Greetings From Charlotte (1 Viewer)

[CBB]

Hello!

Long time lurker, first time poster here on the forum. Felt like it was a good idea to stop in and say hi after using this forum as such a great resource over the years.

About 10 years ago I was lucky enough to find and purchase my 2001 LC down in Charleston. It was a one owner car with 135k miles local to the Blythewood, SC, area (not a hint of rust, hooray!). I think I paid $14k or so, but honestly I can't remember. Since purchase, the car has not left the southeast and is still corrosion free at 236k miles. No AHC or NAV (not sure if that was common or not in 01).

Over the years, the only real issue the car has ever had was that the transmission had to be replaced around 215k miles. I'm somewhat of a maintenance nut so that was disappointing. I'm sure the new trans will last another 20 years and quarter million miles if not more. Aside from that, just tires, belts, fluids, brakes etc...

I try to get it to the Toyota dealer annually for them to go over with a fine tooth comb. Still no drama other than the transmission.

Over the last few months I decided that it was time for some TLC on the old girl and wound up with some minor project creep along the way.

Before getting up to today, here are some pics from when I purchased the LC way back when (I wasn't the best photographer at the time...). It still looks roughly the same today, but that will probably change soon when the current set of Michelins finally age out.

I'll get a project post up shortly.
-Chris

 

[suprarx7nut]

Welcome!

Thanks for sharing. I think your sort of long term ownership experiences are really valuable. Trans failure at 215k on the 4spd, bummer. I heard the 2000's were slightly more prone, maybe yours was a related issue.

How many keys have you gone through?

 

[uzj100]

The trans failure is interesting. Who diagnosed and replaced it? We had a 2000 with trans issues and a few drain and fills and it was back to normal. You can not do the high pressure fluid exchange with these trucks. It stirs up all the bad stuff.

Your 100 is so clean - great looking truck.

 

[CBB]

I've been pretty good to the keys over the years but sadly I'm down to just one valet key at the moment, as the original remote key effectively disintegrated a few years back. Planning on a new master key and the YOTAMD kit so I won't have to mess with keys ever again. I'm not sure if I knew about the kits at the time, but I'm getting tired of having to use the key to unlock the door every time I approach the car now.

As for the trans,
About 3 years ago I sold the car to my parents (fuel economy was killing me) and they let my younger brother drive it for the duration. I made sure he was always on top of servicing the car properly, but unfortunately the cosmetics really took a hit. I re-acquired it about 6 weeks ago (hence the refurbishment that I'm currently doing). The transmission happened while he was driving it in Atlanta. Diagnosed by the Hendrick store down there (I worked for that dealer group at the time as a GSM here in Charlotte) after a flush didn't resolve the issues it was having. I'm not sure what the methodology was that they used to determine replacement. Luckily my employee pricing was solid, and this had been the only real repair it's ever needed outside of just preventative and routine maintenance. I think the biggest item prior to this was replacing a power steering line shortly after purchase.

Live and learn, I guess.

-Chris

 

[CBB]

Alright,
So a few months ago I ordered some replacement seat covers. About 3 weeks ago I pulled the front seats so that when my upholstery guy was ready I could just throw them in the truck and zip em over. While the seats were out I was fairly disappointed with the condition of the carpet from front to back, so I started just ripping everything out (in a fairly methodical way, of course). I pulled out all of the carpet and pressure washed the hell out of it. A few stains were tougher than others, but are either under the seats and invisible or under one of the plastic covers where the bolts attach to the floor. It turned out pretty great all things considered. I'll let the pictures do the talking here, as I'm sure this process has been described in detail several times now here.

 

[CBB]

So the pressure washing turned out great. There is a Chemical Guys detail garage shop near me, so I stopped in and picked up a brush attachment for my ancient plug-in drill. That thing worked wonders combined with the chemicals (no pun intended) and pressure washer. I don't have a ton of progress pics from that day, as it was about 3,000 degrees out with 100% humidity.

The cargo mat is not a before/after 50/50 shot, just brushed it in different directions because I thought it would look cool. It does.

The main section of carpet took about a week to dry. I had it hanging from the slats on the side of my carport for the duration.

If anyone needs to make new carpet or floor mats from scratch for their 100 series, I have the perfect templates for you on my driveway...

 

[CBB]

So I'm due to have my seats back to me tomorrow, which I'm fairly excited about.

Here is the reassembly so far. I cleaned the floorboards up as best I could before applying some sound deadener. I left the factory pieces, as they were still in perfect shape and would have been an absolute PITA to mess with. I did clean up the jute padding that was left behind when I took the carpet out. Fairly obnoxious task, but nowhere near as bad as my old BMW was. I used the Noico 150 Red that I ordered on Amazon. The car was so quiet to begin with that it's probably unnecessary to do, but while you're in there...

I found that everything still fit together perfectly despite the added thickness. The back seats used to "wobble" some, to the point that I had put the little felt furniture pads under them years ago. No longer needed with the I did not do the wheel wells, which I may do at a later time.

 

[CBB]

A few more gratuitous carpet photos. They look better, sure, but the feel that it has being so clean is what makes the project worth while.

