Pacific Northwest Backroad Adventures

With the price of gasoline approaching $4.00 per gallon, more and more people are trading in their “gas guzzling” SUV or truck for a more fuel efficient vehicle. Most people simply think about much it costs to fill up their tank without considering the actual costs.

The way I figure it, I own my Land Cruiser free and clear. If I was to go out and finance a new vehicle, the payments alone would probably exceed $500 (and probably be much more). That’s a lot of gas I could buy each month.

I found a post on pricewheels.com that lays out the true costs of replacing your old vehicle. You can read it at Dumping Gas Guzzler For Fuel Sipper May Cost More Than You Think

Originally we had planned to meet in Montesano, Washington on Friday morning, however, because of a paving project on the Wynoochee Road from Montesano to Wynoochee Lake, the location of the meet up was changed to the Taylor Towne restaurant just South of Shelton.

Attending was Ray from Edgewood (driving his Toyota 4Runner), Kevin (riding with Ray), John in his Jeep YJ Wrangler, Dick (riding with John) and Randy from Shelton (riding with me in my Toyota FJ80 Land Cruiser).

Our goals for the this rainy spring day were to:

• Locate the train wreckage from the 1961 film titled “Ring of Fire”. During the filming of the movie they set an old railroad trestle and some passenger rail cars on fire and dropped them into the canyon. (See Brians site at Georgia-Pacific No. 9 and Ring of Fire Wreck Site for a great write up of the details of the movie and the wreckage site.)
• Visit the Wynoochee Dam and Lake.
• Visit the High Steel Bridge over the Skokomish River.

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Here are some photos from a run to the Capital State Forest near Olympia, Washington on Tuesday, February 26, 2008. You can view the photos at Capital Forest Run Photos

Have you ever wondered what would happen to your Land Cruiser if a large land animal attacked your vehicle? I’ve never gave it much thought. The odds are pretty slim that I’ll be charged by a bison (the heaviest land animal in North America). It’s much more likely that’ll I hit a deer in a frontal impact (that’s one reason why I installed a ARB Bull Bar).

Anyway, I came across this story and pictures that shows thew results of a Land Cruiser being attacked by a Rhinoceros. It actually held up quite well. You just had to duck when the horn came through the window.

You can see the original story at Rhino Collides with Landcruiser. Now I wonder what a elephant could do.

Even though we never found that perfect Christmas tree, we had a great time with some great people under beautiful blue skies on this year’s Christmas Tree run to the Cle Elum, Washington area.

We all met for breakfast at the Cottage Cafe in Cle Elum. Already seated upon our arrival were Jerry (aka soggymountain) and Evelyn from Yakima, Brian (aka Photog) and Cindy from Gig Harbor, Valerie and her mother Ellen from Bothell and Kent, and friends of Ellen’s (whom I did not get their names). Of course I can’t forget to mention my wife Martha, daughter Korinne and our dog Tareva.

After breakfast, we headed out of town to the Roslyn Cyclery in Roslyn to purchase our tree permits. We were the only family on the hunt for a Christmas tree, everybody was out for the fun of it. After getting the permit, we headed out of town, past Ronald towards Salmon la Sac.
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Since I’ve had my Toyota FJ80 Land Cruiser, I’ve only had to deal with a few electrical issues, the Center Diff Lock, the Window Actuator Motor and the Fusible Links from the battery. The first prevented the transfer case to lock up in four wheel drive, the second prevented the window from rolling up, and the third prevented the engine from starting.

Now that I’m a year into the ownership of the Land Cruiser, I’m onto my fourth wiring issue. The engine will simply not start. It started last Thursday when I made a run over to the Cle Elum River near Salmon la Sac. I had one episode where it would not start for about two or three minutes and then it started up fine for the the rest of the trip. On Saturday, it happened again, this time in the grocery store parking lot. This time it would not start until after about ten minutes of trying. Finally, this morning (Monday) when getting ready to leave from work, the little tractor motor would only spin and would not fire up. Of course, this was accompanied by record rainfall in Western Washington. Perfect timing.
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Having one successful storage box build behind me for my old Jeep YJ Wrangler, it was time to build a storage box for my Toyota FJ80 Land Cruiser. The storage box I built for my Wrangler was very simple. It was basically a box with one very large divided drawer that was bolted into the cargo area in place of the rear seat. In the storage box, I was able to store and provide easy access to all my tools, spare parts, recovery gear and spare fluids. Having all the above gear stored in a storage box allowed me to carry additional stuff (tent, sleeping bag, food, cooler, clothing, etc) on top of the storage box, basically doubling the cargo space. Gone were the days of having everything piled on top of other stuff. With the storage box, with a little creative packing, I even had room for my dog to ride in the back.

