MS51HT's RS56 Crown Ute

[MS51HT]

After spending quite some time reading posts of other people's vehicles - I figured it was time that I got my shit together and posted my rusty junk up for the world to see.

After developing an unhealthy penchant for 1969 - 1970 Toyota Crown's some time back, I have seemingly added a hobby to the list of hobbies - collecting Crowns.

As was told to me after finding my first - 'You can't have just one!' - the collection has grown.

 

The latest, being this RS56 Ute....

 

 

This old girl is the latest addition to the fleet, which currently comprises of 1 x MS55 Sedan and 2 x MS51 coupes (separate threads to be generated for those at a later date.....)

Anyways.

I get a message from a guy I have bought from before, and the conversation basically went like this;

Him: 'Want to buy a Crown Ute?'

Me: 'Yes'.

It was made known up front that the vehicle was pretty rough, and that a sedan 'half cut' was available at a reasonable extra cost to support with rust repairs.

And so it was done. Photos were sent after the agreement was made which did little to curb my enthusiasm.

All collected one slightly miserable weekend.

Stoked as.

Of all the Crown shapes, the 50 series really do it for me. 

Of all the 50 series body types - the ute really gets me rigid.

Once I got it home (and made some space in the shed) it didn't take long to work out just what shape it was in....

Uhhhhhhhh...................... 

 

Oh well. I sorta knew what I was getting myself into - so carried on regardless.

All in all, the front half of the cabin is..... garbage.

But that's why I purchased the front cut of the sedan.

Beers were had, and plans formulated.

 

*EDIT*

Page of discussion here: 

 

[MS51HT]

In between the normal Day Job / Kids / Home stuff, I found some time to get at it a little more... aggressively.

Body removed.

Pushed it outside where I could give it some loving with the 'grinder wire wheel of death'

Attacked it with some chassis black to make it look a little more respectable.

After much jankyness in relation to slinging / lifting equipment and strategy, I managed to lift the sedan body on after a little bit of trimming to clear one of the rear body mounts.

From here, it took a few more beers and hours staring at the ute body to best work out how I was going to approach the merger.

First off, I figured the best place to join both parts was.... the middle. Grabbed out the tin of paint stripper and let the paint work have it.

Employed the old boy to wire wheel the bubbly paint so I could see what was what - was surprised to find a lack of lead between the roof and 'B' pillar panels. Even the most casual observer can see that this thing is more rust than anything else.

 

[MS51HT]

The RH side of the B pillar didn't look so bad - but the LH side looks rooted. 

Knowing that the injuries to the poor old girl would go deep, I figured the only way to really know what was going on was to dig down through the panels.

Line drawn, drill bit sharpened and safety squints engaged.

 

Yuck.

Not as yuck, but still yuck.

Can't half tell why the inside of these things rust - primer / paint application back in the day can only be described as 'half arsed'

 

Interesting detail in the panel - where I was expecting to see a step in the panel and lead application turned out to be an old butt weld that was seemingly stamped smooth. Looks like they welded 'wings' onto a larger piece of steel before stamping the whole roof panel and B pillar as one assembly for manufacture.

[MS51HT]

Stripped the underside of its fuel tank and (minimal) wiring, welded up a trolley out of random scrap steel I had lying around and prepared the surgery for the operation. 

Cut in half.

Tray end didn't topple off the trolley. Win.

Nice standup driving position.

 

Wheeled outside for some sun and underside cleaning.

 

[MS51HT]

Karcher + turbojet head thingy employed - dust / rust / loose paint blasted away.

Area above the fuel tank looks mint-ish.

The rest of it is not as nice - still lots of shiny steel revealed once the sound deadener was blasted away.

Rustier parts towards the front of the tray.

 

[MS51HT]

Found myself with a couple of hours after work to start attacking the well body side of the ute.

It's fucking rusty. Like, really rusty.

Especially where the tray meets the cabin - old mate who tried to restore it at some stage in its life really did a number on it.

To be fair, it's not all his fault - Toyota didn't do a great job of rust proofing these things back in the 60's.

Decided to slather some paint stripper into the corners to see what sins I could reveal.

