So after owning this truck for a little over a year, I’ve decided it’s time for a build thread. First off, a little backstory:
I was in southern Alabama for work summer of 2017. I went by and saw my grandparents while I was in the area and they wanted to show me a Land Cruiser around the corner that they were interested in buying. No biggie, we went to check it out and it was one of the roughest looking hundos I had ever seen. A broken tail light, missing trim pieces, dents in body panels, paint that doesn’t belong on the vehicle, and that was just the outside. Inside was the same story but worse. The steering wheel and shifter were peeling, the driver’s seat was torn all to pieces. The passengers seat and the rear seats appeared to have never been cleaned, and we weren’t even able to open the doors to actually get inside. Regardless, the truck had the rear locker. I told them for the right price, it might be reasonable if they really wanted it, and they ended up buying it. To make a super long story short, the greatest grandparents ended up surprise gifting me a 1999 Land Cruiser and I plan to detail its journey back to greatness. This all started with getting it back to Tennessee. Trailering was the winning decision due to the extremely rough shape an questionable maintenance records.
After getting the truck back to Tennessee, there were two glaringly obvious things that needed to be taken care of: the first being a timing belt change and the second being a new set of tires. I happened to luck out because one of the local Toyota dealers was running a maintenance special for timing belt/water pump at $850 and Discount Tire was price matching 4WheelParts ridiculous price on BFG AT KO2s, so both of those items got knocked out relatively quickly. You can see one of the missing trim pieces in the picture below.
After this, work slowed down significantly as my wife and I were moving into a new house and I didn’t have a lot of time to work on it. I did manage to fix all 5 water leaks:
Third brake light
Rear passenger window
Sunroof drain x2
Windshield
It finally began smelling better on the inside which inspired me to find the missing trim piece and also remove the running boards.
You’ll also notice in the picture above that I added the bug deflector. After driving at night, I’m not convinced it reflects anything, but I have always liked the look of them. I also managed to remove the mud flaps and pop out one dent manually.
I was in southern Alabama for work summer of 2017. I went by and saw my grandparents while I was in the area and they wanted to show me a Land Cruiser around the corner that they were interested in buying. No biggie, we went to check it out and it was one of the roughest looking hundos I had ever seen. A broken tail light, missing trim pieces, dents in body panels, paint that doesn’t belong on the vehicle, and that was just the outside. Inside was the same story but worse. The steering wheel and shifter were peeling, the driver’s seat was torn all to pieces. The passengers seat and the rear seats appeared to have never been cleaned, and we weren’t even able to open the doors to actually get inside. Regardless, the truck had the rear locker. I told them for the right price, it might be reasonable if they really wanted it, and they ended up buying it. To make a super long story short, the greatest grandparents ended up surprise gifting me a 1999 Land Cruiser and I plan to detail its journey back to greatness. This all started with getting it back to Tennessee. Trailering was the winning decision due to the extremely rough shape an questionable maintenance records.
After getting the truck back to Tennessee, there were two glaringly obvious things that needed to be taken care of: the first being a timing belt change and the second being a new set of tires. I happened to luck out because one of the local Toyota dealers was running a maintenance special for timing belt/water pump at $850 and Discount Tire was price matching 4WheelParts ridiculous price on BFG AT KO2s, so both of those items got knocked out relatively quickly. You can see one of the missing trim pieces in the picture below.
After this, work slowed down significantly as my wife and I were moving into a new house and I didn’t have a lot of time to work on it. I did manage to fix all 5 water leaks:
Third brake light
Rear passenger window
Sunroof drain x2
Windshield
It finally began smelling better on the inside which inspired me to find the missing trim piece and also remove the running boards.
You’ll also notice in the picture above that I added the bug deflector. After driving at night, I’m not convinced it reflects anything, but I have always liked the look of them. I also managed to remove the mud flaps and pop out one dent manually.
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