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They were still using those vents up till 2006 in the 70 series here in Australia, and knowing Toyota, they’re still the same drat part as the 60’s used, so you could probably find some good ones from someone who’s bought a HDJ79 wreck for the FTE in it and wants to move em on for beer money and postage.
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Aug 22, 2021 23:14
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Time to do an update before I forget things. I now have classic vehicle insurance on 4 vehicles, including the ‘new’ Land Cruiser I’m picking up next month in Salt Lake. (Autocorrect just changed that to Salt Lame TWICE. Hmm…) Because the used, and especially collectible, vehicle market is batshit right now that means this rusty thing has full coverage agreed-value insurance for 10x what I paid for it one year ago.  Seen here classing up the Yacht Club. There was a King Crab sport fisheries opening last weekend; my friend Dylan invited me out on a beautiful evening to try our luck.   Success!  That crab is a monster. Dylan’s pot got 5 legal keepers total over the weekend, with a household limit of 2, so that meant he wanted other people (like me) to come so we could all share the bounty. I used it to make mac & cheese. The shop has been uneventful for most of the last month; we’ve been building a bear-proof (ahahaha) shed to hold the garbage cans and shop access has been…not great.  Now that almost all of the carpentry work has been done I spent some time today working indoors instead of out in the rain. Custom front overhang shortening:  My ‘new’ Land Cruiser apparently needs a replacement steering box. That’s not a huge deal, I have a spare. I went to take the hoses off so I could send it away for a rebuild, and I must say that I’m not particularly pleased with the GearWrench flange wrenches:  After I fought those hoses off I took a break and did some more digging into what the rebuilders actually do and it sounds uninspiring. I may just buy a new box from an 80 series Land Cruiser, as those bolt in and have more power. Maybe. I’m still open to a rebuilt box but the shops I’ve looked at don’t want it shipped USPS and the other shippers want $MORTGAGE$ money just to ship a drat steering box. RockAuto will get me a new-build box for less than just round-trip shipping. Tempting.
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Aug 29, 2021 05:26
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Alaska, The Last Frontier These are the voyages of the derby car Denterprise Its mission: to smash To boldly go where no van has gone before  I took a trip this weekend!  I was invited over to Gustavus/Glacier Bay for the annual demolition derby; a friend had prepped an Explorer, the Explodasaurus Wrecks, that was the first ever out of town entry. For some perspective, Gustavus is a very isolated town, 60 miles by boat (45 by air) from Juneau. You don’t get there by accident, and because this is Alaska, you also don’t always get there on purpose. Gustavus is a town that isn’t exactly set in the ways things were, but also doesn’t change if they like how things are. See the only gas station for example:  Gustavus is a place that makes decay look good.  But that’s also because they have many local artists who need to find things to entertain themselves in a place with no cell phone reception. Things like demolition derbies. I did not realize it until we got there, but we were invited over by the founder and head of the demolition derby, a guy who has spent all year preparing and had a specially outfitted vehicle for every class. He has gone to a lot of effort over the years trying to win one of the amazing trophies (the only prizes).  Now, what kind of vehicles do they run? Well, this is a small town where everyone has stuff that needs hauling, whether by pickup truck  Or SUV  There is even a ladies class  Boobie Bouncer won the ladies class Because we were there by invitation of the derby organizer we got roped into a day of prepping vehicles (DIY ATF out of used motor oil and bad gasoline!) and getting everything ready. The entire town came out for the show (Gustavus, being so isolated, has been able to mostly escape the pandemic). I asked about being able to watch from the top of a hill and was told that I could if I’d be on the Safety Team with flags and air horns. Done deal! Unfortunately for you all, though, that means I don’t have a lot of action shots. The classes were, in order: Ladies 1st, FWD, Midsize, and finally Fullsize. All 4wd vehicles must be handicapped down to 2wd. If your vehicle survives its own class you can choose to run in the next class as well. Several did. One amusing thing is that the most common way of ‘going out’ was getting stuck. The only vehicle in the ladies class that didn’t drive out of the area under its own power was the winner, and several of them raced again (one XJ raced in 3 classes!). The Midsize class winner has now won 3 years in a row. The Explorer came in 2nd place in Midsize before getting stuck; we tossed the keys at another friend who came with and he, at 72 years old, turned absolutely giddy. He was the oldesr driver in the derby by far, the only midsize in the fullsize class, and had nothing to lose. I could hear his laughter over the open exhausts. At the end of the fullsize class the Explorer again came in second, losing to a Ram 1500 that I helped prep the day before. You can see them here with the Explorer, uh, warm.  As the arena was being cleared the Hammerhead International up above had a small incident  It will be back again for more next year. I drove The Beast back  Towing Hammer Time  The Explodasaurus needed a bit more help  Then we had a BBQ, told stories, and I laughed harder than I have in years. We got up early today and went up into Glacier Bay before coming home; we got into places that no motor boat has possibly ever been before. Right where this pin is; the glacier has receded back past the satellite photo. We got to see a glacier calve and surf an 8’ wall of water afterwards, but things calmed down enough that we could get some neat photo ops  Now where did I take that picture from?  The water under me is 300 feet deep and 35*F It was a good, long, weekend. I intend to go back next year. Maybe with a vehicle of my own.
