Two Weeks, Part 18

September 16 to 30

We bought a car.

It’s a 1997 Land Cruiser GCC-spec with around 100k miles running the 1HZ diesel attached to a H151F 5-speed manual. It’s incredibly fun to drive.

I spent much of the last week driving it back up to Washington from Colorado. Other than being pretty poky at altitude (and producing a puff of black smoke when accelerating) it was almost entirely uneventful. I pulled a “Simon Fordman” and brought my tools and fixed up a few things along the way.

The trip was almost entirely trouble free. About two hours from home I was on the highway and heard a clunk. The result was not great!

Note that the front bolt is loose and the rear bolt is completely gone. It must have worked its way out and bounced up to hit my gas tank or something, hence the clunk. There were a couple of loose sway bar bolts too. I tightened down what I could and limped to an O’Reilly and bought a 5/8ths inch hitch pin that I jammed in the hole until I can get a new bolt ordered. I’ll probably replace all four bolts and their lock nuts. And use Loctite.

Anyway, got it home. It was one of the more fun solo trips I’ve ever done. And at the end of it we have a sweet Land Cruiser! Hah.

(Fixing the horn.)