 

[CBB]

While everything was out I decided to replace the instrument cluster bulbs (just the 6 for the dials) with LEDs. What a difference! I also did the PWR/2ND buttons, heated seats and rear vents. Had dead bulbs all over, so having them all be working and so clear fells amazing. Astute observers may notice that the center console wood trim is now gone and it's black instead. The wood trim had already started peeling when I got the car, but I never wanted to "make it worse" because I didn't know of a suitable alternative. Well this weekend I stripped everything off of the main plastic panel and put it in the oven at about 200 for a while. Pop it out, rip off as much wood grain and adhesive as possible then throw it back in to bake. I used some of the plastic trim removal tools to scrape at the adhesive which marred the surface a bit. Following some goo-gone and scrubbing, I had an idea. I got out my 3M headlight restoration kit that I used on the fog lights and figured I'd try to polish the plastic. It turned out great. I may now just replace all of the remaining wood trim with the home-fried "piano black" and call it a day. Or maybe I'll leave it alone. TBD.

 

[CBB]

I've done what feels like 100 little things along the way that I didn't document. One of which was painting the grille. I used a duplicolor wheel paint (some kind of "graphite" that I expected to be darker). Despite my expectations of a darker color, I'm very happy with how it turned out compared to the faded crappy plastic that it once was. Now I just need to do the lower half. Why on earth did they decide to mold that into the bumper?!?

Also today,
I took the roof rack and trailer hitch to be stripped and powder coated. I decided on satin black for the tow hitch and flat black for the roof rack. I picked flat for the roof rack because I want something that will be easy to paint the plastic covers in. Didn't want to mess with "30% satin" or whatever.

 

[CBB]

Here is where we stand now. Definitely excited to get the front seats in. Been a super rewarding project. Next, it'll be time to focus on the exterior. I'll need to get the hood painted and fenders blended. It'll probably need to be wet-sanded on every panel, but I'll get the body shop's opinion on that. That's it for now. I never really thought to document anything until recently.

On a side note,
Does anyone know if they made floor mats for these that match the darker color on the dash and doors?

 

[CBB]

Actually, I lied. I also was getting tired of the terribly designed fabric speaker covers on the door panels. I figured I'd rip the fabric off to see what's underneath. Lo and behold, paintable plastic! I started trying to match the lighter door panel color, but went too light. Then my wife suggested trying to get it closer to the darker color, since they won't be right next to each other and it'll make for a nice contrast. Sure, why not. I found a color at Home Depot called annodized bronze, which the cap was a perfect color to my ashtray that I brought with me. Turns out, the color needs to have just a little more brown in it to match just right. I'm content with how they turned out for now, but it'll definitely be a project for another day if I can ever find a perfect match on the color.

 

[aging fleet]

Hot damn, that looks great!

 

[AlpineAccess]

Welcome!

Thanks for sharing. I think your sort of long term ownership experiences are really valuable. Trans failure at 215k on the 4spd, bummer. I heard the 2000's were slightly more prone, maybe yours was a related issue.

How many keys have you gone through?

I'm interested in the maintenance on this transmission. Were fluid exchanges done or was fluid original at 215? Who did the maintenance?

 

[CBB]

Looking back through the service records, I have two for the t-case but none for the transmission (through the Toyota owner portal). If memory serves me correctly, I did have the transmission fluid serviced after I put about 50k miles on it (so around 180k miles) but I can't find it in the online records. The transmission never acted up at all until right about 215k miles. Slipped really bad in first and reverse, jerked like crazy and eventually just stopped shifting. I'm sure that this is an atypical experience. To be honest, I really think about it all that much since it's been such a solid and reliable car and the pricing was solid. I'm happy to take care of it since it's always taken care of me. Not to dismiss the topic, but it's probably too late now to perform an autopsy on what exactly went down.

 

[AlpineAccess]

Looking back through the service records, I have two for the t-case but none for the transmission (through the Toyota owner portal). If memory serves me correctly, I did have the transmission fluid serviced after I put about 50k miles on it (so around 180k miles) but I can't find it in the online records. The transmission never acted up at all until right about 215k miles. Slipped really bad in first and reverse, jerked like crazy and eventually just stopped shifting. I'm sure that this is an atypical experience. To be honest, I really think about it all that much since it's been such a solid and reliable car and the pricing was solid. I'm happy to take care of it since it's always taken care of me. Not to dismiss the topic, but it's probably too late now to perform an autopsy on what exactly went down.

This was great detail, was mostly curious about if fluid had been changed regularly.

Who got it back running? Did they rebuild the existing trans, swap something used in? Did they cite what caused the slipping?

 

[CBB]

This was great detail, was mostly curious about if fluid had been changed regularly.

I only had the trans fluid changed once since purchasing. The prior maintenance in the Toyota portal starts at 90k miles with timing belt, water pump, etc...

I'm not sure what occurred prior to that, but it's going to be done at every 50k interval starting at 250 from now on. Hoping to never let the LC out of my sight again.

It does blow my mind that something like this can be so uncommon. Friends with Ford/Chevy trucks and other SUVs are having transmission issues at much lower mileages and just shrugging it off as "yeah, they're known to do this".

 

[cwmoser]

Nice work. I really like the LEDs.

BTW, what is this:

 

[CBB]

@cwmoser

That guy is the blower motor for the rear heat ducts. There are two at the bottom of the center console and one on each side. There is also a little heater core down there under the carpet. I may have a picture of the whole assembly from when the carpet was out.

 

[CBB]

No dice on a closeup, but here it is cropped from another photo: