Yesterday I brought a new cruiser into my life, one that will likely be my new daily driver. If you’ve read the build thread on my tomato truck daily driver 60 (Trash Truck … a diary and build thread), you know that above all else I’ve battled rust. Well … I haven’t really battled it. More like I've avoided frame and body rot on my daily driver and just lived in sheer terror. I’ve learned a ton from that vehicle - all sorts of technical procedures, the idiosyncratisities of 60 Series Land Cruisers, how to embrace the 2F and drive up mountain highway passes at 30mph. But I will not learn rust repair.
Enter Matilda.
Clean frame, very minimal body rust. Her paint may be faded like an old pair of jeans, but like those jeans she’s comfortable. 124000 miles on the clock and the wear and tear feels like it - broken in but in good shape. That’s evident in not only the slightly faded but generally rust-free body, but also in the upholstery and plastic on the inside. The seat foam still feels great and even the dash only has one or two small cracks.
Hell, she’s got both snake blinders. Wonders never cease!
The bad news is that “cracked block” was a diagnoses given to me from the PO. I have a lot of testing in front of me to determine if that’s true. And if it IS true, then I’ll be swapping the motor from my tomato truck into this one.
It sucks to lose all of the modifications I’ve done on the tomato - temp, vac, voltage, and A/F gauges, the dual swing arm rear bumper, the front winch, the sliders, the crazy home brew tape cassette + Bluetooth stereo, the Tuffy console …. But those things can be ported over to the new truck in time if I want. I may keep the tomato around as a winter beater or smash-up trail rig. Not sure yet. My future, like the future for most people in the world, is very uncertain.
Initial diagnosis and show & tell to follow. For now I need to do a compression test.
Enter Matilda.
Clean frame, very minimal body rust. Her paint may be faded like an old pair of jeans, but like those jeans she’s comfortable. 124000 miles on the clock and the wear and tear feels like it - broken in but in good shape. That’s evident in not only the slightly faded but generally rust-free body, but also in the upholstery and plastic on the inside. The seat foam still feels great and even the dash only has one or two small cracks.
Hell, she’s got both snake blinders. Wonders never cease!
The bad news is that “cracked block” was a diagnoses given to me from the PO. I have a lot of testing in front of me to determine if that’s true. And if it IS true, then I’ll be swapping the motor from my tomato truck into this one.
It sucks to lose all of the modifications I’ve done on the tomato - temp, vac, voltage, and A/F gauges, the dual swing arm rear bumper, the front winch, the sliders, the crazy home brew tape cassette + Bluetooth stereo, the Tuffy console …. But those things can be ported over to the new truck in time if I want. I may keep the tomato around as a winter beater or smash-up trail rig. Not sure yet. My future, like the future for most people in the world, is very uncertain.
Initial diagnosis and show & tell to follow. For now I need to do a compression test.
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