The Poor Man's Almanac

Good times!


Been lurking around here for a bit, having a look at all of the righteous builds and upgrades.


We'll be having none of that here.

I bought this truck in the spring or summer of 2008 for use as a parts truck to haul Jeep bits to and from the machine shop. I had a lovely 1969 CJ5 with the Buick 225 and a Warn OD that was looking to be my "last" Jeep build.

Indeed, when the economy took a dump later that year, I lost my job and my townhouse at the same time. Sold the Jeep, my brakepress, welder, air compressor, and damn near everything else that I could. Won't be doing another Jeep anytime soon, if ever.

Fact is, I love this truck. It's well-built, well designed, and more capable than any stock Jeep I've ever owned. If I had the money to go crazy with it, I would. Leaf springs on all four corners, for starters...but, I'm broke as a joke, and have been living out of my 95.5 Taco since February of 2013.

Before that, since late 2008, the truck spent almost all of its time in storage. A year parked in the lot of the weekly hotel I lived in after getting laid off, then another 3 years in a garage. A year in the lot (with my roll-away sitting in the bed!) killed the battery. The garage killed another battery, and sucked all the clutch fluid out.

Other than that, no serious damage, which is a testament to the good design work of Toyota. Once I refilled the clutch reservoir, it worked again, good as new. I did hit a bit of a snag when I went to smog it a couple days after, but a tank of fresh gas and a new gas cap was all it took to get right with Johnny Law.

So far, I've completed two solid upgrades. I put an Optima battery in the engine bay in 2008 when I still had a proper workshop in the garage of my townhouse. Easy to do; just a matter of pulling the old battery, cleaning off the corrosion on the fender with baking soda, installing the Optima, and modding the strapdown a bit. Looks like this:




The second upgrade happened about 2 months ago, when I finally pulled together enough disposable income to buy a camper shell. I scored on that deal. Found a Skill-Craft camper that was made for a 96 Tacoma for 160 bucks on Craigslist. It was dark green, but after months of sleeping in the front seat of my regular cab, surrounded by all my clothes, gear, and even a guitar...it was heavenly the first time I got to wake up in a horizontal position!

Things got even better for me a few weeks back. I finally secured another workspace, which allowed me to pull all my stuff out of storage. It's not much, but it's enough for me:




Found stuff I forgot I had, like a couple gallons of Durabak, and several boxes of mil-spec paint. That got me to thinking...

Why not put all that stuff to use? 2 gallons of tan Durabak is enough to coat the camper shell AND the inside of the bed. So...



The manufacturer states that Durabak shouldn't be stored for more than 2 years, but even after 5 years, it still worked like a charm.



The texture doesn't show very well in the pics, but it's handsome. What the pics don't show is the entire day I spent sanding the camper. The clear coat was completely ragged from years of sun exposure. Fortunately, the fiberglass itself was in excellent condition, so I didn't have to bother with any repairs.


More to follow on the rest of the install. Thanks for checking it out!

 

Sounds like quite an adventure but way to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Will be watching your build.

Best of luck to you !

 

I'll be keeping an eye on this. Quite a story and experience, atta boy

 

Subbed to see what happens next. Great story.

 

Looking forward to reading more...
Good luck out there.

 

Thanks for the encouragement, this is going to be some fun!

I'm using the library for access to the interwebz, and spent most of my session today listing stuff for sale on CL. I'll see yall again on Monday.

 

Ok, so the next step was to prep the body for the camper. Turns out I can save some money on registration each year if I get my truck reclassified as an SUV, so I decided to install the camper in such a way so as to make it "permanent".

I am, by no stretch of the imagination, even remotely competent at bodywork. I can't think of a time that I've ever tried to repair any body damage by any other method than replacing the offending piece of metal. I don't have that luxury right now, and I'm not particularly obsessed with perfect lines on the truck. I just need the parts to fit together properly.

