Phamily Wagon

[Land Crusher]

I was fortunate to be handed down a 97' FZJ80 my junior year of high school, not knowing the potential of its off road capabilities. My uncle babied it so as far as I knew, it was a luxury grocery getter. I got it with 84k on the clock. On the downside, it did not come with factory lockers, just the CDL. It also has stock 4.10 gears. While still in college, I try to do as much as I can to the Phamily Wagon when I can.

In the picture with the ruts was believe it or not, my first time off road! A buddy of mine sparked my interest in getting better tires and a lift kit.

Sooner or later, I got my first set of mud tires. Some 285/75r16 E load KM2s. Got them at Discount Tire for about $1200 with insurance on all of them. They are a good company to deal with, and I would highly recommend them! Then I realized I am going to need a bigger lift if I want some more wheel travel. I also took off my mud flaps and side steps for more clearance.

Since I could not dish out enough cash for a whole lift kit at one time, I pieced togethers parts one by one. First, I ordered some 2.5" Heavy Duty front coils through Toyteclifts.com. Getting to know the off road community in Charlotte, I took them to Alex at Carolina Truggies to install my coils. For a good deal, Alex got them installed in no time. The guys are CT are great and full of knowledge. My front end sat a little higher than the rear.

One day, I felt like joining the dark side and took a couple of cans to the rims. They didn't turn out too bad.

One trip off road, I managed to break the weld connecting my cannon OEM muffler to the in pipe so I bought a thrush welded muffler and had my local Chapel Hill Tire weld it up. Later down the road I also replaced my leaking cats with a hi-flow magnaflow cat. I would have removed it however I still need it to pass inspection. It looks all dirty because I only used 500 degree paint so it just burned right off.

 

[Land Crusher]

Finally took off my damage multiplier...

Sorry I do not have pictures of the coils, but I then got OME 2.5" HD coil springs for the rear from Toyteclifts.com and had them installed by Pepboys because they were the most convenient at the time. I also then got a Rage Stingray Roof Basket for those times I need some extra room in the back. I got the basket from Discountramps.com for $120.

Nothing major, I then added some ski racks on my roof basket to hold my fishing rods.

Over the summer, I could tell my handling of the Phamily Wagon had diminished. So I decided to upgrade my shocks. Went to my local 4WP in Raleigh to get these bad boys. Brandon was really helpful as he was a Toyota enthusiast as well. They are Fox 2.0 IFP 10" shocks.

I was getting tired of my 33 KM2s so I searched NC4x4 for a new set of rubbers. Found a set of 35 Kuhmo Road Ventures E load. They owner was willing to trade them for my 80% KM2s plus some and installation. I LOVE them more than my KM2s. While visiting a buddy of mine in Pawley's Island, I went to All-Terrain and had George install a pair of 30mm coil spacers up front to level out the cruiser.

Recently Chris (Redneck92) helped/teach me how to changed my front rotors and repack my bearings. Finally installed the Powerslot slotted and drilled rotors up in the front that I didn't have time to when I installed the rears. Also used 100 series pads.

Then I plan on getting some or of light bar in the near future on my basket or some sort bracket on the windshield frame so I painted the center rib of the hood semi-gloss black to reduce the glare and plus I like the looks of it!

 

[Chris_Keziah]

Never underestimate the phamily wagon, this land cruiser has went many places and made it look too easy. Need to get sliders, bumpers, and a rear locker.


Sent from my mobile Toyota base using Tapatalk

 

[Chris_Keziah]

From today


Sent from my mobile Toyota base using Tapatalk

 

[Hoonigan]

Great seeing that beast up Kodak this weekend

 

[Land Crusher]

Thanks Redneck92 and Hoonigan. Had one hell of a week out at Uwharrie with you guys. Got a chance to take some harder lines like this on the way to the backside of Daniel.

And this was coming up on one of the middle lines on Kodak.

Put my first dent into my rock panel so next on the list are sliders. Any suggestions? Classic side steps with a kickout or boat side sliders??