Plenty of rust to be found.

Additionally - the 'red lead' primer they used back in the day sticks like shit to a blanket.

Some more digging around found what appears to be body sealer / defcon that had been applied over white paint - this would tell me that old mate who tried the resto was hoping for the best by sealing the floor pan / firewall.

 

[MS51HT]

Rightly or wrongly, I figured the best way to get access to the worst parts was to remove the firewall pane that sits above the tray line / under the rear glass aperture.

So I started drilling out the billion spot welds along the lower, upper and side seams.

I took this approach because I thought I had a decent understanding of how they put the body together at the factory.

Boy was I fucking wrong.

 

 

[MS51HT]

So with my 'I'm a twat' hat firmly in place, I proceeded to remove the panel. The driver's side was pretty easy as most of it had rusted away.

The passenger side was more difficult, as not so much of it had rusted away.

Panel was tucked up here under another panel. The process in which they assembled this thing is a little more clear now.

VICTORY.

Whilst my plan to build the trolley at a reasonable 'get underneath and pressure clean the bastard' height seemed like a good idea - it wasn't great for the whole 'now you need to get in / around the tray to drill spotwelds' working height.

Got the fucker out anyway after much sweating and cursing.

Access granted to both sides now.

Spent two minutes admiring my handywork before cracking a beer and watching the last 10 overs of the 20/20 cricket.

[MS51HT]

Treated myself to a proper spot weld drill bit - really wish I'd done that sooner.

Probably could have ground a normal drill bit to work in a similar fashion - but I'll worry about that once I ruin this one.

I set about getting access behind some other panels.

It was hot.

Like, fucking hot.

Because I've filled my shed with so many cars and parts, I'm working up against the roller door that is on the Western side of the building.

With the sun having shone DIRECTLY at said roller door since 1pm, it was now a giant radiator. Yay.

Anyhoo - after nearly an hour of drilling I was covered in swarf and sweat, but had achieved a thing.

I'm super glad that someone had made it look somewhat pretty on the outside - because it's fucking ugly underneath.

I'm starting to think that it might be a good idea to see what it'll cost to blast all these inner panels....

[MS51HT]

Basic update because very little has been achieved in the last month.

Between family holidays, work and other commitments this thing has been no more than something to stare at in the couple of minutes spare i've had.

Anyway - boo hoo for me.

Ripped into the RH side 1/4 panel to see what scary things lurked behind. Much better than the LH side which is nice.

Additionally, I take back all the nice things I said about the proper spot weld drill bit that I purchased.

It was nice for a while, but after a while - not nice.

Stupid think got all tuckered out after drilling 50+ spotwelds - and refused to drill any more.

Tried to sharpen it with the angle grinder - and fucked it.

Tried the next best thing - normal drill bits. Been here and played this stupid game before - and it wasn't fun.

So, after going around with a 4mm drill bit to 'spot' the welds, I gave an old Uni-bit a try to see what would happen.

It was much better.

Considering that I was working within a short window of time, all give-a-fucks had gone right out the window and I wanted this panel off yesterday.

Initial screenshot of a video shows the Uni-bit tearing this panel a new one - notice very little gap between panels.

After clunking through a couple of steps - the panel gap opened up signaling victory!

Happy days.

Carried on with the remainders and got the panel off using considerably less finesse than that used getting the other side off.

Wheeled it outside and pressure cleaned the snot off it and let it dry off.

 

Then pushed it into the shed so that I could resume normal fatherly duties.

[MS51HT]

So somehow it's now the tail end of March - how the hell did that happen?

Progress has been slow - but progress made none the less.

Figured the best thing to do next was fashion some kind of jig that would allow me to throw these two cars together into, well... one car.

A frame was considered and then built that would locate (what I feel) are key dimensions - the distance from the A pillar to the B pillar.

So I spun up a couple of threaded plugs that would locate to the floor pan;

Then proceeded to weld in bars to plates that I could locate on the door hinge and door striker bolt locations;

I made the pieces that locate on the B pillars removable so that I could cut the pillars out.

Added an extra brace from the middle bars to the roof and then one between both sides.

