After viewing it once, i split with a wad of cash, and had it on the back of a trailer heading back to base.
IT had heaps of rust.
For instance, the bonnet had about 20mm of bog covering the whole left side, which had cracked up (which it always does being that thick) and allowed water in to rust the bonnet right through. Some one had done a dodgey repairs on the bottom corners of the windscreen, but had left the top edge unsealed (probably becasue they couldnt be bothered taking the screen out), so water was leaking in and filling up the sills. the attatchment points for the front guards were all rusted away, so they welded the guards straight to the body. The sills were probably in the worst condition, someone had directly welded over top of the old sills, without cutting any rust out, so when i cut the sills off, everything below the bottom door hinge was rotten.
anyway im not going to let all of this put me off, if you start a project, you finish a project.
Most of the grill and headlight surrounds etc were in relatively good condition, as with the bench seat. the dash board looks pretty aweful but im thinking ill recover that in some nice black fabric.
heres a list of the things ive done so far:
pulled the whole car apart, rebuilt the corners of the windscreen, rebuilt the headlight structure, de-spot welded the front panel that houses the indicators and repaired all the rust behind this, removed the cab from the chassie, begun to replace the left and right inner and outer sills.
future plans:
Get the body completely rust free, choose and fit a late model motor and 5spd gearbox, replace the old kingpins and drums with a navara front end, possibly upgrade the diff, panel and paint the car (thinking a nice deep red) and thats about it. I would love to find and fit a 521 wellside tray but ive heard these are as rare as anything, so if anyone knows of a wellside in any condition, please get in contact with me. With the engine, options are, a toyota 20v 4age and 5spd box, a 2.7 turbo navara engine, or a ca18 de. the main thing im going for here is enough power to cruise comfortably, whilst not loosing to much fuel efficency.
any suggestions on the engine choice etc?
