Christo, thanks for checking in at such a late hour. Yes, I did finish the installation and have everything tested in good working order.
I had the bottle in it's "final" mount orientation earlier, but I just finished monkeying around with the re-wiring. Long story short on that topic, I pulled the OEM wiring from the harness connector to the bottle's pump connection, and swapped out your provided wires into the OEM connectors. If I'd have had a kit of new connector prong thingies...I'd have been done in less than a half hour, but alas I had to recycle the existing connectors.
In the first photo, this is a shot of how the bottle's angle was when I initially mounted it based on your instructions, primarily the point being that the left side connection had the bracket on the backside of the bottle. You can see 2 things here: the considerable angle of the bottle's back compared to the Cruise Control's cover. That angle is what gave me considerable pause, given the stress I surmised on the plastic mounting tabs that could fail in the future. Maybe none have ever, maybe it has happened and nobody's posted it up here, who knows. In a pinch, could I get everything to line up and secured with the provided bolts and brackets...yes. However, to do that would leave the mounting tabs very stressed, the Cruise Control cable completely pinched b/w the bottle and vertical bracket, and a considerable amount of pressure on the front of the bottle from the contact with the wiring harness coming out of the firewall. I also noticed that the front bottom right corner of the bottle was contacting the shock tower's mount when I tried to torque the bottle over in order to get the holes to line up on the vertical bracket. Even if I tried increasing the angle of the horizontal bracket (at it's first bend), all that would have accomplished was to put the right side's mounting tab past the vertical bracket's mount hole and requiring an increased angle in order to line up the holes. Adding all this up, one could see there's something considerably amiss.
So I took the route that others have tried and sought to offset the bottle back towards the front of the vehicle, without having to modify the actual brackets. Also of considerable concern was to alleviate the pinning of the Cruise Control cable between the bottle and the vertical bracket. As other's have stated, there's no mistaking that there's much more than just plain contact....there's no wiggle room and I could see the cable getting impinged if its shielding was compromised after prolonged pressure.
[Refer to the second photo] The horizontal bracket was reoriented so that the right angle mount point was in front of the bottle's mounts. I swapped the spacer to the bottom mount, and then secured the horizontal bracket to it's respective mounting holes. The result was exactly as I hoped. The bottle came back in over 1/2" towards the Cruise Control cover, the back of the bottle was now running parallel with the CC's cover, there was no longer any contact with the firewall wiring harness, and the holes lined up a bit better at the right side of the bottle with the vertical bracket.
Here's the rub, the bottle's mounting tab was still some distance away from the vertical bracket, and the only way to secure them with the supplied 35mm bolt would have forced the bottle back in at an angle with the load being at the mount points, just not at severe as before. So I went with fashioning a spacer and ended up using enough flat washers and a near 50mm bolt I had to secure a 3/4" inch space between the mount points. The result is great. No more pressure on the mounting tabs, no contact with any other vehicle parts, etc.
I've included a 3rd photo from the antenna's POV, to help illustrate how the bottle lined up with the CC cover after making the adjustments described above. I actually have taken 48 hi-res photos on this project, so there's plenty to go back and dip into the well if needed. You should be able to see that the CC cable is now passing between the bottle and the edge of the vertical bracket without any impingement. No notching required.
I'm just as bewildered as you are, Christo, as to why some '97 owners are running into seemingly the same issue I've encountered, while others have a "drop in and walk away" experience. I considered that maybe the wiring harness coming out of my firewall was extending too far into the engine bay, but that didn't account for the extreme angles and misalignment of the mounting holes at the vertical bracket. Something did strike me though while I was completing the install tonight.... the windshield wiper fluid bottle.... is there possibly more than one? A slightly larger bottle could throw off the dimensions resulting in possibly the experience encountered here, but how would one '97 have this type and not another '97? Dunno. The bottle in my LC has the following info on it, maybe Dan can run the numbers down for us:
Toyota ASMO 860141 244
Thanks for everyone's help and input on this project. It really made a big difference for me. If anyone has any questions concerning their installation, don't hesitate to contact me for a pic or just a question.
Christo, if I may make a suggestion... it appears that there's some X-factor out there that while not fully explained why, there are without question LC owners out there that have run into the same "fitment" situation as I and others have documented in this thread. It would seem to me that if you added a second spacer that was 3/4" long with an additional 50mm bolt, then the customer would have all the ingredients needed if "Scenario B" was what they were faced with. Obviously there would need to be an added part to the instructions that explained in this case that the horizontal bracket would go on the front of the bottle's left mounting tabs. Seems like adding 2 small "contingency components" might be a good path to ensure that any of your customers would have a "drop-in" install experience. What are your thoughts?
