What did you do to your truck today?

Thank you

 

Today I modidfied the throttle bracket on my cv40 carb to accept the stock Minicab cable. Small step but necessary.

 

I have 225# coil springs on order through Summit Racing and want to raise the back 1". I made these rear shackles today, which are 2" longer. I was able to press out the o.e.m. shackle pins and press into the new shackles. Glad I measured both pins. I used a 1/2" drill bit for the top hole and a 35/64 for the bottom hole, then filed to have a crush fit. I am going to retain the 145r12 tire size and believe I'll order some Toyo's for it. Happy with the progress.

 

What did I do to my truck today? I picked it up at Newport News Marine Terminal and trailered it home. I drove 11 hours to the port last night in pitch black and dense fog on the very mountainous West Virginia Turnpike and I-64 in western Virginia, slept 1.5 hours in my truck, met the TWIC escort at the port at 7:30 AM, loaded the truck and drove home 11 hours in the rain. I'm getting too old for this stuff.

Get a low boy trailer (no sides) and long ramps if you can. My Hijet has 4WD low ratio so I thought it'd crawl up into the 6X12 U-Haul trailer with a ramp. Nope. The little wheels hit the steep ramp and stopped. I had to race the engine and the clutch seems messed up and would only engage at the very end of the pedal release and even then it'd slip. It may need a new clutch. I'll know more when I off load the truck tomorrow, but I wasn't able to drive it onto the trailer. It would go if I popped the clutch to overcome the initial bump against the steep ramp, but that was a very committed move considering there's half an inch of clearance on the sides of the trailer. I had a 3500 pound boat winch in my truck that I use in lieu of a winch for emergency off road recovery and I was able to slowly winch the truck onto the trailer as one port guy steered and the other spotted. If you use a 6X12 U-Haul trailer, bring a hand winch or come along, as well as a jump box for dead batteries, jumper cables just in case, and a gallon of gas.

I picked Newport News as my port of entry because I thought they might be easier given they're a smaller port. Everyone at the port was very nice and they only wanted my delivery order, which is essentially a form I made myself (as the importer) to give to myself (as the shipper). Customs all cleared before I got there thanks to the online broker. I had good luck with Eezyimport.com. I paid them $117.61 to file the paperwork. It's both a ripoff because I should be able to file my own paperwork with Customs, DOT and EPA, but also worth every penny because I spent a lot of time looking and found the forms everywhere but never found any examples of how to fill out the forms and more importantly, never found how to file them with the respective agencies. I think the forms can be emailed but the email addresses are a big damned secret. The bureaucrats really push us to use a customs broker.

If you're importing through Newport News, I highly recommend Kurt (The Gandyman) at Crown TWIC Port Escort Services. He's awesome. I resent the DHS making us hire escorts to get on a terminal, but even if it wasn't required, having been through the process I'd still pay Kurt to do his magic. It ran as smoothly as possible, and it would have been a nightmare if I tried to visit the port by myself. I estimate a 50% chance of me being arrested. I'm a nice guy but bureaucrats do not like me and it goes downhill from there. Kurt saved me from that miserable fate.

I have pictures but I'm too tired to post them... and you guys have seen a Hijet in a U-Haul trailer before.

After a good night's sleep, tomorrow I'm going to unload the truck, return the U-Haul trailer, buy Hijet insurance and hopefully drive the truck to the sheriff for a VIN inspection and then the county clerk to title it, register it, pay taxes and get a license plate, then stop at the mom & pop hardware store to see if I can get a few spare keys for the Hijet (an old Toyota truck blank?) as well as key copies for my motorcycle and 4Runner.

Then I'm going to start a LOT of little Hijet projects. Should be fun!

The economics of JDM trucks is weird. I paid $265 for the truck, but it cost a total of $2380 including having it shipped to the port. $118 to the customs broker to file the government forms and another $30 to witness and notarize the power of attorney for the broker. $69 customs duty and fees (paid through the broker). $231 in port related expenses. $352 to drive to the port and trailer the truck home from 560 miles away. $62 to the state to get it licensed. That's $3240 so far to get it on the road, not including liability insurance, repairs, upgrades, upgrades, add-ons and upgrades. After I dump $2000 more in improvements, it'll be a sweet little 4WD truck, and even including the sweat equity it's probably a good investment based on the selling prices I'm seeing lately on some of these little trucks.

 

Today, I installed the 225# springs and mounted up the Toyo tires. Pretty happy with the way it looks. The shackles I made and the new springs raised it 1" all the way around. The tires look good. Even at 1" lift, I think I'll have to change the pinion angle a bit. It also has a little positive camber in front. I'm going to shim the rearend to correct the angle and consider slotting the body a bit at the strut mount to correct the camber. It won't take much. Pretty happy with the results.

 

The dash seems dark on these driving at night. Since there are no backlights on the heater controls, I put an led light under the passenger side of the dash. I found a wire that's only hot when the headlights are on and tied into it.

 

I did my first oil change on my 1996 Hijet today, including an engine flush and installing a Fumoto F-133 oil drain valve to make future oil changes quick, easy and less messy. All of the gory and glorious sexy fun details are on today's entry on my Hijet project page.

https://minitrucktalk.com/threads/hijet-renovation-upgrade-project.22332/#post-130806

Short story: Everything went well. No cussing or nuthin'.

Next Hijet project: Replace existing incandescent bulbs with LED lights.

 

Plugged him in to shore power. Forecast is for -20F tonight. High tomorrow of -1. With him plugged in and the heat pads warming things up, he should start pretty easy tomorrow.

 

I changed the windshield washer fluid.