Bolts out - nothing moved which told me it was sorta okay-ish.

Then took the B pillar bar and checked it against the ute B pillar. Holes lined up which was nice.

Added an extra brace from there up to the rear window aperture to make me feel more comfortable about its position in space;

 

[MS51HT]

Sawzall employed, B pillars subtracted from the sedan;

Then much cutting and grinding to remove B pillars down to the sills - so much crusty shit sitting down there.

B and C pillar remnants removed;

As a side quest, the original doors, fenders and rad support from the blue sedan became available - so I blew even more money and collected them.

I'm selling it to myself as a 'you could get this thing finished so much sooner now that you don't have to paint fenders that blue colour!'

Very much extra good side shown there. The other side is fucked though.

Not badly fucked - but just enough for me to have to perform more surgery.

Overall - the LH side of the sedan was the worst - would have to have something to do with it's collision history - see le shitty plenum end photo below.

And then underneath.

fucking blergh.

[MS51HT]

Now that the sedan parts were all cleaned up, it was time to move on to the ute part.

Figured that since I had a plasma cutter laying around doing nothing that I should employ it to remove the shittier parts of the back half.

After fucking around trying to get it to work (been too long since I used it) and additional side quest of fitting vibration dampening feet to the air compressor I managed to get rid of the less necessary steel.

I wish that had been the hard bit.

But it wasn't.

A considerable amount of time then went into grinding the remains of what was once sheet steel that was spot welded to the back half.

Just. Shitty. Grinding.

Actually found a use for these stupid 'cutting' discs though. Spot weld grinders.

Just. More. Grinding.

So yeah. Hours of grinding.

Didn't really look like much once I'd finished - so in a mad dash to source some dopamine before I had to pull up stumps, I moved things and stuff around in the shed to lift the ute body off it's trolley.

Closest it's been to being one car in. Well, forever.

 

[MS51HT]

Spent quite a while staring at the intersecting parts to try and work out the best way of joining these things together.

My main goal is to stick them together in such a way that all connection points are identical to how it would have come from the factory all those years ago.

Not sure how many hours (or beers per hour) were spent staring at it - but it was quite a few.

Obviously the B pillar will sit where it needs to sit - but the roof junction was the part that perplexed me the most.

Stripped part of the roof panel off to get access to the inner structure. One thing that is clear to see is that this sedan has considerably better rust proofing / priming of panels prior to assembly.

Made some detailed drawings of the B pillar structure / junction key dimensions on the ute for future reference;

More hours of thinking and grinding saw the inner structure removed from the ute body. Had to cut the corner of the door aperture off to make life a little easier for myself.

Resulted in achieving this;

From the photo above the intersecting parts become a little clearer. The two pieces of the inner roof structure overlap. Just need to extend the outer part of the inner structure to match the engineering drawings I generated earlier in the day.

Nice to find that the door aperture corner that I had to cut out earlier still fits (some fettling required, but close enough for me)

[MS51HT]

Forgot to add the glory shot of the two bodies sitting in the closest proximity ever. Had to fuck around as my plan of dropping the rear section onto the frame with the front section already in place fell apart due to come inconveniently placed chassis and body cross members.

So back onto the trolley went the rear section - the hoist was then employed to lift the front section off the chassis.

Chassis wheeled out of the way, heights adjusted and the two pieces were slotted together.

I'm pretty fucking happy with that. Door aperture size is correct (measured against the closely available MS55 body parked right next door)

Rear firewall alights with the floor pan well (which was cut however many months ago)

Grabbed the rear roof panel from the ute and sat it on top to make sure everything was heading in the right direction.

Stoked.

Still plenty of working out, measuring, cutting and welding (rust repairs more so) prior to sticking these two parts together - but progress is progress.

[MS51HT]

Found some time to get out into the shed today - which had me (once again) staring at the shell of the ute and contemplating the enormity of the project I'd taken on.

Took my bitch pants off, put on some big boy pants and had at it.

The front corners of the ute tray were giving me the most anxiety. I desperately want to stick the two halves together - but know deep down that avoiding these areas is just going to make my life harder later on when there's a floor pan in the way.

