This weekend I finally started turning wrenches on my geriatric Toyota Truck (that's the model name, according to the owner's manual).
I (or strictly speaking my fiancee) bought the truck in late October of 1987, and it was the last carbureted pickup on the lot. I've taken only middling care of it since then and it's borne up under that indifferent treatment strikingly well. I have a battered journal that lives in the glove compartment recording the truck's first fill up, the date on the first page is November 1, 1987.
The power steering recently started leaking and I decided now was the time to take on a few ecomodding steps. I've been saving up to give the truck a lot of refurbishment work (windshield, maybe a new bed, definitely new paint, etc.) and with the steering pump moaning and whining, I figured I'd take on some under-hood weight and drag reduction too. The truck has managed returns in the high 30s in the past and it's one of my dearest goals to take it all the way to 40+ MPG.
No pics of the actual removal underway, my hands were filthy and I couldn't bring myself to actually touch my phone.
I hope these pictures come out okay, in the album if you click on them they become gigantic.
This is a shot down into the engine bay where the plumbing for the PS used to go. You can see the open ports on top of the steering gear. There's an awful lot of unoccupied volume in here now.
Where the belt and bracketry used to live. This opens a fair amount of space in the very nose of the truck.
The collected bits of the pump, reservoir, hoses and whatnot. All told I'd call it about 15 pounds. I even removed the cooling loop of pipe that ran in front of the radiator.
I took it for a spin with the pump removed and the truck felt exactly how I expected: sluggish and heavy at very low speeds, but anything above a jogging pace felt only slightly heavy to entirely normal.
I have a fresh reman steering box to replace it and gave it a sincere, no-BS effort to remove the old box, but the ball joint from the Pittman arm to the relay arm was more than my ball joint puller would shift. It went from looking like a letter U to a letter V. And the Pittman's connection to the splined output shaft of the steering gear seemed similarly firm, so I just put all the nuts back where I found them, snugged them down and will send the truck to a shop to do the actual swap.
Then we can find out if I get an actual economy boost from this.
The goal with the truck is to get it back to a condition where the wife won't mind driving it. It's kind of rusty and bedraggled looking right now, especially the bed where Toyota unwisely included a seam in the sides where rust can silently grow until it suddenly pops out like a xenomorph from Kane's chest. Hopefully within a year I'll have a like-new looking truck again that I can drive for another 30 years.
[edit]
Okay, the pictures didn't post at all. That bites.
All right. I'm eating up too much workday with this but I'll sort it out and make the pictures come up presently.
[edit again]
Daox fixed the images. Now I just need to find a shop. I have one in mind so probably by the weekend or next, the new box will be in.
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