The forecast is for -5 for an overnight low and a few days of bitter cold. I recently brought my Hijet home from the port and it had the windshield washer fluid from Japan in there, and I don't know what they use. It was blue and smelled very faintly of alcohol, but that may have been a mild detergent. The Japanese have little fizzy tablets that can be added to water to make "windshield washer fluid".

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=windshield+fluid+tablet

I started the truck, held down the windshield washer switch and quickly emptied the nearly full windshield washer fluid reservoir. I dumped in the Rain-X -20F washer fluid and ran the washer pump until the orange stuff was spraying on the windshield so I was confident that none of the windshield washer system, including the pump, would be freeze damaged tonight.

Now I need to figure out why the windshield sprayer on the passenger side isn't spraying.

I finally ran the Hijet engine enough to see the temperature gauge indicate that it was warming up. There was plenty of heat out the vents but the gauge never read over 1/3 of full scale. My wife's RAV4 is suddenly doing the same thing. Maybe a stuck open thermostat. Hopefully not a water pump.

 

Well he started just fine in the morning. In the afternoon when he had sat for ten hours, at just above zero, it was a bit hard to get started, and the cold lube in the tranny took a while to warm up to the point he would shift ok.

 

Today I got my new timing belt and tensioner so I got that job wrapped up. Replaced wp, thermostat and alt/fan belt while I was at it. Also plugged the hole on intake for temperature vacuum switch and made block off plate for egr. Glad I blew radiator out as well, was holding lots of dirt.

 

I installed a set of grab handles from an '80 to '95 Samuri I ordered from Ebay. They are located differently than the Carry, but are usable. For $17, I'm surprised they don't seem to be used much. They bolted right up to the existing holes.

 

So used the existing holes with no mods? Got the ebay link? Looks good.

 

No mods! They bolt directly up to the existing holes and came with the screws. Just look up suzuki samurai grab handle on Ebay and dozens will pop up. Samurai, Drover, Sierra, all work.

 

I did a lot of little things to my S110P Hijet today, including swapping the tail lights and brake lights to LED bulbs, cleaning and lubricating the heater flap control cable and linkage, measuring and ordering silicone vacuum lines, measuring so I can CAD and 3D print new door lock knobs, and installing a small fire extinguisher between the seat backs. The details including links to items used are in the latest post on my Hijet project page:

https://minitrucktalk.com/threads/hijet-renovation-upgrade-project.22332/#post-131004

 

I did my timing today. My 92 Sambar only has two timing marks, a zero and what I imagine is 5° since it was set just north of the top mark. Was idling a little low but I got to verify that my tach is correct

 

This summer and fall I designed, prototyped and tested a 3 gauge cluster for the Sambar... but TODAY I posted the files on Thingiverse and made a thread about it over here -> https://minitrucktalk.com/threads/3d-printed-three-2-5-8-gauge-cluster-subaru-sambar.22599/ in hopes that some of you will find it useful

 

I ordered a spare guage cluster from Japan that I have gutted and about to install volt, gps speedometer, tachometer, fuel guages and indicator lights for turns and warnings

 

I had no turn signals or headlights, so I took the steering wheel off so I could get to the multi function switch. Took it apart on the work bench and cleaned the contacts. Works perfect now.

39

 

I did a complete front brake overhaul on my van for ~$200.00 using RockAuto parts.



Heres the writeup:

https://minitrucktalk.com/threads/sourcing-local-parts-for-front-brakes.22603/unread

 

Recreated the center console end cap so I wouldn't have to drill holes in the OEM. I will upload the file once it has been properly tested.

Holes used to mount the smallest CB radio I could find.


Also got some new seat covers from 500yenshop.

 

Drove from Charlotte, NC to DeLand, FL for the weekend in the wee van. Took ~11 hours each way using the secondary roads all the way. Via interstate its an 8 hour drive usually. No issues with the van other than a minor brake problem because I didn't tighten the right side caliper bracket good enough and it lost a bolt. I was able to move the upper bolt to the lower position and continue on. When it lost the lower bolt the caliper would jump back against the wheel when the brakes were applied (very noisy and scary sounding). By moving it to the bottom, it just pushed closer to the rotor when applying the brakes and worked for the remainder of the trip (9 hours of it). Once in FL I just got a bolt that would work and refastened the upper and drove home yesterday. Adventures are fun!

 

Today I used my Suzuki dump truck as a dump truck rather than just using it as a butt buggy. I used my little Kubota loader to put 4 buckets of dirt/gravel mix into the bed of the Suzuki, then trundled off into the woods to dump it in a low spot on one of my trails. I'm not sure how much the load weighed but I guess each bucket from the Kubota is maybe 200 pounds or so.
The truck handled the load just fine running in 4wd low, 1st and 2nd gear. The dump bed had no trouble rising up and dumping. It was a helluva lot easier than driving the tractor way back into the woods and dumping one bucket at a time.
Kevin in NC

 

I've been working on a rear bumper. It shouldn't take much to finish it up.

 

Did the tierod ends on the van yesterday. Write up here on how I sourced replacements for 1/10 the costs of getting them from overseas.

https://minitrucktalk.com/threads/sourcing-local-parts-for-tierod-ends.22632/

 

After filling sinkholes and hauling firewood to be split, I changed both front diff and transmission fluids, both which were way more lighter and honey colored than I would have thought. Minimal shavings on the magnetic transmission drain plug.

 

Mini trucks are a lot of fun. I have fun with my truck but it's nice to see posts here where forum members use their trucks for work. After all, these toys of ours were built as work trucks.
Kevin in NC

 

Same, this was last week but I figured out I can haul 1/4 cord of wood.

 

Finished up the bumper today. Should do the trick

 

Speaking of bumpers.... I didn't make this, just bought it from Mini4x4.ca and installed it last night. Ignore the rust, dents, dodgy paint, etc.