Apparently, I'm supposed to do this sort of thing with a hammer and dolly, but I didn't know any better, and instead made bucks from scrap wood, then compressed them together with a big C clamp:



The result is far from perfect, but good enough to mount the taillight assembly with 3 screws instead of just 2:



I did a bit of work to the top of the bed, as well. The flat bit of steel that the camper will rest on was buckled, so it got the hammer and grinder:



Almost good enough for the parts to fit. I'll have another go at it later to see if I can't get it just right for all 4 bolts of the taillight assembly to fit properly:



No point in getting fussy about it until I replace this guy:



Next thing to do was paint the toprail of the bed, as I don't plan on removing the camper again anytime soon. I have quite a bit of Gillespie OD that's been sitting around for the past 5 years, and that's going to cover the whole truck by the time I'm done. For now, just enough to mount the camper. Since I'm going to be putting Durabak on the inside of the bed as well, I figured I'd coat the toprail before it gets hidden under the edge of the camper. Came out purdy!



I had a couple tubes of polyurethane sealant, but it didn't survive storage. I was bummed at the time, but got all grateful about it after I screwed up on my first attempt to put the camper on the bed.



Time's up for today, check back soon for more updates!

 

Good times!

Since my tubes of polyurethane sealant were dried out, I went for the cheapest alternative I could find.



Worked out great, and left me plenty of time to cleanup the various messes I made while installing the camper shell itself, and the windows to the shell. Had I used polyurethane, I would have screwed up the whole job.

The bed was slightly off due to the damage on the driver's side, so a bit of persuasion was needed to get things relative to each other.



The camper shell itself splays out a bit at the back end, but I didn't realize that rather obvious detail until the sealant had started to cure. It's good enough to live with, but I'll probably put some kind of clamp on the shell itself when I have to pull it to refurbish the seal. In a few years.

Next step was to reinstall the windows. I put a generous bead of sealant on the window frame.





As I said, I made some messes along the way:





All's well that ends well:



That was the first gallon of Durabak, and the can was nearly empty when I was done with this project. I still had 2 more gallons, one the same beige color as seen on the outside of the shell, and one marked "green". As I remember it, the plan was to use the beige on the inside of the body tub in my 69 CJ5, and use the green on the underside.

Plan B is to use the rest of the beige on the inside of the truck bed, and use the green on the underside of the bed and cab. Well, that WAS plan B, at any rate...

 

Your shell turned out pretty nice. My windows leak on my canopy so I may pull them and seal like you did.
Any pics of the truck and shell as a whole?

 

I'll take a couple this week and post 'em up. I probably went overboard on all the sealant, but it stands up to a garden hose at full blast, so I'm happy.

 

Ahh... the garden hose test !!

 

Got to spend some time over the holidays with my son, who owns an 87 Pickup with the 22R. While we were overhauling the carburetor, he mentioned a story about getting pulled over for not having a light on his license plate. I've never heard of this, but it is so.

I drove around with my license plate taped the rear window for a good while, and after I got the camper shell, i mounted it on a 1x4 that I bolted directly to the body panels underneath the tailgate. You can see it to the right in the pic below.



This is what the license plate light looks like in its stock form:



A bit of hillbilly fabrication using leftover lumber and toggle bolts comes next:









It leveled right out after this pic with a few twists of the wrench:



By the way, this is what $8.00 of metric bolts looks like:



The guy who bought the bumper years ago asked for the originals, and I had no idea they were worth anything at the time. Live and learn.

 

First order of business after that and all the other undocumented repairs and modifications done over the holidays was a night out on the town.





Here's the bed where I had left off with it:



I also discovered this:




Since it was out of the truck already, and I knew I'd be a couple days getting the Durabak on, I started up a side project:





I have an orbital sander, and I used it where I could, but there's lots of square feet in the bed of a pickup that are just plain out of reach. So the only choice was to do it by hand, and that's what I did.



Then came the Durabak, another gallon of the Beige that I had on hand:



As nice as it looked, I wasn't happy. Such a light interior color makes it easier to see what's going on inside the shell, which is the opposite of what I want. Fortunately, I had another gallon of Durabak on hand. I wasn't sure exactly what shade of green it was, but I figured as long as it was darker, I'd be better off.

I was still putting on beige at that point, but i realized that if I opened up the last gallon, I needed to put some of it inside the cab, under the carpet, and in the door panels. Had to get done, so I took a deep breath and started to disassemble the cab interior.

I was expecting this job to be a real pain for me personally, because I have very little practice at dealing with so much plastic and so many strange clips and retainers. I thought it would take hours, and result in much damage.

But no. 2 1/2 hours, and only one significant part was broken, the passenger's side window regulator.

The only issue in the process of prepping the cabin was the mat that was bonded to cabin deck. It wasn't seated fully everywhere. A borrowed blowdryer and some tubing to match the radii in the deck, and it was now a single unit.



