Toyotie, part 7: Getting to Know You

The sickly factory horns.

I noticed something funny when we bought Toyotie. I’d seen countless photos of Land Cruisers, studied them online, crawled around inside one, and so on, but I didn’t really know them. Everything was a little different than what I was used to in the Jeep or other vehicles I’d owned. Sure, I pretty much immediately figured out all of the basics, but there was obviously a lot more to learn.

For one thing, it took me a bit to figure out the window wipers – front and back – which turned on in the opposite direction from the Jeep. And how do I open that fuel door? And the hood? Uh, and I know nothing about the fuses or where things are under the hood, and hey are those locking lug nuts? Do I have a special key for those like I had on the Jeep?

I sure hoped nothing broke or otherwise needed attention before I figured out the basics.

Another issue was modifications. I had a list as you saw from my previous post, but those were almost in the realm of hypotheses. The “book learning” was important, particularly with regard to mitigating and preventing trouble before it occurred… But despite that knowledge, I still wouldn’t know many other things for certain until I had some hands-on, and had gained a real understanding of Toyotie. Let me give you a prime example.

I’d replaced the stock horns on the Jeep – which sounded like an anemic goat – so long ago I’d pretty much forgotten about them. When I bought the Land Cruiser, the horns were the farthest thing from my mind. One day though, I had to use them to express my displeasure with someone who was about to drive straight into me, and perhaps encourage them to actually look in the direction they were driving: STRAIGHT. AT. ME.

I pushed my palm into the horn… And the sound that issued forth was not quite what I had imagined it might be. This was a large, robust SUV. Surely it would have an appropriate, manly sort of horn.

No.

What came out instead immediately reminded me of my favorite Top Gear episode, in Botswana. In that episode, Richard Hammond has a puny car he has named “Oliver”. When he first tries the horn it lets out a distorted, toy-like “mleeeeeeep” sound. Although Richard loves the car, he still mocks it: “Oliver, you’re got a cold! Mlehhhh!”

There wasn’t really any way I could have anticipated that Toyotie would have a horn more suited for a 1961 French taxi than for a modern, beastly offroad vehicle. Sure, if i had searched the popular ih8mud forums for “land cruiser 80 horn” I would have noticed that one of the first results was “My horn sounds gayish”… But the fact is that you don’t go searching for these things until you have a reason to!

So, until I realized that the horn sounded more like a half-drowned field mouse than a psychotic balrog expressing epic rage, I couldn’t know that a horn upgrade was to be on the list. After this incident, it was.

Similarly, I discovered that the nice CD player didn’t really support my iPhone; the speedometer gearing had never been corrected, and that the satellite radio didn’t seem to operate correctly. These things and others would need fixing or upgrading to be suitable to my needs, and I’d have to discover them over time.

I’d quickly discovered most of the controls and other details from my time inside the vehicle, but I needed to expand my horizons. So shortly after buying the Land Cruiser, I found some free time on a weekend and decided to give myself a decent tour, especially under the hood. I popped the hood and started looking around.

That's funny, what's a bubble level doing there?

One of the first things I noticed were these things on the body, just underneath where the front of the hood rests. I squinted at the first one, wondering if it was some sort of thermometer, since it was close to the radiator and the radiator overflow bottle. But on closer inspection it appeared to be a bubble level. “That’s odd,” I thought. And there was another next to it.

Another level. I think.

But this one was different, in that the cover was nearly opaque. I could barely determine that there appeared to be another level beneath it. And there was a matching pair on the opposite side of the body.

I checked my service manuals but found nothing about these oddities. A quick Googling however revealed that they were indeed levels, and that they were there to aid the headlight aiming process. Mystery solved.

Firewall access.

I also think I solved another question I had floating around in my head… How would I pass wires through the firewall? This would be needed for things like the planned CB and ham radios. The Jeep had a solid plastic plug on the driver’s side of the firewall… And so did the Land Cruiser, it seemed. Next!

Oil filter.

Ah, there’s the oil filter. Good to know, especially since I usually do my own oil changes.

New radio antenna assembly.

And there’s the shiny new radio antenna assembly. Now I can follow that sometime and see how the cable to the radio is routed.

Primary fusebox cover.

Ah, there’s the main fusebox. May as well open it up, clean up that cover some and see what’s in there. It’s good to have spare fuses.

Fusebox contents

Mostly some pretty standard blade fuses, simple enough, but I also need to get some spares for those big fuses. And after cleaning the cover and noticing that it had holders for a couple of spare fuses, I placed a couple there. I also verified that the empty fuse slots were supposed to be that way, and what each of the other fuses were for.

Transmission cooler

Lastly, up front I noticed this mini-radiator in front of the normal one. A check of the Toyota data sheet for Toyotie revealed that it had the factory towing package. Aside from the trailer wiring harness in the rear, that also included a transmission cooler, which is what that little sub-radiator is. Nice.

That concluded the exploratory under-the-hood tour. I also spent a few minutes crawling around under the Cruiser looking at the springs, body, shocks, etc. Many small, lingering questions were answered, and now I could proceed with my build plans, armed with this basic knowledge.

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