what happens when you break a toy?
you buy a new(er) one.
the old toy is my wifes old 97 landcruiser that she drove into the dirt.(**** near literally)
this truck has hit a deer,been used as a work truck,been rear ended,flooded,owned by a woman and left to rot.
never the less, imma git this ***** on the road again.
6Cyl. 4.5
183k on the dial
all time AWD
leather
power
heated seats
independant lockable diffs.
so here's the thing.
my wife bought the truck about a year before we met(owned for about 8 years).
i told her from the get-go that i wasnt fixing it!
i'll do maitnence but anything major had to be done by a certified tech since the truck was still in finance and any repairs done by me would void warrenties.
agreed.......
the pics below show the kind of damage that can be done from not fixing stuff when it breaks or wears.
starting off,i was impressed that a big'ol SUV could get 350 miles to a 22Gal. tank.......then the EGR took a crap(still hasn't been replaced).
the mileage dropped to about 300.
then the ball joints started smoking if you drove more then 25 miles at a time.
next came the pcv valve. it got stopped up enough to drop the mileage another 25 per tank.
then came the still unidentified ulcer.
it was a mojor oil leak that spewed through about 2 quarts every week wich,inturn,coverred the entire Pass. side of the motor and the entire undercarraige in oily grime about 1/2" thick.
the final straw was when the front driveshaft UV broke.
i parked it and by the time we had the cash to fix it, it was dead.
plenty of juice but no vroom. just a lot of smoke and puttering.
so,we had a toy tech and a tech from jeep/eagle look at it and both said scrap it,more money then it's worth.
when we took it to eagle they threw it up on the diags,put in new filters,changed the oil,fresh gas and slueth of other cheap "fix its" and they failed to get it started.
while it was with eagle,we paid it off. the truck was no longer under finance.
they said scrap it but i'm a bit hard headed and had it hauled to the island(where i do most of my dirt) where it sat for awhile and got flooded(**** lowcountry).
this resulted in a nice rainbow of mold on the interior.
GOTTA LOVE MOLD ON LEATHER!
these pics were taken after the first bath it's had in over a year.(4/21)
that's pretty much where it sat until 4/20.
me and my buddy mike had discussed future plans for the toy ranging from finding a scrapped toy for a donor to converting to a nice domestic V8 (LS9 anyone?).
anyways,i had just got done shooting the last of the etching primer on the 56' and got bored watching paint dry so i asked mike if he wanted to see if we could get it started.
we cranked the key,cloud of smoke and bit of puttering........****.
started looking around and found a huge tear in the airduct. GO DUCT TAPE!
also found a sensor had been unplugged.
fixed those and tried the key....nothing.
it wanted to start,it just did'nt have the will.....yet.
the obvious was checked and fixed so the next thing to check is spark.
sure as ****, pulled the first plug and it was so caked with soot that i could'nt tell where the electrode stopped and the terminal started.
scraped all of that away only to find out that the electrodes were so worn that they had a gap of .070(factory gap is .031)
we cleaned em up and gapped them just to see if we could get some spark.
hit the key.......nothing.
hit the key again.....VROOOM.......IT"S ALIVE!!!!
it was running again for the first time in a long time.
it wasn't running strong but it was running.
i dropped $100 today on plugs,PCV valve,U-joint,distributor cap and EGR and it's runnign great save for the still present ulcer wich is the next project.
so it wet from a rusting/molding non-running bucket to a moldy running daily driver with about 6 hrs of work and $100.
NEW TOY
when eagle said to scrap it we started looking at new car options.
i had my eye on a real nice C320 and a Z3 but the wife wasn't having it since we have a 4yr old boy.
we looked at ALOT of vehicles but we ended up deciding on another LC for the room.
all i have on my comp right now is one pic and it's dark.
i just spent the better part of today curled up in and under the 97 so i'm not about to go out and start snapping pics....but here's the one.
01' LC
more to come on this one tomorrow but i'm tired and that was alot of typing.
cheers,