The doors also got stripped down and prepped.



I wasn't exactly thrilled with the color, but I was relieved to know that it would fix the problem in the bed.




Everything was running pretty smoothly up to that point, considering how many projects were all in motion at once. Then I took a closer look at the carpet.

I should say, I'm not a fan of carpet to begin with. Rugs are great, because they can be taken outside and cleaned. Every carpet is a blanket of foulness waiting to happen. This one didn't look too bad from far away, for being almost 20 years old:



But get up close, and it's disgusting.



Turns out, the carpet had an accomplice. The clutch master cylinder was weeping slowly and brake fluid was soaking into the carpet.

Whatever. That is NOT going back into my truck.

Likewise, the center console, which initially pleased me because it didn't run the length of the cab as most do, turned out to be an excellent trap for all sorts of debris and filth:



As much as I like, and wanted to keep, the stock interior...I've spent too many years around vehicles that never had these issues because they didn't have these sorts of frills.

I thought about all sorts of mods to the interior to try to make it look and function better without a carpet and console. In the end, I left it as intact as my own sense of cleanliness and ease of maintenance would allow. I wouldn't exactly use a hose on it, but a bucket will certainly do the trick.

Factory markings always interest me...



As I mentioned, I ended up breaking very little during the removal of the interior parts that were in the way of my Durabak project. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by how sturdy and serviceable most of the parts and hardware were.

Still, I did break a few bits, and I'm missing a couple others, so I modified my way around the trouble. In the pics below, you can spot a good example of me using spare parts that were lying around to give me at least a temporary solution.







All told, this cluster of projects took several days; the limiting factor was the Durabak. Nominally, it can be recoated once every 4 hours or so, but both times I've worked with my 5-year old examples, it took 24 hours between coats. Once it cured, however...it's great stuff. I ended up with 2 coats on the doors, 4 coats on the cab deck, and 5 coats in the bed.

 

After that epic series of projects, I spent some time doing other things, like organizing the workshop, selling off old stuff, and figuring out how to store and prepare food now that I have enough room to keep a proper mess kit in the truck.

For most of 2013, I thought of my situation as temporary, and didn't do much to plan for living like this in the long-term. But that's how it's going to be, and truth be told, I'm not complaining. Living out of my truck, now that I have a workshop, is actually pretty alright. At least, it works for me.

But not being able to cook has been a big bummer, even worse than having no refrigeration. I'll take some pics of my mess kit as it has evolved, but right now, I'm totally stoked on the fact that I have enough money saved up to get a camp stove.

Meanwhile, a project that has been lingering for years finally got sorted out. When I pulled the bumpers off the truck in 2008, I was left with no front turn indicators. Now, there's plenty of room for another bulb in the front running lights, so why not modify those a bit?

Here's a pic of what I'm talking about, the front running lights:



All by itself, from the passenger's side:



Even on parts that no one will ever see, I like the workmanship to look good, but I can live with the results in this case.









The only challenging element was figuring out exactly where to mount the turn indicator. Not so much room behind the running light fixture:



As close to straight up from the bottom as the fixture will allow is the best way to describe what worked for me. Originally, I was going to get a couple of used front indicators from someplace like Toyota World, cut off the bit that mounts the indicator bulb, and bond that to the running light fixture, but this method has the distinct advantage of being free.

Except for the bulbs, but I needed those anyways. Amber, that's important!

Because of the curvature of the running light fixture, I'm thinking a bit of waterproofing is in order. My current plan is to use the bits of ABS that I drilled and filed into dust while cutting up the fixture, and with acetone, create an "ABS epoxy" to build up the fixture where the indicator mounts to it.

Or, perhaps another set of O-rings?

 

I have used the ABS home made epoxy, works great when adhering to other ABS material. Ive found the cure time is a bit long, but i guess temperture is a factor.. Great work BTW!

 

Good to know. I know a thing or two about fiberglass, but ABS isn't something I'm used to working with.

Should be smooth sailing, as all I'm going to do is put the ABS back where it came from, on the fixture. A bit of sanding after that to make a nice level surface for the o-ring to seal, and it's done.

At least, that's the plan.

 

Today, I got a delivery from Rock Auto; rear taillight assemblies. They're a bit flimsier than the Toyota units, but that's a virtue, given what happened to the original taillight on the driver's side.

