Builds Over the Hills, and Far Away

[Sundowner]

tl;dr - drove from North Carolina to Florida to look at a 73-series, bought it, drove it back to NC the next day, sold my house, left my job, threw a few parts into the drivetrain, put my dog in the back and drove 5,000km across the Lower 48 in the middle of winter to a new life in the Pacific Northwest.

Pictured: Totally not kidding about that, by the way.

...and that pretty much covers the last year of my life, which means that you're all caught up and everyone can officially stop reading. Should anyone choose to continue, be forewarned: the remainder of this so-called "build thread" will probably be comprised of little more than my incessant stumbling along the rather unkempt road of vintage Toyota ownership, a few pictures that aren't really as good as I'd like them to be, and a truly annoying propensity for making questionable life choices and writing about them at nauseating length. I mean, think about it: I daily-drive an HZJ73...and life choices can't get much more questionable than that without involving either democracy, existentialism, the ménage à trois, or - if you're really good - all three at once.

Speaking of bad life choices, I made a very significant one just now: I completely desynchronized my own thread by teasing a middle-of-a-road trip picture without even fully explaining how I ended up with a Land Cruiser in the first place...and that is what's referred-to as exceptionally poor form. But wait: there's less: when I sat down to type out that explanation, it reached a length that would give Anna Karenina a serious case of size envy...which is also exceptionally poor form. So, I'm going to summarize everything as best possible by saying that after many years of searching, last August I found an HZJ73 for sale in Florida in the condition I was demanding and at a price I was willing to pay, which is not only how the "drove from North Carolina to Florida to look at a 73-series, bought it, drove it back to NC the next day" thing took place, but also how I drove through an absolute storm of bugs in a freshly-detailed Land Cruiser on the way out of Florida and then managed to stop in rural Georgia in the middle of the night for a dinner break and not realize that I could have been at the Waffle House when I took the first picture of a newly-purchased truck that I'd coveted for nearly thirty years.

Pictured: And if that isn't existentialism and/or exceptionally poor form, then I don't know what is.

Okay, so now you're all caught up, and I spared you the details of a corporate land grab, contract negotiations, family strife, seriously-heavy life choices, the exodus from a brutally-toxic workplace, the sale of two beloved Jeep projects, a spontaneously-collapsing bathroom floor, 30 cubic yards of things that my partner and I just didn't need to keep, an entire tax bracket's worth of stuff that we didn't even realize we'd accumulated in the first place, a nice little Airbnb in the bad part of town, storage units, favors-called-in, shifting deadlines, a first-class airline ticket for a twelve-pound bunny, tearful farewells, an unplanned nap on the western coast of Iceland, an entire town of puppy-haters and a bunch of other stuff that would make for some good Days of our Lives fodder; thus, we can just get right back to the part where I pack the dog into the rig...

Pictured: Say hello, Leia.

...and start out on a cross-country journey that will eventually cover the aforementioned 5,000km, from North Carolina all the way to Olympia, Washington. By the way: I don't mean "approximately 5,000-ish, give or take a few dozen, because honestly, who's counting?" when I say that; rather, I mean exactly 5,000km.

Pictured: January 28th, 2023. Also, pay attention; this number becomes important later on.

Yeah, yeah, I know: the dash isn't clean...but it's usually clean, so I'm giving myself a permission slip on this one. Also, if you're wondering about why it doesn't look like winter in any of those photos (aside from the first one): winter didn't really hit until we were three days into the trip and pushing through western Kansas. Until that time, nothing really happened except some late-night pizza at surprisingly-affordable hotels, and a strange dearth of traffic through some of the flattest parts of the country. I'm not kidding about that, by the way: you've already seen the rear view...but here's what it looked like from the cockpit.

Pictured: Kansas is downright riveting. Also, nobody told me that the Rapture happened.

Yeah, yeah, I know: the wiper arms need refinishing and the hood needs paint where the clearcoat is blistering. I'll challenge you, however, to show me an early 90's Toyota where the paint on the hood and wiper arms isn't doing that...and when I say this, I mean exactly the opposite: please don't actually show me intact surfaces until I get these repainted, lest I feel absolutely awful about myself. I've wanted a 70-series since I first saw one in a magazine centerfold spread back in the mid-90's - also true of Victoria Silvstedt, come to think of it - so the fact that portions of it desperately need my attention sometimes keeps me up at night. On other nights, thoughts of secondary fuel tanks and a better spare tire carrier keep me up, and on still other nights it's the twelve-pound rabbit playing with the nine-stone Central Asian that are at fault. Thankfully I didn't have both of those with me on the trip, or I would have completely missed out on the riotous, sensory-overloading explosion of hue and chroma that was Colorado.

Pictured: ...
...
...

Hang on a sec: I haven't really said much about actually building the rig, have I? I mean, this is supposed to be a build thread, but here I am - somewhat as promised - rambling on about a road trip and rabbits and a massive relocation, but not really doing a lot of building. Five entire pictures and not a single thing has been built: it's downright shameful. To be honest, however, I'm not exactly sure how much building I'm going to do, or even where the build is going to go. Hell, I haven't even given the rig a name, yet...and that's not just because I'm terrible at naming things; it's because I'm still unaware of what direction I'm heading in life...so how on earth am I supposed to know what to do with a JDM Land Cruiser before I actually get there with it?

Then again...perhaps that's what owning a Land Cruiser is all about: heeding that call to find new horizons, and taking the road unknown to find whatever lies in wait at the end. Perhaps the build isn't so much about the rig, but about the person that's in the driver's seat; perhaps it's about building a different life on a distant shore, over the hills and far away, and finding a bit of solace in stepping ever-closer to terra incognita. In one fashion or another, we will inevitably find out...so: I'll try and keep things interesting along the way.

Stay tuned, Dear Reader...and even if we should never cross paths out there in the Wasteland: thank you for whatever part in this journey you eventually play.

To be continued...

 

[Sundowner]

tl;dr - there's no such thing as "too much fuel capacity", Japanese cupholders are actually perfect, and Sumo overdrive gears are just so choice.

So...due to the strange five-image attachment limitation (what's with that, by the way? Edit: nevermind...my account expired. Duh.) and the fact that I was going Full Faulkner in that one sentence back there, I left off somewhere around the absolute rainbow of colors that slammed into us as we crossed into Colorado.

Pictured: Cue sad trombone.

Okay, so I get the fact that it's winter - January 30th, to be exact - and everything is going to be a bit monochromatic, but this particular part of eastern Colorado is basically still Kansas-inspired grain fields...so even in the spring it's going to be a flat field of gently-swaying green. And when I say "flat" I seriously mean it: until passing through western Kansas and eastern Colorado, I'd never seen ground that was so uniformly devoid of undulation. We drove for mile after mile across that plain, with hardly a ripple to be seen on the horizon...and that's when I started to be truly thankful for some actual building that had been done before I left: namely, a set of Sumo overdrive gears in the transfer case.

Let me step back to the drive home from Florida for just a moment; specifically, the part where I said to my co-driver "Damn, this thing actually has a lot more pull on the interstate than I was expecting." His response: "You're turning 2800 RPM, of course it has a lot of pull"...and that's when I looked down and realized that he was not only correct, but that I hadn't really noticed the tach being that high. I may sound insane, naïve or simply stupid for saying this, but the 1HZ is surprisingly smooth; yes, it's a big inline-six, but I just wasn't expecting it to pull up towards 3000 RPM without a hint of protest. Still, I suspected that the torque and efficiency peaks on the engine were somewhat lower, so once we made it home I started looking for a gearing solution; Sumo 0.9 gears were the answer. Problem solved!

Except, not. Along with the overdrive gears, I had a small amount of bodywork - cracked floorpan under the driver's-side seat - that needed to be done, and I didn't have a shop in which I could accomplish either, anymore: we were staying in a very cozy little Airbnb in the bad part of town after having left the previous house and before embarking on finding a new one, so all of my tools were packed and there was literally no way for me to accomplish anything on my own...so I had to start looking for shops. At current, I believe that two of my six total threads on this site are devoted to that search, because I couldn't find anyone that was even willing to touch a 73-series Cruiser in northwestern North Carolina. I called shop after shop before finding a couple of people that could do the work, and although I'm not 100% happy with how things were done, the repairs have held up well thus far.

