Builds Golden Boy / was 'an as-yet unnamed gulf spec diesel 1991 HZJ pickup'

[John Young]

This is really the first occasion I've been able to spend any time with Golden Boy. When I bought it in Dubai it went straight into the shop. I drove it a couple of times back and forth to Sharjah, but that was early on, and about the extent of it. Then COVID travel restrictions, so I had not seen the truck for almost a year, while work continued in Dubai. Certainly this is the first time I've taken a screwdriver to the truck. I'm seeing a lot of little things that need doing, but I really like the thing. The diesel 1HD engine is great in the 70 series, and it feels like this truck will go another 500k km with a little care.

The first little project that needs doing is to figure out what's wrong with the hood latch. It locks, but not in the fully down position, so the hood tends to bounce up and down a bit. I noticed that the u-shaped catch (?) in the hood itself is quite worn. I'm thinking of firing up the little mig welder and building it up again. Maybe I will try that tomorrow.

I also should crawl under and have a look at the rear tank. It seems to drip a bit when Golden Boy is parked pointed uphill.

 

[WarDamnEagle]

Pretty sure you can buy all the parts for the hood latch. I bought a spare pull cable and handle a few months ago for example just to have as a spare. Quick look on Partsouq shows the hood latch assembly available for $24. I would just go new with anything still available.

Edit: just looked at mine and didn’t realize the loop on the hood appears to be welded on. Guess you would have to do some insitu repairs if that’s the problem.

Congrats on the inspection!

 

[John Young]

Pretty sure you can buy all the parts for the hood latch. I bought a spare pull cable and handle a few months ago for example just to have as a spare. Quick look on Partsouq shows the hood latch assembly available for $24. I would just go new with anything still available.

Edit: just looked at mine and didn’t realize the loop on the hood appears to be welded on. Guess you would have to do some insitu repairs if that’s the problem.

Congrats on the inspection!

Thanks, WDE.

I noticed that the hood latches are available too. The thing was they all would have to be mailed from Shajah. The postage wasn't prohibitive, but the delay is very annoying. I'm going to give a quick try tomorrow and take out the existing one, see if anything is obviously frozen and fixable. On the loop, yes. That's a bit annoying. Lucky for me I have a little Miller MIG welder that runs on house current. Perfect for a little job like this. I think I also have a welding blanket somewhere too, to drape over the engine and grill.

Frankly, I was holding my breath on the inspection.

On the actual registration I was able to get an appointment on Tuesday at something called DMV Select in a local courthouse. The FAQ says they do titling. We will see. Would not surprise me if they look at my paperwork and say 'can't do that here.'

 

[John Young]

Well I worked on the hood latch this afternoon.

I was convinced this was the source of the problem:

I cleaned it up with a Dremel:

Then got out the little MIG.

I won't show you what it looked like after I finished the welding build up. But after I annoyed the neighbors with an angle grinder and a little more fine work with the Dremel, this is what it looked like:

The latch itself cleaned up very nicely with an ultrasonic bath and some simple green and didn't actually show much wear at all.

 

[John Young]

And this is what the loop looked like after a little rattle can treatment just to avoid having bare metal exposed.

And here's the punchline. I got it all back together (using a plastic spudgie to hold the cable actuator part so I could get the little ball into the proper position), and I held my breath and closed the hood. It worked! Wanting to try it again to further savor this minor triumph and also to make sure I had gotten the actuator cable correctly installed, I went to the cab and popped the hood.

Then I tried closing the hood again, and it wouldn't lock in the fully down position. I hadn't fixed the problem at all., dagnabit!

Then it (finally) dawned on me: what if the problem was not in the latch or the loop, but somewhere else....like the pull cable. Sure enough, the actuator cable was a little sticky and when I pulled it out to open the hood it did not retract all the way by itself. Lubed it with some penetrating oil at both ends and it is pretty much fine now.

 

[John Young]

Well, I got all prepared for the registration:

And my son and I drove out to the Farifax courthouse where DMV has an extension office. When we made it to the window it was a very clear "we don't do importation here". I explored that a little given the statements on the website but it was just:

She was pleasant, I must in all honestly say, but not useful. She even did go speak to the manager, who did not deign to appear. I mentioned that DMV no longer answers the phone at all, and she was sympathetic. She did suggest that I might monitor the website early each morning to see if I could swipe up an appointment from a cancellation. Discretion being the better part of valor, particularly in these tense times, we went back home.

I did go back to the website and started looking at the appointment system. It is kind of clunky, and you have to first select one of the 70 DMV offices statewide by name, and then select a transaction (none of which involve international imports), and then look for an available date. Most all of the dates were in March, but there were a few this week--6 hours away by car. On the positive side, I did learn a lot about rural Virginia. I loved some of the names:

Chesterfield--like the defunct cigarette
Christiansburg--probably not good to be agnostic in that town!
Clintwood--presumably an invitation to Clint Eastwood to set up his own private Hollywood
Farmville--I suspect the city fathers were much too busy to be bothered much
Galax--the aliens are among us!
Gate City--I looked this one up: 'Gate City received its present name in 1886, when Attorney General Rufus A. Ayers pointed out that proximity to Big Moccasin Gap marked the town as the "Gate Way to the West."'
Onancock--I had to look this one up too. Interestingly, it is not referring to the biblical personage or his particular habits. Rather "This bayside town in Accomack County is named for an Algonquin word that means foggy place. It was originally occupied by Native Americans until 1670."
South Boston--I'm stumped by this one.
Woodstock--no, not that Woodstock

Anyways, after more than an hour, I managed to snag 3 appointment between 2 and 3 hours drive from Northern Virginia. Once I spotted an appointment for this very afternoon in Leesburg, but it was gone by the time I finished entering my info. I suspect there are a lot of Virginians playing the particular game of 'wack-a-mole'.

