I appreciate all of your suggestions and comments in my quest for a locked 80. As I always seem to do with cars, I bought the first one I looked at. That being said though, I do a LOT of research/shopping from my chair before I choose one to go see.
So here is the lowdown:
1996 FZJ80 120,000 miles. 3 owners. Was a lease vehicle for 75K miles of its life.
Current owner searched for 6 months and was almost as schizo as me. It was a mall Cruiser prior to him acquiring it, and, for all practical purposes, is still a mall Cruiser.
It was from the Northeaset/VA but after crawling under it for a half hour and seeing many underside shots, I found it to be very clean. It appeared to be undercoated, whether from Toyota or not, I do not know.
The current owner has had it for 3 years and 17,000 miles. He only had records for when he owned it. But, he was very quick to have anything that popped up fixed, and was good on the maintenence. He had OME medium springs, shocks, caster correction, and stabilizer installed. He also installed an ARB bull bar.
The Cruiser is very clean. Everything works, including the lockers. The leather is in pretty good shape. It is starting to show cracks/wrinkles but nothing gotten too bad yet. It ran and drove great and did not miss a beat. There was no major oil slick on the underside. It will likely need a knuckle repack, the ends were greasy, but there was no clicking while turning.
We tested the lockers in a gravel parking lot. They behaved just as I figured they should if they were working correctly.
Enough talking about it, here is some porn:
So here is the lowdown:
1996 FZJ80 120,000 miles. 3 owners. Was a lease vehicle for 75K miles of its life.
Current owner searched for 6 months and was almost as schizo as me. It was a mall Cruiser prior to him acquiring it, and, for all practical purposes, is still a mall Cruiser.
It was from the Northeaset/VA but after crawling under it for a half hour and seeing many underside shots, I found it to be very clean. It appeared to be undercoated, whether from Toyota or not, I do not know.
The current owner has had it for 3 years and 17,000 miles. He only had records for when he owned it. But, he was very quick to have anything that popped up fixed, and was good on the maintenence. He had OME medium springs, shocks, caster correction, and stabilizer installed. He also installed an ARB bull bar.
The Cruiser is very clean. Everything works, including the lockers. The leather is in pretty good shape. It is starting to show cracks/wrinkles but nothing gotten too bad yet. It ran and drove great and did not miss a beat. There was no major oil slick on the underside. It will likely need a knuckle repack, the ends were greasy, but there was no clicking while turning.
We tested the lockers in a gravel parking lot. They behaved just as I figured they should if they were working correctly.
Enough talking about it, here is some porn:
