[wharf]

Gday fellas.I have a few questions about my little truck.Any help would be appreciated.

Can you still buy drum brake kits to rebuild them original.

The uni joints are so tiny,are they cheap?

Are parts like these still easy to get.

I drained the oil out of the rear diff.It was clean as.Got to work out the reverse problem in the box now.

[Highway-Star]

Couple of questions to clarrify:

Is it an early LJ81, or an LJ81 "Stockman"?

Which drum brake bits do you need?
New shoes and wheel cylinders can be bought from a brake shop or repco etc. Quite cheap to rebuild. Actual brake drums themselves are a bit more of a problem if they need replacing.
If you are not concerned with keeping the car original, I did a write up on upgrading to Sierra brakes on an LJ; the diffs in my writeup are for my LJ81. Have a look through, and see if it might be suitable for your needs

Yes uni joints are tiny . I don't know about price tough.

[wharf]

Its a stockman i think.

[tanshi]

i bought uni jounts for my LJ50, not 100% sure they are the same. Mine cost $75 each cos they could only get genuine.

[2stroker]

Stockman unis are the same as 1 litre with the circlip on the inside and are replaced like any other uni, lj80 and lj50 are an interference fit uni joint which is "permanently" fixed in place.

tanshi can you explain what you did to replace the lj50 ones so everyone knows what needs to be done, I have not bothered with then in the past, if a uni was crook I just took the oportunity to upgraded to Stockman shafts with replacedable uni's. Once you have Stockman shafts you are set but with Stockman shafts getting harder to find I think the next step for LJ owners will be having 1 litre shafts shortened to LJ size.

[tanshi]

basically you press the old unis out same as you would a normal uni. run a file around the inside to get rid of burrs and the original unis were peened in. put new unis in and use a cold chisel to peen them again.

[2stroker]

Yeah thats what I thought, how did you get the uni in the exact right spot because from memory they sit down inside a bit not flush with the outside, so when you peen the first one it would push the uni the other way. The circlip type like on the stockman ensures it is in the exact position.

[tanshi]

yeah its not much fun.

i used verniers to get it in the centre and just pressed them untill they Felt right.

That being said i replaced my jack shaft with a stockman one, and remade my front one from a 1 litre. so i have circlips on some of them too.

[303zuke]

I've replaced early LJ unis before by pressing out the old crimped in ones and replacing with new ones, centre them in the yoke in a vice by using 2 18mm OD x 1.5mm thick washers (approx) over the top of each cap, and then when you have the same depth recess on each side, tack weld a washer in 4 spots over the top of each cap. It aint pretty, but the unis survived and the shafts remained in balance.

I seem to recall (I don't have notes from then!) that the uni joints were the same as early Datsun or Corolla and could be bought cheaply. Maybe there's not so many Dattos or Corollas getting around these days?

[2stroker]

You are correct as usual 303zuke, the uni's are the same as Datsun 1200 and 120y and in fact so is the gearbox spline for the slip yolk.