Catherines 1998 Toyota Land Cruiser

Owners Name & City- Greg Catherine Gardner - Grand Junction, CO



Make, Model & Year of Vehicle- 1998 Toyota UZJ100 Land Cruiser


Engine- 4.7L V8

Transmission - Factory Auto, A343F

Transfer Case - HF2A full-time 2 speed transfer case with center differential lock




Axles- Factory parts, IFS front, solid axle rear. Rear has factory e-locker, front has an ARB air locker. Stock 4.30 axle gears.


Suspension- Old Man Emu 2.5" with 863 rear springs and OME torsion bars.


Wheels and Tires- Factory wheels powder coated black, 295/75/16 BFGoodrich AT's


Winch- None yet


Favorite Trails- Kokopelli, White Rim, Lockhart, San Juans, Baja... anything scenic and fun.


Other- It does have a Slee 2nd battery tray for dual batteries eventually, plus a set of home-built bolt on rock sliders. Future mods are an ARB front bumper, Warn Winch, homebuilt roof rack and probably a snorkel.



I purchased this from RotBox on RME after he reluctantly decided it was time for a change. This is a high-mileage Cruiser, sitting at 249k when I bought it. It has been well maintained, doesn't burn or leak any oil and it runs and drives great. Andrew made some great mods that will be very handy to have, including some LED lighting, the rear tailgate carpet was replaced with a piece of stainless steel for food prep.

I'm going to post the maintenance stuff here, mostly for my info.

Recent service history:
Timing Belt & related parts done @ 201k
Second 90K service @ 207K
Spark plugs changed at 243K
Differentials and transfer case gear lube changed @ 247K


Some pics, taken while making the drive home after buying it. From Black Dragon Canyon in the Swell.

 

[sixstringsteve]

Love it. We almost went to black dragon yesterday. I'll bet we would have seen you there.

 

[Rot Box]

Hey how did you get the color to show up.. Every time I took pics it looked black haha :sick:

Looks great I'm excited to see where it takes you.

 

[bryson]

Very nice!

 

[MattL]

Sweet ride man!

 

[Greg]

Love it. We almost went to black dragon yesterday. I'll bet we would have seen you there.

That would have been too funny, run into RME'ers in the Swell. Wouldn't be the first time, honestly! Wish I was with you guys, looks like you had a great trip.

Very nice!

Sweet ride man!

:thumbs: I'm happy with it.

Hey how did you get the color to show up.. Every time I took pics it looked black haha :sick:

Looks great I'm excited to see where it takes you.

I don't know, I used the 'HDR' setting on my phone... apparently it does a good job.

I'm very excited about it, I think it's going to be perfect for us.

 

[Greg]

Well, haven't owned the 100 Series Land Cruiser for a week yet and I've already put almost 1000 miles on it! I had to drive to Denver this week for a meeting and was going to take my car, but heard a big storm was expected at the same time I was to be driving over the mountains. I decided to leave the car at home and drive the Land Cruiser... and I'm sure glad I did! The weather was horrible in the mountains, the freeway ended up getting closed when I was 30 miles outside of Denver due to a 60 car pile up on one of the steep hills. There were many other accidents that I passed.... with the freeway closed, I took a small backroad into Denver with thousands of other drivers. The Cruiser was solid on the slick, snowy roads!

On the way up it turned over 250k miles. I got 320 miles (corrected, as the speedo is off) out of the tank and averaged 15.5 MPG. Using the ScanGauge, which has proven to be fairly accurate, if I keep the speeds down the Cruiser can get respectable mileage for such a big SUV. 60-65 MPH will net 18 MPG!

The snow pics are from Vail Pass and the rest area up there...

 

[MattL]

Pretty awesome. Love the color of the rig. Love the snow.

 

[STAG]

Wow I'm not sure wether I would love snow more or completely hate it if I experienced winters like that. Love the UZJ100 but I'm not gonna lie I think I liked your charcoal 80 a little more. That's just personal taste though.

 

[Kevin B.]

That seems like above-normal mileage for a 100? Or is that about average?

 

[Greg]

Pretty awesome. Love the color of the rig. Love the snow.

I'm getting more accustomed to the color, I prefer lighter colors personally... but this was a good deal and hard to pass up. The snow was a great test of the Cruisers ability in nasty weather!

Wow I'm not sure wether I would love snow more or completely hate it if I experienced winters like that. Love the UZJ100 but I'm not gonna lie I think I liked your charcoal 80 a little more. That's just personal taste though.

