The HDJ81 Build I Didn't Know I Needed (1 Viewer)

[SnowVersion]

In October of 2017 I sold my diesel Hilux. By November seller's remorse was pretty acute and I was desperate for another 4x4.

@AirheadNut was selling a fully optioned HDJ81 VX Limited recently imported from Canada. This thing had all the bells and whistles: triple lockers, center console fridge, factory spare tire carrier, winch, ARB bumper.

Before buying I had the opportunity to take the truck for an extended test drive through the mountains. After that there was no question. Another JDM Diesel Import was just the thing to help me get over my Hilux. The HDJ81 was in great shape and needed nothing except some new paint on the goofy burgundy wheels.

The term "triple locked" went straight to my head and my first act as owner of this cruiser involved resting the frame on some grass while the wheels spun in deep, muddy ruts. I didn't mind too much, though, because @AirheadNut was there with his Prado to pull me out.

 

[SnowVersion]

When I bought the 81, I never intended to do any sort of "build" on it. I saw myself as the owner of a very capable "needs nothing but routine maintenance" vehicle.

But I chanced across folks claiming that 1HDTs can run quite hot and a pyrometer is a great investment. Accordingly, I bought an Auber Instruments pyrometer and installed the probe by tapping a hole in the exhaust manifold. A few other little items cropped up and I amassed a small collection of "Genuine Toyota Parts" boxes. Still, this was by no means a build.

Spent the remainder of the winter enjoying my new 81 and having fun pulling UPS trucks out of the ditch.

 

[SnowVersion]

The pyrometer install went just fine and I was pleased as punch with the pyrometer - but not the cruiser. EGTs hovered in the 900-1100ºF range when cruising at highway speeds. The slightest hill sent temps over 1200ºF. The final straw was when I had to pull Homestake Pass - only about a thousand feet of elevation gain - at 30MPH in order to keep temps under 1300ºF. For the rest of that trip I had two things on my mind: 1HDTs have aluminum pistons, and aluminum melts at 1220ºF.

My HDJ81 now needed more than routine maintenance. Suddenly, I had a build on my hands.

Step 1: Make some measurements

Step 2: buy the biggest intercooler that would fit

Step 3: find out that the transmission cooler needs to be moved so that ridiculously big intercooler will fit.

Transmission cooler successfully moved between the radiator and AC!

The work moving the transmission cooler made me realize that this intercooler project was way more than I'd bargained for. Space was extremely limited, which meant that my equally limited fabrication skills were going to be really, really stretched. So I decided to practice my procrastination skills.

 

[subzali]

Have the BEB’s been done?

 

[SnowVersion]

Yep! BEBs were done immediately following the cruiser's import to Canada in 2005 at around 170,000km.

One of the things that made this cruiser so attractive to me was documentation and service records going back to when the cruiser was new. Service records for the first 165,000km are all in Japanese, but because they use Arabic numerals for the VIN I can at least confirm that they are indeed from the vehicle I have!

 

[SnowVersion]

After my intercooler project stalled at buying an aftermarket intercooler core, I sold some jerry cans on craigslist. When the buyer noticed my HDJ81, he proceeded to pop the hood on his late 1990s Chevy S10. Underneath, a fairly clean 2JZ. And by fairly clean, I mean the mechanical portion of the swap looked pretty good. Granted, there were some oddities, like dirty shop towels stuffed into at least eight different crevices in the engine bay. The jerry can buyer then furnished a business card which billed him as a mechanic.

Here was the solution to my intercooler problem! If this random fellow with a mechanic's business card could shoehorn a 2JZ into an S10, he could probably weave an intercooler into a HDJ81 engine bay. Right? So we started talking intercooler install.

"Why not mount the intercooler to the ARB bumper?" he asked. Somehow I missed that red flag and politely explained that no, the intercooler needed to go behind the grille.

Price? We settled on $250 plus materials. Another missed red flag.

Timeframe? Three weeks or less.

At this point it's important to note that I was only 3 weeks from getting married and the months of wedding planning decisions had clearly affected my ability to make real world decisions. Could I determine the ideal typeface pairing for wedding invitations? Sure. Determine a reasonable level of effort for in intercooler install? No way. What about figuring out what combination of great aunts and second cousins could be invited to the wedding without offending other great aunts and second cousins? Done. Discern how trustworthy a random craigslist stranger was with my reasonably rare and expensive Land Cruiser? Apparently not.

Over the next two and a half weeks, communications from the self-proclaimed mechanic adhered to themes like "more difficult than I expected" and "taking longer than I planned." By the beginning of the third week, the agreed-upon $250 was coming out well below $5/hour. That actually made me feel better about the project, because it at least looked like a $7/hour result. Intercooler piping was not only present, but present in massive quantity and was beginning to resemble a roll cage around the engine. That said, it was still not done. Always and ever "almost" done.

The morning of my wedding I showed up at the mechanic's shop with a truck and trailer, ready to take the cruiser and finish it myself. But as I rolled up to the shop I realized that "install a custom intercooler" definitely fell outside the scope of socially acceptable honeymoon plans. So I left to go get dressed for the wedding.

Eventually the cruiser was done, but not without me pulling a 3pm to 1am work session with the mechanic. After 3 am, though, my outlook changed, because I was able to test drive the cruiser and see what a difference the intercooler made.

Before the intercooler, EGTs hovered in the 900-1100ºF range any time I exceeded 55mph. After the intercooler, that number went down to 700-900ºF. Even better news was that I could pull hills without exceeding 1250ºF. It was time to take the cruiser on some adventures!

 

[SnowVersion]

The first place I took the newly intercooled cruiser was to the Wind Rivers in Wyoming. Although I didn't do much proper off-road driving, there was plenty of opportunity to take rough two-tracks up into the mountains.

The cruiser also did well loaded down with camping gear, ski gear, and the RTT. We ended up over 10,000 feet several times but had no trouble with exhaust temps getting too high.

 

[SnowVersion]

The next major adventure with the cruiser involved searching for abandoned mines. This mainly consisted of driving long-abandoned roads and keeping a sharp eye out for any opportunities to get underground. Seems like a lot of mines are either on private property or are caved in, so in my experience it takes a lot of searching to find a mine one can actually get inside. On this particular trip we were pretty fortunate to find not one but two accessible tunnels. My favorite mines are the ones with lots of equipment left behind. This mine didn't have a lot in the way of equipment, but it was nice to see several ore carts, shovels, and a pick.

A little ways into the first mine we chanced across a winze - a vertical passageway with ladders which allowed miners to move between different levels of the mine. Parts of the wooden ladders were mushy to the touch, so we set up a rope and descended about 100 vertical feet down the winze without the use of the ladders.

In the lower level of the mine we found more ore carts and this wooden ore chute. As the mine sloped downward, though, water levels increased and eventually we had to turn around. My main concern exploring partially flooded mines has to do with inadvertently stepping into a flooded winze or vertical shaft. Weighed down with a bunch of gear, drowning is a definite possibility.

Once we'd explored as much of the mine as was safe, we drove up into the mountains a ways to find a nice, quiet campsite for the night.

 

[SnowVersion]

The next morning, we headed out to find more mines. The first thing we found was this load out structure. Unfortunately, the nearby adit was thoroughly collapsed. I'm not sure what they were mining here, but floor inside this structure was covered in grit containing a lot of iron pyrite.

A couple hours later, we found what appeared to be a much newer mine. The adit went 1600 feet straight into the mountain, at which point it split two ways. This must have been a haulage tunnel at the bottom of the mine, because while we saw many stopes and workings above us, there was no evidence of lower levels.

The most exciting part of this mine, however, was brought to our attention by a little sign hanging from a rusted wire.

After not getting blown up by the dynamite, we again proceeded to drive backroads until we found a suitable campsite - this one near a dilapidated mill.

 

[Willie G]

I seem to remember a warning about old dynamite where the nitroglycerin had leached out of the wrapper....

Glad you're OK!

 

[AirheadNut]

I seem to remember a warning about old dynamite where the nitroglycerin had leached out of the wrapper....

Glad you're OK!

Yep! We are always super careful about old dynamite, over time the nitro can leach out of the clay binding agent and bead up on the surface of the sticks. These ones were probably past being dangerous, but we definitely tread carefully!