It has been a while when I first discovered ih8mud and since then have been fascinated by all the crazy people of the forum, their knowledge and deep understanding of their rigs as well as all the home built trucks that are shown with brilliant ideas.
After more than 2 years of owning a LX470, ih8mud (at least to me) has evolved to be the most valuable source of information about my truck - even outrunning the FSM sometimes.
In return to all the information received I want to share the story of my Cruiser's evolution with you. I'll try to translate all the metric measures into US-based ones as good as I can.
>> >>
It all started way back when I was maybe 14 years old and being fascinated by the legendary durability of Land Cruisers. I ordered advertising flyers of the 100 Series and Toyota Hilux just to wrap my school books in them and whenever the lessons began to get boring, I imagined equipping the Land Cruiser of my dreams with winches, muddy tires and all that kind of adventurous stuff.
Back in 2017 I finally had the chance to fulfill that dream of buying a 100 Series. I had searched the web for Land Cruisers for some months but only ran into the more common 1HD-FTE Diesels, often with significantly more than 200tsd miles on the clock.
Considering the fact that due to rather strict emmission regulations in Germany it might be difficult to legally enter some cities with the old fashioned trusty Diesels and due to the fact that I absolutely love the sound of a petrol V8, I skipped the 1HD models.
While Diesel Cruisers outnumber the Petrol ones by 25 to 1 or something in Europe there had been no more than six 2UZ-powered trucks all over Western and Southern Europe for sale over a period of maybe half a year. Most of them were in pretty bad shape with rather high milage or bad service history.
I finally and by accident found a 2005 LX470 in pretty good shape as one could tell from all the photos. The truck had been imported from the US and had been serviced in Bukarest (Romania) as the Company Car of a Managing Director its whole life. I doubt it has ever seen rough tracks off the beaten paths. It had all the options available except for HUD but came with Night Vision instead. After clarifying all the details the seller offered to drive the Cruiser 1000 miles through Europe on his own expense so I could inspect it in Germany.
Cristian managed to get around 17 to 18 miles to the gallon, which is about the same consumption I am achieving today while driving overland.
After he crossed 4 countries in 2 days I layed eyes on that beauty for the first time.
I was stunned by the looks and size, I loved the interior and I was scared to test drive that monster on the narrow german roads... I discovered some minor faults and repaired damage to the bumpers but somehow it did not make me nervous about the rest of the structure of the car as all lines and gaps still matched well. The passenger side crash box has a small indentation but till date I discovered no issues other than that so I'm fine with it.
Two hours later and I was on my way to drive my very first, new to me Land Cruiser to a company called UScars24. These guys had more than 40 old and new American Muscle Cars in their garage, more than 20 of those being Mustangs from the 60s... I was pretty impressed. They proved to be experts when it comes to registration of US cars in the german market and under german law even if they might not be called cheap.
Although being in the European Union, Romanian authorities seem to be completely okay with having cars registered that come with US-Spec lighting and features. Unfortunatelly the German Technical Inspection Agencies are pretty complicated when it comes to emissions and lighting.
Being a US-Spec Cruiser, emissions were no problem at all (as would have been with UAE ones), but in terms of lighting, I had to add a rear fog light and get the low beam head lights completely build up with new Hella "E"-stamped projector lenses. I don't know the type of lens they put in for sure but to summ it up, I payed a little fortune of 3800$ to get all the paperwork, license and the lighting done before I picked it up 2 weeks later. That way let's say the first mod took place even before i got the license plates on...
At that time she had done 102k miles, was running excelent and smooth and while I still had to discover all the features of my car I enjoyed people staring at the truck all the time when going by or starting the engine in the parking lot. On the 300 miles drive home the tension slowly fell of from me and I came to realise it would be the start of some big project that I had long been dreaming of.
In August 2017 this is what she looked like in good company.
It did not take too long before I began working on the Lexus...
Regards, Ruben
After more than 2 years of owning a LX470, ih8mud (at least to me) has evolved to be the most valuable source of information about my truck - even outrunning the FSM sometimes.
In return to all the information received I want to share the story of my Cruiser's evolution with you. I'll try to translate all the metric measures into US-based ones as good as I can.
>> >>
It all started way back when I was maybe 14 years old and being fascinated by the legendary durability of Land Cruisers. I ordered advertising flyers of the 100 Series and Toyota Hilux just to wrap my school books in them and whenever the lessons began to get boring, I imagined equipping the Land Cruiser of my dreams with winches, muddy tires and all that kind of adventurous stuff.
Back in 2017 I finally had the chance to fulfill that dream of buying a 100 Series. I had searched the web for Land Cruisers for some months but only ran into the more common 1HD-FTE Diesels, often with significantly more than 200tsd miles on the clock.
Considering the fact that due to rather strict emmission regulations in Germany it might be difficult to legally enter some cities with the old fashioned trusty Diesels and due to the fact that I absolutely love the sound of a petrol V8, I skipped the 1HD models.
While Diesel Cruisers outnumber the Petrol ones by 25 to 1 or something in Europe there had been no more than six 2UZ-powered trucks all over Western and Southern Europe for sale over a period of maybe half a year. Most of them were in pretty bad shape with rather high milage or bad service history.
I finally and by accident found a 2005 LX470 in pretty good shape as one could tell from all the photos. The truck had been imported from the US and had been serviced in Bukarest (Romania) as the Company Car of a Managing Director its whole life. I doubt it has ever seen rough tracks off the beaten paths. It had all the options available except for HUD but came with Night Vision instead. After clarifying all the details the seller offered to drive the Cruiser 1000 miles through Europe on his own expense so I could inspect it in Germany.
Cristian managed to get around 17 to 18 miles to the gallon, which is about the same consumption I am achieving today while driving overland.
After he crossed 4 countries in 2 days I layed eyes on that beauty for the first time.
I was stunned by the looks and size, I loved the interior and I was scared to test drive that monster on the narrow german roads... I discovered some minor faults and repaired damage to the bumpers but somehow it did not make me nervous about the rest of the structure of the car as all lines and gaps still matched well. The passenger side crash box has a small indentation but till date I discovered no issues other than that so I'm fine with it.
Two hours later and I was on my way to drive my very first, new to me Land Cruiser to a company called UScars24. These guys had more than 40 old and new American Muscle Cars in their garage, more than 20 of those being Mustangs from the 60s... I was pretty impressed. They proved to be experts when it comes to registration of US cars in the german market and under german law even if they might not be called cheap.
Although being in the European Union, Romanian authorities seem to be completely okay with having cars registered that come with US-Spec lighting and features. Unfortunatelly the German Technical Inspection Agencies are pretty complicated when it comes to emissions and lighting.
Being a US-Spec Cruiser, emissions were no problem at all (as would have been with UAE ones), but in terms of lighting, I had to add a rear fog light and get the low beam head lights completely build up with new Hella "E"-stamped projector lenses. I don't know the type of lens they put in for sure but to summ it up, I payed a little fortune of 3800$ to get all the paperwork, license and the lighting done before I picked it up 2 weeks later. That way let's say the first mod took place even before i got the license plates on...
At that time she had done 102k miles, was running excelent and smooth and while I still had to discover all the features of my car I enjoyed people staring at the truck all the time when going by or starting the engine in the parking lot. On the 300 miles drive home the tension slowly fell of from me and I came to realise it would be the start of some big project that I had long been dreaming of.
In August 2017 this is what she looked like in good company.
It did not take too long before I began working on the Lexus...
Regards, Ruben
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. So far they held up pretty well for 3 years now and I'm rather happy with them although I recently realised the rubber is getting a little stiffer.
Nevertheless the new cover had a pretty snug fit compared to the old one and I was satisfied with the result.