The pass is over 10,000' so it's pretty high up there. Lots of people come to the pass to snowmobile, its easy to get to and there's lots of land to play on. I preferred the charcoal color as well, but honestly my preference is for lighter colored vehicles. White or Silver are winners in my book, dark colors are too hot in the Summer IMO. With this UZJ, it was very well put together already... so I had to look over the color.

That seems like above-normal mileage for a 100? Or is that about average?

It's spot on for a '98 that was driven an average of 15k miles per year.... most 80 Series Cruisers that I've seen are at 200K+. I think most people get scared when a vehicle reaches 200K, but this UZJ seems pretty damn solid at this point. There are a few guys on IH8Mud with 400k+ miles on their UZJ's and are still running the original drivetrain. One neat thing about the 4.7's in the UZJ is that they're assembled in Japan, with better quality rods & cranks... versus the US assembled Tundra/Sequoia/4Runner 4.7's.

I don't know the lifetime history of this thing, so it's hard to say if the miles are mostly freeway/commuting miles early on or what. I should get a CarFax and see how the miles progresses. I would imagine someone loved driving this thing early on, it's easy to cover a lot of ground due to how well it drives and handles at freeway speeds.

 

[Rot Box]

wow 320 sounds great. I don't think I checked the milage more than once or twice. I think Toyota hit a home run with that engine it does everything very well.

I love the color. They picked some great colors for all the 100 series rigs imo. Glad you're enjoying it can't wait to see more updates.

 

[Greg]

wow 320 sounds great. I don't think I checked the milage more than once or twice. I think Toyota hit a home run with that engine it does everything very well.

I love the color. They picked some great colors for all the 100 series rigs imo. Glad you're enjoying it can't wait to see more updates.

I almost always reset the trip meter and see how many miles & MPG's I get out of a tank, it's a habit after driving a TDI VW.

The speedo/odo were off by 10%, so the trip meter would read 288 and really be 320 miles. I'm impressed with the mileage and freeway driving of the 100 versus the 80, even the mountain passes were no sweat with the V8. The 4.5L straight 6 in the 80 didn't enjoy the passes, you could tell it was struggling even with stock tires. And the 80's I've had in the past were pretty consistent with getting 11-13 MPG, even when driven a little slower. The 4.7 has much more power and noticeably better mileage, which is impressive.

I don't mind the Maroon, my wife commented that this Land Cruiser had the most pigment out of all the vehicles I've had since I've known her!

 

[Rot Box]

It's mahogany pearl... not maroon . Lol

Edit: Kind of an inside joke Kurt and Stephen will appreciate.

 

[Greg]

It's mahogany pearl... not maroon . Lol

Edit: Kind of an inside joke Kurt and Stephen will appreciate.

 

[cruiseroutfit]

It's mahogany pearl... not maroon . Lol

Edit: Kind of an inside joke Kurt and Stephen will appreciate.

And I do

 

[Greg]

Just some updates/mods... most of the changes were to prepare for our Baja trip.

Replaced the rotors in the front with new Hawk pads and turned the rear rotors and new pads.

Gamiviti roof rack, fabbed up a spare tire mount and fuel can carrier for 3, 5 gallon Specter cans to help carry items on the rack. Also used Quick Fist's to carry a shovel in case we got stuck! Bought a used factory wheel and mounted up a new 295/75/16 BFG AT for a full-size spare.

Added a pair of 4" Checker HID lights on stock bumper, upgraded the high & low beam bulbs to HIR bulbs. Low beams still suck! Installed fog lights that were out when I bought it, polished up the lenses and they turned out great! Overall lighting with the fog lights is OK, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. HID low beams?

Installed my Cobra 75 wx st CB with a 4' antenna and fabbed up a fender antenna mount.

And the end result!

 

[Thursty]

Very nice!

 

[GregLCA]

Great build Greg! (Good name too!).

I don't think I can add much value here, but if you actually want to fix your speedometer Slee now sells a correction box to account for the larger tires. Programmable and you can have accurate speed and odometer readings from now on.


-G

 

[Greg]

Great build Greg! (Good name too!).

I don't think I can add much value here, but if you actually want to fix your speedometer Slee now sells a correction box to account for the larger tires. Programmable and you can have accurate speed and odometer readings from now on.


-G

Hey Greg! Thanks!

I've heard about the speedo/odo fix from Slee, had to look it up; http://www.sleeoffroad.com/products/products_speedo.htm For $180/200 I'm not too worried about the speedo/odo being off. I have the ScanGauge II hooked up constantly in the Cruiser and use that for my speedometer when I want an accurate measurement. Thanks for mentioning it though, maybe down the road if I want to fix it right?