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The FJ40 body tub started in average condition with quite a bit of rust, which is typical of Land Cruisers of this age (almost all Land Cruisers now). I had two primary options, repair my current tub, or replace it with steel, aluminum or fiberglass. New steel would have a chance of rusting, like the old steel, aluminum is thicker but more expensive, and fiberglass is lightweight semi-expensive and can crack if abused properly. The option I chose was to repair the original land cruiser body tub.
The hard top was sold on eBay to fund the soft top...which was delivered three months late. I drove it into the shop in the rain, at night and those headlights were pretty dim.
The initial plan was to simply rotate the tires and adjust the drum brakes. At the time I had no idea the level of rust on the tub and frame.
I cut the rocker panels out several months prior and had yet to replace them. The idea was to stop the rust from spreading. When we found the crack in the frame, our first though was to weld it and go on down the road. Since the fuel lines ran right by the crack, we decided to pull the gas tank. That revealed a large rust hole.
Here's the back, I removed the aluminum doors to find a rotted out rear sill, so I grabbed a cut-off wheel went to town.
About a year before bringing it to the shop I pulled the carpet just to see what was underneath.The neato diamond plate aluminum "corner protection" covered some more rust (no surprise there).
On the right (the rectangle) is the old tire carrier mount that had rusted out. We dealt with that by making a patch panel.
Here's is a close up the passenger's side rocker panel. The floor pans were also shot
The driver's side floor pan had a patch panel in place covering this gaping hole. Since so much of the front floor pans were shot, we decided to build new diamond plate floors from scratch.
After all the work, here is a shot of the patchwork quilt tub.
When all the panels were replaced, I had it sandblasted.
Then 15 years passed....and it was finally time for primer and Raptor liner. High Build PPG VP2050 with Raptor Black
After a few days of drying we flipped it over to start the process on the top side.
I used Rage Ultra and Rage Ultra Extra to level out all those patch panels before another round of primer.
In the end I went with Calvalry Blue (8W2) tinted Raptor Liner.
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