Builds el bandito rojo

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alright, because of lack of choices i had to pay someone to work on this truck. i have not paid anyone to turn a wrench in like 25 years.
pretty basic stuff. oil changes. pinion seal was pissing because of blocked vent. he went through the front axle because it had water contamination. new inner seals and trunions.

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guy is pretty chill. we were able to stumble through the language barrier. i know like six Spanish words and I have Google translate 🤣
after I showed him my 4runner i think he realized i wasn't just some buster gringo.
he ended up giving me a ride home so I didn't have to walk in the rain. he also delivered the truck when it was finished.
 
today i dug into it because i was having some lighting gremlins. cleaning up the sockets didn't straighten things out so i decided to tear out the bs alarm and get those circuits off my lightning harness.
that said, don't ever ever ever install a vehicle alarm. they are stupid, annoying and will make your neighbors hate you. they will also inevitably cause gremlins.
my day consisted of tearing this pos out and repairing all the bs wire splices.
would you believe the gremlins are gone 🤣
truck got all new bulbs, other than headlights. im frankly still a sealed beam fan. afaic leds haven't proven anything in the headlight market yet.
dash will stay torn down until my new head unit shows up since the whole damn dash has to be torn down to install it anyway.

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for the sake of conversation this dash is definitely different than nam trucks. the entire front comes off with the cluster bezel

im also currently waiting on factory wiring manuals from Europe because apparently there is no digital access available here. i will digitally rip and upload them once they arrive.

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Yikes. I agree about the alarms. Sound system installations are a close second for causing gremlins. You still have a very cool truck. Your opened up dash pic gave me flashbacks of fixing A/C ducts on my Ram.

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more fun today.
tore the passenger door down to pull the solenoid and fix the latch. fixed the lock tumbler and managed to break the exterior door handle where the rod attatches :bang: now i need a handle and going to replace the latch too. the pivot pin is pretty wasted and the primary reason it's not working right. no pics because I don't take pics when im resisting throwing tools. 🤣

this morning i put the cluster back in to make sure all was well. the hi beam indicator wasn't working. i had noticed a single strand of wire trapped under the bulb yesterday but didn't really think anything of it. upon closer inspection the ground trace is fubar and the "wire" was an alleged fix. except it was going to the charge light so the indicator would come on at key on...
anyway i did take a pic of that fix.
you gotta do what you gotta do 🤣

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Wonderful, you are fixing the world one rig at a time. Is it he rust from lots of wet or was that rig over at the coast?
 
Wonderful, you are fixing the world one rig at a time. Is it he rust from lots of wet or was that rig over at the coast?
no coast here. i assume it was from water under the mat or possibly mud hanging out. lots of clay mud here.
 
looking to buy tires tomorrow. these are dated '10 :rolleyes:
the Yokohama dealer is right next to the toyotoshi dealership. two birds with one stone, or something.
crawled under to verify the spare wheel....

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a couple other cool things I saw today.
unlike everyone else, i don't really have a boner for 70s but i know everyone likes pics :flipoff2:

I'm one of those folks that would own a 70-series in a heartbeat. One of those 4-doors would look great in my driveway.
 
I'm one of those folks that would own a 70-series in a heartbeat. One of those 4-doors would look great in my driveway.
as far as usability of a vehicle goes, Id say they are probably the best lc. i just don't really get overly excited about any lc. i had plenty of opportunity to buy some kind of this or that down here. i would have probably ended up with an early Prado (lc2 here) if i didn't find a decent hilux. im just a mini guy through and through.
reality is there aren't many older 70s here, that i have seen anyway. almost all late model.

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door lock issue fixed. new exterior handle from Toyota. used lock from some super shytty used doors. this dealer said they couldn't get the lock assembly but it does show on amayana. ymmv.

lesson: if your door starts acting weird. stop. figure it out with some brains and lube. don't just slam it until its ruined. :rolleyes:
your lock should not come apart in pieces as shown.
rad third world window crank mod🤣
and because Murphy loves me, the door handle came out of the shytty door without disintegrating🤣

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this door lock ended up being ever so slightly different. turns out it's a "hold the handle up to lock" type. also the exterior door rod was just long enough to interfere with the actual door lock rod bits. i could push the lock switch down but it was getting hung up and i had to molest it to get it unlocked again. i took apart and tweaked the exterior handle rod a bit. all is well now. not exactly sure wtf, but basically par for my course 🤣
 

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