After determining that the rear Koni shock inserts will not fit the FX16 casing, headed to the junkyard this past Saturday. Look at pic and you can see the insert is longer, and also the diameter is bigger. No amount of hammering will get that fit into the FX casing pictured on top. So Saturday afternoon headed to ABC in Pearl City, the pick and pull I often go to. I wander around the yard checking out all the Toyotas. So far all the strut casing I’ve seen and measured don’t match. I do find a AE92 Corolla SR5 that someone is going over. I leave him to his scavenging as I go look around some more. Nothing else looks good. There’s also nothing else unusual or of much interest to me. Continue reading ‘Junkyarding’
Archive for the 'car' Category
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The Koni Sport one way adjustable struts arrived yesterday. I was wondering if it was my complete order as the box looked rather small. It was just that they were all crammed in, no padding to speak of. Set of two struts per logo box. Here’s the contents of the rear strut inserts showing one strut. To install these, you need to take your old strut assembly and cut the top of, drill a hole in bottom, pull out all the old bits, then insert this new strut, and bolt it in through the bottom. 
So earlier in the day I took an old set of struts over to Ckucky’s to undo the top nut and drain the rears. Drilled hole in side and was wondering if we’d get sprayed by oil from letting the nitrogen goodness out. Either the pressure is low, or the goodness had left already, no oil showers. Continue reading ‘Koni Kurses’
I was planning on working on the FJ80 a little on Monday after work, but when I got home, the sun was brilliant and the weather exceptional. The bike called out to me. Since Whistler is coming up, I tried ramping up the distance, but there is only so much that I can do in my regular training loop. I’ll probably have to start venturing further a field to get beyond 20 km. Still, the scenery is nice, even if it is repetitive.
D = 19.62 km (12.19-miles), Vavr = 20.4 km/h (12.7 mph), Vmax = 39.4 km/h (24.5 mph), T = 57-minutes
Sunday 4th: The drivers door on the FX has been saging, actually every FX has had this problem. After 20 years with the use and weight of a big 2 door design on it, the hinges wear. The current FX it had suddenly also gotten noisy, groaning when opening & closing. Looking at the lower hinge could see the metal bushing was basically disintegrating. These Toyota hinges are not designed to be rebuildable, you’re supposed to replace, at more than $100 from the factory, ouch. Browsing online I can’t find door hinges for a twenty year old Corolla. Decide to try an old trick, often times car manufacturers will have the same hinge on the opposite side oppsite position, meaning the upper right hinge might match this lower left hinge. So a trip to Root’s Toyota wrecking yard and I soon have a upper passenger hinge.
As you can see, they’re different, but the same. Original lower hinge is on the top here. It has a bigger plate for the side that goes to the body. However, closely eyeballing it, the holes look the same. I go ahead and bolt up the smaller bottom hinge. It does seem to fit, the door swings better now. It needs some adjustment that is difficult to do singlehandedly. But I manage to get it ok. Could use some more adjustment, but good enough. Trying to put that bigger hinge back onto the spare parts FX to keep the door on doesn’t go as well. It doesn’t seem to quite fit, and it’s not because the larger plate. Oh well, nothing a little monkey force won’t fix. So there you have it, semi-dirtbag auto repair trick!
I described this to the guys as a wheel aligment doohicky thing. It’s actually a pretty nifty gadget for measuring the alignment of your wheels/suspension. It’s basically a jig with a calibrated bubble level that you set against a wheel. Set it first on the ground and zero the bubble, then set it against wheel with the three contact points flush and even against the rim. You can then read your camber off the bubble. You can also measure caster (the tilt of the steering axis) with this same device. To do this, you turn wheel 15 degreesfrom straight, there’s an angle cut on the end of the bubble level to help set this. You then zero the bubble on the caster scale. You then turn the steering to 15 degrees from straight in the other direction and read the bubble scale. Finally you can measure toe using the additional accessory arms you can see extending forward and rearward from the bottom of the jig. Measurement here is kind of caveman by using a tape measure to a straight bar you hold to the wheel on the other side, or if you’re rich, you buy two sets of these doohickies. Continue reading ‘SPC Performance FasTrax Alignment Doohicky’
I was pretty tired on Saturday, so I didn’t get started on replacing the broken window on the FJ80 until after lunch. Following the instructions in the FSM, I removed the carpet support, the inner trim panel, the D-pillar garnish, and the vent trim. The vent trim was affixed with a 5mm threaded stud and a nut, and 2 plastic inserts. The inserts were pretty much stuck fast, and there is no access to their backsides, so prying from the outside was the only option. Needless to say, the plastic ears that hold the insert chips to the back of the trim snapped off. A combination of 17-year-old brittle plastic and barely-adequate structure of the ears conspired to make this trim piece a one-time-use part. Continue reading ‘Revenge of the Glass’
Toyota went and screwed me! Since the time of the first F-series engine, the Land Cruiser oil filter has always been the gigantic Foster’s Lager can-sized 15600-41010, but this year, they discontinued that filter and introduced a new smaller 90915-YZZD3 filter that fits the same threaded spud. The original filter extended in diameter at least a centimeter past the seating o-ring, but the new one ends at the o-ring, so it is significantly smaller. The new filter has all the same quality touches, like the anti-backflow flapper that keeps oil primed in the upper system and super-fine filtering material, but it requires a new SST. I asked Clyde at Toyota Parts, and he said there was no new official Toyota SST. My old filter wrench was an official Toyota part, 09228-44011. I figured that since the new filter was common to all gasoline Land Cruisers and a bunch of larger Toyotas including the V8 models, finding a third-party cap-style wrench would be no problem. Continue reading ‘SK Tools 90216 3-Prong Adjustable Oil Filter Wrench’
I called Clyde at Toyota Parts on Thursday. He said the order would go into Toyota Motor Sales USA for a part pull from the mainland warehouse on Friday. He figured the part would be in on Wednesday. He called me on Monday saying the window had arrived! I picked ut up today.
Unlike the insides of a PC where all the raw sheetmetal edges are like razor blades, the metal strap that holds the scissors jack into the rear quarter panel of a Chevrolet 3500 van is actually smooth and rounded with a rolled bead on the edge. The plastic wingnut that holds the strap in place however, has a molding flash that easily and quickly shaves the skin off your finger like a wood plane – curled-up ribbon of skin and all! People really freak out when blood is dripping from your hand.
Really – I don’t know what happened. I came back from deliveries at 10:00 or so and it was OK. At noon when we went to get lunch, the window was fully cracked. My only guess is built-up stress (it is nearly 18-years old). If it was caused by someone or by an object, the glass would have come apart and be all over the carpet inside the cabin in little pieces.
I called Clyde at Toyota Parts, and a new one is on the way – probably next Wednesday… In the meantime, there are 4-plies of packing tape holding the tiny crystals together and keeping rain out.