So the plan is to jump in the 1998 100 series and drive tomorrow morning to the North Henrico DMV office.

Wish me luck!

 

[Gun Runner 5]

Please remind me to never complain about the registration process in Georgia.

 

[WarDamnEagle]

Won’t you need to have the 91 with you to verify the VIN? Just curious.

 

[John Young]

Won’t you need to have the 91 with you to verify the VIN? Just curious.

They didn't do any of that physical stuff on the other vehicles I brought in, but there's another thing to worry about...

EDIT:

But thanks, WDE. I went and printed a photo of the VIN plate and also the TOYODIY website which shows the truck was manufactured in September of 1991.

 

[John Young]

Woo Hoo! Red letter day!

I had a nice drive down to just North of Richmond, the capital of Virginia. I was 20 minutes early for my appointment but they let me in and after a pile of--

--the long-sought result:

I was only about 15 minutes drive from the state capital so I decided to drive down and see how things were looking on this inauguration day. It was very, very quiet.

I was quite glad to see it so.

The rest of the day was a quiet drive back. I took some side roads in the 100 and dropped by the OTRAMM Land Cruiser specialty shop in Warrenton, Virginia, and had a word with the owner. I was hoping they could help sort out the frame on the Middle East diesel 80 facing challenges in Dubai, but sadly it turns out that OTRAMM chooses not to work on non-US cruisers. I'm going to try Iron Pig in Lorton next.

It was a great day, if a long one. Might take an inaugural ride in the 75 with fresh paper plates on it. I have custom plates coming.

 

[cruiserdan]

Nice. You have a Land Cruiser 2 door sedan!

 

[John Young]

Nice. You have a Land Cruiser 2 door sedan!

Er... yeah. I noticed that too. Trying to decide whether to do anything about that. Any views?

 

[cruiserdan]

I'd leave that sleeping dog on the porch.

 

[John Young]

At least the DMV got the HZJ75 right:

Unfortunately Golden Boy was a little cranky, and would not start.

That's the 98, a truck that also has in excess of 350K miles.

Golden Boy still won't start. It's cold out and the battery in it is not sized correctly. I think it was just an old battery that hung around a little too long. Off to the diesel forum for battery recommendations...

 

[cruiserdan]

Group 27.

 

[Gun Runner 5]

I'd leave that sleeping dog on the porch.

My first Land Cruiser was registered as “farm equipment”. Did I bring the mistake to their attention ...... the short answer is NO.

 

[John Young]

Thanks to CruiserDan, my shopping was easy, if puzzling. The local chain auto parts store had two relevant options (they also had an Optima battery for 329 USD but that is a bridge too far):

I did a bit of reading and it seems marine batteries are kind of a hybrid between regular car batteries and deep cycle batteries. They also are supposed to be more heavily built structurally because boats, I guess, experience higher g-forces. The cold cranking amps was higher on the marine battery, and it was 50 bucks cheaper. So the marine battery was better, stronger, and only 2/3rds the price of the regular. Sure it has only a 12 month warranty, but given what this truck will be doing, that's probably not going to be relevant. Really, even if it had been the same price, or even a little more, I would have bought the marine battery for the 80 extra cold cranking amps, given Golden Boy is a diesel.

They had the battery in-stock and here's my younger boy installing it:

The new battery performed its duty, and with a couple of plunges on the oversized fuel filter primer, Golden Boy was running again!

And here is the first official use of Golden Boy for its intended purpose of being a pickup truck:

Transporting a small piece of plywood from one place to another! Hooray!

(Now maybe I can put the back seat back in the 1998 model 100 and take all the ratty old flattened cardboard out of the back and have a reasonably presentable daily driver again.)

 

[D21FJ60]

Had the pleasure of driving this truck around a parking lot today.
For those wondering, it is everything you dreamed it would be. John did well with this one.

 

[2fpower]

The rest of the day was a quiet drive back. I took some side roads in the 100 and dropped by the OTRAMM Land Cruiser specialty shop in Warrenton, Virginia, and had a word with the owner. I was hoping they could help sort out the frame on the Middle East diesel 80 facing challenges in Dubai, but sadly it turns out that OTRAMM chooses not to work on non-US cruisers. I'm going to try Iron Pig in Lorton next.

Last time I was there, I was picking up the VZ shade tree and there was a Bandeirante with the Mercedes Diesel in the lot. These two losers must have scared them straight....

 

[John Young]

Friday's are a day off for me, and the the weather was very nice for January in the DC area. I had a look at the DMV website and snagged an appointment for 10:20 am out in Warrenton, Virginia. (I think a lot of people are getting multiple appointments and cancelling them at the last moment. I know I have used that strategy.) I'd wanted to see how Golden Boy does on the highway, in any event. Before leaving, I messaged D21FJ60 (above) to offer some rims I had had shipped out with Golden Boy.

These were some of the 10 left over rims from the factory Dunlop tires I bought at the salvage yard in Sharjah. I had no use for them in Dubai and I thought someone might like them here. William took me up on the offer so I actually put a load in the back of Golden Boy.

I drove out 66 without incident. Golden Boy seems quite happy at 110-120 kph indicated. Google maps was saying I was doing a maximum of about 67 mph. He seemed happy enough and the engine did not seem to be straining.

I got to the DMV in Warrenton exactly on time and after 15 minutes or so and payment of another 18 bucks (pickups are more expensive than passenger cars in VA), I was handed this: