2001 LX470 on 22" rims... (1 Viewer)

[John Young]

Hi All,
I'm shipping my '93 and '98 trucks back to the US for family use there so I decided I needed new wheels here in Dubai. I ended up buying a very nice, low mileage Japanese spec import that's been 'blinged' up, as you can see here:

Yes, those are 22x10 inch rims on the truck.

And she has an air dam of some sort on the front:

I drove the truck around 300km yesterday, down to the camel leather factory (not kidding) between Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, and the ride was terrible on washboard and over road bumps. Really bad.
AHC needs attention, which is another issue, but my question to the collective wisdom of this forum is whether there is any point to putting bigger rubber on these rims, or shall I just go and get some more conventionally sized rims and some 285/70 R17 rubber for example?


I'd really like to hear your thoughts.

 

[krice118]

I would guess that the horrible ride is partly due to the 22" wheels. Find some 16s or 17s and I bet the ride improves drastically.

 

[tacoduck]

buy 2003-07 stock 18in LC wheels, and new rubber.

 

[ToyotaIsLife]

Hi All,
I'm shipping my '93 and '98 trucks back to the US for family use there so I decided I needed new wheels here in Dubai. I ended up buying a very nice, low mileage Japanese spec import that's been 'blinged' up, as you can see here:

Yes, those are 22x10 inch rims on the truck.

And she has an air dam of some sort on the front:

I drove the truck around 300km yesterday, down to the camel leather factory (not kidding) between Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, and the ride was terrible on washboard and over road bumps. Really bad.
AHC needs attention, which is another issue, but my question to the collective wisdom of this forum is whether there is any point to putting bigger rubber on these rims, or shall I just go and get some more conventionally sized rims and some 285/70 R17 rubber for example?


I'd really like to hear your thoughts.

No sidewall, of course the ride quality will suffer, my suggestion would be 16 inch on some method race wheels, 265 bf goodrich . That would look pretty good, good side wall, enough cushion between you and the road.


(Went to far here )
Gut the hydraulics, get some high end shocks, icons or kings with extended travel, a torsion bar with a higher spring rate, uniball upper control arm to maximize wheel travel, adjust the torsion bar to get a 2.5 inch lift (mid shaft 60/40 up travel down travel) longer rear spring with a linear rate, get rid of the bumper and custom make a new fiberglass bumper with a high approach angle, remove the side steps. Emm, This is instantly what I thought when I saw that picture.

 

[John Young]

You guys are all confirming what I've been thinking. I played with the idea of getting bigger rubber on the existing 22 inch wheels, but there is not that much room in there. The good news is that stock rims are readily available from many scrap yards here.

Regarding ToyotaLife's suggestions, I did some of that with my 98 and am very happy with the result. For a while at least I think I will keep this one more modest. I am thinking of adding a Toyota winch inside the stock bumper and at least changing the side steps to the aluminum ones--which I like the look of, and they are useful when climbing in to the truck when you can't open the door all the way.

Re the AHC on the LX, one of the reasons I bought this truck was to see how this works. I've read posts both pro and con on this board. So far I am NOT impressed, but I don't think it is working properly. As soon as I get my other two trucks shipped I will put this truck in my local garage and have them do my typical thing which is to go from front to back replacing anything worn, work through the brakes, and to that I will add sorting out the AHC if they can do it. There are -plenty- of ACH parts in the local scrappers. I'd like to try driving a properly operating one for at least a few months, and see how it goes. But rims and tires will go as soon as I get back from my next trip home to the States.

(If anyone on this thread in the UAE has any interest in the rims and tires (which are new as of Feb I understand), just IM me.)

 

[John Young]

Well most of a year later, and a 93 Model 80 and a 92 Model 77 later, I finally got around to it. Bit of an ordeal. A couple of weeks ago I worked out a deal with a Model 100 wrecker up in Sharjah. He would take my 22" rims and the original 16 inch spare plus some cash in exchange for five 18 inch OEM rims in good condition. I went ahead and bought 285/65 R18 in a Korean brand I'd never heard of--Marshall.

I got up there on Saturday and the rims were not quite as nice as I had hoped, but the guy's laborer helped me sort through a bunch of tires to find 5 rims that are not too bad:

I asked for help swapping the rims but when we looked the 22" needed some awful thin socket. Really, really an awful rim and rim design. So the guy called his brother/partner and he came and lead me to a tire shop where they changed the four rims to the OEM rims with the old rubber on them.

But when we tried to get the spare we found that it had one of those awful spare locks but no key in the toolkit. We drove back to the wrecker who had two or three keys but none of them worked. So then we drove to the brother's shop and he had an even dozen. Still no joy. He suggested that I find a repair shop and have them cut off the spare winch with a torch and then replaced it with one he sold me in the US Land Cruiser style that just operates with the normal tool kit parts.

So off I went..and found a muffler shop that was happy for the drop in business. Everyone was on break (in Sharjah nobody works between 2 and 4 pm), so I hung out with a cigar and enjoyed the fine weather:

Until the guys got back:

They tried for a while to find a way to defeat the lock but ultimately just cut off the cable with a torch while another guy held the tire up. No drama and I could finally fulfill my deal with the scrapper and give the spare/rim (in like-new condition I might add) to him.

 

[John Young]

After I left the guys that I traded the rims with, I stopped at another scrap yard heavy on land cruisers to have another look at an OEM bull bar I had seen last week. I liked it again and bought it.

I've never seen one of these before and the quality is really, really good. I'm going to shove this into the LR77 I'm shipping to the US and then put it on my tan 1998 model 100 'Dhanno' which deserves a better, but still classy, bumper.

I then drove on the old, unknown rubber through a very unusual for Dubai hard rain to the place where the online tire store, Pitstop Arabia, recommended because it included free alignment. They swapped new tires for old with no drama:

And away I went to deliver an instrument cluster to my mechanic who is working on the LR77. The truck drove like a completely different machine. And it was so, so nice! Just comfortable and easy and ... nice with no drama. I even had he pleasure of driving past people in ordinary cars hesitating before driving through high water because, of course, Dubai has very little infrastructure to deal with rainwater.

I'm sure it was a foot deep in spots and I checked later and not a drop came in on any of the four doors.