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Hairy Chested FJ.

When the FJ was a week old I started doing things to it. To keep the radiator and AC condenser free of bugs I added a furnace air filter behind the grill area to catch bugs and debris that might come through the grill.

The filter is a natural fiber air filter I got at my local home builder store. I got two of them, size 20x30 inches 1 inch thick. I had to cut them into 2 sections because of the layout of the FJ grill.  One for the upper grill area and a larger one for the lower grill.  One piece measures 28x9.5 inches and the other is 30x17 inches.

After cutting the filters I sprayed them with black Plasti-Dip coating to help hide the blue color and help keep the fibers together. I've used this method on my Chevy pickup for six years now with no deterioration and the radiator looks like new, no bugs, no dings.

I pulled the FJ grill to make fitting things easier. I had to notch the upper filter pad around some of the plastic supports to make it fit the grill better.  You can see the square netting on the back side of the material.

The lower section just slides (not easily) up behind the lower grill then I bent the lower portion and pushed it over the edge of the skid plate. This will protect the lower edge of the condenser fins. I may run a few Ty Wraps through it later on depending how it manages a few road trips.

 It gives it that Hairy Chested look!

The back side of the filter material has a square netting glued to it and I put that side facing the radiator with the "Hairy" side out facing the air stream. Spray painting helps hide the blue color better. I used Plasti-Dip but plain old flat black paint works good too.

Black Stripes

While I was messing around I got some 1/2" inch wide black striping tape and put it along the edge of the white roof line where it met the sandy bottom color. I never did like that area of the FJ's,  it seemed unfinished where the two paint schemes came together on lighter colored paint. I guess two contrasting paints wouldn't be so bad but the silver, tan and yellow FJ's seemed to need something.

More to follow...

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