100 Series Land Cruiser - Northbound and Down

bwood

Member
Haven’t posted much on here, but the forums have been a huge resource in vehicle and trip planning over the past few years. My wife and I left our full-time jobs in San Francisco in March of 2016 and set off on a 9 month trip from Northern California up to Alaska and back down to Central TX. We had a 2000 7.3 f250 with an All Terrain popup camper, and couldn’t have been happier with it:
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We originally set out to live on the road for 9 months to a year, but have been able to offset travel expenses with freelance design work, so we’ve extended our plans and are now in Baja continuing south, with the hopes of making it down to Panama this year. Anyway, while our last rig treated us incredibly well, we’d heard of issues with some central american border crossings in ¾ ton and larger trucks. Won’t get into too many details here, but long story short, after lots of research, and considering our needs for a more future-proof vehicle, we decided to downsize.

Land Cruisers have been on our list since we started planning a few years ago, and towards the end of last year’s travels, we decided to pull the trigger on a 100-series we found in Colorado:
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Close to 200k miles, but it was a well maintained family hauler, and had 2 timing belts done. I drove it home to Austin, left it with family, and flew back to Colorado to finish our trip.

We stayed in Austin over the winter and built it out, including:
BajaRack utility flat rack
CVT shasta RTT
OME shocks, torsion bars, and rear springs
295/75r16 BFG AT/KO2’s
Slee wheel spacers
Slee diff drop
Slee dual battery tray (modified to fit a larger battery)
T-max dual battery kit (with custom 2awg cable)
Blue sea SafetyHub 150
600w Samlex pure sine inverter
12v accessory plugs
ARB front bumper with ComeUp Dv-9s winch
ARB rear bumper with wheel and fuel carriers
KISS drawers (from cruzerDave over on ih8mud)
ARB fridge on HD slides
Frontrunner storage boxes
Ammo can lock boxes
Propane tank mount
Shovel and axe mounts
Tent, hatch, and annex LED lighting wired to switches

It was a bit hectic getting everything done in a such a hurry, not wanting to lose momentum on our travels, but we were able to hit the road again in late February. This thread will probably be more of a photo dump of the build (as everything's done now), but we’re also keeping a blog at northboundanddown.com, and a much more up-to-date instagram @northbound.and.down.

Anyway, build pics to follow, but here's how she sits currently:
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bwood

Member
Started out addressing minor maintenance issues and getting the stereo up to date while waiting on parts:
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Then the roof rack was the first thing to arrive:
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We knew we'd be needing a second battery, and the Slee tray seemed to be the go-to solution. However, it's designed to hold the 2nd battery as well as a compressor, which we don't need at this point. Wanting to get the most out of the aux battery, I modified the tray by cutting off the tab and leveling the base, allowing for a larger deep cycle AGM to be mounted on its side (copied the idea from SATJS on ih8mud here)
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bwood

Member
Some boxes from ARB showed up in time for Christmas :wings:
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Started with mounting the front bumper:
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And huge thanks to ComeUp for getting us set up with a Dv-9s winch
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Then it came time to install the OME torsion bars, shocks, and springs, along with the Slee diff drop.
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stclair

Adventurer
Very cool. We recently picked up a 2004 Land Cruiser. Prior to that our rig was a Tundra/FWC combo. I'll be interested to follow this thread to see which you prefer.
 

bwood

Member
stclair - so far the first couple months on the road in the land cruiser have been great. We occasionally miss the indoor living space of the camper, but the RTT is really comfortable. The only minor annoyances have been when we've needed to re-position the rig to minimize wind, and sometimes take the rain flap off to cut down on noise. The smaller size is a big plus for us, especially heading towards central america, although we did have to leave a few toys behind (inflatable kayak and mountain bikes).


