[Viraat13]

On New Year's Eve, one of my best friends tasked me with fixing up his 20 year old Land Cruiser 100 series.


The behemoth making my small Polo look even smaller! This car really dwarfs everything else on the road.

The car came to me from my friends hometown, and I started the project on the 2nd or 3rd of January.

The first step was the assessment of the entire car, and listing out the jobs that were needed - this in itself was a huge exercise because it was very apparent that the car had not seen any maintaince beyond the bare minimum, and it hadn't even been for a service in at least 3 or 4 years. It started with an extensive test drive, and then getting under the hood and the car to inspect what was what.

After this I spoke to my friend and gave him the lowdown on what was needed, and what all his wishlist was (detailed ahead).

I'm breaking up the thread into 6 sections:

• Mechanical
• Electrical
• Cosmetics (Exterior)
• Lighting
• Audio
• Interior
• Final Look

So here it is, restoring a Land Cruiser 100 Series with a 1HD FTE 4.2L L6 diesel + 5 speed MT, done 90,000 miles.

[Viraat13]

Mechanical Jobs

It was a long list of jobs before we even started:

• Service
• EGR cleaning & blanking plate
• Intake manifold cleaning
• Timing belt & tensioner
• Steering ends
• Suspension bushes/arms front and rear
• Brakes
• Engine and gearbox mounting
• Clutch and flywheel
• Gear lever bush
• All fluids
• Aux belts
• Power steering box (excessive play)
• Hood shockers
• Boot lid shockers

Pretty much every mechanical system needed to be refurbished, so I was allowed to spare no expense, within days of getting the car it was on jack stands like so:




One of the first things we did was give it a full service with brand new oil (Liquimoly Molygen 5w40), oil filter, diesel filter, air filter, AC filter (all Toyota-Lexus genuine).

After this, we did another test drive to see if the performance had picked up a bit, but alas, it wasn't so. Here we decided to open up the intake manifold and EGR valve and clean out the entire circuit, boy was that necessary. I'll let the pictures do the talking:


This is only scratching the surface, literally.




Look at the state of the poor engine. I wonder how it was even breathing!


Cleaning the huge intake manifold with degreaser.


The 1HD FTE 4.2 litre 6 cylinder engine in all its glory - after gapping the valves.

Then came the timing belt, and the multiple aux belts:

On initial inspection the old timing belt (right) doesn't look too bad, but I did get a surprise after comparing it the new one.

Small but efficient timing belt adjuster

The various pulleys for the auxiliary belts.

The entire steering and suspension system needed to be refreshed, so we started from the front and worked our way to the back, changing every single bush, knuckle, and ball joint along the way.

Pictured above, rear suspension arm of the mighty Land Cruiser 100 series

The suspension was byfar the most tedious job of the lot because there was a dearth of availability of high quality or genuine spares. I had early on decided to use only Toyota-Lexus genuine parts, or RBI or three 5 (555) for the rubber components and ended up using a mix of these, but it costed us a lot of time. I think I wasted 15-20 days waiting for parts in a 35 day project.

The power steering system had developed major amount of play and it was one of the first things we got out of the car and sent to the lathe shop to be rebuilt. When I first drove it, I felt like Dev Anand steering wildly just to go in a straight line - not a pleasant feeling when you're steering 2 tonnes of Japanese metal on crowded Uttar Pradesh roads.

Of course, relatively minor stuff like resurfacing brake discs, changing disc brake pads, coolant system flush, etc. were all done without fuss or much photography.

Changing all the fluids was a fun task, simply because there was a wild amount of specifications for the various fluids. Engine oil, brake oil, gearbox oil, transfer case oil, front differential oil, rear differential oil, and power steering oil. Honourable mention to the Toyota LL (long life) coolant - was an utter pain to source.

The clutch and flywheel was a behemoth of a job simply because of the size of the things we were dealing with. The gearbox? Huge. Flywheel? Pretty big. Clutch? Also pretty big!


I waited over a month for these two boxes. Forgot to take a picture of the third box with the release bearing. I was lucky to get Toyota genuine from the UAE, but I was okay with AISIN as well since they're the OE suppliers.





This gear shift bush had broken and was causing a huge amount of play in the lever and also ruining the feel of the shifts, unfortunately I couldn't find a OE replacement, so I got one made out of nylon - jugaad works.


The original gearbox mount was broken, so in went a brand new Toyota genuine gearbox mount.

One of the most surprising things was the cost of the hood and boot lid shockers! The set of 4 shockers cost more than INR 20000! Insane pricing when you think that you can get new shockers for the Skoda Laura for not a lot more.

