- Joined
- May 22, 2014
- Threads
- 88
- Messages
- 597
- Location
- Boulder, Colorado
- Website
- www.bluedogoff-road.com
Hey everyone. I've had this idea for a while - I want this thread to be sort of a catch all for how to build a Land Cruiser 40/55/60/70 that'll punch above its weight class in terms of capability and durability while still keeping it all the Land Cruiser things intact. I'm putting it here because I'm using my 1997 HZJ73 build as the example (moderator if there's a better place for this to be seen as a resource for all, that would be awesome, I'd love for this to be a resource for all as a broad overview of what works and maybe what doesn't for all to see). Having owned every series of leaf sprung Land Cruiser (minus a 55 but maybe I'll fix that someday), I've found that the tech side is largely the same and until Toyota moved onto the 80 series pretty much all of these ideas are applicable across all of the earlier Land Cruiser types with specific differences attributed to certain configurations and models, but that's ok let's put them here! As the internet gets more sophisticated with search engines and AI while also becoming more clogged with crap and opinions, perhaps one big basket where all of this lives could be useful and fun and give both long time Toyota fans and newcomers a place to talk shop and be a community.
I'm starting this thread at the top - yesterday I just took my freshly built/cobbled together HZJ73 to Kelly Flats here in Colorado after sort of half rushing/half forcing it together after buying it in April and attempting to take it up "The Chute" - a pretty insane obstacle that is not appropriate for moderately built rigs and lived to tell the tale. My nice Land Cruiser on leaf springs and 35s has no business being there, but I wanted to take it up there to prove a point. I have been waiting to start this thread to make sure I was right about my rig and my theories about how to build these things before I opened my mouth. My views are hardly revolutionary, I'm not doing anything new, but I've been really diligent about taking everything I've learned about Land Cruisers over the years - what works and what does not - and applying it to this one rig.
I'm starting here because I've tried to start a build thread many times and I have never had the time - I've always been working, being a father, being a husband, and now being a business owner that have kept me from building this rig and doing a proper thread or maintaining my Instagram, so I'm going to do this in chunks starting here. I own a shop that I bought April of last year (more on that later), which has afforded me being able to spread the work load between myself and some of my employees to make this happen. I knew what I wanted to do with this truck, but honestly some of it was just sort of forced in order to get it ready before the summer was over so I could take it out, and I did take some short cuts (not on parts or execution but on prep) that did bite me in the ass that I'll be honest about here so you don't do what I did. I have the resources now to shoot myself in the foot and survive because of having a shop that you may not have, so in this thread I'm hoping everyone can talk about there F ups like I will so you do a better job and avoid the pitfalls of poor planning. I would never approach a customer rig like this, but it's mine and if you own an auto shop you know that sometimes you've just gotta sort of ram your vehicle through when a rack is open, timing be damned, so you can minimize disruption to customers, cash flow and shop schedules.
My crew was skeptical about my obsession with Land Cruisers, they didn't understand why I bought my HZJ73 to build after my miserable JL Wrangler experience instead of grabbing up a TJ/JK Wrangler to tear apart and build like a normal person with 'tons and giant tires and a LS/Hemi swap that we specialize in (I have one of those builds planned for the shop, a 65 Gladiator, but that's been shelved for the short term while we tend to customer builds and get through the brand transition). Even my more open techs rolled their eyes when I started racking the truck to get it done, and I pushed my youngest tech (who has tons of potential) to his limit, throwing him to the wolves because I wanted him to learn the platform with limited guidance from me. Interestingly enough, I've found as I began building this Land Cruiser, that there are very few shops in the Denver area proper who touch the older rigs. We're right down the street from Slee, who are friends of ours and they haven't touched an older Cruiser in years. So while this thread is not an advertisement for the shop, I wanted to keep the door open as a shop Toyota guys in the region who want to build an older Land Cruiser for the mountains following the same sort of philosophies that have made us successful - over build, assume you're going to take your vehicle on the hardest trails it can fit on because it's Colorado and everything here is hard on a 4x4, make it safe, make it drive nicely so you'll want to use it, and be an upstanding member of your community with your rig so pick up trash as you go, leave the trail better than you found out and always be willing to help out your fellow man if you run across a broken rig on the trail. We're not a restoration shop, and while we do that work more and more as we figure out who we're going to be, I have not going to try and compete with Proffitt's or Red Line Land Cruisers who do amazing work on these Toyotas. We're a shop that is based total functionality and if someone on this old rigs sucks and can be cut off and replaced with something better, we'll do it.
