Wheel Frustration
Had a very frustrating experience working on the old Landcruiser last night. It has been sitting long enough that the battery is flat. Not just a tad low, but 3volt flat. Which, for a 12v battery, means it is probably dead beyond repair. Great.
After trying to charge it for a while I decided to just roll-start the rig and drive around a little. All the things that need oil and grease benefit by a periodic warmup, and the alternator could add some juice to the battery in the process.
I rolled forward about 2 inches and stopped. At first I figured that the rear brakes were bound up (the shoes and drums can oxidize to one-another over time) so I tried pushing it manually. No dice. So then I figured a little, very gentle tug from the other cruiser would get it moving. Nope. Nada.
After a closer inspection, I realized that the dang wheels from the 80, which I had so recently moved over to the 60, are about 1/4" too little offset. That means that the steering arms contact the inner edge of the wheel and the whole thing doesn't go anywhere.
In this particular case, it also means that as the 60 was poking out of the garage, I had the pleasure of pulling the two front tires off of the 60, then swapping on the spare from the 80 as well as one of the front wheels from the 80, then roll-starting the 60, driving around for a while, parking, then swapping the front wheel back onto the 80 so that it would be functional for life today.
All this at dusk, with some mosquitos helping out, in a light rain.
Doesn't sound like such a trial now that I write it out, but last night all I wanted to do was test out a fix on a silly little relay and instead ended up doing a bunch of crawling around on wet ground. I've really got to get our garage covered and concreted. Working in gravel is the pits.
Take home message: early fj80 wheels don't fit fj60 front axles. Which is a surprising move by Toyota as wheel and axle combinations were totally interchangeable from about 1950 through 1991. And there aren't any particular benefits to the "new" type of wheel. Oh well. It's juuuuust time and money.
After trying to charge it for a while I decided to just roll-start the rig and drive around a little. All the things that need oil and grease benefit by a periodic warmup, and the alternator could add some juice to the battery in the process.
I rolled forward about 2 inches and stopped. At first I figured that the rear brakes were bound up (the shoes and drums can oxidize to one-another over time) so I tried pushing it manually. No dice. So then I figured a little, very gentle tug from the other cruiser would get it moving. Nope. Nada.
After a closer inspection, I realized that the dang wheels from the 80, which I had so recently moved over to the 60, are about 1/4" too little offset. That means that the steering arms contact the inner edge of the wheel and the whole thing doesn't go anywhere.
In this particular case, it also means that as the 60 was poking out of the garage, I had the pleasure of pulling the two front tires off of the 60, then swapping on the spare from the 80 as well as one of the front wheels from the 80, then roll-starting the 60, driving around for a while, parking, then swapping the front wheel back onto the 80 so that it would be functional for life today.
All this at dusk, with some mosquitos helping out, in a light rain.
Doesn't sound like such a trial now that I write it out, but last night all I wanted to do was test out a fix on a silly little relay and instead ended up doing a bunch of crawling around on wet ground. I've really got to get our garage covered and concreted. Working in gravel is the pits.
Take home message: early fj80 wheels don't fit fj60 front axles. Which is a surprising move by Toyota as wheel and axle combinations were totally interchangeable from about 1950 through 1991. And there aren't any particular benefits to the "new" type of wheel. Oh well. It's juuuuust time and money.
Labels: landcruiser
# posted by Steve Broyles @ 7/09/2008 07:35:00 AM 
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Note: pre-1976 wheels do not fit post 1975 trucks.
IFS wheels generally don't fit solid axle trucks.
80 series wheels do not fit trucks with standard (non-frombe) steering arms.
15" wheels do not fit 80 series with four-wheel-disk.
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IFS wheels generally don't fit solid axle trucks.
80 series wheels do not fit trucks with standard (non-frombe) steering arms.
15" wheels do not fit 80 series with four-wheel-disk.
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