Leaving the most challenging mechanical task for the last: AHC (automative height control) flush and fluid change.

Now, when it comes to most other jobs, there is a certain amount of familiarity in the process of how you would work on brakes/suspension/steering/etc across most cars. What happens when the system you need to work on is rare to begin with? You sit and search and search till you find multiple sources saying the same things and then get to work! I managed to get two cans of Toyota genuine AHC fluid for the LC, we did the entire flush and bleed procedure with the various valves and finally, we were done and decided to test the function...

At it's highest and lowest setting.

A great success! The feature works exactly as it should, and it works much faster and smoother than it did before, Infact, the height at the highest setting increased by a good margin. The amount of lift is absolutely hilarious, you can stick your head between the fender and the tyre (not that you should)!

[Viraat13]

Electrical Repairs

• Sunroof
• Electrical antenna motor
• Various switches/Roof lights
• Diagnostic scanning
• Power window service
• All LED conversion for the interior (requested, not really needed)
• Replace horns

Unfortunately I didn't click many usable pictures for this section of the thread. The most major repair was the rebuilding of the entire sunroof system, which had simply crumbled to dust - there was nothing to photograph but the wire that moved the sunroof glass, the pipes and channels had all been rusted away.

Large part of the roof of the interior had to be disassembled to access the sunroof system.


The ustaad cutting out the old pipes from the frame.

The primary reason for sunroofs failing is not cleaning the water channels, and secondly not using them at all. Luckily, I have an excellent gent for repairing all manners of sunroofs.


Almost back in place, all in a days work.

My friend (the owner) had only asked me to fix one thing - the electrical antenna because it looks cool when going up and down.
Thankfully, this was a quick fix for an experienced electrician.

As expected from a car of this age, there were many buttons and light switches that weren't functioning - not a complicated thing to fix, but one that needs patience so as to not leave any marks on the various trims inside the car. One of the quirks this car has is that it had two diagnostic ports, one was a proprietary Toyota port, and the other was the universal OBD port - funnily I didn't discover this one till after I had made my guy go back home to bring the Toyota adapter from his kit. All for nought though, this car has a very primitive diagnostics system and thankfully all was well with it.

All the electrical motors of the power windows, along with the window channels were serviced too, and the interior was given an all LED upgrade (pictures in the interior section).

[Viraat13]

Cosmetics (Exterior)

• Bumpers repair
• Repaint of bumpers, bull bar, roof spoiler, side steps, wing mirrors.
• Remaking stickers and numberplates

Since a full repaint was not on the cards, I only focused on the major cosmetic corrections that the car needed.


The first was this poor old sticker, probably there from when the car was delivered, as it is apparent that when the bull bar was repainted, the area around the sticker was masked. I spent an age on various font finder websites to get the right font for this, as well as the numberplate, and then had it remade using a vinyl router cutter.



The front and rear bumpers both had signs of damage - either chipped corners or broken mounting clips causing them to flex a lot more than they should. All this was repaired using plastic welding.

The rear with the popular bumper delete mod.


This chrome mirror cover was very 90s, and very damaged. No real way to repair it, so I tossed it and repainted the mirror cover in the OE shade (Imperial Jade Mica).


Tinted the fog lights yellow (since I was putting LEDs in them - partially belongs in the lighting section)


The new Land Cruiser sticker, a perfect match to the previous one.


For the bull bar and the bumpers, I couldn't find the OE shade code, so I just decided to go with something similar to what it had, but a lighter colour on the bull bar for a bit more contrast.


Bumpers freshly painted and installed. More pictures of the final look at the end!

[Viraat13]

Lighting

• HID main beam
• LED fogs w/ yellow tint
• LED high beam
• Polishing

One of the things that have definitely come a long way from the 90s to now is automotive lighting. Older headlights are great for upgrading the power output because of their all glass and chromed steel construction, but they still feel like candles compared to the LED/HIDs we have today. The owner of the car specifically requested some magic to be done for the lights and to bring them up to modern standards.

The stock headlights have halogen in the fog, halogen in the high, and HID in the main. Now, with time the output of HID lights dimishes, so it made sense to replace the entire system and put in a modern HID kit. Since we were already fiddling with the lights, I decided to get them cleaned up and polished a bit to bring out a little shine - you may have noticed the lights looking brighter between the first and some later photos.


The order of lights is fog, then main, then high beam, and then flashing.

