Well thank you Chef, I am definitely going to enjoy transforming it...however, due to recent information, I may have a change in living situation that would inadvertently put this on hold until I finish the move...I really hope it works out too because with this change in living situation I would essentially quadruple my work space...I am possibly buying a house with a 40x40 ft detached garage...I am checking it out today!

 

WOW, now THAT'S good news! Best wishes, happy hunting, yadda yadda, etc.! lol.

 

So Update: FRUSTRATED

So I was going to attempt to remove the rear bumper, and the tailgate, and start working on removing the bed...

the rear bumper mounts on the rear most frame...





after liberally spraying some WD-40 on it and letting it set in for about 10 minutes, I went to work on it....
The amount of effort it took to get only the first bolt off was sickening...
30 minutes later forcing a breaker bar the whole time...

 

So I am just waiting on my buddy to bring back my angle grinder and forget the effort of wrenching those bolts that are useless anyway...i'm just gonna cut them off...so much easier!

 

Oh god the rust... How is there that much rust in NC!?

 

My only guess is that its either not from NC or it spent a bunch of time near the beach. That rear crossmember is toast. I remember those days trying to work on my FJ62 that was from MN, gosh it stunk!!

 

Yeah thats the only thing i could think of.

 

Well, the sticker on the tailgate says VA...but i know it has been registered in NC for at least the last 12 years...since I have his last 12 registrations. He lived up in the mountains around Asheville, so I am assuming there was lots of snow and ice, which would mean lots of salt...also it sat in his front yard for the last year or more. Yeah the rust really sucks...I have seen cars sitting in the desert for 10 years or more and not had this much rust on it...

So I really kicked major butt on the rear end once I got my angle grinder back...it took me 30 minutes to wrench the first one out, I had the other three in less than five. After that I cleaned up the bed...if you look back at the first post pics you can see some of the trash, I added quite a bit more before I finally just cleaned it out...







X88&94GT yeah that rear crossmember is WAY toast! I'll get a better pic of it tomorrow now that the spare is finally off. It has the spare lifting and lowering bracket just like my 94, except this one is a chain...well I pulled the tool out from my 94 to lower it out and I found out the hard way that the whole mechanism was rusted solid by breaking both the socket and tool....so now I have no tool for lowering my spare on my DD...ouch, of course I have been able to lower it before with nothing but a screwdriver...so I will still be able to use it if absolutely necessary...after fighting with the spare and bracket for about a half hour I was able to get the spare down, damaging the completely dead rear crossmember even more... sadly my DSLR died before I was able to get more pictures of everything...so hopefully tomorrow after work I will get back to it if I have the time or energy...but I will get more pictures of the crossmember without the spare in the way... thanks guys for all your comments, suggestions, and thoughts!

 

I was thinking the same thing when i saw it. Keep up with the great updates

 

I would say that truck spent some time in the mountains and wasnt washed out much. That isnt typical for a vehicle in this area, far from actually.

Most of the rust seen on mountain vehicles is mostly to the lower body skirting.

 

Like I said before, I am not used to rust at all. So I don't know what is or isn't normal here.

 

Okay so it has been a little bit since I posted, I have had some really LONG weekends, trying to be under my truck and at work back and forth, because apparently even though we work until 7 or 730 every night that isnt enough and they make us come back in on our days off...so yeah, I do have some progress but I am seriously too tired to post it up right now...so I will get to it probably later today sometime...if not then this weekend before I do anymore work to it...

 

Hey, I'm new here and a 'new' owner of a 93 4x4 too. Wow! Great thread. I feel like my truck was separated at birth from yours. I guess it really was. Anyway, I just picked mine up last week here in Austin but it also spent a bit of time in VA so it also has some rust but not quite as much. I've been under the back of the truck a bunch as well and had a lot of that black gunk/grease all over the tailgate lower valance and the tow hitch and bumper. My first effort was to remove that rusted bumper. Why they design bumpers to hold water is beyond me. I too broke off bolts. The angle/die grinder is a great idea. I should have thought of that because that bumper was a knuckle buster. I also removed the 'bed protector' to find an inch thick layer of leaves, dirt, gravel, and that black gunk. Also, some bonehead used caulk to seal the tailgate protector on. Is that a northern thing?

