Road Trip in an old Toyota

[Captain Ahab Jr]

I know many enjoy a good road trip and a few like old Toyota offroad rigs, so thought I'd start a thread combining both

Mrs Ahab and I have decided we need to do what we hope will be an interesting but uneventful road trip

Just got to dig out a few photos to explain the back story of our 1994 Toyota 4Runner 3.0 TD and the many fun times we've enjoyed with it during our ownership

Then, I'll start posting to bring the thread up to date with where we are with preparations

[oldE]

Breaking out the popcorn.

Best
Les

[ZeroHecksGiven]

I drive a '94 Toyota Pickup out to my river property every other week or so. Just cracked 230K on the original 22RE. I'm here for this!

[look 171]

Ok, I am waiting to hear about the rest of the story. I have done many road trips in Toyota trucks and SUVs over the years starting in college with the same girl. She's pretty burned out on road trips by now that the kids are older.

[pwd72s]

You will need none of the spare parts you carry...

[john70t]

Get new tires. Change the oil. Check all fluids.
Wax and glass clean.

Make room for spare petrol canister, small air compressor, jack and lights, basic tools for everything important, blankets, basic food, plenty of water, chargers for the phone and electronics.

[LWJ]

As a Toyota road-tripper, you got my interest.

[GH85Carrera]

A 1994 vehicle is still fairly modern, and not yet 30 years old!

Try it with an 1980 or older car! My brother's daily driver is a 1954 VW bug and his camper is a 1974 VW Westaffalia van.

I will be driving 3,000 miles round trip in my 1985 911 next month into the hot desert south west part of the country, and I expect to see 100+ every day and possible 120 or so a few times.

The important thing is to have fun, and make some memories with your wife!

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by Captain Ahab Jr

Just got to dig out a few photos to explain the back story of our 1994 Toyota 4Runner 3.0 TD and the many fun times we've enjoyed with it during our ownership

Then, I'll start posting to bring the thread up to date with where we are with preparations

[911 Rod]

Your latest pics show it needs a bit of work? (or maybe just dusting?)

[herr_oberst]

Originally Posted by LWJ

As a Toyota road-tripper, you got my interest.

Me too.

[look 171]

Hey Captain, where will this road trip take place? Europe? I imagine most western europe auto repair help is plentiful and travel distances are much shorter then the western US unless you are in some remote eastern European countries?

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

A 1994 vehicle is still fairly modern, and not yet 30 years old!

Try it with an 1980 or older car! My brother's daily driver is a 1954 VW bug and his camper is a 1974 VW Westaffalia van.

I will be driving 3,000 miles round trip in my 1985 911 next month into the hot desert south west part of the country, and I expect to see 100+ every day and possible 120 or so a few times.

The important thing is to have fun, and make some memories with your wife!

I think you should get your 500 miles per day, or whatever the itinerary calls for, between dawn and noon. Some of the areas you plan on driving are not only hot in the afternoon, but windy. Not hard to ruin the windshield and front end paint, bra or no. A good deal of the West's hot dry areas are sandy.

Anyone who frequents Palm Springs has succumbed one time. Then they don't do afternoons and early evenings.

[Captain Ahab Jr]

Ok, here we go...

While living in Italy we decided we needed a family car that would be tough enough to survive the type of road trips we enjoy ie exploring beond the usual tourist trails/routes

Our faithful 2007 Ford Focus survived extremely well being driven around countries like Bosnia, Serbia, Romania, Montenegro and southern Italy. Some of the roads in these places can't really be called roads as at times it's hard to tell what is a road and what's not a road

My brother living in the Caribbean suggested a Toyota Surf which is sold in Japan/Far East and exactly the same model as the Toyota 4Runner. He'd owned a 2.4 straight 4 diesel and the 3.0 V6 petrol as know as the 3.slow and highly rated them. I did some research and found out the best version of the Gen 2 was a 3.0 turbo diesel with the indestructable straight 4 KZ-T engine.