[Viraat13]

Audio

Like for the lights, the owner requested a modern system (Car Play & Android Auto), but largely left the selection of the system on me. I had a lot of fun figuring out what system and speakers to go for in this project, and given the practically unlimited budget I had, I feel I did well to wrap up the job at a "reasonable" price (see ICE section for the meaning of this term )

Luckily, I knew exactly what I wanted to put, and immediately set about looking for a Pioneer Z5290BT unit which was in major short supply at the time due to lockdown in Thailand (where these units are produced). I think I must have picked up one of the last available units in January (when there was no confirmation of when fresh stock would arrive).

Below are the details of the set up:

• Pioneer 5290BT
• Hertz Cento Coaxial speakers for the front
• Hertz DCX component speakers for the rear
• Pioneer TS-WX300A active subwoofer
• AmazonBasics 14 gauge wiring
• CTK Vibromax 2.0mm damping (two layers) for doors
• Silicone water guards

Mounting tweeters is always such a challenge, luckily I managed to modify this original mount and install the Hertz tweeter on it.


The front door with the Hertz crossover and tweeter mounted in place.


The rear door with the damping, water guard, speaker in place.


The lovely Pioneer HU - it really allows for fine adjustment of the output, and overall I'm really pleased with it. More so because the back light on this unit was adjustable, and I made it the right shade of green to match with the back light of the rest of the dash (I can't stand a colour mismatch there).

[Viraat13]

Interior

Largely the interiors were in ok shape, except for the typical wear points. This is a short list:

• Seat channel repairs
• Patchwork of upholstery
• Steering retrim
• Gear knob retrim
• Door cards retrim

Any car that is 20 years old will begin to show signs of wear on the interior, and this LC100 was no different. Some of the leather panels on the front and rear seats had worn badly, the steering wheel was in bad shape, and so were the door cards. The carpet had seen better days, and the electrically adjustable seats (!) barely moved because the seat channels were so clogged with dirt.


The steering wheel had an awful cover on it, but only because the original had worn away to nothing. Note the yellowed Toyota logo.


The carpet wasn't in great shape to begin with, but a month of staying around many greasy hands did it no good.


Seats removed to access the workings underneath the seat, and also to clean the carpet.


Managed to find a perfect match for the leather seats, down to the last grain. Difficult to tell that 8 or 9 patches of leather on the rear bench have been changed.


Redone door card leather, as well as fresh contrast black fabric wrapped on the speaker grill (original was beige, but torn).


Hand stitched perfection - this gear knob was expertly retrimmed and luckily the old numbering insert was good enough to be reused. Really pleased with how this turned out.

Other interior photos in the big reveal of final photos in the next post!

[Viraat13]

Final photos!



The steering wheel - now retrimmed in the original colour (matching the dotted trim of the door cards; a brownish purple). It took weeks of rejected samples to get the colour perfect. There was also no real way to get the T of the Toyota fixed, so it was painted in silver.


Interior with all LED lights.


The Pioneer active subwoofer finally makes an appearance along with the split tailgate.


Fresh out of detailing, with my Polo in the background again.


Not sure if I mentioned it earlier, but the rear spoiler, and rear bumper were repainted too, along with the running boards in black.


Impressive amount of shine for a 2 decade old car - boy does it still turn heads.



Some parting shots.


This culminates more than a month of hard work in the January cold. Thank you for reading.

[GTO]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

Going to our homepage today

Lucky car to get such TLC & I must say, you really have a thing for old legendary cars, huh (referencing your W124)! This 100 series & the 80 are my favourite generations of the Land Cruiser; at one time, these were everywhere & every rich garage just had to have one.

[TheHelix0202]

The final result is such a sweet sight, all that effort was worth it! A truly legendary SUV this is.

[vredesbyrd]

What a beautiful machine! I can't even begin to imagine the effort that took place.

[CEF_Beasts]

Kudos to you, impressive work done on the Cruiser! The colour, interiors and other miscellaneous parts all look factory fresh. The 20 year old Land Cruiser got updated like we modify our cars to make them new at the 5 year mark, that’s the difference between the Land Cruiser and other cars.

[Storm2.0]

Awesome restoration thread OP.
The Land Cruiser has some special affinity for footpaths
(this is just a light hearted humour with reference to last few pics OP has shared and Salman Khan's controversial hit and run Land Cruiser case).

[keroo1099]

Superb restoration on a lovely vehicle. Reminded me of the work my uncle did on his faceliftedJ 60.

Excellent job @Viraat13.

[anoopGTkrish]

Such a beautiful machine. We have one in our apartment that belongs to a fellow enthusiast. It simply dwarfs everything else on the road.