Anyway, back to the trip: that 75MPH speed limit in Colorado was really nice, and we made good time across the state...and the 1HZ was much happier with those speeds than it might have been without the highway gearing. It may have also been the uniform whiteness of Colorado under a light-duty winter storm that made the state pass by so quickly, because it seemed like hardly any time had passed before we were pulling into the beautiful city of Denver.

Pictured: I feel lied-to by every sportsball commentator, ever.

Confession Time: I don't watch a lot of sportsball...but when I do, it always seems like the commentator is telling me all about "the beautiful city of ______" at every timeout, but Denver - like so many other metropolises described as such - was not pretty from the interstate. Or from the side roads. Or from any other angle. As pictured, it was rather brutally industrial in a fashion that I did not know to exist outside of the northern Mid-Atlantic...and although there can be a certain beauty to industry - citation: Stuttgart - that stark beauty was missing, here; instead, all that I saw was a rather cold city...and I mean that both metaphorically and literally.

Confession Time, Again: We hadn't stopped for about six hours - more on that in a minute - before we pulled in for the night in Fort Collins, Colorado...and it was cold. Like, seriously cold...and when I say that, I mean it; I enjoy time in the mountains above treeline, where 10° is often a warm day...but I felt so chilled when I got out of the car that evening, that I had a vague sense of unease about whether or not it would start again in the morning.

Slight aside: the only real issue that I had not fixed on the Toyota before leaving North Carolina was replacing the older, mismatched set of starting batteries...one of which had grown weak enough to cause a single fail-to-start episode some days prior. Unfortunately, I had been unable to replace them before leaving; the battery supply chain at that moment was non-existent, so there were no matched pairs of high-amperage Group 27 batteries available when I needed exactly two of the same thing. Anyways...

I commented on the frigid temperatures to the hotel staff when I walked in the door, upon which they said that it was not just cold, but ridiculously cold; so cold, in fact, that the entire southern half of Wyoming's highway system had just been closed to all travel due to low temperatures and high winds. That got my attention, because our route the next morning led up through Cheyenne before turning westwards towards the Idaho border...and that's how we ended up spending half the night planning a new route before waking up the next morning to this weather report.

Spoiler: The batteries held up and started the engine, but I have no idea how.

See all those white patches in Wyoming? Those are blizzard warnings, and the careful observer will note that there is a distinct lack of them to the left of Denver, towards Utah. Oh, and speaking of "towards Utah"...

Pictured: That's where we're headed.

From the radar map aforementioned the implication would be that the route westwards is actually much easier that the route north; the view through the windshield, however, tells something of a different story...and this made absolutely no difference at all to us, because even if the western route was infinitely harder we really didn't have another option at the time. Wyoming DOT was closing literally everything in the southern half of the state that night, and Colorado DOT shut down everything between Fort Collins and the northern border...so that left us with exactly one option: Interstate 70 West, all the way up through the spine of the Rockies, across Vail Pass and through the Eisenhower Tunnel. And from the previous picture of the pretty snow-covered hills, that looks like no big deal, right?

Pictured: Wrong.

If you've never taken a 33-year-old naturally aspirated diesel that had its last tune-up at ten feet above sea level up to over ten thousand feet above sea level, I have one bit of advice for you: DON'T. She actually did rather well up to 8,000', even though the soot content of the exhaust was steadily growing from 5,000' onward...but as we passed 8K things took a nosedive and I swore that I would never attempt a high-altitude climb without 1) a turbo, 2) more fuel, and 3) some seriously effective de-icing wiper fluid. Traffic was at a near-crawl going up the hill; the heat from struggling engines was causing a mist of salt brine to hang in the air, but it was so cold and windy - the entire western part of the country was experiencing unseasonable cold at the time - that the brine was causing an ice film to constantly fog everyone's windscreens. Cars were pulling over one after the other to try and get the glass clear enough to see through; I honestly don't know how there weren't more collisions than the ones we actually saw. In the end - and you already know this - we made it, but it was a long, slow, painful grind up that hill, and the fuel mileage was dismal. We stopped in Vail itself - home of the nicest Wal-Mart I've ever seen, by far - to pick up some window-cleaning supplies and a lower-temp washer fluid to see if that would help...

Pictured: Approximately five miles of salt-ice-film still on the rear windows, for comparison's sake.