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Sep 7, 2021 07:14
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Dude, I'm so glad you came back to this dying pig balls forum. I miss the demo derbies of my youth in WV, although that looks much safer and slower. Any fist fights? I'd have been wearing an exposure suit to climb into an ice chunk, but that's a hell of a shot. I'm also famously risk-averse.
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Sep 7, 2021 14:41
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No fights. In fact, there was a rollover in the FWD class and several other competitors rushed out to make sure the driver was okay: …And once he was back upright, he ended up winning the class! Gustavus is too small and too isolated to live there if you can’t get along. Quite a few of the vehicles were formerly abandoned at the airport by people leaving, including the Assalt Killer above (named because it was formerly owned by the Johnny’s Seasoning Salt people, who used to have a fishing lodge there). We actually tested that iceberg quite a bit before getting on, plus kept stuff handy to fish people out, plus made sure anything on our persons was okay getting wet (but it would have still been miserable going in).  Here’s a group of baby seals, ready for clubbing:  And some Orcas, out looking for salmon snacks:  I believe there are two resident Orca pods and we saw both.
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Sep 7, 2021 16:35
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That Travelall looks insane and I want it
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Sep 7, 2021 16:45
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Advent Horizon posted:No fights. In fact, there was a rollover in the FWD class and several other competitors rushed out to make sure the driver was okay: If we ever travel up that way again, I wanna go for a ride. I sure miss Alaska.
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Sep 7, 2021 17:37
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Any time you want to visit we can make things happen. Same goes for any goons looking to stop by. I see your stealth edit about the Orcas - I made sure to say salmon instead of seals because there are thought to be two subspecies of Orca, ‘resident’ and ‘transient’: https://www.pbs.org/kqed/oceanadventures/episodes/killerwhale/indepth-orcas.html Resident Orcas, which we saw, almost exclusively eat fish. Transients eat mammals. We do have both around here but transients are mostly solitary or very small pods; the pods we saw were around 10 individuals each.
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Sep 7, 2021 18:06
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Alaska seems completely awesome like...three months out of the year.
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Sep 7, 2021 19:51
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Geez, it’s already been another couple weeks. I went to the junkyard and scavenged a radiator for the Explodasaurus Wrecks:  But the city finally started their ‘cleanup’ of the junkyard and the Ranger I got that from was crushed the next morning. There was one other with TTB but it was basically in a hole at a 45* angle:  Note that it was nearly dark when I took that picture. I was trying, and failing, to salvage a coil spring:  I was getting tired and stupid right before I took that picture. I took the picture when I decided to salvage myself and my tools. We’ll find a spring somewhere else. That Ranger has also now been crushed. The city is fining them $1500 per vehicle hauled away. They were still insistent about getting money for vehicles slated to be scrapped; we offered to drag away two for free and they would not budge on $150 each. Both got crushed and they got a $3,000 bill; we got called cheapskates for not buying. I was out in the shop and noticed one of the breakers had tripped. Tried resetting and there was an explosion.  Yeah, that’s not good. The outlet is behind a storage rack, that’s my only excuse for not noticing the vapor barrier. I replaced it with a new outlet and extended the box out to the drywall face.  Turned out my space heater had a short. Hooray. That’s now out in the scrap metal pile. Speaking of scrap metal, I’m finally making progress on the FJ60 again.  Today I got the front suspension out. I tried for weeks to get it out ‘properly’ before resorting to cutting it all off. Rubber leaf spring bushings suck. Figured out that an old creeper with a couple 4x4s on the frame makes a darn fine axle dolly:  Credit where credit is due, the 4x4s across the frame were my wife’s idea. Originally I put it directly onto the creeper and that was a pain (see the right side of the hovercruiser picture). And, finally, I GOT MY LICENSE PLATES BACK!  I had these plates from 2002-2008, when I let the tags on my FJ40 expire. In 2012 a friend posted a picture of a jeep on FB with them - the DMV considered the number lapsed and let someone else get it. I have been checking with the DMV every single month for NINE YEARS to see if the jeep people had let them go. Anyways, I think that’s about it. I lead a pretty boring life, thanks for reading.