Anyway, I'm watching with interest. I may attack my rust with a sand/bead blast first and then use some sort of sealant. good luck with your build. These trucks are worth saving.

 

Thanks Vonroll...yes I believe they are and congrats on your toy...

Okay finally an update...so since the last time I actually updated I had the spare out well from there, I proceeded to empty and remove the bed...





Sadly the bed was shot, completely, all the mounting positions were busted off and ripping through into the bed, there were several holes all over the bed, and both inner fenders were toast...so I scraped it..sorry didnt get any pics of the process of scrapping it, although it was alot of fun using my new plasma cutter...

so I was able to get a real good look at the rear frame now that the bed was gone...





and I did a proper, "screwdriver test" on the entire rear frame, about every inch on all four sides of the frame with a fairly sharp P1 screwdriver, well it was fairly sharp... and there was only two places that it punched through, where the round crossmember flanges are welded on to the inside of the frame, there are two...bolt holes...that are open, inside both of the holes on both sides are the only places that I was able to bust through...which is very exciting seeing as that means the integrity of most of the frame is intact...I will only be replacing the two rear crossmembers, and boxing the rest of the frame...



then i removed the hood, windshield wipers, and the skinny section the wipers come out of...don't know what it is called...




it was taking up too much room in the garage so I pulled it back outside...




the hood is completely unbolted, however since I didn't tale the locking latch off yet, I just set the hood in place and latched it, which surprisingly holds the hood pretty much secure by itself...I put it on just to keep as much water as possible out of the engine bay...which of course wasn't possible with the storm that just came through, with 60 some odd tornadoes and rain and hail and all that, surprisingly, nothing happened to the truck...the storm actually cleaned up a bit of the loose rust on the rear...lmao

next I drained fluids...I have drained the radiator, which surprisingly looked super clean, especially giving the reservoir has black gunk in it...drained the engine, or what was left from dumping, the tranny and transfer case, and then both front and rear diffs...god gear oil has such a god awful smell, it got all over my mechanix glove and the smell will not go away...dont suppose anyone has a remedy for that, it's stinkin up my whole garage...i am almost tempted to throw away the 20 dollar gloves...I didn't take any pics of draining it since that is a fairly boring step...

today I removed the seats,





I'll be getting rid of those soon I hope...probably just take them to the dump, the driver side isn't in the best condition, and the headrests are both split on the bottom...

okay so I am getting there little by little, part of the problem is that I am running out of room, and the house fell through so I am still stuck working out of this tiny garage...hopefully I will be getting a bigger place soon...so I can do more with it...

 

diggin your enthusiasm for this daunting project... personally, i wouldnt wanna touch something with THAT much rust on it... but im from CA and my truck has never seen a salty road in its life...

Id make friends with the local Toyota Dealer Parts counter guy... my guy, chris knows me by the sound of my voice... he gives me 15-20% off parts AND if i call in advance, he will even have the computer diagram printed out for me wether i need it or not...

seriously tho, good luck with that... ill be watching...

 

I wish I could get to know them that well, maybe I will, you never know...I really wish I had a copy of all the diagrams that they have, that would be really nice...

 

Dude, I'm thinking Nike stole your catch phrase of "Just do it". I took compressed air to a lot of my rust yesterday and that flaky stuff just, well, flakes off. I plan on using my die grinder and a bunch of POR-15 stuff after I get my bed off. Thanks for all the pics!! You are an inspiration.

 

well, if you need one of their systems diagrams and cant get one, lemme know, i can scan and upload it for you...

also, go to www.ncttora.com/fsm for the FSM for your truck... most valuable posession you will ever have...

 

thanks space-junk, i will look through it as soon as it finishes downloading...I have always used a haynes manual, but I am learning quickly that they just aren't in depth enough, I hope these ones are way better...

your welcome vonroll, and thank you, all the people on here on the real inspiration, you can learn a lot from these guys, make sure you take a good look around if you really want some inspiration in the form of what I am doing, search for cyberman, his restore thread is my real inspiration...

 

awesome project man! if you didn't find out already, that white pole thing you mentioned is for the radio antenna.