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Sold in 2016, bought back in 2023 My 1994 M reg 80 series 12v manual VX

Well that was emotional for me. Just waved goodbye to my old friend after six and a half years.

Rob Moore bought her - a landy owner who has wanted an 80 for a long time. Am sure you will see him on here soon. Glad its gone to another enthusiast.

Is that Rob Moore who lives round Slough way? a chap I knew from my 4x4 club.
 
Well, who would have thought? In February 2016 I sold the Landcruiser to a man called Rob. And he used it until August 2022. He then sold it to a good friend of his.

Step forward to last week. I have regretted selling the Landcruiser since it went. My nephew regrets not buying it from me when I was selling it. He called me 9 days back and said he had seen my old cruiser for sale. So we went together to South Wales on Tuesday evening and he has bought it. So the old girl is back in the family so to speak. A bit more battered and bruised and in need of some TLC. It will be back here with me tomorrow so we can both get to work on a host of jobs.

It was a real trip down memory lane and a delight to be back in the old girl once again. So much so that I am selling 2 or 3 of my other cars and will be looking to get another 80 series as soon as I can. I had forgotten just how much I love driving them.
 
Thats brilliant . I sometimes consider selling just because it would be easier to own and drive a vehicle i couldn't care less about , but then you read something like this and know it would be a huge mistake .
 
A wee update. The GT TDI Mk 4 Golf project I rebuilt last year was sold about a week back. I have someone coming to look at, and hopefully buy, the other very nice project car the Merc E300d estate W124 sometime next week. Once that goes then I'll be on the hunt for a nice manual 80 again. Given their age now I see most have started to succumb to the tin worm. I have seen ads for a few nice not rusty (described as that though I have not visited or seen anything until I have cash with me) imports that are auto so if I went that route I would have to do a conversion, which would be interesting, and a fair bit of work too. I am very excited to be getting closer to another 80 once again.

My old green one from the start of this thread is back up with me next week so we can do the cambelt and tensioner, power steering fluid change, front prop shaft UJ, seal on the front diff flange, nip up the wheel bearing passenger side, and change some of the rubber boots on the back brake slide pins. If we have time we can also start with a wire wheel on the underside and some of the body panels and getting hydrate 80 onto them to slow down the rust.
 
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In case you are interested some pics for the story. The cruiser was sold to buy a 1994 Hymer Motorhome in the Netherlands - an S550 1994 vintage on a Mercedes 310 tipper chassis with the 2.9 5 cylinder normally aspirated engine. You can see it in the background of the silver car below. Rebuilt the inside back and end floor (water ingress not attended to by the previous owner plus some remedial work on the engine, nothing serious). I love this thing. 94 horsepower of normally aspirated mechanical goodness. Chugs along all day long at 56 mph. Easy to work on and chassis in great condition.

The Mk 4 PD Golf I just sold, is the second one I restored last year. The first was a tired PD130 (ASZ) engine I build for my youngest. About 130 hours of work and £2000 in parts. I bought a very tired end of life MK4 with a blown head gasket (found that out just after I left the seller's house to head home, resulting in a pretty heated conversation and further negotiation that lasted an hour or so and returned about 40% of the purchase price to me). Car was brought home three days later by a friend of mine on his transporter. A very limited summary of the work including coil-overs and other suspension parts, top-end engine rebuild with new camshaft, followers, guides, timing belt, water pump, various electrical parts, new discs, pads, belts, fluids, radiator, 1 new wing (they all rust), engine remap (about 165bhp and 280- ft lbs torque of the old 1.9 lump), leather interior, new window motors, fixing wiring problems, brake lines. Ended up looking like this at 20 years old and 196k miles last year when I delivered it to her (still some scuffs but mechanically sound now). The undersides of all three look like the top after a lot of work with a wire brush and hydrate 80.

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The silver one I just sold was another end of life with an ARL engine PD150 with 192k miles or so that I found abandoned in a garden green with mould, parked up for a year, blown steering rack, broken lifter, knackered camshaft and cam bearings, mouldy engine and interior and looking thoroughly sorry for itself. I thought to myself I fancy fixing that up and having some fun in it.

Another 130 hours or so of evenings and weekends and another £2000 or so in parts including similar work to the black one but stayed with cloth interior, remapped to 195bhp and 310 ft lbs so it was a bit of a handful when you leaned on it but great fun and lots of smiles per mile and 60 mpg if you sat around 60 on long runs. Fitted a billet steel camshaft in this one as part of the rebuild. 2 keys full book pack and lots of history with this one as well. The intake on both was really choked up so both had EGR deletes after I cleaned out all the crap. The whole intake was like this:

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New billet steel camshaft, bearings, followers, lifters and valve guides, new injector wiring loom and glows plugs fitted later

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Became this (my daily driver to the left is now an 06 Rav 4 XT5 2.2 diesel that also needed work when I bought it).

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And the old Merc I Have just finished needed a lot less work mainly fuel leaks and other niggles. I have someone coming to look at this next week. Just 83800 miles on this one so hardly run in.
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Looking forward to getting my hands on some bigger metal to work with.
 

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Hi Adrian! when Pete told me you had bought her back I was thrilled, I was absolutely gutted to see her go, as was my better half. silly how emotionally attached you get to these things isn't it? anyway I hope she will still do you proud, she is a bit battered but she's done a lot of work! all over Europe multiple times, almost all of the Welsh lanes and most in between. she was utterly reliable and I home she continues to be so. thanks, Rob
 
Hey Rob, it is strange how we get so attached to them. And what a small world this is! My Nephew absolutely loves her. I'm on the hunt for another for myself now.
 
Just spent three full days with my nephew working on the cruiser again. the front diff started making a really bad noise on him a few months back. got some interesting metal pieces out when he drained the oil. so he had removed the front propshaft and drove around with the centre difflock on until getting to mine on tuesday this week. the front axle also had a small crack that was leaking diff oil through a crack. he had kept the oil topped up in the meantime. since he has recently fitted some 35 inch tyres the performance was off.

He recently bought a pair of 80 axles from an auto that came with calipers and working lockers front and rear which is a bonus. He replaced the rear diff himself on the road outside his house which is not the ideal work place.

Decided we would swap his old front axle with the one he bought with the better ratios for the larger tyres. Rebuild of the front hubs and replace bushes in the arms that were worn and sloppy.

I didn’t get many photos as we were busy, and the last and longest day it rained a lot which was not pleasant. my drive is on a slope so it's not the ideal place to do the work, but we got it all done.

Over the three days we:
- replaced bushes on the front arms.
- swapped the front axle
- stripped the front hubs and replaced the wipers, wheel bearings, and king pin bearings, and all the oil seals, all with genuine Toyota parts.
the cvs seemed to be fine so we cleaned them and refitted.
- scavenged the callipers from the new to him axle as they were nearly new and the old ones need rebuilding and were partially seized. Used the brake disc backing plates from the new to him axle as there were also in great shape.
- Fitted a new UJ to the front prop - the other three had been replaced. He was going to do the 4th a while back but an unfortunate meeting of his hand and large hammer in the process of the first three stopped that from happening.
- Replaced the oil seal on the front diff pinion.
- had to rework the wiring for the ABS to match the wiring on the "new" axle

He finally left here at 1030 last night for the 2 plus hour drive home. he said it drove so much better now, which is to be expected.

We still need to do more work on the brakes as they are still pretty poor.

During the project we were able to use some of the spares that were still with the car from when i sold her 7 years back.

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My nephew changed 3 of the 4 corners for the flexy brakes pipes himself last week.

he came up yesterday so we could attack the one that was rusted on. all sorted now and the brakes are much better. we also changed the panhard rod bushes, and ordered a new track rod to connect to the pitman arm. there is vertical play in that ball joint.
 
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