Getting back to the build pics. The rear bumper came in a separate shipment from ARB a little later, and getting the old hitch off proved to be more of a challenge than anticipated. For one, the old hitch was pretty rusted, not sure if it was pulled off something else and put on later, but the hitch bolts wouldn't budge. Ended up having to cut the middle section of the hitch out to be able to remove the bumper cover, which allowed me to hit the bolts with pb blaster from inside the open frame ends. Took a few days of this to finally get the bolts to break loose. Then, whoever installed the hitch welded it to the frame in a couple spots, so I had to grind the welds down to actually get the hitch off.
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Treated the frame with por15 and got to installing the rear bumper.
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bwood

Member
Next came building out the interior. Starting with the rear cargo space, we knew we wanted drawers of some kind, as well as a 12v fridge (half of our trip last year was spent with a broken 3-way fridge, using a cheap cooler with ice instead, which we definitely didn't want to do again). I had planned on building the drawers myself, since most available options were out of our price range. Then I came across cruzerDave's KISS drawers on ih8mud. Saved a ton of time in not having to design them and source materials ourselves, and they were way cheaper than anything else we'd found.
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For the fridge, we got an ARB 50qt, and ordered some HD slides from Lee Valley. Mounted a piece of 3/4" ply to the slides, then bolted the fridge to the ply through the feet mounts. The slide is mounted to the drawers with 8 L-brackets bolted through with large fender washers.
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bwood

Member
Next came wiring up the second battery, as well as the fuse block, inverter, fridge, 12v outlets, and lights.
I went with the T-max dual battery kit, and used this thread as a guide, but with 2awg cable instead of 1/0. The t-max solenoid mounted up nicely to existing holes in the slee tray, with the addition of a small 3" DIY bracket. Once the batteries were set up, I ran another fused 2awg cable back through the passenger side firewall, behind the glove box and down the passenger floorboard (under the carpet trim pieces) to the Blue Sea fuse block mounted in one of the rear cargo area cubbies.

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For lighting, we used 3 separate strips of LEDs: 1 for the rear hatch, 1 for inside the tent, and 1 for under the tent in the annex area, all wired to switches installed in the little side flip-up cover in the rear.

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motoz

Adventurer
Fantastic. Great build and great composure in the photography.

Subscribed !

Did you assemble the ARB bar yourself? If so was it a massive job ??


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

bwood

Member
Thanks motoz! Yeah, I did the ARB bumpers myself, turned out to be a little more complicated than expected. The front was fairly straightforward, but the rear took a while. The amount of hardware is pretty crazy, and the instructions aren't super detailed. Also didn't help that I think the rear frame crossmember on this LC was kinda bent in, so it was kinda hard to get the bumper to mount flush. Eventually I'll need to work on fine-tuning some of the clearances, and getting the hinge pins shimmed a little tighter, but it's been great so far.

To finish out the bumpers, I got an 11lb propane tank and mount, which I mounted to the side of the jerry can swing out:
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Finished with everything loaded up:
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Also mounted a shovel to the inside of the tire carrier with a couple quick fists:
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We had a hi-lift mount for the tire carrier, but decided not to take one. Instead, I ended up using it to hold an axe (which you can't see, but it's under the trasharoo).


Then came finishing out the interior. Since it's just the two of us traveling, we decided to take out the 2nd row seats and use the space for storage. We thought about building a storage box that would be level with the drawers in case we ever needed a platform to sleep inside, but after coming across these frontrunner boxes that fit the space really well, decided that'd be a much quicker/easier option. The bottom boxes are tied down to D-rings mounted to the seat mount bolts, and then again with a long bungee going over the top.
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In the space between the storage boxes, I mounted an ammo can to use as a lockbox. It's bolted from inside down through a steel bracket that's bolted to a couple seat mount bolts, then again through the back attached to a bracket mounted to the drawer top. There's another can (different size) bolted to the drawer wing kind of behind/beside the fridge.
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Fire extinguisher was mounted to the rear driver's side step thing:
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Last came mounting the CVT shasta tent we'd had waiting in the garage for a couple months. Installation was pretty quick and painless, and we ended up using the security nuts CVT offers to keep anyone from unbolting it during the trip.
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All packed up and ready to go :victory:
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bwood

Member
Thanks! We've been traveling in it since the end of February, and everything's been working great so far. However, we did quickly realize that the stock carpet on the tailgate wasn't the best for cooking. We stayed with family in Oceanside before crossing the border, and took the opportunity to replace it. We were looking into plastics, but then a friend of family gave us a piece of sign material he had leftover, thin plastic sandwiched between 2 sheets of aluminum. We cut it down using the old carpet as a template, then used sheet metal screws and silicone to fix it in place. It works way better as a cook/prep surface, and cleans up easily.

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Before:
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After:
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