crushers
post ho
or better known as the putz through BC Canada Kootenay Valley.
After our great Long May Weekend in Mountain Aire area I convinced Berni to take another week off from work and do a putz.
(putz-to putz here and there with basicly no goal in mind)
so we loaded Cruiser in the back with a couple over night bags and away we went. (the back is pleanty big enough, with the rear seats foled up, for Cruiser to have lots of "lay down room".
first the truck in the test:
http://www.luxuryimports.ca/forsale/1989LJ71-1/index.php
31" tires and all stock, no mods at all except a larger exhaust from the contector back.
We started from Calgary and headed down to Ferni (we filled up here and started recording our milage and fuel) to visit Land Cruiser Gord and check out his stash of cruisers and i got lucky and scored a new top and back for my 1995 PZJ75 and he scored a FF for the back of his HJ75,
>side note:
which by the way he got ripped off on purchasing from a guy in Ontario (it never even had a lower rad on the engine when Gord recieved it from the train. it was advertised as rust free but had tons of fiberglass in the box). NOT ALL LAND CRUISER SELLERS ARE HONEST. i am sure many of you have seen the ad here, i must say BUYER BEWARE. these trucks are coming in from south america. it would not be so bad but the seller will not return the calls from Gord.
end side note>
the little LJ71 ran great, it purred along with no problems and was very comfortable. we hit a small amount of rain but nothing like what we heard they had just prior to our arrival.
after a bite to eat we headed on down to Creston, we did a putz on the local back roads and found a SWEET property that was for sale but alas there was an offer already submitted... we spent the night there in a small motel (waste of money, the walls were paper thin and a pair of noisy guys in the next room kep t us awake till 1AM and then they started their Cummins at 5:30 AM right outside our windown and let it rattle away for at least 15 min and yelled back and forth in the room...) we decided to head up the Kootenay Valley instead of out to the island (sorry Rob, next time). What a beautiful drive that is, if you are ever out for a putz definately give this valley a drive. we kept the speed to 80-90 k/h and pulled over if the traffic came up behind us, which wasn't often at all) a few nice hikes and checked out the local towns as we went through. we took the ferry accross to Belfour and headed down to Nelson to visit a new wheeling buddy from May Long Weekend. Andre and Nicoleen made us very welcome. we had a water view the entire trip up the Kootenay Valley, just beautiful.
From Nelson the next day we headed up to the hot springs at Halcyon. the food there was fantastic, the accomodations were great and we both wished in hindsight we would have stayed another couple days. it was nice and quiet and the water was HOT. plunging into the cold pool was heart stopping but refreshing. the next morning we headed up to Revelstock and did our first fill up for the record.
640 km and 53 l of fuel used which works out to 8.28 L/100 or 34.11 mpg.
the little truck never missed a beat or neaded more power for this leg of the drive , it purred right along and was a pleasure to drive.
From here we decided to drive up to Mica dam, the drive up was very nice, still just putzing along and had lunch beside Revelstoke lake on a small path berni found. what a wicked little camping spot for future reference. after luch we kept driving up and just as we crossed Gold Stream i noticed the wicked rap[ids so i wanted to find a trail down to the bottom, well i did find a trail and at the bottom there was no sign of the stream but we did come across a nice sized Black Bear which cut our vist a bit short.
We headed back up to highway 23 N and carried on to the damn, that dam is tall but completely blocked off to visitors. the upper lake didn't look too inviting but i would love to boat the lower lake sometime in the future.
Berni wanted to do a speed run back to the #1 so we opened up the little 2L-T for the boot back down and at times we were up to 135 k/h (of course this was downhill) the little motor just loved the run and the truck road the corners very smooth but by now we had been in the truck for about 9 hours and my back was begining to ache. a couple negatives of the truck is the leg room for a long in the leg block such as myself and the inability to lay the seat back with the back seats folded up. up to now it never bothered me in the full 2 days of driving. i did find though that if i took my snadles off i could get my foot up behind the clutch and that felt like heaven.
once we hit Golden it was the end, i was beat.
the next morning we headed off to Feild for breaky at a small cafe we had heard about and this is when the LJ71 showed it's limitations. it did NOT like the Rogers Pass, i had to drop to 3rd a couple times and i feel that if the LJ71 had Propane injection i could have stayed in 4th easily up those hills. up to now it was seldom that i needed to drop to 4th so 3rd came as a shock.
after a great sandwich and a couple awsume Brownies we headed for home. we made it to Cochrane before needing to fill up (actually we didn't need to but i was getting nevous at 721 km and pulling those hills and speeds around 110 all the way from the last pit stop.
721 KM and 74 L of fuel which works out to 10.26 L/100 km or 27.52 m/g
to me this is a fine truck for a putz, an excellent truck for a dd around town and we even put it up some great off road trails we found over the couple of days in the mountains. not a hickup, not a burp in the 1719 km we put on.
<side note:
i did not confirm the speed with the GPS, the batteries were dead. so the actual milage could be better than this by 10%.
end side note>
let me know what you think.
cheers
After our great Long May Weekend in Mountain Aire area I convinced Berni to take another week off from work and do a putz.
(putz-to putz here and there with basicly no goal in mind)
so we loaded Cruiser in the back with a couple over night bags and away we went. (the back is pleanty big enough, with the rear seats foled up, for Cruiser to have lots of "lay down room".
first the truck in the test:
http://www.luxuryimports.ca/forsale/1989LJ71-1/index.php
31" tires and all stock, no mods at all except a larger exhaust from the contector back.
We started from Calgary and headed down to Ferni (we filled up here and started recording our milage and fuel) to visit Land Cruiser Gord and check out his stash of cruisers and i got lucky and scored a new top and back for my 1995 PZJ75 and he scored a FF for the back of his HJ75,
>side note:
which by the way he got ripped off on purchasing from a guy in Ontario (it never even had a lower rad on the engine when Gord recieved it from the train. it was advertised as rust free but had tons of fiberglass in the box). NOT ALL LAND CRUISER SELLERS ARE HONEST. i am sure many of you have seen the ad here, i must say BUYER BEWARE. these trucks are coming in from south america. it would not be so bad but the seller will not return the calls from Gord.
end side note>
the little LJ71 ran great, it purred along with no problems and was very comfortable. we hit a small amount of rain but nothing like what we heard they had just prior to our arrival.
after a bite to eat we headed on down to Creston, we did a putz on the local back roads and found a SWEET property that was for sale but alas there was an offer already submitted... we spent the night there in a small motel (waste of money, the walls were paper thin and a pair of noisy guys in the next room kep t us awake till 1AM and then they started their Cummins at 5:30 AM right outside our windown and let it rattle away for at least 15 min and yelled back and forth in the room...) we decided to head up the Kootenay Valley instead of out to the island (sorry Rob, next time). What a beautiful drive that is, if you are ever out for a putz definately give this valley a drive. we kept the speed to 80-90 k/h and pulled over if the traffic came up behind us, which wasn't often at all) a few nice hikes and checked out the local towns as we went through. we took the ferry accross to Belfour and headed down to Nelson to visit a new wheeling buddy from May Long Weekend. Andre and Nicoleen made us very welcome. we had a water view the entire trip up the Kootenay Valley, just beautiful.
From Nelson the next day we headed up to the hot springs at Halcyon. the food there was fantastic, the accomodations were great and we both wished in hindsight we would have stayed another couple days. it was nice and quiet and the water was HOT. plunging into the cold pool was heart stopping but refreshing. the next morning we headed up to Revelstock and did our first fill up for the record.
640 km and 53 l of fuel used which works out to 8.28 L/100 or 34.11 mpg.
the little truck never missed a beat or neaded more power for this leg of the drive , it purred right along and was a pleasure to drive.
From here we decided to drive up to Mica dam, the drive up was very nice, still just putzing along and had lunch beside Revelstoke lake on a small path berni found. what a wicked little camping spot for future reference. after luch we kept driving up and just as we crossed Gold Stream i noticed the wicked rap[ids so i wanted to find a trail down to the bottom, well i did find a trail and at the bottom there was no sign of the stream but we did come across a nice sized Black Bear which cut our vist a bit short.
We headed back up to highway 23 N and carried on to the damn, that dam is tall but completely blocked off to visitors. the upper lake didn't look too inviting but i would love to boat the lower lake sometime in the future.
Berni wanted to do a speed run back to the #1 so we opened up the little 2L-T for the boot back down and at times we were up to 135 k/h (of course this was downhill) the little motor just loved the run and the truck road the corners very smooth but by now we had been in the truck for about 9 hours and my back was begining to ache. a couple negatives of the truck is the leg room for a long in the leg block such as myself and the inability to lay the seat back with the back seats folded up. up to now it never bothered me in the full 2 days of driving. i did find though that if i took my snadles off i could get my foot up behind the clutch and that felt like heaven.
once we hit Golden it was the end, i was beat.
the next morning we headed off to Feild for breaky at a small cafe we had heard about and this is when the LJ71 showed it's limitations. it did NOT like the Rogers Pass, i had to drop to 3rd a couple times and i feel that if the LJ71 had Propane injection i could have stayed in 4th easily up those hills. up to now it was seldom that i needed to drop to 4th so 3rd came as a shock.
after a great sandwich and a couple awsume Brownies we headed for home. we made it to Cochrane before needing to fill up (actually we didn't need to but i was getting nevous at 721 km and pulling those hills and speeds around 110 all the way from the last pit stop.
721 KM and 74 L of fuel which works out to 10.26 L/100 km or 27.52 m/g
to me this is a fine truck for a putz, an excellent truck for a dd around town and we even put it up some great off road trails we found over the couple of days in the mountains. not a hickup, not a burp in the 1719 km we put on.
<side note:
i did not confirm the speed with the GPS, the batteries were dead. so the actual milage could be better than this by 10%.
end side note>
let me know what you think.
cheers
