Tel Boy
Member
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2019
- Messages
- 139
- Country Flag
Like almost every newcomer I have to pay tribute to this club for the members depth of knowledge and willingness to share their experience. It is a fantastic resource for everybody who owns a Cruiser and I have learned so much from the posts here. Also, I have to fess up that I have been a lurker on this site for years, since before Ben went to Australia. Finally flushed out of hiding by discovering that I was able to help a member from my own experience. Bet that never happens again!
So, sticking to the principles laid down nearly 10 years ago by Andrew Prince …
My name is Terry Green and I live in the bayous of Woolwich, in the Thames delta. The car is a 1995 KZJ70 with 130k miles on the clock. It has the all-mechanical 1KZ-T with an early Type 1B cylinder head, no cracks so far. I have had it since it was 4 years old and it has had a few mods to make it a decent expedition truck. (No, seriously!) 50mm longer stiffer springs from HD Suspension, castor correction bushes, remote reservoir shocks, 33x12.5/15 tyres and 30mm wheel spacers because I couldn’t get the -32 offset rims I wanted at the time. Rear springs are aided by Air Lift balloons inside them. One of the best mods was a custom front mounted intercooler from Brunel Performance, which has noticeably boosted torque in the bottom half of the rev range and gives me peace of mind in long hard pulls through soft sand in temperatures above 40 degrees. There’s also a swing-out rear spare wheel carrier to keep the weight off the back door in rough stuff. All the original seats have gone and there are just two Sparco rally seats in the front, light weight and very supportive when things get lively. And, of course, the obligatory snorkel.
But that’s about it, no long range tank, there’s just no room under a SWB body, I use a wooden frame to hold 6 jerries of diesel and 2 of water across the width of the car behind the front seats. In sand & gravel the car does about 7.5km per litre, so this gives a range of well over 1000km off-road away from any supplies of fuel, food or water. And no roof tent, we just have a small pop-up ground tent. One golden lesson I have learned from off road driving is that weight is your mortal enemy so my guiding principle is keep it simple and keep everything heavy low down. It means sacrificing some comfort for agility but when things get tough it really pays dividends. This means the car is brilliant in deep sand, the only way to improve it would be to have more power, but that would mean higher fuel consumption and reduced range, so I’m pretty happy with just how it is.
How has the car ended up like that? Well it all started back in ‘85 when my partner Mickey (she doesn’t like the word wife) bought a Suzuki SJ. We found out how incredible those little clockwork toys are off road, joined AWDC and started competing in trials. At first it was the road legal class but that stuff is seriously addictive and the inevitable damage leads to modifications to toughen up the vehicle. So a few years down the line we end up in the modified class with what has by then become essentially a roll cage on wheels with no glass and not much body. When you roll sideways down a hillside all you have to do is get the thing rubber side down again and off you go to the next section – no repairs needed. Just bangs and bruises for the poor driver. Being no longer road legal the Suzuki had to be taken to and fro on a trailer, which is where the tow truck comes in. At first an LJ70, which did sterling service for years but did struggle up hills with a loaded trailer and then the current KZJ70. Chalk and cheese for towing, or more like mouse and lion. Eventually we gave up trialling, we were getting fed up with the battering every time we made a mistake, so we said - Let’s see what the tow truck can do.
Well … It turns out the tow truck is brilliant off road, too. Too heavy for trialling but it just loves the wide open spaces and sand of the Sahara, not too shabby on the rocky tracks of the Atlas mountains, either. When I first retired we used to go on an extended trip every year to North Africa so the car has been many times to Morocco, been to the far south of Algeria, a couple of times round the dunes of Tunisia and all round Libya three times (not recently, of course). So when I say it’s good in the dunes I mean it really is in its element – it’s what it was built for. I can forgive the car any amount of noisy, jiggly tedium on the road in return for the way it reacts once it gets off tarmac. It just comes alive. A truly great vehicle.
What I like about this site is the tech stuff, that’s where I’ll be.
So, sticking to the principles laid down nearly 10 years ago by Andrew Prince …
My name is Terry Green and I live in the bayous of Woolwich, in the Thames delta. The car is a 1995 KZJ70 with 130k miles on the clock. It has the all-mechanical 1KZ-T with an early Type 1B cylinder head, no cracks so far. I have had it since it was 4 years old and it has had a few mods to make it a decent expedition truck. (No, seriously!) 50mm longer stiffer springs from HD Suspension, castor correction bushes, remote reservoir shocks, 33x12.5/15 tyres and 30mm wheel spacers because I couldn’t get the -32 offset rims I wanted at the time. Rear springs are aided by Air Lift balloons inside them. One of the best mods was a custom front mounted intercooler from Brunel Performance, which has noticeably boosted torque in the bottom half of the rev range and gives me peace of mind in long hard pulls through soft sand in temperatures above 40 degrees. There’s also a swing-out rear spare wheel carrier to keep the weight off the back door in rough stuff. All the original seats have gone and there are just two Sparco rally seats in the front, light weight and very supportive when things get lively. And, of course, the obligatory snorkel.
But that’s about it, no long range tank, there’s just no room under a SWB body, I use a wooden frame to hold 6 jerries of diesel and 2 of water across the width of the car behind the front seats. In sand & gravel the car does about 7.5km per litre, so this gives a range of well over 1000km off-road away from any supplies of fuel, food or water. And no roof tent, we just have a small pop-up ground tent. One golden lesson I have learned from off road driving is that weight is your mortal enemy so my guiding principle is keep it simple and keep everything heavy low down. It means sacrificing some comfort for agility but when things get tough it really pays dividends. This means the car is brilliant in deep sand, the only way to improve it would be to have more power, but that would mean higher fuel consumption and reduced range, so I’m pretty happy with just how it is.
How has the car ended up like that? Well it all started back in ‘85 when my partner Mickey (she doesn’t like the word wife) bought a Suzuki SJ. We found out how incredible those little clockwork toys are off road, joined AWDC and started competing in trials. At first it was the road legal class but that stuff is seriously addictive and the inevitable damage leads to modifications to toughen up the vehicle. So a few years down the line we end up in the modified class with what has by then become essentially a roll cage on wheels with no glass and not much body. When you roll sideways down a hillside all you have to do is get the thing rubber side down again and off you go to the next section – no repairs needed. Just bangs and bruises for the poor driver. Being no longer road legal the Suzuki had to be taken to and fro on a trailer, which is where the tow truck comes in. At first an LJ70, which did sterling service for years but did struggle up hills with a loaded trailer and then the current KZJ70. Chalk and cheese for towing, or more like mouse and lion. Eventually we gave up trialling, we were getting fed up with the battering every time we made a mistake, so we said - Let’s see what the tow truck can do.
Well … It turns out the tow truck is brilliant off road, too. Too heavy for trialling but it just loves the wide open spaces and sand of the Sahara, not too shabby on the rocky tracks of the Atlas mountains, either. When I first retired we used to go on an extended trip every year to North Africa so the car has been many times to Morocco, been to the far south of Algeria, a couple of times round the dunes of Tunisia and all round Libya three times (not recently, of course). So when I say it’s good in the dunes I mean it really is in its element – it’s what it was built for. I can forgive the car any amount of noisy, jiggly tedium on the road in return for the way it reacts once it gets off tarmac. It just comes alive. A truly great vehicle.
What I like about this site is the tech stuff, that’s where I’ll be.
