Finally got a LC v2.0!

[hiluxjeremy]

Just found this thread now..

Have you considered a diesel fired coolant heater? I've used both Webasto and Espar brand units on equipment in northern Alberta. Sizes vary but they all seem to make make heat like crazy. Like minus 40 to starting happily in an hour or less. Probably half an hour on a 1-hdt. with tight injectors and good glow plugs, a new set of plugs can make a world of difference in my experience. 0w40 rotella also helps. I'd go with the smallest size of Espar on a vehicle and it shouldn't be too hard to mount in an 80 series engine bay I dont think. I've often thought such a set up would be the cat's backside. No more cords, just set it and forget it. They can be programmed to come on at a set time every day, on demand or however you choose.

That is a very nice truck you've got there.

 

[IanB]

I've been doing some research on a Webasto/Espar, it really is the ultimate solution, no need for even an electrical outlet. It's $1000+ though, so 10X the cost of any other option. But it would be the best. But it costs so much. But it would be the best. And so on.

The truck currently has started every time I've asked it to. The command start is set to run the starter ~4 sec despite the engine "catching" as opposed to kicking off when the engine "catches", so even if it sputters a few times it will smooth out and continue running on those really cold mornings, like -36C cold. There's some black smoke, but it cleans up quickly, and settles into a nice idle. I'm also running Rotella T6 5w40 synthetic oil, which does help. That's with no engine heater at all, stone cold.

It does not, however, warm up. It could idle for an hour and never get close to warm on its own. It needs to be driven a couple minutes to start to warm up when it's really cold out. I've got the rad 80% blocked off with cardboard in the winter. If you shut it off, it cools off quickly. I'm going to put a new T-stat in, maybe it's stuck open? Maybe that's just how these engines run, as my last one was very similar as far as warming up in winter.

A webasto sure would be nice. I could have it wired in to my command start on the trunk release button. Which hits the open air parkade at work from in my building. Perfect.

When I think about it, running the webasto would heat up the engine and truck, while running the engine would not.

 

[IanB]

Got around to playing with my power windows again last night. In an effort to speed them up when it's cold out, I've replaced all 4 window seals, tried dry graphite powder lubricant, and they still struggle to go up when it's real cold out.

I pulled the master switch out, using the pics and instructions I found here:

https://forum.ih8mud.com/threads/cleaned-window-switch-question-within.781878/#post-8875259

and some contact cleaner and Q-tips. There was the same black film on the contacts that others have reported, the real fun began however when the power window lock button "exploded", sending springs and bits flying around the garage. I wasn't even sure what was originally there, so I'd been messing with it for about 10 min when I found another spring on the floor, and had to start over figuring out how it went back together. I got pretty good at getting the switch reassembled, but could never get the 2 halves to go back together, and the button would blow apart again. Very frustrating, but I finally figured out you need to use a small screwdriver or something to depress the window lock button contact so it will slide back together nicely. Took me at least an hour altogether, for what would take me 5 min to do over again, lol.

Made sure everything worked, and fast forward to this morning. Truck was cold (on the outside) by the time I got to work, windows worked amazingly, just as fast as in the summer! I'll know for sure when I leave tonight if I'm off to the races, it's always been the worst when the truck has sat outside and is completely cold and all the seals are contracted, but I'm optimistic.

I read to spray down the harness connector with contact cleaner as well, but I forgot to do that last night. I'll probably pull it apart again and do that, along with the rest of the window switches, and neither of my rear door switches work right now either, so I'd like to try and refurb those in the near future.

 

[IanB]

Installed @bhicks rear double cup holder last night, had to make a couple mods to make it fit as my cooler console was not in mind when he designed them. Had to cut the end of the hook off, and add another layer of double sided tape, but it's on there now, and looks great!

 

[IanB]

Been a while since I updated this, stupid German car keeps needing attention, and expensive parts from Germany. Stupid car. I did get it looking pretty good though, and I'm hoping it's solid for the rest of the summer at least.

On the LC front, I got some Sandgrabba floor mats for the front row, and I have to say I love them! The surface was a bit "squeaky" the first couple days, but now that they've got some dirt on them they are great! They fit the footwell very nicely, protect the carpet very well, trap water and dirt/mud, and clean off easily. They are a molded, rubber coated foam type material, and mount with tabs that slip under the doorsills, and snap out for easy cleaning. As you can't get Huskyliners or Weathertech for a RHD, they are pretty well the best option. Here's a few quick shots of them, yes they're dirty, and they are doing their job very nicely!

In other news, my rear hatch seal is leaking water and getting the carpet wet when it rains. So I'm going to need to place a parts order with Beno shortly.

