Marco
March 31st, 2010, 07:18 PM
Hi All,
My name is Marco Capote, I currently own an 85' FJ60 and an 82 FJ40.
My first truck was a 1967 Series IIA Land Rover. I had that thing through most of high school and untill the beginning of college. I Drove it every day for several years, got it stuck in a lot of deep Memphis mud and learned how to wrench on it. I ended up basically going through that whole truck because at some point or another it wore out or I broke it. At one point I even caught it on fire and watched it burn to the ground. I learned how to do body work and wiring after that....
Anyways, through school I worked at a welding/fab shop as an apprentice for a guy in Memphis. There I learned how to Mig and Tig, how to do tube work, build motors and trannys, and how to machine basic parts. We built a lot of cars for a lot of folks there, but evenually it got to be too much so I moved to a produce company where I worked on their diesel rigs, drove a fork lift some of the time, and spent HOURS welding storage racks. During that time I sold the Rover and slowly got into auto-x and road racing. I built a Turbo CRX since I couldn't afford the Porsches and Bimmers we were building for other folks . I started going to lots of Driver's Ed's to help the folks who's cars we'd built, supported them at races and eventually got my instructors license in both the Porsche and BMW clubs.
One of the guys I worked with at the shop there also got me hooked on dirt bikes, so I started doing a lot of Hare Scrambles. I owned several 250cc 2 stroke dirt bikes throughout the years and had an XR650 and Ninja for playing around on the street with.
After owning several vehicles (something like 12 or 14) I found myself wanting another Rover... I was looking for something that had more space and did better on the HWY though... so after a while of looking I found the FJ60. I got it with about 200k on the clock and bone stock from a dirt biking buddy. That was all around the time that I also decided I wanted to move out west.
So, in the fall of 07 I landed a job out here and put things into high gear. I put a vortec in the 60, did a new suspension so it'd make the trip better, and put in a 5spd. I sold all of the other toys to fatten the piggy bank before the move, packed up and left. All of that materialized in about 2 months, so things went quickly.
After getting out here, I started running trails in order to see more of the state and go camping more. I didn't really know what "wheeling" was. Of course with running more trails came the desire to do more to the truck, so it slowly evolved. I squeezed 35's on it and found out later that I needed to do a bunch of other stuff to make them work. After a year or so of futzing with it I finally got it kinda dialed. Then came my first trip to Moab.... I hustled and built a set of bumpers and sliders for it, and threw on a winch. The truck did OK, so it stayed like that for a while. This winter I finally geared it with 4.88's, added ARB's, did good axles in the front and rear, and tweaked the drivelines a bit more. Man did it need gears.. how did that take me so long??
Then.. .I realized I still wanted a truck for those "top down" days so I started looking and I found a pretty rusty FJ40. I'm currently working on getting it sorted. I'll probably end up restoring it to basically stock since it was a relatively low mileage truck and I already have the 60 for the harder trails...
So, that's pretty much my story.. glad to be here and look forward to meeting some of you folks!
-Marco
My name is Marco Capote, I currently own an 85' FJ60 and an 82 FJ40.
My first truck was a 1967 Series IIA Land Rover. I had that thing through most of high school and untill the beginning of college. I Drove it every day for several years, got it stuck in a lot of deep Memphis mud and learned how to wrench on it. I ended up basically going through that whole truck because at some point or another it wore out or I broke it. At one point I even caught it on fire and watched it burn to the ground. I learned how to do body work and wiring after that....
Anyways, through school I worked at a welding/fab shop as an apprentice for a guy in Memphis. There I learned how to Mig and Tig, how to do tube work, build motors and trannys, and how to machine basic parts. We built a lot of cars for a lot of folks there, but evenually it got to be too much so I moved to a produce company where I worked on their diesel rigs, drove a fork lift some of the time, and spent HOURS welding storage racks. During that time I sold the Rover and slowly got into auto-x and road racing. I built a Turbo CRX since I couldn't afford the Porsches and Bimmers we were building for other folks . I started going to lots of Driver's Ed's to help the folks who's cars we'd built, supported them at races and eventually got my instructors license in both the Porsche and BMW clubs.
One of the guys I worked with at the shop there also got me hooked on dirt bikes, so I started doing a lot of Hare Scrambles. I owned several 250cc 2 stroke dirt bikes throughout the years and had an XR650 and Ninja for playing around on the street with.
After owning several vehicles (something like 12 or 14) I found myself wanting another Rover... I was looking for something that had more space and did better on the HWY though... so after a while of looking I found the FJ60. I got it with about 200k on the clock and bone stock from a dirt biking buddy. That was all around the time that I also decided I wanted to move out west.
So, in the fall of 07 I landed a job out here and put things into high gear. I put a vortec in the 60, did a new suspension so it'd make the trip better, and put in a 5spd. I sold all of the other toys to fatten the piggy bank before the move, packed up and left. All of that materialized in about 2 months, so things went quickly.
After getting out here, I started running trails in order to see more of the state and go camping more. I didn't really know what "wheeling" was. Of course with running more trails came the desire to do more to the truck, so it slowly evolved. I squeezed 35's on it and found out later that I needed to do a bunch of other stuff to make them work. After a year or so of futzing with it I finally got it kinda dialed. Then came my first trip to Moab.... I hustled and built a set of bumpers and sliders for it, and threw on a winch. The truck did OK, so it stayed like that for a while. This winter I finally geared it with 4.88's, added ARB's, did good axles in the front and rear, and tweaked the drivelines a bit more. Man did it need gears.. how did that take me so long??
Then.. .I realized I still wanted a truck for those "top down" days so I started looking and I found a pretty rusty FJ40. I'm currently working on getting it sorted. I'll probably end up restoring it to basically stock since it was a relatively low mileage truck and I already have the 60 for the harder trails...
So, that's pretty much my story.. glad to be here and look forward to meeting some of you folks!
-Marco