joyota 73 cj5 i guess now it's a "gladiator" build

  • HTML tutorial
Smileyshaun

Smileyshaun

Rank V
Launch Member

Member III

2,779
Happy Valley, OR, USA
First Name
Shaun
Last Name
Hoffman
Member #

4799

This build starts a long long time ago with many dead ends , failures and even being sold once .


The eventual goal is to build a reliable very capable crawler/snow blaster with room for 4 and space for some gear .
View attachment 45260

Specs so far

Basicly a SAS 87 Toyota pu
5.29s v6 diffs
Arb front Detroit rear
Bobby longs
Hy steer
Trussed axles
Dual cases
Low lift with either 37s or 38s
73 cj5 tub
Small bed



Now this thing started life as a bone stock 73 cj5 purchased new by my father . I spent my childhood in this thing out in the woods , taking trips with my dad's jeep club it's what really sparked the fire and desire to be off the beaten path . Life often gets in the way and my parents got divorced when I was 6 or 7 and not long after that the jeep needed a transmission and ended up just sitting for a very long time .
We will fast forward to my dumber 19 year old dumber self who wanted to make a wheeler out of it . At to his point I was very into Toyota and had a extra set of axles sitting around so I figured " he'll it's gotta be stronger then the jeep axles so I swapped them in and gave it a ton of lift with the spring over .... and there it sat again for many years
View attachment 44919

Fast forward again after a couple of re designs and motor swaps I was never happy with the Driveline angles/ motor placement and many other aspects of it , my li I decided to just sell it to a friend of a friend who thankfully never paid me for it so I took it back .and I decided it was time to actually take it off the back burner and get to doing it rightView attachment 44920
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Firemom, H3Coyote, Arailt and 3 others
Smileyshaun

Smileyshaun

Rank V
Launch Member

Member III

2,779
Happy Valley, OR, USA
First Name
Shaun
Last Name
Hoffman
Member #

4799

So after a couple other vehicles got put together and eventually sold i finally took the joyota off the back burner and started to make some headway on it. I got it all together and running , drove it around a little and just hated it , was way to tall and it's a cj5 so way to small for the now 4 people I have with me .

View attachment 44927
After doing a lot of " research" aka drinking beer and staring at it, I decided the best way to combat the Driveline angles was to do a spring under and stretch it to a cj6 length .
View attachment 44928
Thanks to cad I had I idea of how it would look kinda liked the looks of it . But with my constant craigslist shopping I came across 3 deals that really changed the build 4 the better .

First I found a hardtop for the cj5 with all the glass , Windows rolled up and down and it was in all around great shape 200$ , couldn't pass that up so what to do about the extra tub length ?
View attachment 44931


I thought about stretching the top to fit but bodywork is not my strong suit and the top is rather thin material .back to that in a minute

Score # 2 a set of Toyota axles just built with 5.29s arb in the front Detroit in the rear Bobby longs and trussed.
View attachment 44932

My original idea for the jeep was a Toyota in jeeps clothing the main reason I didn't go all the way through with it was I already had 4.10 v6 different in both ends so it worked gearing wise very well with a v8 but now I had these 5.29 stuffed axles


Score #3
View attachment 44933
my buddy had a 87 Toyota pickup that had a rebuilt motor with around 40k on it , he owed me a little money for some stuff so a good deal was struck and i now had everything i needed to build this the way i had originally planned .That's where this build really starts .
 
  • Like
Reactions: H3Coyote, Arailt and Jimmy P
Smileyshaun

Smileyshaun

Rank V
Launch Member

Member III

2,779
Happy Valley, OR, USA
First Name
Shaun
Last Name
Hoffman
Member #

4799

This was plan for the cj6 stretch
View attachment 44934

part of me wishing I would of gone that way but there still would have been about 10" of overhangood on the rear of the frame so more " research" was done ( I think it was whiskey and coke this time ) and at first I couldn't come up with any real good solutions that didn't look horrible . Thankfully I took a great trip with the gf (fiancé now ) and kids and had a lot of no cell service and lots of downtime thinking and came up with a idea after seeing a picture of a jeep brute .
View attachment 44935
This is what I hope I end up with when I'm all done , should be fairly low for 37s or 40s .for the most part it will be a SAS 87 Toyota pickup so parts are easy to source and dead reliable with room for 4 and a bed that should hold enough gear for weekend excursions
 
  • Like
Reactions: H3Coyote, Tinker and Jimmy P
Smileyshaun

Smileyshaun

Rank V
Launch Member

Member III

2,779
Happy Valley, OR, USA
First Name
Shaun
Last Name
Hoffman
Member #

4799

So first thing on the list was to get the Toyota torn down .

View attachment 44938
My goal was to keep everything as close to stock as possible so repairs will be easy and parts can be sourced most anywhere, that means a lot of labeling and not cutting any wiring.

View attachment 44939
View attachment 44941
I was actually hoping to graft in the Toyota dash to the jeep but it just didn't look right so I ditched that idea.