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Sep 21, 2021 06:44
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Advent Horizon posted:Geez, it’s already been another couple weeks. Maybe so, but it's not *our* boring life, so... 
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Sep 21, 2021 19:37
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Oh, right, there is that one thing I did last week: I bought another project.  I need to edit the first post in this thread (and maybe the title) since my spoiler tag apparently worked. McStephenson sent me a message this spring saying he had an FJ62 and was looking to sell. We slowly messaged back and forth all summer before I sent my life savings and he sent a title. All that was left to do was pick it up. I took the evening flight out of Juneau on Friday the 17th and landed in Seattle for an overnight layover. This is not my first rodeo with airport camping, however, and I’m pretty shameless/proud of my setup:  On Saturday morning I hopped the early flight to Salt Lake City. I may have been in the back of the bus but I still had a window seat and some awesome views. Mt St Helens:  Mt Adams with Mt Hood in the distance:  Landed in Salt Lake and immediately there were two snags: 1. That airport is very poorly laid out; it was over half a mile from my gate to the baggage claim (and after that I got lost between the baggage claim and where private cars can pick up). 2. My cooler, with all my tools, was missing. Once I finally managed to find my way to the proper, barricaded, private vehicle lane (and McStephenson was sent back around for trying to fake his way into the Uber lane with a 33 year old Toyota), we set off for the Land Cruiser Heritage Museum, which at that moment happened to be hosting the big annual Cruiserfest gathering. At Cruiserfest we met up with Somewhat Heroic and I completely forgot to take enough pictures. Whoops. I did snag this one of a special FJ45 project that Jonathan Ward/TLC in Van Nuys created for Toyota, which led directly to both the FJ Cruiser and the TLC Icon:  Side note, that mint green FJ45 in the background is the same color I plan to paint my FJ40 (GIR). Eventually left Cruiserfest (I will have to go back and nerd out for a whole day at the museum) and dropped McStephenson off at home. As I was leaving I got a call that my cooler had come in; I picked that up before doing my snack/spare fluids shopping and crashing for the night at a hotel in Park City. Got up early the next morning and started my drive north, with the day’s destination being Big Tiddies National Park:  First stop: Tourist central. Moulton’s Barn. As I drove up there were a ton of people parked as close as they could get to the barn. I laughed and kept going to both explore and find a spot to turn around. Just past the crowds I found where the famous pictures are actually taken from, and that nobody was there.  Imagine a little longer focal length on my phone camera to get the standard shot. I did some more exploring and found out there are actually TWO Moulton barns, and both are known for being scenic:  After this I went into the park proper. Something that was on my list was the dumbest National Park Service attraction I have ever heard of: Bill Menor’s Outhouse:  That’s right, it’s listed in the NPS app as something to see. Such a stupid thing that I had to find it:  No signs, no proper trail, and most certainly not ‘open to the public’.  It’s a rotten old outhouse that dumps directly into a river. 10/10, would recommend finding. I did the usual park loop but don’t have many pictures worth posting here. If you go, absolutely make the drive up Signal Mountain. The view is incredible. It also has this cell phone tower at the summit:  Why did I take a picture of that? Because with all those antennas, on the top of a mountain know for historic smoke signals, I had zero cell phone reception. Drove down and checked out the Jackson Dam, where the water is currently below the natural level of Jackson Lake:  Drove up to my final stop for the evening, Lizard Creek Campground. Pulled up to the information sign and found this:  Full of these:  Business cards with a link to the website used to make the reservation. Not helpful without cell reception. Found my site for the night, which was actually pretty darn nice:  This is why we wanted a nicer FJ62; it’s great for camping:  After I had dinner I wandered over and chatted for a couple hours with the host and another camper. Turned out it was the last night of the season for this campground. Lucky timing on my part! I’m going to break the drive down into a few posts over the next several days since it was a long week. Stay tuned!