I purchased my 80-series Land Cruiser to be able to carry my family, my dog, and my adventure gear. The only way that this was practically going to happen was by building a storage box for the back of the Land Cruiser. In addition to the extra storage capacity, my needs list included an interior sleeping platform for my solo camping trips as well as having a place to install an auxiliary battery for my FJ80. Unlike the newer models (1993-97) of the 80-series Land Cruiser, there is no easy way to install the second battery on a 3FE powered (1991-92) FJ80 without heavily modifying the engine compartment components.
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When I purchased my 1992 Toyota FJ80 Land Cruiser, the previous owner informed me that the four wheel drive system did not work. I knew the transfer case was a rebuilt unit so I figured it would be something simple such as a switch or a relay. Little did I know that I would spend hours trying to troubleshoot the problem. Hopefully this article will walk you through all the diagnostics needed to check the complete center diff lock (CDL) electrical system so you can figure out the problem much faster than I did.

You might ask, why did you spend hours diagnosing the problem? My answer is, I don’t like to spend money replacing parts when the part being replaced was not the problem. I’ve been a victim of paying people to do just that. Never again.

As in all repairs on the Land Cruiser, you should purchase the factory Toyota Repair Manual and the Toyota Electrical Wiring Diagram for your specific year of vehicle (order the factory manuals at techinfo.toyota.com). A Chilton’s or similar service manual won’t cut it when you are diagnosing specific issues. Invest the money in the factory manuals. It’s worth it if you (or your mechanic) does any diagnostics or repairs on your Land Cruiser. Purchasing the correct manual will pay off only after a few repairs because you will be diagnosing problems and not throwing parts at the problem until it is fixed. The reference for this article was the USA version for 1992 model year Toyota Land Cruiser. Even though there are similarities between all 80-series, there are differences between the various years of Land Cruisers and world markets so be aware of this when making repairs to your Land Cruiser.
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For those of us who can only dream of such adventures, we can live vicariously through the travels of Dave Connors. Earlier this month (November 2007), Dave set out on a ten month journey through two continents, eighteen countries, and approximately 14,000 miles. His solo overland adventure (driving his 80-series Toyota Land Cruiser) began in Salt Lake City, Utah and will take him through Central and South America to his goal of completing the adventure in Ushuaia, Argentina.

Dave is posting almost daily updates on his blog at On the Road to Ushuaia.

For those of you who want to see the SPOT Satellite Messenger in use, Dave is sending his waypoints via the SPOT to his blog which are readable with GoogleEarth.

For more information about Dave’s adventure, visit http://www.expeditionamericas.com

Toyota FJ Cruiser Wheels on my FJ80 Land Cruiser

Ever since I purchased my Toyota FJ80 Land Cruiser, I knew I wanted to replace the factory Toyota 15 inch alloy wheels and 31/10.50 BFG AT tires with larger tires and wheels. The primary reasons for wanting to complete this upgrade included:

• The “C” load rating of the 15 inch tires were being pushed to their limits with the weight of a fully loaded and accessorized 80-series Land Cruiser. I didn’t want to trust them very much longer on a 6000 pound vehicle.
• There are very limited tire sizes that will fit a 15×7 wheel. I wanted to run narrow 33 inch tall tires.
• I wanted to increase the ground clearance by a inch or more. Every inch in the vertical direction helps with a 112 inch wheelbase.
• The 31/10.50 tires looked very small in the abnormally large wheel wells of a 80-series Land Cruiser running the medium weight Old Man Emu (OME) suspension. Even my wife thought the tires looked small.
• In the future, I want to install a full float rear axle from a later 80-series Land Cruiser which requires a minimum of 16 inch wheels to clear the disk brake rotors and calipers.

With that in mind, I was planning on eventually acquiring an inexpensive set 16×8 black steel wheels and purchasing some narrow 33 inch all terrain tires to fit. My plan was to hold off on the tire and wheel purchase until I had the opportunity to regear my axles from a 4.11 to a 4.88 or lower ratio.
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