Hey SRTNate, here's a little history on Ole Yeller. I found him in Boynton Beach, FL and drove down with a full U-Haul trailer in my FZJ100 LandCruiser and hauled him back up to Atlanta. He was a total basket case with bashed in back door, rotten seats but still running strong. It turned out that part of the crank cradle was missing but it ran for about 20K miles like that and we didn't find out it was broken until Eddy and I pulled apart the engine to rebuild it. I built him up with new rear door, 3 row core radiator, snorkel, dual bouncies, 33s and a roof rack. He's been all over N. GA. I sold him to build a diesel Montero and you know the rest of the story.

-Pmontero

Looking good, Remind's me of when PA_JERO did this swap except your truck has less body damage and will probably run one day.

Hey Nate,

I found a pic of when Ole Yeller arrived home from Boynton Beach, FL in May of 2002. I can't believe it was 8 years ago! Thought you would like to have it.



And here's when Eddy saved him from some serious trail-rash!




-Pmontero

What was wrong with the right side of the trail that you were that far over on the left? <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />

It's cool to see a rig with some history continuing on! With Powells recent postings on the diesel forum, I had wondered at times what became of Yellow Truck. Then thought with Nate, "Hey there's another guy with a Yellow Truck." <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

I never take the easy route in a Montero... boring! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> (it was very muddy and there was some pitch to that road you can't see in the pic... I slid over)

Nate, hurry up and get that thing on the road again! We need to take them back up to Stonewall Creek and try it again...

-Pmontero

There is a little more to the story of the incestuous Monteros. Some time back, son John (wwff) was in school in Daytona. He had a friend who had a pretty nice 5spd Maz Navaho (badge engineered 2dr Explorer) with a 5-6" lift for sale. I bought it for my daughter Kate, who had sworn off running away and finally worked her way thru an online high school, and gotten accepted to a good college and in general sorted her life out after a disastrous couple of years. She drove it for several years, until her knees started giving her trouble with the clutch, and I bought her the 91 lwb Monty a/t, which she drove for several years, and gave the Navaho to John, who had lusted for it for years, himself, but he was still driving the Fiat spider I had bought him from his working for me for free earnings. He had it less than 2 weeks when a DHL driver rear ended him at some ridiculous rate of speed in his second wreck of the day, totalling the Navaho and the car in front of it. Powell had the yellow Shogun for sale at the time, so I bought it for John to make up for the loss of the Navaho. He drove it for several years, as did his wife. Kate in the meantime graduated from college (Finally!!!) and got a great job making tons of money, and wanted a new car. She was disgusted with the tradein offer on the 91 lwb, and ended up giving it to her brother John, and John sold the Shogun to his friend from college Nate, who I consider sort of a foster son. I think I paid Powell $2500 for the Shogun, $3600 for the Navaho, and $1100 for the 91 LWB, which was probably the best of the bunch, or tied with the Shogun.

See why I call it an incestuous trail??? And I think that wooden roof rack in the almost rollover pic is now on John's 91 lwb

Thanks for all the background pics and info on the truck! I guess that rocker dent is even older than I realized...I've got a set of sliders to put on, but I was going to try to pull the dent out a bit before I blocked it with those.

John's got the Safari rack on his...I've still got the wooden ones in my shed. Yellow has a modified Landrover rack on it now.

All right, I just got back from Iowa...work will now resume.

Watching this with greast interest Nate. Looking forward to coming back from the weekend and seeing your progress. The driveshaft is the biggest issue I see with this. Not knowledgable enough to know what could be done to make it work.

I appreciate all the enthusiasm! I haven't stopped working on things, it's just been a bit slow this past week. Just as I got home Monday I started coming down with a case of the plague. I did manage to make a little bit of progress though.

I've got the Gen 1 wiring removed from the headlights, back to the connection to the rear harness under the rear seat. So, now that I can lay out all the Gen 1 and 2 wiring I can get started blending the two together. Theres a "War Room" effect going on right now in my living room with many sheets of taped together schematics laid out like battle plans. I'm going to try to make an real effort to document the wiring aspect as best as I can, but it's going to be tricky.

As I was pulling the connector off the driver headlight, one of the spades on the light bulb broke of...so obviously I saw this as a sign that it was time for an HID upgrade. Plus, I figured since the wiring is going to get refurbished/modified, I could do a nice seamless blend of the HID ballast wiring into the factory harness.

I've also been working on getting the fuel lines taken care of. The Gen 1 supply and return have a junction basically right underneath the drivers feet...so it's really a perfect place to connect the Gen 2 lines in. The Gen 2 lines will need to be shortened significantly, but then it's just a matter of re-flaring the end and connecting everything back together. The bolt holes in the firewall aren't in exactly the same place, but pretty close...it just requires moving the clamps around a bit. I'm not quite done with this yet, but most of the way there...

The engine is in the process of getting cleaned up and checked over. And I've got a nice big box of parts that I need to clean, smooth, and get over to the powdercoater.

I'll update this post with pics when I get a chance...

Allright, it's been 4 days....we're waiting. Is it done yet? Is it done yet? Is it done yet? <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/baby.gif" alt="" /> Looking forward to the update.