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Sep 22, 2021 07:41
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Advent Horizon posted:Found my site for the night, which was actually pretty darn nice:  Such a good looking truck
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Sep 22, 2021 14:13
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60 series looks awesome. I hope you pooped in the outhouse.
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Sep 22, 2021 22:22
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Sorry about the lack of road trip posts. I’ll get caught up on that as I can. In the meantime… We were walking the dog at the airport the other night when my wife spotted an owl on the airport fence, right next to us.  Red light is from her headlamp. The owl has a duck, and it flew off while we were standing there. I’m really impressed that an owl can carry such large prey! Ordered an engine stand from AutoZone because they were the only place dumb enough to do free shipping. It was even sent ‘Priority Overnight’, which I had the counter jockey at FedEx figure out had a retail price of $624.46. Unfortunately the box was totally inadequate and I had to refuse delivery because stuff was falling out.   Hopefully the replacement gets here soon; I ordered a different one from Rich Uncle Jeff’s place. I haven’t heard back from AutoZone about my claim yet. FJ62 is currently sailing on the barge and I’ve been stalking it with vessel tracking and port webcams. It should be inside a container; it looks like someone else has a Unimog coming up on the same barge:  (Unimog is top center) Since I don’t have the garage cleared out it seemed like a good idea to get some better shelter until it can come inside. I bought one of those ‘garage in a box’ things:  ‘Compact storage for smaller vehicles’. Funny how my large SUVs are 1/10” narrower and only 8” longer than our compact car… These tent kits have atrocious QC:   Both pieces in both pictures should be identical. I had to do some careful drilling to make things work. For some past context, I used to sell and assemble similar tents for one of the large, quality, tent companies. Our tents cost thousands of dollars (IIRC it was about $4,000 for a 10x12) 20 years ago. $289 for one now is stupid cheap and I have no expectations that it will last more than a year or two. Anyways, directions said 2 people, two hours. Over four hours later we had this:  Parked the truck inside for a test fit:   The Mazda is several feet longer than an FJ62 so it should fit a lot better. The tent is even lined up with the garage door so I can just drive straight through.
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Sep 26, 2021 20:53
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Another bullshit ‘not Yellowstone’ update: Yesterday we pulled the FJ60’s engine and transmission. Started lifting and the front of the FJ60 kept coming up like something was caught. Futzed with it for an hour, making sure nothing was snagged, before realizing the lack of weight on the front end had it see-sawing over the rear jackstands.  It’s an inelegant solution but it works. There’s just nothing on the rear end solid enough to jack from other than the tailgate! The whole drat vehicle is less than cheese:  Finally got the drivetrain out and set down:  I could really use an engine stand about now. However, something did come in a shipping container this morning…  …This fancy new jack!  I knew it was going to be bigger but I didn’t really comprehend how much bigger. This is going to be so nice to wrench with! I’ve been avoiding using the dolly lately because of how low stuff has to sit; now I’ll be able to stay off the floor. Oh, yeah, there’s also this Land Cruiser that the jack shipped in:  That’s pretty cool too, I guess.
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Sep 28, 2021 06:13
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LOL. Glad it made it!
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Sep 28, 2021 12:08
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Well, my new project may have a deadline. I have a cousin getting married in Cody, WY next May. We’d like to drive the FJ62 through Yellowstone again, which means that the mechanical work needs to be done by April. The clock is now ticking.
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Sep 29, 2021 02:20
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Just stopping in to say 1) Love this thread. 2) I really need to visit Alaska, it's such a beautiful place. For the portable garage, I'm planning on buying two of the Costco variety and covering them with a recycled 14x40 billboard vinyl. I'm not sure that's a good option for you, but they are the cheapest, UV/Weather resistant large tarps I've found outside of surplus gov.