So, back to yesterday. We chose Kelly Flats because it's relatively short, far enough away from things to keep the traffic to a minimum on this Labor day weekend, but has some significant obstacles like "Heart Attack Hill" and "The Chute" that are notorious for eating even well built rigs, with roll overs and major breakage commonplace on busy weekends. We took it out with some of my crew and my lead fabricator's heavily built CJ on tons and 40s (which represents the type of rig we traditionally build) and a trailer just incase my Land Cruiser exploded and we had to drive the CJ back and trailer the Cruiser if it died. The Cruiser was amazing and blew my crew's minds with what I was able to tackle with it, and made them believers. The tech who begrudgingly spend the most time with it is now a fan, and has acknowledged that working on these things might not be a bad thing. If you tried to take a TJ Rubicon with an equivalent build - factory axles (upgraded or not), 35s and factory steering, it would have broken with the beating we gave it. I took all the hard lines, pushed it to the limit, and attempted The Chute. I was not able to get up The Chute, but not for lack of trying. We threw the Cruiser at it almost a dozen times, and it did not break. It just took it. We were unable to complete the obstacle due to lack of width. I'm on factory axles with 35x11.50R17 tires on 4.5" backspace beadlocks, nearly two feet narrower than the CJ's track. We had to climb a wall on the left side and stay on it, and ultimately every time we were almost over the obstacle, the tires would slip and the rig would get sucked into the hole underneath and it would be forced to drag itself backwards and start again. Sadly, during one of these attempts I did rake the door across the rock face. I know, I know, this is such a nice rig - but that's the risk you take if you're going to take your truck out. I'm going to get it fixed this winter, this Land Cruiser is not a rig I intend on turning into a beer can but I did build it to use it. I'll keep it nicer, but I use it and over time it'll acquire some war wounds and all of the scratches on the sliders, bumper and bead lock rings will stay. For the next couple of months I'll wear the body damage as a badge of honor until the season ends and I'll send it to the body shop we work with to get it touched up. Might even do a car show with it as is
The point here is that the truck kept up with a gnarly linked heavily modified CJ on 40s and an LS, we did all the same stuff, and the Land Cruiser drove home just fine. You couldn't even tell that it had just been flogged from the driver's seat. That's not to say if I keep doing this over and over again I would eventually bend an axle housing and break something important, I don't intend to keep throwing it at things this big, I wanted to push the limits and see if it did what I thought it would do.
Here is the basic overview of the rig so everyone knows what we're looking at:
-1997 HZJ73 Manual transmission + factory e lockers, 285K on the odometer and counting.
- Suspension: some sort of Japanese performance leaf springs and anti inversion shackles totaling about 4" lift, Fox 2.0 remote shocks, Timbren bumps tops, relocated rear shock mounts, some additional suspension messages.
-Axles: factory axles, factory e lockers, factory 4.11 gears, RCV front axle shafts, Nitro chromoly rear shafts, cut to fit (had them laying around the shop leftover from my BJ74 that I intended to do this with before taking a 5 year hellish detour into JL Wrangler ownership), front knuckles got a light rebuild with the shafts, factory steering arm studs and hub studs properly torqued). Previous owner converted the auto hubs to off the shelf warn manual hubs.
-Engine: factory 1HZ diesel with some sort of air leak in the fuel lines (have determined after this that it really must be at the fuel tank, which was my next project anyway), that has had some basic maintenance, minus the air leak it runs awesome. The only modification done so far is the removal of the factory resonator and replacement of the factory muffler with a Magnaflow pass through muffler that is too loud but actually made a huge difference in performance (more on that later). 1HZ struggles with altitude, but is great otherwise.
-Transmission: factory H55F 5 speed with unknown miles on clutch.
-Transfer case: factory 38mm split case with Sumo 4:1 gears and under drive. Absolute game changer and will be the subject of a write up on this thread, also a difficult installation. Factory vacuum shift converted to a manual shift from @cruiseroutfit while doing the t case. Sidenote: huge shoutout to the crew at Cruiser Outfitters. More on that later, of course.
-Body: ARB front bumper with Come Up Winch and 4x4 labs rear bumper (both installed by the previous owner). Modified cheapy Trail Gear 72" sliders which are an almost perfect fit, had to work around the exhaust on the right side). Baja Designs LP6 light pods and Squadron SAE foglights. Previously installed STEDI LED headlights.
