Contributor II
Howdy Gang.
I finally took the plunge and joined the forum after hanging out and reading/learning for a bit. Specifically joined because I just started an automotive adventure with a 2000 Land Cruiser so that my wife and I could have, well, adventures.
A little background: I’ve been intermittently working on a variety of cars, snowmobiles, small engines, and boats, first with my dad and then on my own through the years. I grew up in Michigan and my first major project was a beat up Jeep Wrangler that my dad and I rebuilt and modded at lot in our garage. We’d go wander around trails in Northern Michigan and I fell in love with working on all things mechanical and also going out and exploring uncharted territory. My now wife and I would take that Jeep around the woods when we first started dating and discovered many magical and serene places. We’ve since become avid in many different outdoor activities, but national park trips and backcountry hiking have become a major staple of ours. We've used some pretty off-road incapable sedans as base camp before, including this trip to Bryce Canyon, Utah:
I’ve had too many cars to count over the years, primarily Audis and a couple other Germans. I get the itch for something new every year or two. I’ve always been drawn to cars that offer practicality while still being rare or unique. One of my personal favorites in this category was an Audi Allroad that went on some pretty deep off-road excursions during our time together. Google “Offroad Allroad” sometime and you’ll find a really different build thread; not mine, but I wanted it to be for many years. Since that Allroad, we’ve always had a wagon in the fleet, currently represented by a Volvo V90 Cross Country, which has been the “adventure-mobile” up until this purchase.
So how does one go from that history to a 3-ton Lexus SUV? Well, we took a trip to Maui late last year and rented a lifted Tacoma with a rooftop tent to do some mini-overlanding around the entire island. We took it to some pretty amazing unmapped locations that we couldn’t have dreamed of with a generic rental car. It made me realize how badly I wanted a real off-road vehicle that I could build back on the mainland. I thought about various options and was originally pretty interested in a Tacoma to have the practicality of a pickup and the reliability of a Toyota. But it doesn’t meet my “unique” criteria; I mean there are hundreds of thousands of them out there. So I kept digging and of course fell deep into the rabbit-hole of the Toyota Land Cruiser. Perfect combination of capable, Toyota reliable, long-haul comfort/luxury, and most of all, fairly rare.
Exploring Maui:
Shockingly, when I mentioned scratching the time-for-a-new-car itch to my wife, she said yes without even too much of a sales pitch. That’s because the premise was to find a Land Cruiser to slowly build for overlanding to augment our hiking/camping habit. I wasn’t looking for anything special or in amazing condition, but something that had good bones and hopefully at least decent maintenance history. Okay, so what I found isn't technically and Land Cruiser, it's a 2000 Lexus LX470...same thing but with 4 kind of ugly headlights. Turns out they're more plentiful and therefore often cheaper. They also have detailed Lexus service records on every vehicle searchable online by the VIN which was super helpful. The car we ultimately ended up with was listed by a small used-car dealer in Cleveland:
Except that it isn’t really from Cleveland, and so the story gets a little more interesting. I found it online from as one of the cheapest ones for sale, especially considering the mileage. Not much info in the listing, the pictures were pretty crappy. But after talking to the guy, he said he picked it up in South Carolina from the original owner who was a family member’s neighbor. He came across the car while he was down visiting his family and planned to bring it back to Cleveland to sell. Except with the pandemic, he got stuck down there and couldn’t really get it advertised well. We texted and he sent me lots of pictures and it was so much cleaner than I would have anticipated for the year, mileage, and price. I confirmed using the Lexus dealer records that it was a FL then SC car its whole life and was dealer maintained up until 3 years and 9k miles ago. Carfax also suggested what he was telling me added up. I put a deposit down and he eventually got it back to Ohio where I bought it off him. One thing to stick to when searching online for a vehicle: don’t assume anything about a car without digging a bit deeper, as there are some real deals to be had out there. What I thought would be a mediocre Ohio rust-belt car, turned out to be a one-owner impeccably-maintained gem from the South just because I asked for more info.
