Hi everyone, again lol. My name is iyan (pronounced and sometimes spelled like ian) and i stumbled across a high desert cruisers meetup yesterday morning while out to get breakfast! Everyone was so friendly and I am really looking forward to future meet ups.
I drive a ‘92 BJ73 that i bought a couple of months back, from a nice family near my old home in Washington, who had imported it the year prior from Spain. It’s got a factory intercooled 2.5l turbodiesel engine manufactured by VM Motori, paired to an H55F and part time transfer case. Not sure about the diff ratio, unfortunately, but thanks to the help of a handful of you yesterday, I discovered it has a full floating rear axle
The truck (side: is that what you call a Land Cruiser? “Car” doesn’t seem to do it justice but I’m not sure if truck is accurate either lol) just ticked over 227k km on the odo, and the engine seems to run pretty well for what it is. These engines have a pretty bad reputation across the board; they were installed in Spanish and Portuguese 70-series, as well as some mid-90s Jeep Cherokees and Range Rovers, the Ford Scorpio, and a handful of other Euro-spec light duty vehicles. The issues stem mainly from above the block: the head bolts manage to work themselves loose over time and are required to be retightened on a jig every 70k km as part of regular maintenance, and the head itself comes in four parts, one for each cylinder, which as you can imagine makes head and valve cover gasket blowouts a pretty frequent affair. That said, I’m doing my best to stop worrying and learn to love the bomb until I can save up for a fresh motor down the line. If anyone has any recommendations I’d love to hear them! My ideal swap would be a 1HD-FT, but I’d be open to a 1HZ, 2.8 Cummins or even a Mercedes OM606 if that’s what’s available.
Other mods I’m interested in are a modded FRP “truck” top, a small lift and maybe some sort of roof-mounted tent or canopy after seeing some of the great ones you all have on yours. Though I’ve been warned that some of you will attempt to coax me into doing loads of upgrades that have nothing to do with any of that, so fair enough
Anyway, here are some pics!
It has a carpet, rear bench and two jump seats that are in the garage, as I just moved here and am driving around a bit each morning picking up furniture, scrap lumber, bricks and soil for my garden. If anyone has a good lead on some used firebricks let me know!! I’m hoping to build a wood burning oven in my yard and will happily have you all over for pizza once that’s allowed.
I drive a ‘92 BJ73 that i bought a couple of months back, from a nice family near my old home in Washington, who had imported it the year prior from Spain. It’s got a factory intercooled 2.5l turbodiesel engine manufactured by VM Motori, paired to an H55F and part time transfer case. Not sure about the diff ratio, unfortunately, but thanks to the help of a handful of you yesterday, I discovered it has a full floating rear axle
The truck (side: is that what you call a Land Cruiser? “Car” doesn’t seem to do it justice but I’m not sure if truck is accurate either lol) just ticked over 227k km on the odo, and the engine seems to run pretty well for what it is. These engines have a pretty bad reputation across the board; they were installed in Spanish and Portuguese 70-series, as well as some mid-90s Jeep Cherokees and Range Rovers, the Ford Scorpio, and a handful of other Euro-spec light duty vehicles. The issues stem mainly from above the block: the head bolts manage to work themselves loose over time and are required to be retightened on a jig every 70k km as part of regular maintenance, and the head itself comes in four parts, one for each cylinder, which as you can imagine makes head and valve cover gasket blowouts a pretty frequent affair. That said, I’m doing my best to stop worrying and learn to love the bomb until I can save up for a fresh motor down the line. If anyone has any recommendations I’d love to hear them! My ideal swap would be a 1HD-FT, but I’d be open to a 1HZ, 2.8 Cummins or even a Mercedes OM606 if that’s what’s available.
Other mods I’m interested in are a modded FRP “truck” top, a small lift and maybe some sort of roof-mounted tent or canopy after seeing some of the great ones you all have on yours. Though I’ve been warned that some of you will attempt to coax me into doing loads of upgrades that have nothing to do with any of that, so fair enough
Anyway, here are some pics!
It has a carpet, rear bench and two jump seats that are in the garage, as I just moved here and am driving around a bit each morning picking up furniture, scrap lumber, bricks and soil for my garden. If anyone has a good lead on some used firebricks let me know!! I’m hoping to build a wood burning oven in my yard and will happily have you all over for pizza once that’s allowed.
