Toyotie’s First Birthday

Toyotie’s Birthday Bath

9/11 is a day that will live in infamy, of course. But for me, there’s a silver lining now because 9/11/11 was the day that I purchased Toyotie. We recently passed the one-year anniversary of ownership. As a birthday present, I decided to detail Toyotie for the first time.

When done properly, hand-detailing is time-consuming and involves a lot of elbow grease. That is to say it’s pretty much a pain in the rear! There are several steps for the outside paint alone.

First, the vehicle is given a regular wash, preferably a power wash. If needed, Dawn or other specific soap is used to remove the old wax and such. Once everything is scrubbed and dried, it’s time to give every exterior paint surface a clay bar treatment. This is where you become truly aware of just how much surface area there is on an 80-series Land Cruiser!

It’s quite time-consuming and this is why detailing shops will charge $60, $80, $120, or more – on top of their regular fees – if you bring them a big truck or SUV. I went through an entire bottle of Meguiar’s Qwik Detailer and destroyed a clay bar in this process, but it was needed. The clay bar removes all the bit and pieces of “stuff” that’s still stuck to the vehicle even after a pressure wash & scrubbing. You can feel – and see – this detritus being removed during the clay bar process.

After the clay bar, it’s time to consider whether or not the polishing step is needed. In this case, it was, so now I have to go over most every inch of the exterior for the third and fourth time. At least I was able to skip the front bumper for this step… Polishing involves the most elbow grease of any step, especially if you’re working by hand as I was. Again, I became very aware of how much Toyotie there is! After the polish & buffing phases I’ve now gone over everything five times. My arms and shoulders are sore, but I’m not done yet.

I finish with two final steps: a thorough application of wax, and buffing. More elbow grease, but not quite as much as the polishing phase. The seventh and final pass buffs off the wax and leave the outside looking as good as it’s ever going to look, and protected by the wax layer.

Of course I wasn’t really done there… There were still all of the windows to clean – inside and out. The interior surfaces also needed cleaning and dusting, as well as vacuuming. The wheels needed cleaning. And so on. It was a lot of work but it was done right, and I spread the effort out over several days. Toyotie is clean and shiny for a change. For now.

I pretty much exclusively use Meguiar’s and Griot’s Garage car care products. That’s an unpaid endorsement, unfortunately.

Looking Back Over the First Year

When I bought Toyotie the odometer was at a hair over 198k miles, and it is currently closing in on 217k. That’s just about 19k miles if you’re bad at math. Or 30k kilometers if you’re foreign.

Toyotie came with several good (and expensive) upgrades and I added more. A year later, I’m particularly fond of the auxiliary fuel tank (although it was expensive and has not been entirely trouble-free) and the Engel fridge. I was also happy to have finally figured out how the iPod/iPhone works with the Alpine head unit and adapter..

There have been some important bits that have needed replacing as well: front and rear brake pads, the starter, brake booster, radiator, and several hoses. Also the power steering and valve cover gaskets. That’s quite a few things, but not completely unexpected with a 16-year old vehicle, and some (like the hoses) were strictly preventive maintenance. With any luck, most of these replacements should last another 16 years.

In true Toyota style, none of the parts failures left me stranded, although the radiator certainly could have, had it happened out on the trails somewhere. Then I would have needed to try out my radiator repair kit and hoped that it got me home.

As noted earlier, the auxiliary fuel tank has had some issues that have needed working through. The exposed fuel pump was damaged & leaked in Death Valley. The exposed fuel filter was damaged and leaked (much slower, at least!) in the Mojave Desert. Both were fixed and led to the addition of a small custom skid plate to guard those items. That seems to have cured those vulnerabilities, but now the rear axle breather tube has been cut where it passes though that skid plate… Sigh. That will be corrected soon, and hopefully that’s the end of those issues.

On the plus side, Toyotie has been fun, capable, and has seen us though a year’s worth of adventures, including well over 400 miles of offroading on a dozen occasions. There’s plenty of room inside for people and “stuff”, and it’s comfortable too.

I’m hoping that the next year will bring even more offroad miles, and fewer repairs, if those things aren’t mutually exclusive. To quote my legendary Jeep mechanic Jeff Arabia, “I love how you offroad the fu__ out of that thing and beat the sh__ out of it!”

I’ve created a small image gallery with some recent updates and photos.

Happy birthday, Toyotie!