With that, meet “The Rock” the newest member of the family fleet. She’s got 181k miles. Completely OEM minus some janky satellite radio wiring coming down the passenger A-pillar. That last dealer visit was for the “180,000 mile service” which is such a hilarious concept for most any vehicle, but not a Toyota like this. Timing belt and water pump done at that service, fluids and all other maintenance done regularly. Thank God for the new dealer timing belt and pump, as I’ve had two of them go in my Audis and bent valves both times. One of those incidents spelled the end for that Allroad I’m so sentimental about.
The Rock arrives home:
Initial plans are to baseline the car and drive it as is for a bit. It’s got brand new Michelin Defender LTX tires, which although boring are worth a good bit of coin, so I can’t justify getting rid of them yet. Almost makes me mad, given that I really want to put a good set of 33s on it (I’ve read plenty of threads, still deciding on KO2s vs something else). After that, I’ll starting building a “go bag,” which will really be a med kit, toolkit, some spare parts, and some simple recovery gear for some mild adventures. I'm both somewhat mechanically inclined and also work in healthcare with a special interest in Wilderness Medicine, so these human and vehicle first aid kits will be almost as important as anything else.
Once I get the itch to do more, I’ll probably start with a rooftop tent or in-car sleeping setup +/- a new roof rack. HID upgrade will be a must; I consider that a safety upgrade in addition to just being cool. I have some younger family members in town that I hope to get interested in turning wrenches with some of these projects as well. It might stay mild, it might get wild. Who knows. No real plans to do major rock crawling or go international beyond maybe Canada at this point, but I would like to get places 98% of other cars can’t. Mostly just looking forward to the adventure of building and the adventures my wife and I can go on with it. Appreciate everything I’ve learned on this forum and plan to continue to update this thread to keep telling its story. I'll also be posting on the Land Cruiser 100-series portion of the IH8MUD forum, you can find me there as @LndXrsr. That will contain a lot of what's in this thread but also with some more technical posts about maintenance/upgrades. Exploration photos and trip details in both forums for sure. Looking forward to being part of a new community. If you’re in the SW Ohio/N Kentucky area, shoot me a message so we can meet up and talk “local” places to explore and get lost.
More to come...
I finally took the plunge and joined the forum after hanging out and reading/learning for a bit. Specifically joined because I just started an automotive adventure with a 2000 Land Cruiser so that my wife and I could have, well, adventures.
A little background: I’ve been intermittently working on a variety of cars, snowmobiles, small engines, and boats, first with my dad and then on my own through the years. I grew up in Michigan and my first major project was a beat up Jeep Wrangler that my dad and I rebuilt and modded at lot in our garage. We’d go wander around trails in Northern Michigan and I fell in love with working on all things mechanical and also going out and exploring uncharted territory. My now wife and I would take that Jeep around the woods when we first started dating and discovered many magical and serene places. We’ve since become avid in many different outdoor activities, but national park trips and backcountry hiking have become a major staple of ours. We've used some pretty off-road incapable sedans as base camp before, including this trip to Bryce Canyon, Utah:
I’ve had too many cars to count over the years, primarily Audis and a couple other Germans. I get the itch for something new every year or two. I’ve always been drawn to cars that offer practicality while still being rare or unique. One of my personal favorites in this category was an Audi Allroad that went on some pretty deep off-road excursions during our time together. Google “Offroad Allroad” sometime and you’ll find a really different build thread; not mine, but I wanted it to be for many years. Since that Allroad, we’ve always had a wagon in the fleet, currently represented by a Volvo V90 Cross Country, which has been the “adventure-mobile” up until this purchase.
So how does one go from that history to a 3-ton Lexus SUV? Well, we took a trip to Maui late last year and rented a lifted Tacoma with a rooftop tent to do some mini-overlanding around the entire island. We took it to some pretty amazing unmapped locations that we couldn’t have dreamed of with a generic rental car. It made me realize how badly I wanted a real off-road vehicle that I could build back on the mainland. I thought about various options and was originally pretty interested in a Tacoma to have the practicality of a pickup and the reliability of a Toyota. But it doesn’t meet my “unique” criteria; I mean there are hundreds of thousands of them out there. So I kept digging and of course fell deep into the rabbit-hole of the Toyota Land Cruiser. Perfect combination of capable, Toyota reliable, long-haul comfort/luxury, and most of all, fairly rare.