 

[IanB]

A small thing, but a big thing, if that makes any sense. The winch fairlead rollers on the land cruiser have always...jangled? when I shut off the engine, or slam the doors on the truck. It's a small thing that has always really annoyed me. I found a product from Daystar called a winch isolator, basically a polyurethane block that you put your winchline through, and the hook folds neatly into it, and you tighten it into the fairlead rollers where it stays and keeps everything neat and tidy. Side effect is it is on the line, so acts as a dampener should the line ever break during use. Side effect I was hoping for most was that it would quiet my noisy rollers.

I got it probably 8 months ago now, excitedly pulled it out of the packaging, only to find the hook on the line didn't fit it. Fast forward to a week or so ago, I saw a winch hook FS and it jogged my memory, found one on Amazon.ca, and it showed up today. And it fit the winch isolator! Install took all of 5 minutes, and it works! Truck shuts down silently now, not more rattle that makes my truck sound broken. No more metallic clang when I shut the door. The smile on my face is big!

New winch hook is rated for 18,000lbs, so it shouldn't be the weak point in the system either!

 

[IanB]

New personal best, 19.2 US mpg! 90% city driving on this tank. Trying to push through the air at highway speeds doesn't seem to be where it gets the best results.

 

[IanB]

I'd ordered a new rubber stopper for the rear spare tire swingarm, as mine was not rattling, but felt a big "loose". Showed up last night, so I installed it right away. You can see from the pic how compressed the old one had become. What wasn't obvious when it was on the truck is, it's adjustable via the jam nut. So now I have a nice new one, but I could have VERY easily just adjusted my old one to tighten it up again. Thankfully it was fairly cheap.

Should have a bunch more parts to freshen up the on girl in the next couple weeks, and I've finally started on my sound deadening/speaker upgrade project. The passenger side front speaker (the only door I've torn into so far) had 0% of the foam surround still intact, no wonder they sound like junk!

I also picked up an OEM drip tray for under the oil filter, which will get installed on the next oil change. No more drips down the side of the block! I always thought the oil filter facing down was a strange design. (not my pic)

 

[IanB]

Replaced the rear hatch seal with a new OEM from Beno, hopefully no more wet carpet in the back! The PO had some sort of TV antennae gizmo installed when I bought it, with wires that squished the seal at the top edges, and with the wiring removed the creases in the old seal were allowing water to get past and run down the D-pillars and onto the floor in the cargo area. It was a tough issue to diagnose, as nobody else on the internet was going to have the same issue I was having. You can see the antennae in this pic from my importer before I purchased.

 

[hamishpotter]

Nice rig!

 

[IanB]

Today I finally got around to doing a coolant flush on the truck. Drained it, flushed with a kit that let me hook up a garden hose and ran it till it was clear, drained again, filled with distilled water and ran it around the block with the heat on full, drained it, and refilled with Toyota Red coolant and more distilled water. I wasn't able to get as much coolant in as I'd have liked due to not completely draining, so I think the mix is likely a bit weak, and I'll drive a bit and test the strength, and likely do another drain and fill with straight coolant before fall. Also went with a new OEM 82C t-stat (1FZ application) to replace my old 76C one, hoping it will help warm this thing up in the winter faster, and a new OEM rad cap. Just need to replace the foam strip along the top of the rad cradle, and my cooling system is all up to snuff!

 

[IanB]

Got my fire extinguisher mounted on the weekend, it's a "Lifesaver" by Kidd auto/marine, B/C unit that came with a mounting bracket. I used a couple self tapping screws to mount the bracket to the side of the seat frame. It doesn't interfere with the seat moving forward or back, and doesn't get in the way of removing/replacing the 2nd row weathertech floormats for cleaning.

I wanted something I could reach from the driver's seat, and although you do have to open the driver's door to get it free, it's right close to me should I ever need it.

 

[IanB]

Finally got my front door speaker install pretty well wrapped up last night! It took about a month, 2 prototypes of a custom MDF spacer ring, and lots of brainstorming to get something to work the way I wanted.

I started with Infinity 6032si 6.5" coax speakers, which are supposed to be a shallow mount model. They aren't shallow enough, by about 1/2" as they contact the window rail inside the door.

I added some Fatmat sound deadening to the outer door skin, covering about 20% of the panel, and some on the inner skin where I could, including the front of the door where the speaker actually mounts. I retained the OEM plastic door liner over top of the sound deadener.

I was looking for a solution that would retain the factory speaker grill, and as many know this is tough as you need to open up the hole in the door card for a 6.5" speaker. I needed something to bring the speaker out from the door to clear the window rail, but that the door card could still go back over. I looked at various plastic speaker rings, but couldn't find anything that would work.

