Repair-It

I had some time this afternoon, so let's tear into this thing.

After getting it into my workshop, the first thing I noticed was the tires aren't glued on. Generally when one of these had a locked diff, you turn 1 tire and all 4 turn. If the diffs aren't locked, you turn one wheel and the other one (on the same axle) turns in the opposite direction. On this truck, you turn one wheel and only that one turns. Initially I thought it may be a snapped axle or a blown out diff, then i noticed it was just the tire spinning on the rim. It wouldn't have been much of a driver like this- as soon as it came up to an obstacle it would just stop and spin the wheels inside the tires. On the ebay ad, the truck had different wheels/tires installed.

Body is now removed. It's not in terrible shape, but has definitely taken a few shots.
Cab is in decent shape, none of the details have been knocked off.
There are 4 mystery holes in the truck bed, not 2.
There is a pretty comprehensive wiring harness for the LEDs in the lights, blinkers, marker lights, and taillights. There is a key component missing though- the LED controller. Not sure what i'm going to do about this yet. The controller is basically a voltage regulator and a bunch of resistors bult into a printed circuit board that all these lights plug into. It may have a couple of other functions but I'm not aware of them. If I can't find one of these on ebay i may try to use a cheap chinese knockoff, or just take the lights out. They were an added option anyway. A new one is ~$80, which is way more than I want to spend here.
The next problem I found is with the receiver. It looks like the antenna wire was cut. The length of the antenna wire is tuned to the frequency it is going to be receiving. Cutting the wire decreases the range and makes the system glitch sometimes. It looks like there is some decent length left in the wire, so we'll see how well it actually works. I'll probably just plasti dip the end of the wire.
Next issue is the servo saver for the steering servo is broken. This acts kind of like a steering damper. If one of the front wheels impacts something at speed, it doesn't transfer all the force backwards through the steering linkages to the servo, which is the most fragile link in the chain. This should be a pretty easy fix using parts from my spares bin.
Discovered there is an upgraded driveshaft installed. It's kind of a random part to upgrade, so the previous owner must have snapped the stock one while driving.
The last part the truck is missing (which i knew about) is the electronic speed control (ESC). This is the component that takes a signal from the receiver and feeds the corresponding amount of current from the battery to the motor. Sort of like an electrical relay, but with a bunch of transistors. Most of them have about 1500 steps for forward and reverse, which gives a linear throttle response. More expensive models have programmable features for ABS, drag brake, hill decent assist, traction control, and stability control (using a tiny gyroscope- how cool is that)? Seeing how this truck goes about 8MPH, none of that stuff really matters and it will be getting a cheapo ESC from the far east. Maybe a waterproof one if I can't find a light controller and end up taking out the lights.

I'm going to test the electronics tomorrow and make sure I don't need anything else.

For now, total money spent remains at $290.

It's been a while since i posted any progress here, but things have been moving.

First thing done was remove the body and sand it down:
Then it was time to bondo the mystery holes in the sides of the bed:
Ready for hi-fill automotive primer:
After a couple of coats:
Fully primed:
Airbrushed in some kid of flat light brown color I had on hand:
Masking off some of the details and bedliner:
Next steps are painting some of the details on the body, painting the bedliner with black plastidip, and working on some of the chrome parts.

You are literally following an automotive paint process, which is awesome.

Some more progress. Since the last post, there has been a few more coats of paint, addition of a few decals (toyota logos, small chrome parts, etc.) and a few coats of flat clear topcoat from a rattle can. Following that, I sprayed the bed area with black plasti-dip. If you haven't used plasti-dip yet, it's basically that spray rubber stuff the as-seen-on-tv guy is pitching. When it's used here it looks just like a spray on truck bed liner.
I used scotch blue painter's tape to mask off the bed area, the regular white masking tape sucked and bled through the first time i tried it. I had to paint a larger area black as a result.
I needed to order a sheet of replacement decals from some internet hobby shop i've never heard of. My identity is probably for sale in Bangladesh now.
The bondo turned out pretty well, you can barely tell there was a big hole in the body.
The hilux logo is a chrome transfer that came with the decals. The door handle and tailgate hinges I just brush painted.
I'm trying to decide if i want to weather (add rust and dirt, etc) the body or not. It looks pretty good now. Either way, the next step is going to be working on the chrome roll bar and bumpers, then order the rest of the electronics.

Decals, paint, and bondo set me back about $25. That brings my total spent to $315.

This is pretty satisfying. What do you think the market will pay for it when you are done?

I've been working on this 5 minutes at a time for a while now. I ordered the mechanical stuff I needed, which consisted of a steering servo and a speed control. Finished installing and testing them tonight.
The speed control is the box in the bottom right that looks like a waffle iron (that's the heat sink). The steering servo you can see connected to the steering linkages in the top center.
This is a closer shot. I just hardwired the speed control to the motor by soldering the leads and heat shrinking. I love how the Japanese (where the silver can motor was made) use yellow/green for positive/negative; and the Chinese (where the speed control was made) use the red/black we're all used to. Also I had no big diameter heat shrink tube in black, so we'll have to deal with 2 red leads.
Now everything is hooked up, radio turned on. I love the 80's high tech shift gate it came with. The left stick is throttle, you move it left to right to engage each gear, up and down for speed. Pulling it down is reverse. You do get 3 gears in reverse.
This is how the shift linkage works. There is a second (shift) servo inside a case you can't really see on the front of the truck. The linkage is in 1st gear here.
Second Gear
Third Gear

With the model propped up in the air I was able to test everything on the bench top. All the gears engaged correctly in fwd and reverse, and no strange noises coming from anywhere.

And to answer Kevin's question from 6 months ago- I'm not really sure. All this stuff new would be around $600. After about $50 in parts this last round, I'm in it for $385 now.

I'm not seeing the linkage/shifting thing. I do see the rear axle...

Shift linkage is the rod with a cylinder on the end of it that moves in and out at the center of the picture.

I had to download the pictures and flip through them to see it and even then it took a bit! So it is sequential based on the motion, right?

Yeah I believe so. I was expecting to have to take it apart further than this to get it shifting again (and get some more pics of how it works), but I'm going to leave well enough alone for once.