...and then headed down the hills towards Grand Junction and the Utah border, which we didn't reach until 17:00; there we took a quick break to rinse the salt from the cars, and then headed out across the desert, with me still thinking "five or six hours of running time at interstate speeds...about 375 miles... just isn't a lot of range" which was the first time I'd really started doing the math on how much fuel capacity I would like the rig to eventually have.

Ironically enough, later that night the question of fuel capacity and consumption would become somewhat more stressful...but that's me getting ahead of myself, again. Stay tuned.

To be continued...

 

[Sundowner]

tl;dr - buying gas is, like, hard and stuff...and so are 18-hour days through three - wait - four different states.

Where did I leave off? Oh, that's right...

The icy glare of Vail had long since abated, but as the day wore on and we slid down the western slope of the mountains, a lingering harshness in the air strained both sight and patience; by late afternoon we were more than a little frayed as we briefly stopped on the Colorado border for the aforementioned de-brining. Little did I then know, however, that I was headed directly towards one of the most magical, peaceful and stressful evenings I've ever spent on the open road; as we passed the Utah border and threaded our way across the desert, I kept one eye on the fuel gauge and the other drifting among possible futures, and we crossed into the lands of House Harkonnen.

Pictured: The spice must flow.

Sunset in the desert. It seems so deceptively peaceful until the first time you experience it...upon which you suddenly, belatedly and cathartically realize that there are certain things in this world which will forever escape our control. The flow of time is one of these things, for darkness does not predictably fall in the desert; it silently slithers in as often as it swells and overwhelms the brightness of the day, and there are just as many evenings cut painfully short by its curtain as there are twilights that seem to languidly stretch out into forever. This evening was one of that last variety; the sun perched itself on the horizon in an orange bloom of defiance, Night was reluctant to rise from its comfortable sleep under the sands, and the miles ticked away under the happy purring of a big, inline diesel.

Pictured: You can almost forget to keep that second eye on the fuel gauge, at times like this.

Snow lingers long in the desert; the land may look hot but it most certainly isn't. The temps had gone up and were hanging in the upper 20's on that side of the hills, but there was also a subtle change in air; something about the way it shimmered over the asphalt ahead of me felt...different. It felt warmer; looking off into the West, it seemed to ripple and rise in a way that I had never before encountered. I've often thought back to that evening over the last few months, and I still cannot tell whether my impressions were simply a matter of perception and wistfulness on my part, or if there was actually a palpable difference in the atmosphere after having crossed the Continental Divide...and that may be due to the fact that I will never be able to separate any of those thoughts from the other one that accompanied this leg of the journey: the fuel gauge was dropping rapidly, and my anxiety was rising in inverse proportion.

Allow me to step back a moment - well, several moments, actually - to the part where I said I would never again take a naturally-aspirated diesel up to ten thousand feet while navigating the afterglow of a blizzard. The Toyota honestly struggled with that altitude, and by the time we passed through the Eisenhower Tunnel at just over 11K the combustion gasses out of the tailpipe were carrying more soot than I thought possible; it looked like a 20-something guy with a theological opposition to particulate filters and serious concerns about the relative size of his genitalia had tuned the engine. Things improved a bit coming down the far side of the Rockies, and not simply due to the fact that we were out of the high altitudes; Vail Pass is a hard section of road to navigate on a good day, so traffic can absolutely crawl through it - which it did - when things get a bit inclement...and that slow going seemed to have seriously fouled up the works in the 1HZ. I ran the numbers when we stopped to refuel few miles past Vail, and consumption was up...drastically up: somewhere around 10.4 miles per gallon to be exact, which is about 22.6 liters per 100km to those of us that live in countries with sensible metrology. Not good.

This being said, as we continued the descent I recalled something that I had once read about combustion problems with old-school diesels: "there's very little that can't be sorted out by a good, hard, hot run down the highway"...so I got on the radio to let my travel partner know that I was going to let the Toyota stretch her legs a bit. We'd kept things to a very economical speed throughout the trip - 63 to 66MPH, for the most part - but on that descent I started to push the tach as high as I was comfortable with it going, and by the time we rolled into Grand Junction things seemed mostly back to normal.

Absorbed in the sunset, I almost missed the still-too-rapid dip of the fuel gauge. It isn't a linear read on a good day, but even by then I'd learned to translate what it says and what it actually means, and what it was telling me was that I was going to be down below a quarter of a tank by the time I'd covered the 250 miles between our last stop and our next planned one...so we started looking for fuel on 191 North, and if it hadn't been immediately after a severe cold snap, we probably would have found some.