The passenger side didn't look so bad - plenty of metal still in the corner (in the grand scheme of things).

The Driver's side was considerably less good.

Figured the best place to start was to cut the floor pan corners out. Found the D/S forward tray mount to be in reasonable condition considering I'd blasted 10kg of clay mud out of there earlier in the build.

P/S forward tray mount was not as good - which was weird seeing as the upper section was in better condition.

Dug the needle scaler out of the depths of the garden shed to see how good it would be at knocking the rust out of the hole.

Did a pretty good job of identifying where the rust holes were.

Yuck.

 

[MS51HT]

After multiple stoppages over the course of the day (required to stop kids from killing each other / wife losing her mind) I moved onto ACTUALLY trying to fix something.

With good access to the inner structure now that the 1/4 panels weren't on the vehicle, I set about working out how to make a patch panel.

Now, I've watched plenty of YouTube videos (Fitzee's Fabrications for example) and figured I would approach it in the manner Fitzee would - using multiple pieces welded together to make a complicated shape.

After gathering up metal scraps, and establishing the best direction to attack the better of the two corners (P/S) - I came to the realization that I was in no mood for a shit load of cutting, welding and grinding.

So I thought I would have a go at making a paper template that would pick up all of the important profiles and shapes that I could then go on to bash into a piece of metal.

I put a piece of paper over the area I needed to copy, pressed and contoured it then put some tape over the top to give it some form.

The masking tape did OK, but the template would have been much better if I'd had some of the reinforced plastic tape that the professionals use.

Close enough to good enough, I checked it against the other (more fucked) side to make sure the upper rust holes were covered.

I cut it down, then found some NOS sheet steel (piece recovered from the strip cut out of the sedan's roof panel) and then transferred the contour lines with a center punch.

Intricate code on the sheet identified which profiles were UP, which ones were DOWN and which ones were LEVEL (which made total sense in my head at the time)

Moved the anvil near the car and then proceeded to tap tap tap, bend and tweak until I ended up with something close.

In all honesty - it didn't seem like a particularly difficult piece to make. Got lost in the back and forth between the body and the anvil until I had something that was pretty close.

Just under an hours worth of hammering. Happy with the time investment.

Relief cut needed some tweaking half way through hammering, but was pretty close to the money all things considered.

The step / relief in the panel shown here does need some work, but when I take into consideration that this side won't ever be seen again - and the inside will have the tray floor pan spot welded up to it I'm calling it good enough.

Pretty content with that fit. Stumps called, beer gathered and off to dinner.

[MS51HT]

Weeks have passed - managed to sneak out into the shed and get some more work done on the ute.

Figured the best way to re-introduce myself to the rust repairs was to create a patch for the other side.

Then I realised that I couldn't remember the exact steps I took to make the corner patch for the LH side.

Found the paper template, cut out another piece of roof steel and marked it out using a center punch as per the LH side.

No images taken of the steps taken to make the patch - but the result was something close to what was needed.

Clamped it against the piece I made for the LH side after trimming it to the same size as the RH side to gauge how close I'd got it.

Was pretty happy with that, so committed to getting it stuck in.

Took a lot longer than I'd hoped for, but was happy with the fit.

 

[MS51HT]

I was happy with how it all lined up - swage lines seemed to be in all the right spots even after worrying myself that making the patch over the top of the existing panel would lead to discrepancies.

Got the welder out and proceeded to blow holes through the panel (hadn't bothered to check the welder settings)

Some fine tuning with the hammer and dolly got the piece sitting where I wanted it.

[MS51HT]

After getting that side spotted in, I moved back to the LH side to see how well I could get the first patch integrated.

After I marked it out, I used the step drill to knock out the internal corners before attacking it with the 5" grinder.

Old steel sat on new panel.

Dropped the patch in after a little work tidying up the hole I'd made.

Super happy with how the swage lines matched the original steel profile.

In my haste to make it fit as the day drew to a close, I absolutely botched with fit on the back side - leaving a grand canyon to fill in with the welder.

Figure it was a good enough time to pull up stumps for the day.