-Wheel and tires: Method 105 Bead Locks, 17x9 0 offset 4.5 backspace with Nitto 35x11.50R17 Trail Grapplers.
-Steering: stock linkage with 555 replacement rod ends, OME stabilizer on drag link, original steering box.
My intention is to get into all of these things in detail and talk about them. So, here are some pictures from the first of many trips Land Cruiser will see.
Let's see some pictures and build specs of some other trail worn Land Cruisers! Whatcha got? How did you build them? Let's some some wheeling pics!
I'm starting this thread at the top - yesterday I just took my freshly built/cobbled together HZJ73 to Kelly Flats here in Colorado after sort of half rushing/half forcing it together after buying it in April and attempting to take it up "The Chute" - a pretty insane obstacle that is not appropriate for moderately built rigs and lived to tell the tale. My nice Land Cruiser on leaf springs and 35s has no business being there, but I wanted to take it up there to prove a point. I have been waiting to start this thread to make sure I was right about my rig and my theories about how to build these things before I opened my mouth. My views are hardly revolutionary, I'm not doing anything new, but I've been really diligent about taking everything I've learned about Land Cruisers over the years - what works and what does not - and applying it to this one rig.
I'm starting here because I've tried to start a build thread many times and I have never had the time - I've always been working, being a father, being a husband, and now being a business owner that have kept me from building this rig and doing a proper thread or maintaining my Instagram, so I'm going to do this in chunks starting here. I own a shop that I bought April of last year (more on that later), which has afforded me being able to spread the work load between myself and some of my employees to make this happen. I knew what I wanted to do with this truck, but honestly some of it was just sort of forced in order to get it ready before the summer was over so I could take it out, and I did take some short cuts (not on parts or execution but on prep) that did bite me in the ass that I'll be honest about here so you don't do what I did. I have the resources now to shoot myself in the foot and survive because of having a shop that you may not have, so in this thread I'm hoping everyone can talk about there F ups like I will so you do a better job and avoid the pitfalls of poor planning. I would never approach a customer rig like this, but it's mine and if you own an auto shop you know that sometimes you've just gotta sort of ram your vehicle through when a rack is open, timing be damned, so you can minimize disruption to customers, cash flow and shop schedules.
My crew was skeptical about my obsession with Land Cruisers, they didn't understand why I bought my HZJ73 to build after my miserable JL Wrangler experience instead of grabbing up a TJ/JK Wrangler to tear apart and build like a normal person with 'tons and giant tires and a LS/Hemi swap that we specialize in (I have one of those builds planned for the shop, a 65 Gladiator, but that's been shelved for the short term while we tend to customer builds and get through the brand transition). Even my more open techs rolled their eyes when I started racking the truck to get it done, and I pushed my youngest tech (who has tons of potential) to his limit, throwing him to the wolves because I wanted him to learn the platform with limited guidance from me. Interestingly enough, I've found as I began building this Land Cruiser, that there are very few shops in the Denver area proper who touch the older rigs. We're right down the street from Slee, who are friends of ours and they haven't touched an older Cruiser in years. So while this thread is not an advertisement for the shop, I wanted to keep the door open as a shop Toyota guys in the region who want to build an older Land Cruiser for the mountains following the same sort of philosophies that have made us successful - over build, assume you're going to take your vehicle on the hardest trails it can fit on because it's Colorado and everything here is hard on a 4x4, make it safe, make it drive nicely so you'll want to use it, and be an upstanding member of your community with your rig so pick up trash as you go, leave the trail better than you found out and always be willing to help out your fellow man if you run across a broken rig on the trail. We're not a restoration shop, and while we do that work more and more as we figure out who we're going to be, I have not going to try and compete with Proffitt's or Red Line Land Cruisers who do amazing work on these Toyotas. We're a shop that is based total functionality and if someone on this old rigs sucks and can be cut off and replaced with something better, we'll do it.