Spoiler: we didn't. The only stations we saw were around Price, Utah; one didn't have diesel at all, and the other was closed. My travel companion and housemate - See that sensible little white VW in all of the over-the-hood photos? That's her. - was fine, but I had already realized that if we hit any more weather-related slowdowns, things might get a bit interesting. Of course, that's exactly what happened.

Coming through Price canyon towards Provo and Salt Lake, the passing weather had been severe; the road was absolute ice in many areas...so traffic again slowed down to a snail's pace and I could feel the power difference in the engine. No shudders and stumbles like she'd shown at ten thousand, but there was still enough poor-combustion residue left in the system to make the six-thousand foot canyon a fuel-draining nightmare. I don't honestly know how bad the mileage was through that section, but I do know that when we finally came out of the hills and started the quick descent into the city, I was below empty on the gauge; she never ran dry, but I pulled into the first station that I saw and filled her to the brim. After that, it was a quick stop for a burger and a late run up the highway to Logan, where we spent a very restful night. It was a seventeen hour day, in the end, and I was ready for sleep.

As the next morning dawned...

Pictured: Seen here. And also, damn, those are some beautiful hills.

...we pulled out of Logan and started what would be our last day on the road. A quick breakfast and thoughts of an increased-fuel solution accompanied me as we made our way northward to the Idaho border; we passed plenty of fuel stations, but even in the city, more than a few of them were missing one or another grades of go-juice. I'm not sure if there was a shortage taking place in that area at that time, or if it was just remnant weather for which nobody had been fully prepared, but it was a stark reminder of how fragile our infrastructure and supply chains can be; it's not like we needed another reminder of that after the last several years, but I got one, nonetheless.

On that note: it's odd that there are so few fuel tank solutions for the 73/74 series. I know it was never really a military or long-range truck, but you'd think that someone would have tried to cram every scrap of available space into an aftermarket tank, by now, and advertised the absolute hell out of it...and perhaps they have. Maybe my ever-present nemesis - Google's location-curating results string - somehow still doesn't believe that I have a JDM Land Cruiser and therefore need non-US-based solutions to my questions. I mean, it can listen in whenever we talk about buying a house or a second car or a new kind of dog food and then relentlessly spam me with ads for all of those things, but not once has it ever decided that I might actually want to see an ad for an Australian-based aftermarket fuel tank. Or a cargo rack from somewhere in central Europe...or even some jerry cans or a fuel bladder, for lack of anything else. Instead, it's so focused on such a narrow stream of interests that it seems to have no room for anything else...which is perhaps a commentary more on the society that supports such results than the provider thereof...but that's delving deep into the wasteland of socio-economics, and we simply will not go there.

Pictured: Instead, we'll go to Idaho.

I'm going to be very honest, here: this is not what I expected southern Idaho to look like. Nevertheless, that's it; just up there and through those rolling, snow-covered hills lies the border of the Gem State...and some of the worst crosswinds I've ever encountered. They'll literally blow you sideways, especially when you're in a high-sided Toyota with a narrower-than-typical track width; I honestly felt bad for the guys and girls in the road tractors that were having trouble keeping station within any given lane. I generally give the big rigs a pretty wide berth and try to help them as much as possible when I'm on the highway, but the best I could manage on this particular morning was simply staying the f*** out of the way. Seriously: everything would be fine one moment, and in the next a 50- to 60mph gust would slam into the side of the car and shift it half a lane sideways before you even knew what was happening. It was almost enough to cause me to miss out on the stark and beautiful horizon that was my first real view of the American West.

Pictured: But not quite.

Fun Fact: I saw my first tumbleweed in Idaho. I thought that would be more of a southwestern thing for whatever reason, so I was mildly miffed that I hadn't seen one as we passed through western Colorado and Utah...but no: Idaho came through for me. And, it would continue doing so all the way to the Oregon border; I don't know that I would especially want to live there, but I can promise that I'll be back to see more of it. And the same goes for Oregon itself; as the day wore on and we crossed the eastern mountains and made our way through the plains, we descended into the Columbia Gorge and the PNW decided to not only give the Utah desert some serious sunset competition, but to make up for everything that we'd missed seeing underneath the snowy skirts of Colorado.