View attachment 44943
After everything was torn down the body bed and all the other parts I didn't use went to a new home to fix a truck that got rolled
View attachment 44944

Now I had my pile of goodies and a clean frame to work with
View attachment 44948
... well semi clean the truck spento alot of its life on a farm so it took another pressure washing to get clean
View attachment 44947

Time to start body swapping
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: H3Coyote and Jimmy P
Smileyshaun

Smileyshaun

Rank V
Launch Member

Member III

2,779
Happy Valley, OR, USA
First Name
Shaun
Last Name
Hoffman
Member #

4799

At this point having a lift or a couple of friends would have been real handy but I was impatient and wanted to get stuff done so I used the only thing I had available, a cherry picker to pull the tub off the jeep frame .
View attachment 44949

Thankfully I didn't drop the tub or kill myself with it and everything went mostly smooth
View attachment 44950


Now obviously the ifs would not work so out with the plasma and off with the ifs View attachment 44951
View attachment 44954

View attachment 44956

Everybody has seen plenty of sas swaps so no need for alot of detail but I did have to change a few things on mine .
I needed to push the spring and shackle mounts a little further past the frame to get the tire where I wanted . Really have to give a shout out to sky offroad design, their stuff is amazingly well built and uses all USA metal and labor .
View attachment 44957

View attachment 44958
 
  • Like
Reactions: H3Coyote, Tinker and Jimmy P
Smileyshaun

Smileyshaun

Rank V
Launch Member

Member III

2,779
Happy Valley, OR, USA
First Name
Shaun
Last Name
Hoffman
Member #

4799

Next order of business was getting some steering hooked up so moving it around the shop would be easier .
Fairly standard for a SAS, sleeve the frame , make some plates bolt it together . I will have to notch the frame a little to clear the pitman arm nut when I put on the flat pitman arm
View attachment 45135 I
View attachment 45139
View attachment 45136

Had to cut out the bottom corner of the grill to make the box fit
View attachment 45140
 
  • Like
Reactions: H3Coyote
Smileyshaun

Smileyshaun

Rank V
Launch Member

Member III

2,779
Happy Valley, OR, USA
First Name
Shaun
Last Name
Hoffman
Member #

4799

Next was moving onto some wiring . I hate wiring , that was alot of the reason I wanted to keep the harness as complete as possible . Thankfully everything went together really smooth and the only thing I had to mess with was adding some wire to the passenger side of the harness that runs to the tank and to the airbox due to moving it to the passenger side . Also mounted the battery behind the motor because there's tons of room in there . I did manage to mess up the only two plugs on the whole harness that could actually plug into each other so I ended up burning up some of the alternator harness but after figuring out my mistake it fired right up .View attachment 45192View attachment 45193
 
  • Like
Reactions: H3Coyote
Smileyshaun

Smileyshaun

Rank V
Launch Member

Member III

2,779
Happy Valley, OR, USA
First Name
Shaun
Last Name
Hoffman
Member #

4799

In my effort to use as much Toyota as possible I used the stock petal assembly , steering column, brake master and clutch master . Took a bit of messing around but eventually it all fit , had to cut and bend the clutch petal to make it work and give the floorboard a bit of lovin with a big hammer so it would get its full range View attachment 45194View attachment 45196

Like I said earlier my original plan was to use the Toyota dash , heater all that stuff but it just wouldn't fit without looking just odd so I'm experimenting with using just the Toyota gage cluster . Need to trim down all the plastic and make some sort of covering for it but for now I just want to get all of it together and worming so I can pull it all apart , do all my final cleaning , welds and paint .View attachment 45197
 
  • Like
Reactions: H3Coyote
Smileyshaun

Smileyshaun

Rank V
Launch Member

Member III

2,779
Happy Valley, OR, USA
First Name
Shaun
Last Name
Hoffman
Member #

4799

  • Like
Reactions: HappyOurOverlanding, overlandford and Tinker
Smileyshaun

Smileyshaun

Rank V
Launch Member

Member III

2,779
Happy Valley, OR, USA
First Name
Shaun
Last Name
Hoffman
Member #

4799

HappyOurOverlanding said:
WOW!!! :openmouth: What a build. Can't wait to see how the it turns out. Looking forward to more posts.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'm really hoping in the next couple weeks to get it put back together and moving under its own power, been really busy with normal life stuff so the jeep has been on the back burner .
 
  • Like
Reactions: H3Coyote and HappyOurOverlanding
Scout

Scout

Rank V
Launch Member

Pathfinder I

1,798
Jamestown,NY
Member #

3609

Awesome build.. Unfortunately its not giving me the "drive" to get to work on my Scout build..I've had it for 11 years now, sitting untouched for the the last 3..
 
Smileyshaun

Smileyshaun

Rank V
Launch Member

Member III

2,779
Happy Valley, OR, USA
First Name
Shaun
Last Name
Hoffman
Member #

4799

  • Like
Reactions: HappyOurOverlanding
HappyOurOverlanding

HappyOurOverlanding

Rank VI
Launch Member

Member III

3,402
Verdi Nevada
Member #

9206

Ham/GMRS Callsign
KI7RAM
Smileyshaun said:
Got the dual cases stuffed in it this morning
Need to get the Driveline shortens and start working on a belly pan to get rid of the factory mount
View attachment 46044 View attachment 46055

Next I put my attention to the steering swapped the pitman arm made a steering shaft extension and had to Notch the frame to clear the pitman arm nut
View attachment 46058


View attachment 46059
Click to expand...
I have no idea of half the stuff you're doing. But I am enjoying watching the build.
 
  • Like
Reactions: H3Coyote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom