Lando the FJ80 Build and Adventure thread

This spring the $50 Saab blew its head gasket. I decided that I had my fun with it, and that it was time for something complexly different. I sold the Saab for $650 and picked up a stock 1994 Land Cruiser. I had been itching for something capable off-road, partly thanks to Toyman's 7 hour adventure thread, and the fact that it can fit all 8 of us doesn't hurt. Other than some new 33" Falkin tires to replace the worn out ones that came on it, the Land Cruiser stayed stock all summer. What restraint!

Then...disaster. Well, minor inconvenience maybe. I was rear ended and, super, the guy didn't have any insurance. On the FJ80 most of the "rear bumper" is a solid part of the frame. On each side there are plastic pieces that wrap around to the back of the rear wheel. Of course he hit the squishy plastic part obliterating it. Luckily I had uninsured motorist coverage, and there was only a small dent on the body. I banged out the dent and took the insurance money and put it towards some nice off-road bumpers from NW Trail Innovations. This is the same guy that let me use (and abuse) his nice new tubing bender when I made the roll cage for the Midlana. The bumpers come as kits, some welding required.

They went together fairly easily. It took me about 1 day each bumper to get them tacked together. You start with the pieces that bolt to the frame and work out from there.

Thanks mostly to my puny 110V welder it took several more days to get them fully welded and ground down. Then I got them powder coated and toped off the front with a 10K LB Engo winch. These things are beefy. I won't suffer much damage if somebody else taps me!

Today I finished wiring up the winch, locating the solenoid under the hood and adding a $15 remote control kit from amazon. Then it was time for it's first adventure.

I took my boys up Davis Peak just outside of Arial WA. Most of the roads were very well maintained gravel that any vehicle could handle, but we found a few power line roads to give Lando a workout.

The goal is to build a mild overland vehicle for some camping, without sacrificing the daily driver/family hauler characteristics. Next mods will be  2.5" lift, sway bar disconnects, and extending the axle breathers. After that rock sliders, a removable bed platform and maybe air lockers? Eventually I would like to take it up to Alaska on the Alaska Marine Highway for a few week adventure with my oldest son.

Until next-time, happy cruising!

 Very nice, very nice indeed. 

I would put the lockers higher on the list, personally. Stock height on those is still quite serviceable off road, and even an LSD will make a huge difference in traction. The Covered Wagon is lifted 4”, and the only thing that it’s done for me is prevented some mangled rockers. Diff rebuilds are pretty high on my list right now...

These are awesome and I'm looking forward to seeing what life is like with one.

Did you want this in the build threads section?

Thanks guys. Please move the thread to wherever it makes the most sense. The lift is primarily to swap out the old, likely original shocks that are tired after over 200k. Might as well go a bit taller while I'm at it. 

I had a local Land cruiser shop rebuild the front axle and they quoted me $3,500 to add air lockers to the front and rear. I would love to DIY but am worried about setting up the differentials.

In reply to bgkast :

Diffs aren’t particularly difficult to set up... it just requires time, and attention to detail. I find it quite rewarding.

After one of the kids didn't get the door closed and ran down the battery over a weekend I decided to upgrade to LED bulbs in the dome lights. Before you could hardly tell the interior lights were on:

Now:

That's better, and will be good for camping too. You can buy a kit for this upgrade on the cruiser forums for $30 ...or get a 10 pack on Amazon for $15.  I'm also planning on adding some lights on the rear hatch that will shine down and illuminate the tailgate when the back is opened up.

I also ordered myself some winch accessories from Amazon. A few soft shackles, snatch blocks and some green webbing for a cable pull.

On the adventure side of things I tried to take the girls up to a set of peaks that you can see from our house called Elk Mountain. It turned out that all of the logging roads there were gated and it is all Weyerhaeuser land that is closed to the public unless you have a $300 permit. Bummer. I ended up taking them to Davis Peak where I took the boys a few weeks ago instead.

You can get some new front seat covers for three bills from lseat.com.  Here they are on my UZJ100:

Bit of a PITA to put on, but you shouldn't have any problem.  I like the bumper.

In reply to Dr. Hess :

How much of a pain were the covers?  Any issues with the seat heaters?  I’ve never done any seat recovering.  Am I better off taking them somewhere?  I have a 100 series as well and my fronts are badly badly cracked. 

I dunno what your definition of "pain" is.  I mean, it was less work than pulling a motor.  More work than swapping a starter, unless it's a 1UZ motor, then it was less work than swapping a starter. 

Pull the seat, disconnect the harness, pull some trim bits, strip the old cover off, remove the seat heater from the old cover (it's held on with those price-label needle gun things), tack the seat heater to the new cover with needle and thread, put the new cover on, a few hog rings here and there, maybe a tack here and there, lots of grunting and pulling, reconnect the harness, put the seat back and that's about it.  The set from Lseat comes with the headrest and arm rest pieces too.  I don't think I could buy the leather for what they sell the whole thing for, and it saved me another week or two of cutting and sewing.

Here's a thread of someone else doing it, which I followed.  It's fairly accurate.  I put some comments at the end.

LX Seat cover R&R.

I think that were I to do it again, I would scotchguard the crap out of the covers, then hit them with a bunch of Lexol, as the scotchguard seemed to suck the oil right out of the cover.  I did that after they were installed and it would have been easier to do it with the seat sitting on the shop floor.  They stopped pulling in dirt after I did that.  I've seen mention of people taking them to upholstery shops and there being an extra '0' in the price.

Funny that you live in WA, first thing I did when I moved up there was get a SUV for overlanding also but I went with the Gen 3 Montero because they were cheaper than the Land Cruisers that I really wanted. Good luck with the build and making some memories with those kiddos.

That extra light really makes the seats look bad.  Thanks for the tip on the covers, I'll check them out. I reupholstered some Mercedes seats about 10 years ago and it's not too bad of a job if the new leather fits.

Edit: How have the leathers from lseat.com held up Dr. Hess? All of the other upholstery kits I have found are about $700 per row, those seem like a great deal.

Nice Mitsu Jaynen. Are there some good tracks out your way to explore? I've been itching to get off of well maintained gravel logging roads and on to something slightly more challenging.

They've been holding up just fine.  As I said, I scotchguarded the E36 M3 out of them, then laid the Lexol on thick.  We almost had snow last night.  Well, maybe an inch of slushy stuff but unfortunately none stuck on the roads.  Took the LX470 in to the restaurant today anyway, after changing out to my General Altimax Artics 2 days ago.  We will probably never have snow again. 

The seats look better now than in the pics, as the leather has relaxed to fit the cushions more now.  That pic was like the day I put them on.  There were a couple of minor screwups in the covers.  Nothing that a little bit of hand sewing or a couple minutes on the sewing machine wouldn't fix.  Small things like one of the pull-ee-down-ee inside things in slightly the wrong place on one seat, etc.  Nothing major, and at the price, nothing to complain about, really.  The overall fit was just fine.

bgkast said:

That extra light really makes the seats look bad.  Thanks for the tip on the covers, I'll check them out. I reupholstered some Mercedes seats about 10 years ago and it's not too bad of a job if the new leather fits.

 

Edit: How have the leathers from lseat.com held up Dr. Hess? All of the other upholstery kits I have found are about $700 per row, those seem like a great deal.

Nice Mitsu Jaynen. Are there some good tracks out your way to explore? I've been itching to get off of well maintained gravel logging roads and on to something slightly more challenging.

 

I sold the Mitsu to a GRMer actually when we moved back to San Diego. I live in NC now and there are some trails I think. I lived near Seattle and there was some stuff but it was all about 2hrs out of town

My nice new bumper kept getting muddy.

The problem was a gap between the bumper and the fender right behind the rear wheels.

The stock mud guards used to cover this area, but they came off with the stock bumper.

To fill this area I decided to try something I have been meaning to try for quite awhile: Ikea Mud flaps! The idea is to use flexible cutting boards as a budget rally armor style mud flaps. Ikea seems to have changed the material since I last looked at doing this. The old material was about 1/16 inch thick, and the new ones are even thinner, but they still should work.

CAD template and the final product:

And the cutting board in sitsu

Hopefully this will also stop crud from building up on the fender lip

I made a tool mount for the stock roof rack today to let me carry a shovel and axe. I used Yakima mighty mounts and quick fist clamps mounted on some brackets I made. No more bungie cords!

Looks awesome! I'd recommend sliders, I'm super glad I put mine on. I was able to get the 4Runner through some rocky stuff on street tires that put the sliders to good use. 

Sliders are definitely in the future. The guy I got my bumpers from is planning to offer slider kits and may use my car to prototype them.

Nice rig. If I'd had a little more money to play with I'd have gone with a TLC instead of my Grand Cherokee. 

I'd like to hear a little more about your process doing the bumper withh a 110v welder. I've looked at the kits for the GC but all I have is a 110V Lincold wire welder with no gas. I was thinking they might be too much for it to tackle.

bgkast said:

Sliders are definitely in the future. The guy I got my bumpers from is planning to offer slider kits and may use my car to prototype them.

I've seen some of the front bumper kits he's made for the 4th gen 4Runners. Everyone that runs one seems to really like it. 

In reply to ultraclyde :

The bumpers kits are made up of flat geometric shapes. When you fit them up at the angle needed to form the bumper there is a nice trough to weld in and get good penetration. I also welded a full seam on the inside. It's easier and faster with a big welder, but a 110v will get the job done. The biggest pain was welding a few inches, then waiting to let the machine cool so that it doesn't thermal overload.  That and lots and lots and lots of grinding.  

In reply to bgkast :

Put a muffin fan on the welder.  Get a larger one if you have it, like a 8", but even a smaller one from a computer power supply will help a lot.  I used to have the thermal overload problems too.  Weld an inch, wait 5 or 10 minutes for the thermal overload to reset, weld another inch.  PITA.  That's on my Italian made 110V Harbor Freight MIG.  I put a 110V muffin fan I pulled form some equipment I was scrapping up against the outside of the vent and ran an extension cord to it.  No more overloads.  EVER.  I mean, set it on high, weld as much as you want and never have that problem again.  I eventually mounted it inside the case and wired it to the power switch.

In reply to Dr. Hess :

That’s an amazing story. So simple yet so productive. Thanks for adding that.

In reply to bgkast :

I've got the same problem with my 110V HF welder...leads to the unintended consequence of drinking way more beer than anticipated while waiting for the machine to cool 

In reply to Dr. Hess :

I'm guessing you also have a POWERMIG?

That is good info. I've never had a problem with my little Lincoln shutting off, but I've never tried to run a bead more than 4 or 5 inches either.

So you just mount it to the vent huh?  Come to think of it, I think mine may have one built in....