Extremely cold this morning up in Alpharetta at C&O. There was a smaller turnout than usual but still a pretty good showing.
Team Skittlekandieren BMW was there in all the colors of the regenbogen.
And even a few Land Cruisers showed up. If I had known these guys had finished all their repairs yesterday I might have brought the Sloth up.
This is a 1930′s Ford replica in 3/4 scale. The owner built it from a kit. Has a V6 engine from a GM product in it and weighs only about 1500lbs. The perfect size for a little roadster these days. Can fit one and a half people on the seat. I’d love to see something like this go on a cross-country tour.
A late model Subaru Impreza WRX STi. A dime a dozen at C&O but this one has a peculiar semi-gloss yet matte silver paint job. It looks better in real life. I need to find out what color this is so I can paint something that color.
“Performance” econo-boxes like this old Corolla are the future of classic cars. They’re popping up all over the place.
I’ve got to look into this Trail Of Fools race. Surely a 1991 Land Cruiser counts as vintage these days…
I have saved the best for last. Forget your Ferraris, R8s, and GTRs. The absolute best car of today’s show was this 78/79 Bronco in mint condition. Its a great color. It sounds great. It smells great. It was all around perfect.
Friday night is when Land Cruiser owners begin to consider what projects they need to tackle to maintain or improve their mall marauder over the weekend. Since nothing leaked, caught fire, or fell off this week I turned my attention to beautifying the beast. I had been thinking about replacing the slightly corroded factory wheels with a set of black FJ Cruiser 17 inch steel wheels but I like the 80′s Star Wars look of the wheels I have and I couldn’t find 5 FJ Cruiser steelies for $55 each which is the most I was willing to pay. And then I found this…
Such poise. Such grace. A factory set of wheels just like mine except they look fantastically clean and are a really cool color. That color is Rust-oleum Graphite. I ordered it from Amazon. It arrived Wednesday.
To make sure the wheel would look good I would have to use sandpaper and steel wool to scrub off the corrosion and smooth out any blemishes. The perfect first wheel to start with is the spare tire which is housed under the rear of the truck and been subjected to 100,000 miles of salt and grit. It is the worst looking of the 5 wheels. If I can make this wheel look good I knew I could get the others looking good too. The picture above is after endless scrubbing. I used 220 grit sandpaper and 000 steel wool. You can see the large blemish where a bunch of crud was. I sanded that down until was smooth and did the same in all the nooks and crannies on the wheel. I wasn’t aiming to make it perfectly clean but it needed to be pretty close to perfectly clean and feel smooth to the touch.
It takes a long time to cover the sidewall this way. Maybe I can think of a faster way for the other 4.
Notice the blemish to the left of the Toyota label is a lot better looking. This is after one coat.
After several coats of graphite and an initial clearcoat. Looking pretty good. Can’t wait to do the rest and get them on the Cruiser.
This is the weekend for a Land Bruiser owner. Hood up, gate down, tools out. Today’s project is to quell the screaming riot in the dash. As its gotten colder the Sloth has developed a squeal in the dash that varies based on speed. The speedometer would also wobble a little bit. The sound varies but its generally high pitched and present from 15-20mph on up to about 80. A little research online and at ih8mud indicated that lubricating the upper end of the speedometer cable could fix the issue. Otherwise it might be some components in the speedometer itself that needed lubrication. In either case, to remove the gauge cluster you have to remove several components of the dash which is what I have done this afternoon. It doesn’t take long and all you really need is a screwdriver or two (preferably the magnetic tipped kind and one or two of varying lengths). I found this video very helpful for getting started on the dash:
Before you begin, disconnect the battery. You’re going to be yanking on a bunch of wires. Best that no power being running through them.
Here’s the dash. It has two separate pieces. The lower bezel is held in by 3 screws.
Two are behind the cigarette tray.
The third is down and to the right of this plastic circle below the steering column.
Once the screws are removed I started on the left hand side of the dash and carefully pulled it outward until the snaps popped loose.
Then I made my way across to the right. You will need to unplug all the switches, the cigarette lighter, and the light in the ash tray to remove the dash bezel. For the switches I pushed them from behind so they popped out of the bezel and then unplugged them. Its easier to do that than to try and undo the plugs with the switches in the bezel.
Here the lower bezel is removed. Looks like somebody’s been in here before.
Here it the left side.
Put the bezel somewhere safe.
Next remove the top dash piece. This is held on the same way. There are two or three screws along the bottom and then several under the lip of the dash facing down. Once they’re out I again released the snaps from left to right, pulling down slightly on the right so that the top of the bezel could come away from the lip of the dash.
On the left side part of the vent tube will come out with the bezel.
Here both of the dash bezels are removed.
And the left side.
Now you have access to the 4 screws that hold in the gauge cluster. Remove those.