My buddy has a new router, and a sheet of 3/4" MDF, and undertook to make a solution. 1st test fit showed that the original design was not going to cut it. Back to the drawing board, and we had a winner! The final design sits down in the sunken flange the OEM speaker mounts to, and uses the OEM speaker screws to hold it into the door panel, we had to countersink the ring so the screw heads would sit flush where the speaker sits. Where the speaker sits we had to clock the speaker 45 degrees so the screw holes are evenly spaced, and reliefs were cut for the speaker "ears" around the screws, as opposed to cutting the ears off the speakers. The speaker mounting surface is routered into the ring so there's an MDF lip along the outside edge of the ring. We then drilled pilot holes through the spacer and into the door panel, and used self tapping screws to sandwich the spacer ring between the speaker and the door panel. The finished spacer rings were painted with spar varnish to waterproof them. I soldiered the factory speaker leads to the new speakers, so you can use the factory connector to remove them in the future.

My buddy has some better pics of the spacer ring he's going to forward me that shows the dimensions

Moving on to the door card, we confirmed the factory hole is perfectly spaced over the hole in the door where the speaker sits, then used the spacer ring to trace the shape on the back of the door card, and used a small router bit with the depth set to about 1/2 the thickness of the door card board, and etched out the shape of the new hole. Then we were able to break away, and peel off the vinyl the extra material we wanted to remove, leaving the vinyl intact, and a new hole that would fit over the speaker spacer, so the vinyl was able to take up any additional height beyond the level of the door card board, which is minimal. We then trimmed the vinyl back to clear the speaker foam surround, and the door card went back on.

This is where it sits for now. The plan is to listen for a bit, and decide if I want the speaker's +3db tweeter gain switch set to on or off, which is accessible on the tweeter of the speaker, and then silicone the grills, with the tabs ground down, directly to the vinyl face of the door card, so they are a part of the door card going forward.

I've seen some other installs where people cut the door panel into strips they fold forward/flat and mount the speaker to that to gain the clearance they need. I don't like this method as you're mounting the speaker to a flimsy flap of metal, this method is much more solid, and should hopefully transfer any mid-low range the speaker is able to generate much better.

I've only listened briefly sitting in the garage so far, but it's already light years ahead of the very tired, 22 year old units I replaced!

I'm hoping we can come up with a similar solution to mount another set of 6.5" coax in the rear doors without having to cut metal, but we'll see when we get around to having a closer look. I expect I'll need an extra set of front speaker grilles for that project, so if you have a set in grey, please let me know.

 

[IanB]

Well, it was 55kms premature, but F it, I had time so I busted out the timing belt tonight! It's pretty well going to roll over 100,000kms the next time I drive it anyway. I changed the belt, and tensioner with OEM Toyota

I also got it up on jackstands, pulled the lower rad hose and drained some coolant. I tested it earlier, and it's only good to -26C (-15F), so I need to up the mix a bit. Replaced what drained with un-mixed Toyota Red, hoping to get it to -35C or so. I'll do another drain & fill if I need to.

I also installed a 4-wire trailer wiring clip so it's not just dangling from the back of the truck. I drilled it into the hitch, nice and tidy compared to before. I'll snap a pic of that after I wash the truck sometime. It's been muddy here recently, and I was having some fun. Ran the sprinkler under it last weekend to try and get the bulk of it off, lol.

I have the day off tomorrow, and I'm going to try and put in some more time on the truck. I'll try and remember to take pics as I go, I'm terrible for just getting into a zone and forgetting to document.

I also got this little guy, just need to get it in the truck and I can clean up some of the oil mess from the blowby.

 

[IanB]

Got an oil change in this morning, took a sample to send off to Blackstone, and confirmed that the OEM drip tray doesn't fit my older engine, oil cooler doesn't have the hole for it to mount, and the shape is all wrong, and trans cooler lines are in the way to boot. Also got the drivetrain greased, and the tires rotated.

No pics, I was hoping the drip tray would fit and when that didn't pan out the phone stayed in my pocket, lol.

 

[IanB]

Got the truck tinted last night, no more fishbowl! Went 50% on the front doors and rear hatch, and 35% on the rest. Looks great! I'll try and get it cleaned up and snap some pics this weekend.

 

[IanB]

Finally got a chance to wash the truck, $9 later all the mud is cleaned up from some recent adventures.

Re-tested the coolant, it's now good to -28C, another drain & fill should get me to where I need to be.

I removed the sunroof visor and cleaned under it, and bent the brackets a bit to tighten it up. I took the truck through a touchless carwash earlier this summer and it didn't do anything good for it, lol.

I'm seriously looking into getting a Webasto TSL 17 for winter, I'm starting to think I could handle the install myself, save for the wiring cause I hate wiring. Triggered by the aux function on my command start would be perfect!

Also snapped some pics of the new tint, and the trailer wiring bracket from last week, I apologize for the quality, taken on my iphone as the light was fading last night.

 

[IanB]

It's happened! At 22 years old, today my LC rolled over 100,000kms/60,000miles!

 

[AussieHJCruza]

That's a very nice truck!

 

[absalom]

You mentioned you were running 861's/862's but you appear to have much more lift than that. Are you referring to a different truck, perhaps?