Rufus The Doofus

This aluminum roof rack project is taking much longer than I thought it would….

It rained most of the day today to I didn’t get much done on the aluminum roof rack for the Landcruiser.
The bottom tray is tack welded together now. I’m still not very good with welding aluminum. I was able to run a few nice beads along the pieces of angle where [...]

A few hours after the arc flash eye pain subsided I got back into building the Landcruiser aluminum roof rack. It was going pretty well up until the point where I realized it needed to be six inches wider! I had already cut, notched and bent a bunch of tubing and had a [...]

I spent some time practicing MIG welding aluminum today. It’s a difficult skill to master.
I spent a lot of time reading articles and tutorials all over the web about MIG welding aluminum. Some of the articles helped, some simply confused me. Most people recommend using 4043 .035″ MIG wire for general purpose [...]

I’m finally getting started on building the roof rack for the Land Cruiser. It’s a huge relief to finally be working on this. It’s the last major project on the BJ42 before our big trip.
As you can see in the photo above I’m building it out of 1″ aluminum tubing. I don’t [...]

Spring is almost here. After a week of sunny days with temperatures in the high 60s and low 70s we still have plenty of snow in the yard.

I’m almost done.

I’ve been working on getting the BJ42 Landcruiser ready for our upcoming 6,000 mile trip. I noticed the front steering knuckles were leaking axle fluid pretty badly a few days after I topped off the front differential lube. I knew this couldn’t be a good thing so I spent some time researching it [...]

The OME (Old Man Emu) suspension kit was installed today. I’m pretty impressed with the difference in ride quality over the old, flat stock springs on our ‘82 BJ42. I have no idea who Old Man Emu is or was but he makes some nice leaf springs.
I was a little worried the Cruiser [...]

When our BJ42 arrived it had a bull bar on it. One of the first things I did was remove it because it was damaged and barely held in place by the broken and bent bolts. It would rattle horribly on every little bump. I knew I’d fix it some day. [...]