Pictured: Mr. Monet, your services are needed.

For those that are interested: that gorgeous, sharp triangle of rock and ice out there on the faded horizon is Mt. Hood, and at that exact moment it is 81 miles away. This, I suppose, is the good side of Google knowing where I am at most times; there's no longer any doubt as to where a particular picture was taken, or when. I can look at the exact GPS coordinates of that photo and figure out that it would take me an hour and a half to drive to Hood from that place; likewise, I know that it was taken at exactly 17:10 on February 1st, which was the last day of our trip. I can also look at all of the photos that were taken afterwards on that same night - none of which turned out due to a significant lack of light and an even-more significant addition of image-shaking - and see that it wasn't until almost midnight that we pulled into an Airbnb on the south side of Lacey, Washington, where my partner was staying, having flown out ahead of us and made the five-day journey in just over five hours. We had the keys to the house that we were going to be renting for the next year, but we were all so exhausted that we didn't bother to go see it that night; the day had been nearly eighteen hours of driving for us, and Ground Zero of Our New Life could wait for us to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

The next day, we slept late; I don't think any of us stirred until the sun had long since risen...except Leia, of course, whom has too many generations of Kazakh shepherding in her to think that any early morning is worth missing. We lazed around the Airbnb until early afternoon and then headed to run a few errands and grab some dinner before finishing the last .01% of the trip and finally pulling into our new driveway. And that's when this happened:

Pictured: See? I told you it was going to be important, later.

That's 5000 kilometers, right on the nose; to date, that's my longest road trip ever. It's my first cross-country drive, and the first time I've ever taken a basically untested vehicle on such a massive, long voyage into the unknown...but I'm starting to think that it won't be the last. This, perhaps, is the most significant portion of what we've done: having crossed out of a life that had grown oppressive and risked...well, everything we'd done and everything we'd built over the last however-many years in order to do so, we found that we were all better for having made the journey. The trip itself wasn't easy - the rig still probably needs a solid tune-up, even these months later - and life hasn't been rose-colored each and every day, but it's been so much more incredibly real that we all shudder to think of how long we stayed in a place that simply wasn't ours. Yes, we owned it - we scrimped, saved, shivered, lived, laughed and loved within it - but it was never truly ours...and nor is the place in which we find ourselves, now. The difference is that this place was not ours through entropy or inertia; this place is ours through choice. There's been a lot of hard work and many, many more hard miles - and that unplanned nap in Iceland, which is a story that I may tell, someday - but they've all been worth it, because we are finally here.

We are finally home.

Stay tuned, Dear Reader; I have the feeling that things are only just beginning to get interesting.

 

[OGBeno]

Welcome and enjoy your 70 series Toyota Land Cruiser.

 

[Sundowner]

Welcome and enjoy your 70 series Toyota Land Cruiser.

Thank you! I've actually been on the forum for almost nine years, but heretofore have mostly used it for research and shopping. I don't post many threads - mostly because I'm a moron and require far more help than I can contribute - but I really wanted to document this particular endeavor; I bought the truck from a forum memer, via the classifieds, so it's kind of like that leg of the journey started here. As far as the enjoyment goes: I'm anxious to get a few things done and make a more dirt-focused trip this coming spring. I've thought about making a trip out to the Black Hills, but a cohort of mine wants to make a push up to the Arctic Ocean, so we might think about wandering up that way, instead.

 

[Broski]

Looks like a nice rig

 

[John Young]

...I think the steering wheel is on the wrong side...

 

[Sundowner]

Slight Update: Post #2 got its first edit...so the story continues up there.

Looks like a nice rig

Thank you! I think it's pretty decent...and I hope to both keep it that way and improve it. My father gave me some advice a long time ago, and it's never been wrong: "Don't cheap out; buy the nicest one you can afford." He wasn't talking about Land Cruisers, or even cars in general...but this is the nicest one of these I could afford, so I pulled the trigger. There are better rigs out there, and cleaner ones, and more-built ones...but this is what I could do with my budget, so I did it. And I haven't looked back.

...I think the steering wheel is on the wrong side...

No, it's on the right side.

See what I did, there?

 

[John Young]

No, it's on the right side.