Once the screws are removed, you can pull the cluster forward. You might want to adjust the steering column down to make more space. I started on the left, reaching behind the cluster and blindly removing the multi-pin connectors. There were 5 of them. If you peek in there you can also see the speedometer cable. As you disconnect the pins, the gauge will come free. Its a tight fit but you can work it out of the dash by moving it through the space to the right of the steering wheel.
With the gauge cluster out of the way, you’ll see all the pins you’ve just undone.
You’ll also see the speedometer cable.
On the back of the gauge cluster you can see the round hole where the speedometer cable plugs in. I sprayed a little bit of lithium grease on the end of the speedometer cable and a little in the hole you see here. Seemed like the right place to lubricate it since that squared pin sticking of the cable is what spins the speedometer.
I’m not sure if this is the before or after shot but reassembly is the reverse of disassembly. I only ended up with one extra screw!
After I put the dash back together and reconnected the battery, I started up the Sloth. At first I was saddened to see that the tachometer didn’t jump to idle though all the lights in the dash worked. However, after I put it in reverse and started backing out of the driveway, the speedometer and tach came to life again. I’m guessing the tach was briefly affected by the ECU reboot since the battery was disconnected…
The squeak was still present at the beginning of my test ride. I expected this because I had read that the lubricant needs to make its way to the right place. I took the sloth around the neighborhood, hopped on the interstate and got up to speed. After a few minutes the noise started winding down. Then it would chirp every so often. Then it went away completely. I still have a fainter lower note whirling sound somewhere further away. I’m not sure if its the speedometer cable but its barely noticeable. The high pitched speed-varying whine is gone… at least for now. I’m marking this project a success.
Total time invested: about an hour, maybe a little less.
First you can watch me drive to Starbucks to kickstart my morning. Video ala this one though not nearly as cool! Not worth watching unless you’re bored or don’t know the way to C&O from downtown.
I get a lot of flak for liking the coupe version of the Z3. Some of us just have better taste than others!
This reminds me of the bikes I had as a kid, converse sneakers, and swatches.
One of the most beautiful VWs ever made. So German. I wish VW would move back in this direction rather than the Japanese bubble-like designs its been putting out for the Jetta and Passat.
What all the kids are into these days.
The only other Land Cruiser at the show besides the Ruby Sloth. There was only one JK too.
Anything goes at C&O.
1909 International Harvester. It was trailered to the show but was driven to its parking space. Top speed: 20mph.
A look under the hood.
Not my favorite color of (possibly) my favorite car but I’m obligated to take a picture of these every time I see one.
A Japanese GTR wrapped in our Constitution.
The intestines of an Audi R8. For some reason I don’t think those twin turbos are factory…
Some people have problems with elephants in the room. Other people have 800lb gorillas. I have a hungry hungry hippo in my driveway named Ruby Sloth. Ruby Sloth is a 1991 Toyota Land Cruiser, an 80-series, born of the long heritage of FJs from Toyota. (Buy Ruby’s Grandfather here!)
The typical pose for the hippo. You can put the hood down to drive but usually when you stop it will come back up again.
Within there you can see the powerful tusk of an engine producing a staggering 155hp and a marginally impressive 220 lb-ft torque until you consider it weighs 4,594lbs. This muscular combination gives it a 0-60 time of, I’m guessing, 12 or more seconds. In comparison the mighty JK produces 285hp and 260lb-ft at a svelte 3,800lb and reaches 60 in around 8s.
Here is the beast at a nearby watering hole where all the fluids it has leaked can be replenished, excreted, and replenished again.
The breed is known to congregate with like kind as you can see here. Occasionally they mass on unpaved surfaces.
Glub glub glub glub glub… I read somewhere you can get “up to 350 mile range” on a tank… Uh. No.
So you are probably wondering what is the allure of this slow moving dinosaur? Well look at it! Its beautiful for one. Its roomy with leather seating for up to seven with its 3rd row seat. Visibility is fantastic. The engine, while not a high performer is rock solid. I prefer to call it “deliberate” rather than “slow”. This one has right at 100,000 miles and is good for 300,000 miles or more (fingers crossed!). And it doesn’t leak or smoke like I pretend they all do (just most of them do I think). Its “full-time” 4wd with a center locking differential. And its a great color.
People have already asked me, why have this when you “already” have the Jeep. They couldn’t be more different from each other. About the only thing they do share is they both get miserable gas mileage (by modern standards). Mostly this thing is just for tinkering.
Having carefully prepared for this month’s show last night by charging all my batteries, clearing out space on my SD cards, cleaning lenses, setting my alarm clock for 6am, etc. I somehow overslept til 8, rolled straight out of bed onto the bike and took off for Alpharetta… leaving all that gear behind except for my iPhone. So the pics are few and their quality crappy but the show was as good as always.
An old AMX.
The Aventador. The only car that can attract the complete attention of a crowd while sitting right next to it is a Murcielago being utterly ignored. It might as well have been a Camry.
The Citroën Méhari. You might guess that Méhari means “certain death on wheels” but its actually a type of camel used in racing. “Racing” not being the first word to come to mind when you see one of these.