 

[yoder519]

nice toyota. SO you say you like the Kuhmo's fairly well? Its probably to early to tell, but do you think you will get a lot of life out of them? Ive heard mixed reviews. I want them for my DD

 

[Chris_Keziah]

I have to give those kumhos some credit, from my point of view (spotter/ co-pilot, shit talker) they are awesome. Sidewall flex is well and they hold up to his crazy ass driving style.


Sent from my mobile Toyota base using Tapatalk

 

[Land Crusher]

^hahaha.

Thanks Yoder519. For what they are worth, I think they are great. Here's why, I have roughly 6k on them so far and on in the center line of these tires, you can see the center lug and then the edge it makes with the extruded part, well the extruded part has barely worn down on the center lug. That is on my front tires, my rear looks even better. And like Chris says, lol, I haven't been easy on the tires. I run 30-35 psi on the road and 15 psi off road. The cruiser sees about 80-90% pavement and 20-10% offroad. I believe Kumho designed these more around a street tire while still having good characteristics of a mud tire like the alternating shoulder pattern and aggressive pattern. The rubber compound is harder than most MTs. So it is perfect for a DD. They are not too loud, that would be bad or good depending on what you want. I too have heard mix reviews on them, however everyone has there own opinions, you know really don't know til you try them out. I believe I'll have these tires for a while. I would say they have better traction than the KM2s I ran. The only thing I haven't driven in with this tires is snow/ice. Hope this helps.

 

[duggan98tj]

i ran those tires on my jeep and got 25k with a little less than 50% tread as long as u rotate them evenly they are awesome

 

[NickMaul]

Madddddddd jelly. That with some lockers would be absolutely unstoppable. I am never one to buy things just because they look cool but a low profile winch bumper would look smoking. A winch would be a nice luxury especially with the weight of that tank.

 

[Chris_Keziah]

Madddddddd jelly. That with some lockers would be absolutely unstoppable. I am never one to buy things just because they look cool but a low profile winch bumper would look smoking. A winch would be a nice luxury especially with the weight of that tank.

Hes got a skinny pedal and a lot of people to talk shit to him so he wont need a winch for a while. Keep telling him he needs to do a locker(s).

 

[Land Crusher]

Madddddddd jelly. That with some lockers would be absolutely unstoppable. I am never one to buy things just because they look cool but a low profile winch bumper would look smoking. A winch would be a nice luxury especially with the weight of that tank.

Thanks man. Trust me, those are on the list too. It's just the matter of saving up money while being unemployed in school which takes forever. I'd want to run ARBs because I don't like the fact that with automatic lockers, its not ideal accelerate through turns which I find myself doing a lot. Yeah its going to be a while, but I'm the "do it once, do it right" kinda guy so I don't waste my money. I got a bumper in mind, it isn't low-pro but it looks good. When the time comes, I'll have one of the shops help me fab it up. I want one similar to the AOE bumper.

 

[Land Crusher]

This is probably the slowest build you will EVER read! So for the past few days, I've been working on some of the rocks lights I finally got in from ebay. They are suppose to be 6 watt eagle eye led bulbs. They have a nice projector lens that throw out a nice clean circle of light. Its got an aluminum housing backed with 3M double-sided tape.

From Wally world, I got some heat sink butt connectors, "L" braces for brackets and some coaxial cable stables, and from Home Depot I got some circular magnets.

The first step was to attach the washers to the back of the lights so the magnets can stick to.

The magnets are pretty strong. At first, I was going to use them temporarily to see what spots on the frame I wanted to put the lights. I ended up not using the "L" brackets and just stuck the lights onto the chassis.

I also got my rock light switch from OTRATTW. It is of very high quality. It comes with instructions on how to wire it up as well.

 

[Land Crusher]

Here are some pictures of how they look. I started out with 8 but one of them went bad.

 

[Chris_Keziah]

Pham you need to look through this build click here

 

[alove0750]

^ That's all you!