See what I did, there?

Hopefully you have very long arms or you can train your dog to help from the passenger seat.

 

[Broski]

My father gave me some advice a long time ago, and it's never been wrong: "Don't cheap out; buy the nicest one you can afford."

That was good advice !

 

[Sundowner]

Hopefully you have very long arms or you can train your dog to help from the passenger seat.

I have average-length arms, and she doesn't fit in the front seat...which is actually one of the reasons that I traded/sold a total of three vehicles and put some of that money into this one: sensible rear doors. Leia isn't a small dog; she's not huge, either, but she has no extra fat on her...so she is extremely large for her 130-lb/59kg weight. Or, put another way: she's 5'-10"/180cm when she stands up...and that amount of dog takes up a lot of room in any mode of transportation. She's gotten rather adept at jumping through the small left-side rear door, but prefers that both of them be open...which is why any future spare tire solution has to be as seamless to operate as the factory system. Unfortunately, I know of only one answer to that dilemma, and that option is a no-go for several reasons...but that's a problem for a future post.

RHD isn't really an issue, unless you want to go through a lot of drive-throughs... which I don't. If I have the option, I just park and go inside; that's usually faster, anyway.

That was good advice !

It absolutely was, yes; it's stood me in good stead for many years, now. It goes along with another saying that I was once told: buy once, cry once...you'll save money in the long run. That's also been exactly 100% true.

Also, Slight Update: I've managed to lose three dash illumination bulbs in as many weeks...which is somewhat hilarious to me, because I guess they're all giving up the ghost at once. I haven't seen any voltage spikes (and I've been watching since the second one went) and I'm pretty sure that these are the original bulbs...so I'm honestly suspecting nothing more than age-related illness, here. That being said...

Quick Question: Does anyone know the bulb code/number for the 24V dash/instrument bulbs off the top of their head?

I'm searching for that info so that I don't have to pull the dash apart to get a number and then put it back together to get the rig drivable again, only to pull it apart a second time to fix the bulbs when they come in...so a number that I can look up and order would be very, very helpful.

 

[Houser]

Thank you! I've actually been on the forum for almost nine years, but heretofore have mostly used it for research and shopping. I don't post many threads - mostly because I'm a moron and require far more help than I can contribute - but I really wanted to document this particular endeavor; I bought the truck from a forum memer, via the classifieds, so it's kind of like that leg of the journey started here. As far as the enjoyment goes: I'm anxious to get a few things done and make a more dirt-focused trip this coming spring. I've thought about making a trip out to the Black Hills, but a cohort of mine wants to make a push up to the Arctic Ocean, so we might think about wandering up that way, instead.

The Arctic Ocean sounds like a fun trip. If you want to make it a group thing count me in.

 

[Sundowner]

The Arctic Ocean sounds like a fun trip. If you want to make it a group thing count me in.

I'm absolutely open to that idea. Things are in a very formative state right now, so I don't even have dates or a serious route plan...I just kind of want to get off the pavement for awhile. Feel free to shoot me a PM, or we can start talking it out here; some basic planning would go a long way to helping direct my next few steps.

 

[Broski]

Quick Question: Does anyone know the bulb code/number for the 24V dash/instrument bulbs off the top of their head?

I would reach out to Cruiser Outfitters there a great source for 70 series parts !!
Or type your Vin # into Partsouq.com They have a very easy to use web site. You can order from them or get a part number and do a google search to see where you can source the parts your looking for.
If your going to own a 70 you well need to get good at looking up and finding parts

 

[FJBen]

Welcome! You should have reached out. In Ft Collins you were only about 20-30 mins from me.

 

[Sundowner]

I would reach out to Cruiser Outfitters there a great source 70 series parts !!

Already did, for that and a few more items (wiper arms, window regulator, etc) and am hoping that they have some suggestions.

Or type your Vin # into Partsouq.com They have a very easy to use web site. You can order from them or get a part number and do a google search to see where you can source the parts your looking for.

Unfortunately, partsouq.com requires a 17-digit VIN; I have exactly five digits less than that. This being said: I think the Toyota code is 83100B, but the actual ten-digit part numbers are different for every single bulb in the cluster...but when I search for the 83100B bulb code, I get a lot of associated and similar numbers and they all lead to 12V bulbs for later/different vehicles. Thus, my question as to whether anyone actually knew the correct number off the top of their head. I may just look and see if I can find the Osram replacement bulb; I'm pretty sure I bought one of those before, but I don't have the part number written down.

