Hopefully I'm putting this trip write up in the correct spot, but I wanted to document the first long trip I took in my 2000 LX470 from North Carolina to Collingwood Ontario. Most of it involved pavement, but the roads in the far reaches of Canada are quite a bit different than they are in NC, and it served to highlight problem areas that I'd like to address for future trips.
I got the vehicle in February shortly after we found out we were having our 3rd girl, and my 1994 Suburban wasn't quite up to the task of family hauling duties. It does have some surface rust, which I'm not a fan of, but nothing I can't remedy with a little time and elbow grease. It had 156k miles on it and had not yet had the timing belt service from what I could gather. Fast forward to October 5th, the week before hitting the road, I decided to change the oil with M1 -5W-30 and have the timing belt and water pump replaced by a local Toyota dealer in the Charlotte area. As I made the 70 mile trip from the dealer to Morganton, NC, I pulled into the driveway to find coolant leaking from the upper radiator hose and the fresh stench of coolant kissing my exhaust manifold. Needless to say I wasn't exactly the happiest person after having dropped that much coint to have it done properly by the dealer. After letting things cool off I found that the hose clamp simply wasn't put on properly, so I remedied that, put new coolant in and watched my temp gauge. I contacted Toyota and they did right by me and had a tow truck come out and pick it up and make sure that nothing else was loose and make sure to do a pressure test and check for any other leaks.
Thursday October 10th, 1 day before we were scheduled to depart on our trip to Canada, and the same day Hurricane Michael affected the Carolina's, someone decided that they wanted to play bumper cars. Unfortunately for them, a Honda Crosstour isn't really well equipped to come out of that scenario without damage. Fortunately no one was hurt, but with the hurricane having just barreled through, causing accidents and power outages, the over hour long wait for the cops wasn't really something I wanted to do while I still had loose ends to tie up for the trip.
I got the vehicle in February shortly after we found out we were having our 3rd girl, and my 1994 Suburban wasn't quite up to the task of family hauling duties. It does have some surface rust, which I'm not a fan of, but nothing I can't remedy with a little time and elbow grease. It had 156k miles on it and had not yet had the timing belt service from what I could gather. Fast forward to October 5th, the week before hitting the road, I decided to change the oil with M1 -5W-30 and have the timing belt and water pump replaced by a local Toyota dealer in the Charlotte area. As I made the 70 mile trip from the dealer to Morganton, NC, I pulled into the driveway to find coolant leaking from the upper radiator hose and the fresh stench of coolant kissing my exhaust manifold. Needless to say I wasn't exactly the happiest person after having dropped that much coint to have it done properly by the dealer. After letting things cool off I found that the hose clamp simply wasn't put on properly, so I remedied that, put new coolant in and watched my temp gauge. I contacted Toyota and they did right by me and had a tow truck come out and pick it up and make sure that nothing else was loose and make sure to do a pressure test and check for any other leaks.
Thursday October 10th, 1 day before we were scheduled to depart on our trip to Canada, and the same day Hurricane Michael affected the Carolina's, someone decided that they wanted to play bumper cars. Unfortunately for them, a Honda Crosstour isn't really well equipped to come out of that scenario without damage. Fortunately no one was hurt, but with the hurricane having just barreled through, causing accidents and power outages, the over hour long wait for the cops wasn't really something I wanted to do while I still had loose ends to tie up for the trip.
