Aleu - The Rebuild of a 1980 Pickup

Life's good. Sold my tacoma but still have my 85. Going to start a 2nd gen 4runner build early next year

 

That's good to hear! Totally lame but I can understand lol. Oh that's gonna a fun project!

I still have a lot of plans for the Tacoma and the 80. Tacoma I still want to 6 speed and 4wd swap it. The 80 needs its cases rebuilt and 4.7s possibly, selectable lockers, 37s?, 4 door stretch and possibly a custom camper for it

 

Great to see you back!… and look at that no sag Alfuh!!!

 

haha thanks! well...my fiberglass fenders hide the sag pretty good lol. my springs are pretty worn out in the back so if I had the 80 too far forward my springs were actually arching negatively.

I really do need to go through my google photos and get a huge photo dump put together. I just haven't had time due to work, I should have time hopefully this Friday on my ONE day off lmao

 

Don't fret! I haven't forgotten about photos, been sick the last week and a half and finally have the motivation to get things uploaded lol

 

SUPER MEGA PHOTO DUMP

well I guess this is as good of a place to start as far as I can see from my archive of google photos haha, 4+ years of photos and updates and 2+ hours lol

back in 2020 finally got the heater core installed, this thing puts out some amazing heat





built a custom dash out of square tube, this was fun trying to get everything lined up. I no longer have the head unit and speakers in the truck. Also put in a push button start just because. The dash also accommodates the defrosters too, so this thing pushes some pretty damn good heat during the winter. Originally was going to use my Tab A as my E-Dash but I was constantly having issues connecting via bluetooth...so I gave up and now it's just an angled piece lmao













Then in December of 2022 the 80 decided to leave me stranded for the only time since I've had the truck. I was on my way to Fairfax to pick up a new adoption husky to the family. Turns out SOMETHING with the smaller auxiliary fuse box came loose and I had absolutely no startup at all. So thankfully I had towing on my insurance so I was able to get a free ride from a 24/7 towing to a hotel for a few days. Thankfully I had prepared just in case and had all my cold weather stuff if I was unable to get to a hotel. Bismarck had a blizzard that night and shut down in/out so I was not able to return for another day or so. I had to precure a 20ft Uhaul moving truck and drive 2 hours to get a dolly to drag the 80 back up to Bismarck. The poor girl sat in the garage for a good 2 months before I was messing with wires and just unplugged and plugged in the Ignition circuit and I had power again and she fired right up....talk about bullshit lmao. $800 down the drain between the Uhaul and hotel for a single damn wire lol. I ended up getting a whole new small fuse box and rewired it so it wouldn't come loose anymore.









In April of 2022 we had a nice blizzard hit with a crap ton of snow, had some fun getting out of the garage and playing around in the snow hehe.










Towards the end of 2022 I attempted to get the truck painted so a bunch of grinding back down to bare metal and getting things fixed. I also decided to finally see what was under the two layers of bed sheet metal from the previous owner...and I found more rust. So I removed the bed and got to fixing sheet metal. Ended up being a lot more in depth than I had anticipated...needless to say it ended up NOT getting done before that winter. So I had to come up with a bracket and find a toolbox for my battery and use my spare 2wd bed I had from many years ago before I found out my replacement frame was a long bed frame. Rocked that for the winter.

























Feb of 2023 I finally got a nice RCI 19 gallon Fuel Cell and got that all squared away. The bed sat in the garage

 

as of right now with how she sits, I think plans right now are to rebuild the W56-B, both transfer cases, and the engine potentially. I'm still getting oil leaking out of my intake...how....I have no idea but it might be partially because I had the intake from my 3rz on it and it does have a different port style setup. Engine leaking oil slightly and the damned rear case keeps leaking. I did figure out my front output was leaking but I have no idea where it's leaking from now. one of my case shifter bolts stripped out the threads on the case so when I go to rebuild the cases I'm just going to swap housings with one of the cases I bought in the lot. UV dye to find leaks is pretty sweet though lol

EDIT: I also finally updated the front page of this thread lol, almost 9 years later

 

(had to update this since all the pictures broke)





In April of 2023 I decided to finally get around to doing the IFS hub swap and bigger brake setup, also bought Diamond Drive Flanges to get rid of the locking hubs as I was still running into the issue of the locking dials not keeping axles locked in. Got all 4 hubs machined down to fit the slip on 2nd gen Tacoma rotors, at the same time the adapters allowed me to mount 2nd gen Tacoma calipers as well. great braking and doesn't throw me through the windshield as bad as the solid axle calipers did. Some before and after stance shots, I kept the 2" wheel spacers on as well to increase the track width even more. Also installed a short throw shifter kit from LCE on the W56 too! it's amazing. Decided to also put my heavier flywheel back on while I was at it, definitely like it more with the bigger flywheel than the stock weight one. The stance looks awesome with the IFS hubs and 2" wheel spacers

 

June of 2023 I made the decision to cut my losses with the long bed I had as it was just too much work to fix it. Sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision cutting up the bed. However, I did get a bunch of square tube and made myself a custom flat bed! I think at some point here soon I need to trim the wings of the bed and make some sort of quick mount system for the bedsides so I can have bolt on bedsides. The flat bed does look pretty good, but I do miss the look of an actual bed sometimes. I did make the height of the flat bed tall enough to give a bit of extra clearance for my shock tower. I ran the tubing along the factory bed mounts to get everything even. I used 3/16 flat steel and drilled a single hole in the center, welded a bolt to it then welded the square tube on top as my mounting method; so all I would need to do was use a nut on the bottom. I did also pick me up a new welder at this time too! Got me a Hobart Multi-Handler 200 up from my older Hobart 140. Mig/Tig/Stick...I've only messed with the TIG once...but at some point I do want to learn the art of TIG.
























September of 2023, I got sick and tired of constantly blowing right rear axle seals. So a buddy of mine had a spare axle housing he was going to use to convert into a bearing puller tool. So I swapped housings with him to see if my suspicion of my axle being slightly bent was true. Turns out...he had it laying on the ground and said it looked bent to him as well. I kept blowing seals on the right rear. The seal would always be ripped in one specific spot, so it led me to believe the my rear housing was bent prior to me obtaining it. It may have even been the culprit of all my locking dial issues as well. Either way, cleaned the new housing swapped the housing with the old one and welded new shock mounts on. so far it's been almost a year and haven't blown a seal yet!

I had forgotten to run a bolt through the back of the drive flange holes that are drilled to remove them. FROR says to do this to remove any extra material from machining and to allow the bolts to easily go through the front. Well I didn't do that...so it was a PITA to get the bolts to thread...but I finally got it and was able to get them off to swap housings.

 

October of 2023 I decided to add a resonator, O2 sensor, and V band flanges to my catalytic converter...I'm still not happy with it. I need better quality flanges as the flange from the header to the mid pipe refuses to seal. Still so much exhaust noise in the cab...it's so frustrating. I think I may just need to redo the whole thing and start from square one. I had also taken the grey toolbox off and went back to my black Husky toolbox for my battery relocation as I did not like how the box was bending with the bolts. I much prefer my Husky toolbox haha. This is also when I picked up my 1981 DLX 2wd 5 speed!














This was also when I finally got to ACTUALLY play around in some rocks and test things out, was a lot of fun playing around in the Black Hills of South Dakota, I have more videos than pictures of this lol. However even after this and playing around in Tuttle Creek, KS, I need to rebuild my transmission and my rear case. Over the last year I developed this rotating squeak that was in every gear and only went away when the clutch was pressed in or in neutral. The rear transfer case also consistently pops out of low range. You can tell when it's about to happen as everything just locks up.











I had also bought 4...yes FOUR RF1A gear cases at $75 each lol, one of them was used for my 4x4 swap on the tan 81 but one will be used for Aleu since I think no matter what I do the current case just won't stop leaking.




At this point too it's about May of this year and I found out my rear driveshaft yolk was shot. The ujoint cap spun inside the yolk...so I had to source another and get the rear shaft rebuilt and rebalanced. Also replaced the front ujoint as it had play in it too. One of my wheel studs for my wheel spacers also stripped itself...so thankfully I had some spare rear wheel studs that fit perfectly, shorter...but still pressed in.

 

I also purchased my 2025 Big Tex 70CH at this point too, so happy to have my own trailer

While out in Omaha in June of this year I found a topper for my Tan 81 and also played around a bit in Tuttle Creek with a buddy of mine.

 

October of 2024, I ended up buying a 23 spline 4.7 Low Range Kit, 23 spline output coupler from Advance Adapters, and an MCOR Tcase Rebuild kit. I decided to swap all the rear housings out as well with one of the spare tcases I bought to attempt to finally fix my leaking situation.

At the same time I decided to try and fix my rotational squeaking by rebuilding the W56B and replacing the throwout bearing and rebuilding the rear driveshat (unfortunately as of Feb 2025 it is still there). However, I did manage to FINALLY fix my rear case leaking, it ended up being one of the housings, not idea why or what was going on, but after almost a decade of fighting it...I finally fixed it

I also FINALLY figured out why my rear case kept popping out of low range....my dumbass had the shift rail inverted....so all the rail was able to detent to was high range, no neutral or low range, so it was just held in with friction and eventually would pop out. So while the case was open, I rotated the rail and all is well and it no longer pops out.

Rebuilding the transmission was fun, I had gotten done with rebuilding a W56C for my 81 truck that'll eventually be swapped over to the 4x4 chassis. So I had experience already rebuilding one. Swapped the rear output to a 23 spline since I had a 23 spline 2.28:1 total spline in my rear case. Figured I may as well just move that up to the front so I can run dual 23 spline input shafts. Installed the Marlin 4.7 kit in the rear along with the 23 spline HD seal and it's been working great. I love the options I have with having the front case a 2.28:1 and the rear being 4.7:1.



































I also have plans, trying to decide if I want to use the A750F or wait to save money up for the XAT conversion kit to run the R156F I bought. This was all originally for my Tacoma but decided to go a different route.

 

Nice work. Glad to see you still wrenching and wheeling

 

Thanks! Yeah it's been hit or miss lately lol. I'm kinda stuck right now with finances, been doing the adult thing and paying everything off before starting the next thing. Now that I am not getting as much OT as I was last year, I have dial it way back.

I'm in a dilemma atm, with this 2UZ I can either go the cheap route using the 2UZ/A750F, MC Adapter for the cases, engine mounts, engine harness (run standalone), and exhaust manifolds.

or

the 2UZ, XAT kit to run the R156F 5 speed I bought, and adapter from MC for the R156F to run the cases, and then everything else along with an emulator for the auto trans on the ECU but this route is about 3x the price. I'm also thinking about getting another long bed, taking the one with the topper off my tan truck and dropping it on this truck since it already has a hole in the center of the bed. When I do the 4x4 chassis swap on the 81 I'll get a better bed for that and swap the cab/engine over and have a stock 4x4....but who knows...lol


Other than that...how's everything going out there? Life been good?