Edit: I want to say it's a 2845, W5W...but don't quote me on that.

If your going to own a 70 you well need to get good at looking up and finding parts

I'm normally pretty good at it, but electrical bits seem to be the death of me; I had a hell of a time figuring out the factory tail light harness connectors for when I spliced in the 12V trailer harness that I built. Ugh...that project still gives me nightmares.

Welcome! You should have reached out. In Ft Collins you were only about 20-30 mins from me.

Wish I'd known! I would have bought you a late-night beer; next time I pass through, I'll be sure to let you know!

 

[Irish11]

In case I missed it, where in the PNW are you headed? We do have some 70's in the greater Seattle and Portland area. Also the club just north in Vancouver has some parts around in case you need something.

For the 24v lights, there are also Caterpillar dealers around that have them in stock if you need them right now.

 

[saltycoconuts]

Quick Question: Does anyone know the bulb code/number for the 24V dash/instrument bulbs off the top of their head?

I might have some bulbs tucked away that I had as spares for my 74. They should be 24v. I’ll check and report back. Just cover shipping and they’re all yours

Edit: Found a few light bulbs. 24v turn signal lights and x4 24v gauge green cluster lights.

 

[Guyute]

PartSouq loves a JDM frame number. Happen to have searched for the turn signal bulbs the other day....browser window is still open.

Mines a '97 but likely the same-same.


The turn and marker 24v bulbs show available at my local dealer BTW. (99134-11250 and 90981-16016).

 

[Sundowner]

In case I missed it, where in the PNW are you headed? We do have some 70's in the greater Seattle and Portland area. Also the club just north in Vancouver has some parts around in case you need something.

You didn't miss it; I just haven't authored a build thread in about ten years so I'm a little off my composition game...thus, I left that relatively crucial detail out. Answer: Olympia, Washington. Also, thanks for asking; I added that little bit of info to the first post...and thanks for the tip on parts!

For the 24v lights, there are also Caterpillar dealers around that have them in stock if you need them right now.

Good to know, thank you! I think the main problem here is wattages; there are about four different illuminance levels within the dash, for whatever reason. 1.4 W, 1.6W, 1.8W, 3.0W...so hopefully that'll not be too difficult to find. Kind of makes me wonder why they varied three of the bulbs by only 0.2W each and then went all the way to 3.0W; I get that it's probably for even illumination, but does 0.2W really make that much of a difference?

I might have some bulbs tucked away that I had as spares for my 74. They should be 24v. I’ll check and report back. Just cover shipping and they’re all yours

Edit: Found a few light bulbs. 24v turn signal lights and x4 24v gauge green cluster lights.

I'll be happy to take those off your hands; PM incoming, and thank you!

PartSouq loves a JDM frame number. Happen to have searched for the turn signal bulbs the other day....browser window is still open.

Your Parts-Fu is much stronger than mine; I can't seem to get anything to pull up, there. All I get is a "Nothing Found" result and about three different "You screwed this up, moron" messages.

Mines a '97 but likely the same-same.

Should be the same, but isn't: I have the other dash cluster, which is slightly more complicated.

The turn and marker 24v bulbs show available at my local dealer BTW. (99134-11250 and 90981-16016).

So, I read this a bit ago and headed to the local dealer to see if my Parts-Counter-Fu was in any way present, and - spoiler - it totally wasn't.

I found a cluster diagram on Megazip that's accurate for my setup, and then decided that I needed to just do this the very easy way and get full parts and chassis electrical diagrams...so, I have both of those, now. I then pulled the numbers from that, checked them against what I already had, added them to the couple that you gave me a few minutes ago, and then handed that entire list to the parts guy. Result: zero hits. They can't even get access to the catalog for JDM vehicles to look up any of the bulb part numbers that way...so we checked PartSouq and ToyoDIY and found matching diagrams and numbers on the latter site. All that said, I still don't have much of a source for them locally, so I'm continuing to look online. I did find a lost stash of 5W Osram bulbs that I got awhile back to replace the lower dash switch lamp...
...
...
...which I just realized is also not working.