Exploring Maui:
Shockingly, when I mentioned scratching the time-for-a-new-car itch to my wife, she said yes without even too much of a sales pitch. That’s because the premise was to find a Land Cruiser to slowly build for overlanding to augment our hiking/camping habit. I wasn’t looking for anything special or in amazing condition, but something that had good bones and hopefully at least decent maintenance history. Okay, so what I found isn't technically and Land Cruiser, it's a 2000 Lexus LX470...same thing but with 4 kind of ugly headlights. Turns out they're more plentiful and therefore often cheaper. They also have detailed Lexus service records on every vehicle searchable online by the VIN which was super helpful. The car we ultimately ended up with was listed by a small used-car dealer in Cleveland:
Except that it isn’t really from Cleveland, and so the story gets a little more interesting. I found it online from as one of the cheapest ones for sale, especially considering the mileage. Not much info in the listing, the pictures were pretty crappy. But after talking to the guy, he said he picked it up in South Carolina from the original owner who was a family member’s neighbor. He came across the car while he was down visiting his family and planned to bring it back to Cleveland to sell. Except with the pandemic, he got stuck down there and couldn’t really get it advertised well. We texted and he sent me lots of pictures and it was so much cleaner than I would have anticipated for the year, mileage, and price. I confirmed using the Lexus dealer records that it was a FL then SC car its whole life and was dealer maintained up until 3 years and 9k miles ago. Carfax also suggested what he was telling me added up. I put a deposit down and he eventually got it back to Ohio where I bought it off him. One thing to stick to when searching online for a vehicle: don’t assume anything about a car without digging a bit deeper, as there are some real deals to be had out there. What I thought would be a mediocre Ohio rust-belt car, turned out to be a one-owner impeccably-maintained gem from the South just because I asked for more info.
With that, meet “The Rock” the newest member of the family fleet. She’s got 181k miles. Completely OEM minus some janky satellite radio wiring coming down the passenger A-pillar. That last dealer visit was for the “180,000 mile service” which is such a hilarious concept for most any vehicle, but not a Toyota like this. Timing belt and water pump done at that service, fluids and all other maintenance done regularly. Thank God for the new dealer timing belt and pump, as I’ve had two of them go in my Audis and bent valves both times. One of those incidents spelled the end for that Allroad I’m so sentimental about.
The Rock arrives home:
Initial plans are to baseline the car and drive it as is for a bit. It’s got brand new Michelin Defender LTX tires, which although boring are worth a good bit of coin, so I can’t justify getting rid of them yet. Almost makes me mad, given that I really want to put a good set of 33s on it (I’ve read plenty of threads, still deciding on KO2s vs something else). After that, I’ll starting building a “go bag,” which will really be a med kit, toolkit, some spare parts, and some simple recovery gear for some mild adventures. I'm both somewhat mechanically inclined and also work in healthcare with a special interest in Wilderness Medicine, so these human and vehicle first aid kits will be almost as important as anything else.
Once I get the itch to do more, I’ll probably start with a rooftop tent or in-car sleeping setup +/- a new roof rack. HID upgrade will be a must; I consider that a safety upgrade in addition to just being cool. I have some younger family members in town that I hope to get interested in turning wrenches with some of these projects as well. It might stay mild, it might get wild. Who knows. No real plans to do major rock crawling or go international beyond maybe Canada at this point, but I would like to get places 98% of other cars can’t. Mostly just looking forward to the adventure of building and the adventures my wife and I can go on with it. Appreciate everything I’ve learned on this forum and plan to continue to update this thread to keep telling its story. I'll also be posting on the Land Cruiser 100-series portion of the IH8MUD forum, you can find me there as @LndXrsr. That will contain a lot of what's in this thread but also with some more technical posts about maintenance/upgrades. Exploration photos and trip details in both forums for sure. Looking forward to being part of a new community. If you’re in the SW Ohio/N Kentucky area, shoot me a message so we can meet up and talk “local” places to explore and get lost.
More to come...
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