Lake City Limo (2 Viewers)

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See...getting all smart here......you see plugs in those pics?

How’s the EGTs on that Cummins?
J Mack said:
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I don't need to tell you what happens if they go full factory sparkplugs.

https://i.makeagif.com/media/10-07-2017/Wvmh2Q.mp4
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My experience with 55s are significantly less... but I’ve spent a lot of time with the 55 devotees, personally. All are rather eccentric.

I remember folks like Morgan Fletcher, Bill Stayner, Schmuck, Luke Porter, Todd Ballard, Brian Koerner and the Pig runs in the Sierra when people smashed the hell out of their 55s on the Rubicon— 1990’s/early 2000’s.

The transition to preservation has been interesting see. In 2004, very few folks bought OEM parts for their Pigs; NAPA was good enough.

The 55 was such a radical design in evolutionary development. It was almost revolutionary...which is super rare for Toyota... And it was mainly because of its aberrant sheet metal choices...you can thank Toyota engagement with their body suppliers— Gifu and Arakawa Auto Body.

Both companies had former Toyota Honsha (the “home plant”, A1 on your data tags, Line 1– A11, formerly called Koromo) plant body/stamping employees who rose up the management ladder and were promoted to run supplier companies that Toyota has financial involvement.

As such, Toyota placed their people into important Tier 1 assembly suppliers with various expertise in structure and putting pieces together— consistently and efficiently.

Both Gifu and Arakawa are super good at their assembly processes and follow to a T the nature of what they learned early on at Honsha stamping/body— think late 1930’s, through the war period and into their first testing of the Land Cruiser utilitarian vehicle in the early 1950’s.

The 55 design period was exciting at Toyota.

Roughly 1960-1977 (the Oil Wars during the end of that time period significantly stressed development investment at Toyota).

That 17 year period was the most important pre-electrification time frame for Toyota.... The company created and perfected the narrative and lore of their philosophical worldview. Once they made it into a story with a philosophy, it sucked you in.

They won the Deming Prize, many of their preliminary ISO certifications were achieved further integrating Toyota into the scientific/engineering world...

Ohno was at his peak before his stagnation and horizontal move to executive management by the mid-to late 1970s.

Toyota instituted the 10-digit part numbering system (10/1963)— two year before their 1965 Demong Award—and made their suppliers either adapt Toyota’s or develop their own mimicking Toyota’s— Nippon Denso and Aisin Seiki Corporation were good examples of suppliers that perfected Toyota harmonization/rationalization activities and developed their own name and reputation.

The 55 was a product of this time.

Interesting stuff of course. I could waste a lot of peoples’ time with this stuff.

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Andrew S said:
Onur, while this isn't my thread, please waste more of our time with the historical details. I love learning this information!
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The fact that we just had a conversation about the movie Strange Brew in this thread should make it obvious that actual FJ55 historical info would be very welcome. LOL.:)
 
So exactly why did they use such crap metal. complicated bends, and layers of overlapping sheet metal in the design, especially if Toyota was running its suppliers?

I could care less how many numbers are in a part number....5, 10, 15, 20, whatever. That's not revolutionary. If you can't make a car that doesn't disappear into iron oxide or break in half (tacoma/4runner), it's moot.

And Napa parts are still good for me. All the local parts houses will keep it running. I don't need a 10 digit part number, OEM hose clamp.

It's the body that fails, and parts are almost non-existent.

However, I'd love to hear more about the history and why they made the decisions they did.
 
Can it be done with NAPA stuff? 1000%

That said, I absolutely love being able to still get the red boxes. Usually the price point is not completely out of wack with the Auto parts stuff.
 
Onur said:
Sorry you don’t care.

I’ll not waste anymore of my time.
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Not sure how you read so wrong into what I typed.

I do care. We all care.
We'd all love to hear the history, for better or worse.
No doubt Toyota is an engineering powerhouse these days, and how they got there, and the ups and downs are fascinating.

Come on.
 
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