So, back to yesterday. We chose Kelly Flats because it's relatively short, far enough away from things to keep the traffic to a minimum on this Labor day weekend, but has some significant obstacles like "Heart Attack Hill" and "The Chute" that are notorious for eating even well built rigs, with roll overs and major breakage commonplace on busy weekends. We took it out with some of my crew and my lead fabricator's heavily built CJ on tons and 40s (which represents the type of rig we traditionally build) and a trailer just incase my Land Cruiser exploded and we had to drive the CJ back and trailer the Cruiser if it died. The Cruiser was amazing and blew my crew's minds with what I was able to tackle with it, and made them believers. The tech who begrudgingly spend the most time with it is now a fan, and has acknowledged that working on these things might not be a bad thing. If you tried to take a TJ Rubicon with an equivalent build - factory axles (upgraded or not), 35s and factory steering, it would have broken with the beating we gave it. I took all the hard lines, pushed it to the limit, and attempted The Chute. I was not able to get up The Chute, but not for lack of trying. We threw the Cruiser at it almost a dozen times, and it did not break. It just took it. We were unable to complete the obstacle due to lack of width. I'm on factory axles with 35x11.50R17 tires on 4.5" backspace beadlocks, nearly two feet narrower than the CJ's track. We had to climb a wall on the left side and stay on it, and ultimately every time we were almost over the obstacle, the tires would slip and the rig would get sucked into the hole underneath and it would be forced to drag itself backwards and start again. Sadly, during one of these attempts I did rake the door across the rock face. I know, I know, this is such a nice rig - but that's the risk you take if you're going to take your truck out. I'm going to get it fixed this winter, this Land Cruiser is not a rig I intend on turning into a beer can but I did build it to use it. I'll keep it nicer, but I use it and over time it'll acquire some war wounds and all of the scratches on the sliders, bumper and bead lock rings will stay. For the next couple of months I'll wear the body damage as a badge of honor until the season ends and I'll send it to the body shop we work with to get it touched up. Might even do a car show with it as is
The point here is that the truck kept up with a gnarly linked heavily modified CJ on 40s and an LS, we did all the same stuff, and the Land Cruiser drove home just fine. You couldn't even tell that it had just been flogged from the driver's seat. That's not to say if I keep doing this over and over again I would eventually bend an axle housing and break something important, I don't intend to keep throwing it at things this big, I wanted to push the limits and see if it did what I thought it would do.
Here is the basic overview of the rig so everyone knows what we're looking at:
-1997 HZJ73 Manual transmission + factory e lockers, 285K on the odometer and counting.
- Suspension: some sort of Japanese performance leaf springs and anti inversion shackles totaling about 4" lift, Fox 2.0 remote shocks, Timbren bumps tops, relocated rear shock mounts, some additional suspension messages.
-Axles: factory axles, factory e lockers, factory 4.11 gears, RCV front axle shafts, Nitro chromoly rear shafts, cut to fit (had them laying around the shop leftover from my BJ74 that I intended to do this with before taking a 5 year hellish detour into JL Wrangler ownership), front knuckles got a light rebuild with the shafts, factory steering arm studs and hub studs properly torqued). Previous owner converted the auto hubs to off the shelf warn manual hubs.
-Engine: factory 1HZ diesel with some sort of air leak in the fuel lines (have determined after this that it really must be at the fuel tank, which was my next project anyway), that has had some basic maintenance, minus the air leak it runs awesome. The only modification done so far is the removal of the factory resonator and replacement of the factory muffler with a Magnaflow pass through muffler that is too loud but actually made a huge difference in performance (more on that later). 1HZ struggles with altitude, but is great otherwise.
-Transmission: factory H55F 5 speed with unknown miles on clutch.
-Transfer case: factory 38mm split case with Sumo 4:1 gears and under drive. Absolute game changer and will be the subject of a write up on this thread, also a difficult installation. Factory vacuum shift converted to a manual shift from @cruiseroutfit while doing the t case. Sidenote: huge shoutout to the crew at Cruiser Outfitters. More on that later, of course.
-Body: ARB front bumper with Come Up Winch and 4x4 labs rear bumper (both installed by the previous owner). Modified cheapy Trail Gear 72" sliders which are an almost perfect fit, had to work around the exhaust on the right side). Baja Designs LP6 light pods and Squadron SAE foglights. Previously installed STEDI LED headlights.
-Wheel and tires: Method 105 Bead Locks, 17x9 0 offset 4.5 backspace with Nitto 35x11.50R17 Trail Grapplers.
-Steering: stock linkage with 555 replacement rod ends, OME stabilizer on drag link, original steering box.
My intention is to get into all of these things in detail and talk about them. So, here are some pictures from the first of many trips Land Cruiser will see.
Let's see some pictures and build specs of some other trail worn Land Cruisers! Whatcha got? How did you build them? Let's some some wheeling pics!
