The saga of Toyota’s J40 restoration continues. Earlier this year, Toyota embarked on a journey to bring a well-worn 1982 Land Cruiser back to life. Though it had only 130,000 km (about 81,000 miles) on the odometer, its age and exposure to the elements had made the job far more daunting than the team had originally imagined. In the next couple of installments, we see just how much rust they had to deal with.
In the first two installments the J40 was brought into the shop and completely disassembled. By the start of episode three the frame has already been powdercoated. As the technician explains, from the factory it would have been cation plated, but that wasn’t possible in the resto shop. To reach all the crevices and surfaces inside the boxed frame, they found a large powdercoating shop — in Aichi, no less — for the job.
The biggest bout of cancer was discovered on the body, especially along the lower areas near the frame. In other cases, shadetree patch jobs often resulted in greater long-term damage. The restorers spent countless hours shaping sheetmetal perfectly replicate the contours of the original stampings, then reunited the panels by replicating the factory spot welds.
While all that was going on, another team was working on the oil pressure gauge and bringing the instrument cluster housing back to new. Another group disassembled, overhauled, and rebuilt the original B-series diesel.
Before sending all the body panels to the paint booth, the crew conducted one last test fitting. Unfortunately, that’s when they hit a major snag. Cliffhanger!
The fourth installment starts where the previous one left off. After mocking up the body and frame, the restorers were dismayed to find that the new roof they had ordered didn’t fit. The only solution was to go back to the original, but even that didn’t line up exactly. Apparently when you chisel apart decades old factory welds, fabricate many feet of new panel edges, and then put everything back together, you can be off by a few millimeters.
The techs hammered and shaved the metal, bit by bit, to get the steel crown to align (the roof itself is FRP). Once they finally got it to fit, they took everything apart again and sent the body panels to the paint booth.
Meanwhile, the engine and transmission were mounted back onto the frame. Once the body panels were back from teh paint booth, the techs reassembled them, roof and all. But then the whole car was rolled back into the paint booth for a few more coats, to fix scratches that may have been made during body assembly and paint chips from tightening nuts and bolts.
Interestingly, they chose not to repaint the car in red. Instead, they chose a rare Syrian Olive color, which raises the question, since this restoration was commissioned by Toyota, can olive be considered the official color for this particular car?
The goal of the project, other than to have a restored BJ40, is to showcase Toyota’s Heritage Parts Program. Reissued items include front brake calipers, the parking brake cable, companion flanges for the diff, backup lamp switch, and the power steering pump. However, more than 200 J40 parts are still in production, including shock absorbers, u-bolts for the leaf springs, as well as engine and transmission mounts.
It’s incredibly satisfying to see these expert craftsmen work. Imagine those cable overhauling shows, but better, because the restorers are working at the behest of the riches car company in the world. There will be six installments in all, and we can’t wait to see the final product.
