Skillet
Skillet
Having admired the 80 series for years, and while driving home from Tahoe in July of 2005, I passed a very nicely setup 80 series cruiser, lumbering along in the slow lane of the Luther Gibson freeway near Martinez.
I slowed my Tacoma, stared, drooled and was hooked.
When I got home, I put the Taco up for sale.
With a little research I found IH8MUD and began my search for the right 80.
In November of that same year, my search ended with a 1993 FZJ80 with 183,000 miles on the odometer and factory locks.
I would be the third owner.
The first owner bought it new in San Jose, CA, a dot-com Mom who put about 80K on it.
Second owner bought it and put on another 103K commuting over highway 17 from Aptos to San Jose.
At 166K, PO had the front end completely gone through, new starter, new power steering lines, radiator hoses, valve adjust, etc, etc…work that totaled $4600 from Stevens Creek Toyota in San Jose and all the paperwork to back it up.
I negotiated from an $7,800 asking price to $7,000 and was on my way to mod-ville.
Supposedly there are cheaper 93’s out there but I figured that with the recent PO investment, it was a fine deal.
There have been a couple of small issues since I have owned it which include a new condenser and refill for the AC and a new #6 injector which was destroyed by a small leak of coolant dripping on it over a long period of time from a leaky heater hose.
My goal with this vehicle was and is an expeditionary type vehicle that can tackle most obstacles if necessary. Not big on climbing rocks with this one, I have a 40 for that, but she will get where she needs to go.
Among many small – medium adventures around California and surrounding states, I took the vehicle on an 18-day 3,200mile trip through Mexico in October of 2006 with no problems whatsoever.
You can see a writeup on the trip here.
Many things replaced and repaired with the help of all of you fine people on this site, thanks for that.
A special thanks to CDan who gets you the goods to make it all happen!
I jumped right into the modifications and did not look back.
The main reason being my desire to finally make a vehicle exactly what I want without sitting around and thinking about it until it is too late.
With the sale of my ’01 Taco, I had some extra money to get it done.
Most of the stuff was taken care of within about 1½ years of the date of purchase but there are still things to do.
There are now about 207K on the odometer.
Mods and PM are as follows, not exactly in this order:
PM:
Mods:
I slowed my Tacoma, stared, drooled and was hooked.
When I got home, I put the Taco up for sale.
With a little research I found IH8MUD and began my search for the right 80.
In November of that same year, my search ended with a 1993 FZJ80 with 183,000 miles on the odometer and factory locks.
I would be the third owner.
The first owner bought it new in San Jose, CA, a dot-com Mom who put about 80K on it.
Second owner bought it and put on another 103K commuting over highway 17 from Aptos to San Jose.
At 166K, PO had the front end completely gone through, new starter, new power steering lines, radiator hoses, valve adjust, etc, etc…work that totaled $4600 from Stevens Creek Toyota in San Jose and all the paperwork to back it up.
I negotiated from an $7,800 asking price to $7,000 and was on my way to mod-ville.
Supposedly there are cheaper 93’s out there but I figured that with the recent PO investment, it was a fine deal.
There have been a couple of small issues since I have owned it which include a new condenser and refill for the AC and a new #6 injector which was destroyed by a small leak of coolant dripping on it over a long period of time from a leaky heater hose.
My goal with this vehicle was and is an expeditionary type vehicle that can tackle most obstacles if necessary. Not big on climbing rocks with this one, I have a 40 for that, but she will get where she needs to go.
Among many small – medium adventures around California and surrounding states, I took the vehicle on an 18-day 3,200mile trip through Mexico in October of 2006 with no problems whatsoever.
You can see a writeup on the trip here.
Many things replaced and repaired with the help of all of you fine people on this site, thanks for that.
A special thanks to CDan who gets you the goods to make it all happen!
I jumped right into the modifications and did not look back.
The main reason being my desire to finally make a vehicle exactly what I want without sitting around and thinking about it until it is too late.
With the sale of my ’01 Taco, I had some extra money to get it done.
Most of the stuff was taken care of within about 1½ years of the date of purchase but there are still things to do.
There are now about 207K on the odometer.
Mods and PM are as follows, not exactly in this order:
PM:
- Mobil-1 synthetic in front, rear and center differentials as well as and in the engine and transmission. This included the pan drop on the tranny.
- PHH done with green & red silicone from Napa and spring-loaded hose clamps.
- New throttle cable.
- New O2 sensors.
- Most hoses replaced.
- New Toyota U-joints and Toyota bolts on both drive-shafts, balanced and Green Grease all around.
- Radiator / cooling system flushed and filled with fresh Toyota Red.
- Full tune with OEM Toyota goodies.
- Wiring harness repositioned and wrapped with fresh heat-shield fiberglass cloth.
- Brake lines flushed and replaced fluid with full synthetic fluid.
- Power steering fluid flushed and replaced with full synthetic fluid.
- New air intake hose.
- Rear bearings replaced, repacked and resealed.
- Front bearings repacked and resealed.
Mods:
- ARB winch mount with Warn 8000xi. It is small but I had it in the shed, new in box and it has worked for me more than once.
- 4x4 Labs rear bumper with swing out ladder, spare carrier and Hi-Lift mount. Check it out here.
- BudBuilt drag link and tie rod.
- Hanna sliders. Clunked at first, here is my fix.
- OME 850-J springs in the front with OME 4” Comps in the rear. OME Shocks, N73 front & N74E in back and OME steering stabilizer. Castor correction complete. Originally, I went with the standard OME 2.5” but with all of the weight that I eventually put in the beast, they were simply not enough as I wore ¼ of my rear flares off during a journey through Sonora, MX. See the new look here. If you look here https://forum.ih8mud.com/showthread.php?t=118830&highlight=Surf+turf at the first pic, you can see why I had to go higher.
- PIAA 520 drivers.
- Auxiliary back up lights wired to reverse.
- BFG All Terrain in size 305 on stock black powder coated rims.
- Dual Battery system with Optima Blue & Yellow and Slee water relocation kit.
- 44 gallon Long-Ranger auxiliary fuel tank replacing stock mounted spare tire with George’s control unit and OEM sub-tank switch and Toyota OZ dual fill neck.
- Dual rear storage drawer system by Jeff Kaufman of Napa, with bed-liner painted on top to prevent slippage. Link to pics here.
- Engel 45 fridge slide mounted to the top of the drawer system.
- Pioneer H/U.
- Cobra dash-mounted C/B below the Pioneer.
- New Pioneer speakers all the way around with Infinity base unit in back. Writeup here.
- iPod hardwired to H/U
- Garmin 378 GPS unit with XM Radio hard wired to H/U.
- 1500w Xantrex inverter mounted in back.
- Hand Throttle.
- Center Diff Lock switch.
- Japanese model PS grab bar.
- George’s LED interior lights all the way around.
- Rock lights. Here is the thread.
- Lower profile aftermarket muffler.
- Husky liners front and rear.
- SOR Tuff-Duck seat covers front and rear.
- Car-Top-Tent ‘Mombasa’ mounted on a triple Yakima system for comfy, sturdy camping.
- DBA Gold, drilled and slotted rotors with 4x4 pads from MFE.
- Cruiser Crap bottle-opener on the ARB.
- Fiamm air horns.
- Little clip on sun visor to hold my sunglasses.
- INTI roof rack.
- 4.88 gears.
- 2m radio.
- Better and more off –road lights up top.
- Overhead console with auxiliary fuel gauge from OZ rig.
Last edited:
Riley
