Restoring a 20-year-old Toyota Land Cruiser 100 Series

Pretty much every mechanical system needed to be refurbished, so I was allowed to spare no expense.

BHPian Viraat13 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

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 maintenance 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 of 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 was in his wish list (detailed ahead).

I'm breaking up the thread into 7 sections:

1. Mechanical
2. Electrical
3. Cosmetics (Exterior)
4. Lighting
5. Audio
6. Interior
7. 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.

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 by far 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 (automotive 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 its 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, in fact, 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)!

Continue reading about the Land Cruiser's restoration for more insights, information and BHPian comments.