waiting for us. We were to build a new bed for Lance’s father’s 1960 Dodge “By God it’s HUGE” Power Wagon. After torching the mounting points for the old bed and ripping it off with a Kubota tractor (quite a sight to behold by the way), we crashed for a few hours, hitting the bed at about 12:30 P.M.(!) Sat. We got in a few more hours of work building the new flatbed that night, but we were beat, so we called it a night.
Sunday, Lance and I got up early and finished up the new bed for the P’Wagon. After I woke up Rob, we grabbed some grub, then headed out to work on a set of rock-sliders for my 4Runner in preparation for GSMTR. Let me tell you, these things turned out SWEET! Lance did a helluva job on them. Rob and I helped out a bit, but Lance deserves the majority of the credit for them turning out as well as they did. Roughly 8 hours after we started on them, Lance and I were happily hi-lifting and jumping on the bars with nary a flex. Bring on the Tellico rocks now!
We left the farm at about 11pm last night and began the trip home.
The weekend wasn’t over yet! Not too long after we got on I-95, Rob
called ahead for me to pull over. He’d lost all his coolant and the
engine in his 60 was getting HOT. After a valiant effort in sub-zero
temps, we decided to give AAA a call. About 1 ½ hours later,
Lance jumped in with me and Rob rode with the tow truck guy. I got
home at about 3:30am, thoroughly exhausted, but also amazed at how much
we’d gotten done. It was a great weekend. I can’t wait until
the weekend of the 27th, when we go back down and spring-over Rob’s 60.
Thanks again guys!
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