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Sep 29, 2021 23:54
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It looks like the ‘cruiser projects may have a deadline of April - we want to ship it back south and do Yellowstone again. Hopefully that means this thread will have a lot more good content, and I’m really going to try to get the rest of the last road trip uploaded this weekend. I’ve been staying productive, though, so here’s an update on that: Last Friday we had a big storm. The airport 3 miles from our house was reading 50mph winds, gusting to 70mph. A lot of trees came down and some areas of town lost power for two days. We were very fortunate to only lose power for an hour and have no major damage. Before the storm I tied down the tent as best I could. When I did tents professionally we would install ground anchors on each side and run straps over the top. I tried to emulate that as best I could without penetrating my asphalt:  I also attached 5 gallon buckets full of dirt (sand) inside:  It held down but I may need to reinforce some of the cheap tubing. We shall see. Tonight I swapped out most of the bulbs on our Leaf for LEDs. I was not encouraged to find that parts of the car are already this rusty…  First up was the reverse bulbs. New LED on the right, original Nissan incandescent on the left:  It LOOKS bright, but when I took a test drive it didn’t seem to have the same visibility. I’m going to give it a week or two but I’ll likely be going back to regular incandescents. I also swapped over the high beams for these:  We have the optional LED low beams so those are fine; I was hoping for more high beam power. Note that I normally do not condone LED ‘bulb’ swaps for things like headlights, but with high beams IDGAF if it blinds others. A comparison of low and high beams with the new LEDs   I didn’t get a ‘before’ picture with incandescents, I was too excited. Sorry. It looks like the new bulbs have a lot more light than the old ones did, but the beam pattern doesn’t seem quite as good. It still seems like an overall upgrade and I really like having the color temperature be the same for low and high. I hope to have another big project update tomorrow; it’s been pretty busy around here.
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Oct 9, 2021 07:57
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Led bulbs very rarely match the filament shape and exposure, so the beam pattern falls apart. More lumens, but not in the places the reflector is designed to throw. I just add dedicated LED reverse lights to every truck. I've never seen a retrofit LED headlight that actually works better unless it's on an ancient vehicle. They're brighter up close, but the throw and pattern are poo poo.
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Oct 9, 2021 13:18
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I generally agree with you, but these are high beams ONLY and they do seem like an improvement. The stock Leaf high beams suck. I think the reverse bulbs would work better if I could access the inside of the housing and line it with foil tape. I have the same bulbs in an FJ62 and I like them in that application, but I have the housing properly reflective there.
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Oct 9, 2021 15:45
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Advent Horizon posted:I generally agree with you, but these are high beams ONLY and they do seem like an improvement. The stock Leaf high beams suck. Yeah, I wasn't saying you made a mistake. They just don't work out great. If they're the same or a bit better, that's a win in my book. Plus, matching color temperatures and longer bulb life (probably).
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Oct 9, 2021 18:12
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Saturday morning I got the truck’s tailgate handle replaced. They keep breaking in the exact same spot (the thin 90* turn shown in the picture of the new one). I really should keep a spare because this is the 3rd replacement handle I’ve installed.   Got the first load of FJ60 hauled to metals recycling. This load contained the entire frame and most of the body, only the cowling and 1/2 the roof is left. With all the rust that was only 740 pounds, which they charged me $0.05 per pound to take. Ugh. Still cheaper than having a flatbed haul it away as a ‘vehicle’, though.  Stripping the rear axle for parts, I thought I may have scored with the brakes. I mean, look at this shoe, it looks brand new!  Then I got to the other side and it’s trashed.  Only thing I can think of is that maybe a brake line was pinched. One of the fronts was. Got the good parts of the axle all stripped out:  3rd has been wire-wheeled and is ready for POR-15. Stopping at the paint store on the way home tonight. Side note, my wife has decided to paint the diff cover with glow-in-the-dark paint; that should be entertaining if it works. I also upgraded my electrolysis tank yesterday; I can now do anything up to 18”x18”x24” 
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Oct 11, 2021 18:31
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I don't think the foil tape inside the housing would help. My 1993 Toyota Pickup tail light clusters were very dull on the inside. I coated the insides with foil tape and it made very little difference with respect to tail lamp brightness or reflectivity. I mainly wanted the reflectors to be brighter so cars driving down my street at night won't hit my truck. Some red reflective stickers material from Amazon made much more difference for reflectivity (stuck to the outside of the housing).
