First time owner (1 Viewer)

[westwardCruiser]

4th Toyota, first Cruiser. My first Toyota was a 92 pickup (4 banger!) and it blows my mind that I just picked up a LC for only a few grand more than I paid for that thing back in the day My son is turning 6 in a couple weeks, and I told him I just bought his first car!

I've been looking for the last couple months, and doing lots of research on here (love this forum, thanks everyone!) Being from PA, pretty much everything I was looking at locally didn't give me confidence it would still be in one piece 10 years from now, so I expanded my search grid.

Happened to find a 04 out of Atlanta in great shape from essentially a single owner. Current owner bought it from his business partner who had it maintained at dealer since new. He showed me some substantial maintenance and nearly new tires so we did the deal over the phone I flew down two weeks later to pick it up and drive it home.

It spent its whole life in GA and probably never saw a lick of salt until the wonderful folks of VA decided to brine the highway 4 days before the snowstorm. Its washed and waxed now waiting for a treatment of fluid film

in the last 10k miles i got: timing belt/water pump, r/f axel & bearings, fan clutch, brakes, tires.

I'm not a gear head, and I was trying to figure out what would have caused the axel, transfer case hub, AND bearings to all need replaced at the same time? Here is the invoice with details

I'm sure some will ask, so here you go. 262k miles for $9700

Hope I find it was a good deal, it was the best I saw to date and was getting kind of tired of looking. Helped that the seller was a no nonsense kinda guy, all in all it was a great transaction.

See you around! If anyone is near Harrisburg, PA hit me up.

 

[PabloCruise]

Nice!

Congratulations!

I do not know about the repair, someone else who knows more will chime in...

 

[Octavious]

Nice. My sis and BIL live in Lititz, and I got pics of the snow ya'll received last week. LC seems like the perfect ride for up there.

 

[Sandroad]

And black wheels! Looks good in the snow.

I don't know what a transfer case drive hub is or why it would need replacing. Did you ask the PO ? The right front hub bearing could have failed for lack of grease; the spindle bearings don't always get done when the wheel bearings are serviced. It's also possible "hub bearing" means wheel bearing. If the axle (CV) boots were leaking the axle may have been replaced when the hub bearing was changed on a "while I'm in there" basis. Of course I'm just guessing! The axle price indicates non-OEM so you may get some vibration from that someday.

 

[westwardCruiser]

And black wheels! Looks good in the snow.

I don't know what a transfer case drive hub is or why it would need replacing. Did you ask the PO ? The right front hub bearing could have failed for lack of grease; the spindle bearings don't always get done when the wheel bearings are serviced. It's also possible "hub bearing" means wheel bearing. If the axle (CV) boots were leaking the axle may have been replaced when the hub bearing was changed on a "while I'm in there" basis. Of course I'm just guessing! The axle price indicates non-OEM so you may get some vibration from that someday.

Thanks sandroad, I did ask about this service because I was worried the belt may have snapped, but the PO said he had it towed in cause of the hub/bearings and I left it at that. Assumed he just decided to do that TB at the same time. My guess is that the bearings had not been greased in a long time and just ceased up. I've been looking into whats involved with that, I think I might give it a try myself on the left side and see how it goes.

When I got it inspected my mechanic did say the wheel bearings were very loose and that somehow did something (minor) to the end of the axel. He didn't seem overly concerned though, and said the cruiser is in great shape!

And the tires just have some dip coating that is starting to peel in places; I will probably remove it all one of these days. And the left front hubcap is missing, so I'm keeping my eyes out for a cheap replacement.

 

[westwardCruiser]

Thought I'd post a couple more pics, just started getting the fluid film on, mostly elbow grease at the moment. Some of what I thought was a light coating of rust was just some caked on mud.

Before:

After:

Seat is in decent condition given 260k+ miles, I looked at ones around 150k that were trashed.

I held onto this old mat when I sold my outback thinking it would come in handy someday. Fits the cruiser pretty well, just cut a few holes for the latch points: