Hey all,
Long time lurker here, but haven't posted before.
I've had my 80 for a few years now, after making a rash purchase under ludicrous time pressure. Being a 25 y.o. vehicle with 380,000km under it's belt, it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing, but I am working on ironing as many of the neglected scheduled maintenance bugs out. The purpose of this thread really is to document that progress, and float ideas for future improvements. My pics and recollections are a bit all over the place, so apologies in advance for that!
So... the very beginning:
Having owned a couple of Vitaras that I had heavily modified, up to the limits of regulatory engineering approval in NSW, I decided to upsize. The hope was that with a bigger, stronger starting point I wouldn't need to modify it as heavily to get what I wanted - a do anything, go anywhere rig that I could take crawling, camping, touring... whatever. I backed myself into a bit of a corner with a scheduled week away, leaving it until the week before trying to get the last Vit registered, but then in my frantic searching this appeared.
I wanted a 1HD-T, having heard they were a better bet than a retro-turbo'd 1HZ, and the GXL trim options were a nice bonus, and it had to be manual. I would have much preferred barn-doors to the tailgate, but it was a small 'price' to pay. Had I had more time to properly research I would have looked for a 93+ model with the bigger brakes/tow rating, but figured I could upgrade those fairly easily. A much later 1HD-FT was always going to be out of my price range, as was a VX Sahara. This one had relatively low mileage for it's age, and presented pretty well. It also had most of my 'priority mods' already bolted onto it, including most of the ARB catalogue:
Mechanically, other than the snorkel and a 2.5" exhaust it was pretty much stock as far as I could tell. Motor ran smooth for an old oil-burner, pulled strongly, gearbox was a little whiney but shifted smoothly. There was a clunk and at least two distinct vibrations in the driveline and a fair amount of play in the steering, both of which showed up much clearer in the 500km each way drive a few days later than they did on the test drive!
Long time lurker here, but haven't posted before.
I've had my 80 for a few years now, after making a rash purchase under ludicrous time pressure. Being a 25 y.o. vehicle with 380,000km under it's belt, it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing, but I am working on ironing as many of the neglected scheduled maintenance bugs out. The purpose of this thread really is to document that progress, and float ideas for future improvements. My pics and recollections are a bit all over the place, so apologies in advance for that!
So... the very beginning:
Having owned a couple of Vitaras that I had heavily modified, up to the limits of regulatory engineering approval in NSW, I decided to upsize. The hope was that with a bigger, stronger starting point I wouldn't need to modify it as heavily to get what I wanted - a do anything, go anywhere rig that I could take crawling, camping, touring... whatever. I backed myself into a bit of a corner with a scheduled week away, leaving it until the week before trying to get the last Vit registered, but then in my frantic searching this appeared.
I wanted a 1HD-T, having heard they were a better bet than a retro-turbo'd 1HZ, and the GXL trim options were a nice bonus, and it had to be manual. I would have much preferred barn-doors to the tailgate, but it was a small 'price' to pay. Had I had more time to properly research I would have looked for a 93+ model with the bigger brakes/tow rating, but figured I could upgrade those fairly easily. A much later 1HD-FT was always going to be out of my price range, as was a VX Sahara. This one had relatively low mileage for it's age, and presented pretty well. It also had most of my 'priority mods' already bolted onto it, including most of the ARB catalogue:
- ARB Deluxe winch bar with Aldi 12,000 winch (wire rope was rusted, but that's an easy fix.)
- Scrub bars and side steps
- ARB Roof basket
- ARB awning
- Kaymar rear swing-away
- Safari Snorkel
- 2.5" exhaust
- Polished sunnies with 33" BFG ATs (good tread, but several years old)
- ARB airlockers in both diffs, with compressor mounted in the boot
- Uniden UHF
- Dual Batteries with a simple 'dumb' isolator
- ERPS that had been disconnected, leaving the dissimilar metal pads to accellerate rust where they had been placed.
Mechanically, other than the snorkel and a 2.5" exhaust it was pretty much stock as far as I could tell. Motor ran smooth for an old oil-burner, pulled strongly, gearbox was a little whiney but shifted smoothly. There was a clunk and at least two distinct vibrations in the driveline and a fair amount of play in the steering, both of which showed up much clearer in the 500km each way drive a few days later than they did on the test drive!
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