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Oct 11, 2021 20:08
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Advent Horizon posted:Saturday morning I got the truck’s tailgate handle replaced. They keep breaking in the exact same spot (the thin 90* turn shown in the picture of the new one). I really should keep a spare because this is the 3rd replacement handle I’ve installed. Are you lubricating the hell out of everything else in the mechanism? The only way I've ever succeeded in preventing weak handle failure is to make sure it sees as little force as possible. Lube really helps with that.
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Oct 12, 2021 22:43
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I do, but the tailgate is just bent enough that stuff jams. You have to hold the handle up to close, and I have to make drat sure everyone knows that because for some reason everyone’s default when something (anything!) doesn’t close the first time is to slam it. Again and again. Harder and harder. It never works, but they just keep going until something breaks. That does not apply only to tailgates. I can tell people over and over and over again not to slam my front door but they do it EVERY GODDAMN TIME gently caress WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THAT WHEN I SAY TO CLOSE SLOWLY AND PUSH UNTIL IT CLICKS JEBUS gently caress
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Oct 13, 2021 18:45
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Put a damper on the front door that makes it impossible to slam!
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Oct 13, 2021 22:40
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I'm wondering if welding up a stronger arm for that latch would keep it from breaking or just break the tailgate.
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Oct 13, 2021 22:43
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They're usually utter crap pot metal, so... Source: first-gen RX-7 door handles that do pretty much the same thing thanks to an arm that manages to neck down right where the most stress would be.
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Oct 13, 2021 23:06
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Yeah, those handles are garbage pot metal. They’re also only $27 and I’ve got the process down to a 10-minute swap. I mentioned this in the chat thread but I’ll extend the invite here as well: If any goons want to come up for the Gustavus Demolition Derby next year, I’m definitely going over with one of the FJ62s (FOR CAMPING) and maybe also a derby car. Let me know if you’re interested in a proper Alaskan Advent Horizon fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 23:13
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Exactly three months ago today we dragged this thing into the shop: I promised my wife it would be gone in two weeks. Today we met that milestone on time and under budget just like any other contract.  (We actually still have half the scrap, but in a pile outside waiting for a day when metals recycling is open past 3:30pm) Before the FJ62 could roll inside, though, we had to get a lot of stuff squirreled away. We saved every useable part we could find off that FJ60. I keep thinking I’m done scavenging and then remember something else - the cowl is cut in half but I still need to grab a bracket off it. This is why I have trouble throwing things away. Before the FJ62 came inside we helped a friend out again:  Flexed out in my garage, aw yeah. He came back to do the shocks since he realized the original shocks were still on there 200,000 miles later. I’m happy to report that the power steering pump gear appears to have worn in and works great with no weird sounds. Kakermix told me to save any of these little hood prop doohickeys because ‘they always break’. I had literally never seen a broken one until he said something.  That means this is officially the first part from the parts ‘60 to be used on the FJ62:  …There will be a lot more of those as we progress. We have a lot of work ahead. One of the first projects will be baselining. I haven’t had a lot of time under the hood yet so I took a couple minutes to glance around.  I’ll take ‘Things That Look Like A Vacuum Leak’ for $400, Alex.
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Oct 19, 2021 07:02
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I don’t know why people like K&N filters; for $50 they are terrible at filtering and this thing is loving tiny.  For $25 Toyota sells a water-washable filter with many times the filtering area.  Much better. I’m working on changing out what appear to be stock, 300,000-mile-old bulbs with LEDs. Koito is quality stuff and I’m kind of sad to see these go.  When swapping to LED turn signal bulbs you usually have to switch the flasher to an electronic unit. However, finding one that fits the 80s Toyota plug pattern is a PITA. One option is to find one of the green 1980s flasher units, like this:  Carefully take the flasher apart and remove this resistor:  Doing that disables the ‘bulb out’ circuit, which causes the unit to keep flashing at the normal pace even with small loads like LEDs. Don’t buy one off eBay; there are replacements now with a completely different circuit. I’m now ducking my head into any dead 80s Toyota I come across because these things are great. For the rear lights I decided to go a little overboard and ordered a set of Digi-Tails conversions. These fit into the stock housing and replace the bulbs with a proper LED board:  Turn and Tail/Brake only, but with how fast LED bulbs are improving I’m not upset with having to run a ‘normal’ conversion bulb. They are still crazy bright:  At 65mph LED brake lights can turn on up to 20’ faster than incandescent bulbs. I consider this to be a safety upgrade even more than a looks upgrade. I also really like that this takes a huge load off my old wiring.