Got to finish up the lights all the way around. First thing to be done was repositioning the wiring harness to get it out of harm's way. Here's how the harness hangs when its in the stock location on the passenger's side:



Credit where credit is due, whoever assembled this harness was very fastidious. I was able to reuse the tape, which is astonishing considering that this harness was wrapped up almost 20 years ago.





The driver's side harness has the same issue; stock location is all wrong for what I'm doing.



Here's the passenger's side after rerouting. On this side, there was really no need for either of the panel connectors I removed, once the harness was put into its current layout.



I also rerouted the windshield washer hose, washer motor, and wiring harness to the inside of the engine bay:



That's actually another project that is relatively low priority. The original windshield washer reservoir was trashed when i got the truck, plus it was located in a very bad position for a vehicle with no bumper. Even with the bumper in place, it was so low, I can't imagine it surviving very long offroad. Besides, the damn thing is huge, with far more capacity than I need. Fresh washer fluid at oil change, and I can get away with a MUCH smaller reservoir.

Here's the old one. It was all brittle and cracked:





I'll get around to that one later.

Here's what the driver's side harness looks like after rerouting:



I ended up using one of the panel connectors from the passenger's side harness on the driver's side, complete with vintage tape...



I also put a little time in on the bodywork, which is surprisingly enjoyable. I suppose it's the novelty of it. I got myself some hammers and dollies at Harbor Freight, and I've been watching Youtube for guidance.

Here's my current kit, which includes a couple of larger, more persuasive hammers that I had on hand:



Here's how the big dent on the passenger's side just behind the door, turned out:





Also, my second go at using my Dremel to create a mount for the driver's side turn indicator bulb went much better than my first go at the passenger's side:



Close enough to machined for my purposes; I'll redo the passenger's side when I get the Acetone to perfect the bulb mounts.

Finally, I got to mounting the tail lights. These are NOT Toyota units; made in Taiwan. The PP used is generally thinner than the Toyota part, but as I mentioned before, that's probably a virtue, allowing the assembly to flex more. It's certainly stout enough for a tail light, and pretty cheap, too. Everything included from the pigtail to the bezel.

I did a bit more bodywork on the driver's side tail light opening to get all 4 screws lined up. Not easy getting a dolly into that space, but the tail light mounts easily and securely now, so I'm happy with the results.





At this point, the only exterior light on the truck that hasn't been serviced is the 3rd tail light, mounted above the rear window of the camper shell. It's been tested, and it works, but I have to figger out a better way of wiring it into the harness than the previous guy, who used those blue plastic splicing blocks, which I don't much care for.

All told, this round was a bit spendy; 25 bucks or so for the hammer and dollies, 70 or 80 for the tail lights, and a few more bucks for amber bulbs, which I have yet to buy. My front turn indicators are currently white. Which is probably fine, just strange looking. I made enough money selling off some tools to cover my costs on that, a clutch master cylinder, another gallon of Durabak, a 1" body lift that is en route, and most important of all, a 2-burner camp stove that will pay for itself inside a month. I'm stoked!

Someone asked for a full-body shot, so I took 2; one with the stock wheelwell trim in place, and one after. I really liked the retro look of the trim, but it has no place on an offroad vehicle...it holds dust and water next to the fender, inviting rust...it gives rocks something to tear off the fender...it won't be nearly long enough when I'm done trimming the fenders. That said, I think the truck will probably look better without it once the paint is on.





That's it for now, all yall have a good weekend!

 

So, im curious. what are you planning on doing for front and rear bumpers?

 

Nice write up, and thanks for the pics, I like the olive drab look on the gate. You're doing the whole truck right?

Also I found a cheap radiator overflow at the parts store and used it for the wiper fluid, it fit right in the stock location with the help of a cheapo bracket. Holds about a quart or so. I ran a short section of tubing for the pump and let the pump sit on the fenderwell for now. I'll post pics if you want. I don't think I ever did a write up on it.

 

1.75" DOM. High and tight to the body. I'm thinking of wrapping the bumpers around the body panels to the edges of the wheelwells, and also installing nerf bars.

I am going to do the whole truck in OD, yeah. I have a bunch of it left over from a Jeep project that got interrupted years ago.

I was thinking about doing exactly what you've done, using a generic reservoir and fabricated bracket. I'd love to see a pic of your setup, absolutely!