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

[Smileyshaun]

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 .


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


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 right

 

[Smileyshaun]

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 .


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 .

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 ?



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.


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

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 .

 

[SeattleBeardo]

Following! This looks like it's going to be a great build!

 

[Smileyshaun]

This was plan for the cj6 stretch


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 .

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

 

[Smileyshaun]

Following! This looks like it's going to be a great build!

Thanks man , it's actually about 75% done at this point just need to get around to finding all the pics and writing it down

 

[Smileyshaun]

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


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.



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.


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


Now I had my pile of goodies and a clean frame to work with

... well semi clean the truck spento alot of its life on a farm so it took another pressure washing to get clean


Time to start body swapping

 

[Smileyshaun]

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 .


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



Now obviously the ifs would not work so out with the plasma and off with the ifs




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 .

 

[Smileyshaun]

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
I



Had to cut out the bottom corner of the grill to make the box fit

 

[Smileyshaun]

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 .

 

[Smileyshaun]

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

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 .

 

[Smileyshaun]

I was getting tired of looking at the rear frame just sticking behind the body so a trip to the dollar tree and some tape and I had a real ruff markup of what the bed would look like


Got the bed mostly together and skinned next I need to work on the floor , tailgate and tops to the tool boxes



And as always it's good to have expert help with all your measuring

 

[Smileyshaun]

This is a little out of order but just got the duel cases together hopefully get it put back in the Jeep next week .

 

[HappyOurOverlanding]

WOW!!! What a build. Can't wait to see how the it turns out. Looking forward to more posts.

 

[Smileyshaun]

WOW!!! What a build. Can't wait to see how the it turns out. Looking forward to more posts.

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 .

 

[Smileyshaun]

Had plans of getting the duel cases in and working on the rear fender armor and making mounts for the bed butttt the little one got sent home from school so all I managed to get done was setting the bed on it

 

[Scout]

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]

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


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

 

[HappyOurOverlanding]

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

I have no idea of half the stuff you're doing. But I am enjoying watching the build.

 

[Smileyshaun]

I have no idea of half the stuff you're doing. But I am enjoying watching the build.

Thanks , it will start making more sense once it gets further along and I do a better job of writing and explaining things

 

[Smileyshaun]

When I say duel cases I am speaking about duel transfer cases. It allows me to essentially put it in 4 low twice to keep the tires moving at a extremely slow speed making crawling over large obstacles easier .