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Oct 21, 2021 06:00
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Advent Horizon posted:Custom tail light PCBs
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Oct 21, 2021 16:45
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Advent Horizon posted:I don’t know why people like K&N filters; for $50 they are terrible at filtering and this thing is loving tiny. Probably because those water washable filters don't exist for most vehicles. According to a bike magazine test, the K&N does filter well... once it gets dirty. Otherwise, oiled foam pod filters worked better, at least on bikes. edit: I have had a couple K&Ns in the past, but I don't bother any more. I just regularly replace decent paper ones now. quote:I’m working on changing out what appear to be stock, 300,000-mile-old bulbs with LEDs. Koito is quality stuff and I’m kind of sad to see these go. I still have the stock, working, Koito 7" headlights from my RX-7, from when I changed them out for halogens. Pretty sure a lot of the other bulbs in the car are still 1979 Koito as well (it last ran over a decade ago, before LEDs were really good enough to use at a price point I was willing to pay.) I'm really impressed by those bulbs. It'll probably get upgraded to LEDs all over once I've got it back together, and I'll be sad to see them go as well.
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Oct 21, 2021 18:35
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I ordered some belts from RockAuto and these showed up: Date on the packaging hints that they might be from 1994. I sent them back. Swapped the wiper arms out front and rear; fronts are from a 4Runner and rear is from an 80-series Land Cruiser.  Spiffy new parts and for how simple an upgrade this is it’s crazy good. The passenger side, especially, makes a HUGE difference. We swapped out all the dash light bulbs for LEDs; not all of the new ones really fit exactly without some work:  To be fair, I think the plug that one goes into is abnormally tight. These little bastards, however, required me to disassemble them and reassemble with the LED ‘bulb’ in the old base - needle nose pliers for scale:  Got it all back together on either the 3rd or 4th try, and it looks drat good now:  Two things: 1) The seat belt LED had been on backorder since July and showed up about two hours after we got the dash together. Figures. 2) The turn signals got swapped back to the original 300,000-mile incandescent bulbs because the LEDs would draw so little current that they’d be lit the entire time the switch was engaged. When the actual blinkers flashed they would just get brighter. That was annoying so back to stock they went. Speaking of going back to incandescent bulbs, I swapped the Leaf’s bulbs back. I also decided to install fresh turn signal bulbs while I had the housings out, and then screwed up which bulbs went in the front vs the rear:  When I took the passenger rear housing off for the third time to correct that I stripped two bolts and one threaded hole in the car. Fun. Thankfully a friend was willing to exchange his tap and die service for a breakfast burrito this morning.
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Oct 25, 2021 05:45
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What do you need wipers for? LOL. That's most of what I remember about Southeast. Rain, rain, rain. The dash looks amazing. I've gotten really old poo poo from RockAuto before too. Mostly VW parts with "Made in West/East Germany" on them.
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Oct 25, 2021 13:09
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These rule. I like them way more than the standard 1156/1157 led replacement as it fills the entire surface area of the lens with light rather than just a dot. Would be awesome to make kits for more 80s greats. 80s awesome green represent! That looks so much better than any 4300-6000k white led backlight solution. Tad too bright but quite visible with no hot or cold spots.
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Oct 25, 2021 17:37
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There is a dimmer and for that shot I had them turned up. Still fairly bright though. Some people swap to white and I think that would just kill my night vision. sharkytm posted:What do you need wipers for? We have three dehumidifiers and I would buy the DampRid hanging bags by the case if I could. When I installed the dashcam back in SLC I immediately realized I needed to do the wiper upgrade. The old wipers didn’t clear top-center enough and the camera wasn’t useful in the rain.
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Oct 25, 2021 18:39
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Those Dayco gold label belts were the absolute poo poo when I still had the old 2.8D in the hilux. Bout one of the only ones that didn’t stretch like a bastard non stop and squeal like a pig being molested due to the design decision of Toyota putting the vacuum pump on the back of the alternator and then sharing that drive with a mechanical fan…
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Oct 26, 2021 05:20
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