As a UK market car it was only sold for 2yrs so I looked for quite a while to find the one, I found it, it was a one owner truck that had 120k miles and had been maintained very well as it belonged to a wildlife charity and it was used as a Wildlife Ambulance for rescuing all sorts of wildlife animal eg swans, deers, badgers, hedgehogs etc.

The truck was actually donated to the charity by Toyota UK and when sold to me was replaced by another Toyota but a Hilux truck, again donated by Toyota UK. In the UK the roads are salted during the winter and this truck was as rust free as I could have hoped for

This is what it looked like the day I collected it back in 2013



I flew into the UK from Italy, paid $2000 for it and set of on my first drive, a solo trip across Europe, 1000 miles from the UK to Slovenia. I set off with a days head start to the rest of my family who were going to fly instead of drive. Our plan was I'd pick them up Ljubajana airport at the far end of Europe

This truck will sit at 75-80mph or just over 3000RPM all day and has done many days of this type of driving

Our family race across Europe was like a Top Gear race with the closest finish imaginable. As I was driving around the airport perimiter fence their plane was landing, couldn't have timed it better if I'd tried

[Jeff Higgins]

Fun stuff. My closest parallel was when my son graduated high school in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and I flew back to help him drive home. We drove from there to Seattle in his 1971 Super Beetle, packed to the rafters with everything he owned. This was in 2004. Lasting memories, for sure. I hope your trip turns out as well, and provides similar memories.

[Captain Ahab Jr]

A few pictures of our old Toyota,

Other than being used as my daily commuter car to and from work in both Italy and the UK it has been a one car that does everything type of vehicle and the best car I've ever owned

Pressed ganged into being a hard working builders truck



All weather fun adventure wagon







Even a show car on occasion too



Think, the part our family that enjoyed riding in our old Toyota the most was our dawg, can't explain how excited he would get when I mentioned ' Do you want to go in the truck?'



The single thing our old Toyota did the best was to always get us to our destination safely after every single trip and there have been many, many long trips in all weathers. From, to and through countries like the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Hungary and Slovenia







Reason for all this reminiscing, is this thread is all about the last road trip Mrs Ahab and I will probably ever enjoy in our old Toyota. We've added a couple of other countries to our list which we safely did over this last weekend.

Get the popcorn out, sit back with a beer or two and hopefully enjoy the updates as I post them up over the next few days

[flatbutt]

Vicarious gear engaged!

[astrochex]

This promises to be a wonderful journey to follow.

Its kind of you to share your adventures with us.

[LWJ]

Popcorn waiting!

[Captain Ahab Jr]

This update is all about getting our old Toyota ready for it's longest road trip yet,

It's been parked on our drive for the last 1.5yrs, completely neglected, never started or driven in all that time so I wasn't sure how much work would be involved in getting it trip ready

Over this time it had even been abandond, parked under a tree on the street for a summer



Nothing for it but to get stuck in fixing it up, decided to get it running before switching to cosmetic jobs

First job, 2x new batteries, as I was hoping, the engine fired up on the 2nd turn of the crank and ticked over perfectly. Toyota sure build em tough and reliable



Then on to a full service, all the belts, fresh oil/filter, air filter, fuel filter and even a new radiator cap







A small 'while you're in there' job was the alternator bearings felt a bit crunchy, normally I'd have just give it a squirt with some WD-40 but this time I thought it was wise to fit a new alternator as the consquences of loosing the lights aren't worth thinking about



Wheels were changed from alloys to steels with all terrain tyres, thought they were more suited to the type of driving the truck will do, better a bent rim than a cracked or broken wheel



Then onto the cosmetic jobs, making it looking a bit more respectable, ie more fit for purpose look, rather than the rusty Scottish oil rig vibe. It took 30m or 90ft of White and black duct tape to cover all the bodywork rust holes



I've prepared cars for racing and road trips but never prepared any vehicle for the extremely hostile enviornment our truck was heading to. Couldn't leave anything to chance so triple/quadtruple checked all my work was done prefectly.

Was feeling relatively confident for the start of the trip as I'd done 100 miles of local back road 'shakedown' driving to check everything was in good working order