40 Guy builds a 100 Series

[Rezarf <><]

I installed a ScanGauge 2 OBD tool, simple as pie... (is pie easy to make? Mmmm, pie).

One screw by the kick panel and yank, then you have this access to the steering column.

And here is the OBD 2 port in a 1999 100 series. It's center of the pic with the bundle of stereo wires above it, just inboard and above the gas pedal. This thing is plug and play, it was nice to get something done in 20 minutes without hassle.

Pop our the lower dash cluster panel and route your CAT5 cable through. I will mount mine up higher near the rear view down the road but for now this was easy and got me up and running.

I'm always on the hunt for new fasteners, this stuff is some of the best I have come across... its like Velcro on steroids. I used it to mount the gauge to the steering wheel housing. It's rock solid and doesn't leave a residue after being left on any surface. Pretty awesome stuff.

Final Result:

 

[ShannonH]

Great build! I appreciate your thoroughness!

 

[redthies]

Drew, which snorkel did you buy? There are a bunch of cheap eBay options and I've never heard a bad review on them, but long term UV might become an issue. I had a Safari on my last Hilux, but they are pricey!

 

[Rezarf <><]

Great build! I appreciate your thoroughness!

Thank you!

Drew, which snorkel did you buy? There are a bunch of cheap eBay options and I've never heard a bad review on them, but long term UV might become an issue. I had a Safari on my last Hilux, but they are pricey!

I bought mine from seller stoneined, as it had the writing "LAND CRUISER" on the side. Fwiw, I have a Safari Snorkel on my FJ40 but for $120 shipped I figured it was worth a shot for this build. There are a few obvious differences in quality but I'll take my chances. I'll give it a full review as I install it, my cruiser isn't sheltered at the moment from the sun so the UV thing will get tested, but we don't have branches on our trails like we did in the South where I grew up, so I am not expecting to knock it on much here in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.

 

[Rezarf <><]

I wrapped up my mic holder and added a USB port for the stereo and an Aux plug in that I can use to run my Midland CB through the Radio as a speaker when wheelin'. Pretty straight forward. I decided to use the blank panel on the dash to mount this stuff. I popped it out and heated the wood trim and pealed it off.

I didn't want to chop and cut too much of the rear structure. In retrospect I would have and mounted the USB port a little higher on the panel to give it a little more spacing between the mic hanger and the USB/Aux port.

Drilled a hole and opened it up with the dremel. Keep test fitting and taking it slow there is a small amount of material that overlaps and you can remove too much really quickly.

All wrapped up, it came out pretty factory looking and I kept the dust cap on the cover. My goal is to keep the clutter to a minimum and be able to return to stock quickly and inexpensively. This panel costs $5 from Toyota and I can pop a new one in in a matter of seconds.

 

[Rezarf <><]

Last little detail with the HAM radio was mounting the Mic connector, I had purchased a CAT5 Panel Pass through thinking I would mount it between the cigarette lighter and the 12v accessory outlet. But drilling a hole there was not as cheap to return to stock down the road, and more importantly in making my decision, the coiled cable for the mic then flopped around on top of the center console. I decided to use the outlet with the separation kit and used a little 3M VHB Tape to mount it to the side of the center console. This allowed everything to mount towards the passenger side seat and the cord dangles from the side of the console with plenty of reach for when I need to use it.

All that is left is mounting and wiring the speaker for the HAM and I am up and running. Feels like it has taken forever to get this far with this radio.

 

[deadbeat son]

Before...

After wet sanding and scuffing them up I shot them with some gloss paint. I love the Rustoleum Industrial Hard Hat paint. I've had good luck with it on my 40 tire carrier for like 10 years. Also, I used some 3M Step Tape, basically its skate tape and cut the holes out for the screw, logo and drain holes. It came out nice. Time will tell if I need to have it powder coated with texture to make it last.

Nice work on those. I have had my Slee sliders on my Tacoma since 2009, and although my bars don't look as bad as yours, a couple of years ago my step plates looked like yours did before your resto work. Unfortunately, I didn't make time to take care of them then, and I lost them. They got so bad this year I pulled them off and threw them away, completely exfoliated. I hope to be able to buy some replacements from Ben and the crew. I'll probably have the sliders themselves re-powdercoated too.

 

[aausmana]

I bundled all the wires I needed and popped off the trim I needed in the rear cargo area and along the door sills to stuff the wires under the carpet and sill plates. There are a lot of little things to remove to do this right but nothing is hard about it.

Now, if you aren't running a separation kit then you don't have to do all of this, just wire it up where you can reach the controls and you're on the air, but I liked the idea of keeping the cockpit as clean as possible and this helps me do that. Here are the wires still needing to be added and the panel removed in the rear to hide the cables and wires.

I mounted my face plate to the ashtray as it made for easy wiring, easy to operate position and I can fiddle with it while resting my hand on the shifter giving me a bit of stability while on the road or trail.

Love the details! Will be teeing up for my electrical in just about 2 months.

 

[One If By Land]

I have to give a shout out to my friend Leal (one_if_by_land here on ExPo) for taking some time on a day off to help me install this. He is a fan of vehicle based travel and wheeled an AWD Sienna harder than anyone else I've known. He's got plan for a Toyota build himself once the timing is right. Thanks again bud.

Thanks Drew! The only better way to spend a day off would be to actually hit the trails. I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn how it's done before I start on my own build. I'll be sure to start a buildup thread after I upgrade to a more appropriate rig.

 

[SirCampalot]

Very cool write-up! Very thorough and a pleasure to read/view!

 

[Rezarf <><]

So Sunday I loaded the boys up to meet my wife and daughter at church. The 100 wouldn't start, I have been having issues with the starter contacts, as I was poking around I also noticed the front Passenger CV axle boot was torn, I knew it was slinging a bit of grease but this was total failure. I had had it at Toyota that week for an oil change and it was just weeping 2 days before so it failed recently.

All that said, I decided to do what any 40 owner would do... INSTALL MY SNORKEL!

Now I own an ARB Safari Snorkel for the FJ40, and I thought I would give the eBay Snorkel a shot. I have never had an issue with my Safari Snorkel but as a dad with three kids this clone fits into my budget much better. In fact, I used a few eBay gift cards from Christmas to pick it up over the holiday season. I searched and searched for the knock-off with "LAND CRUISER" on the side. Overall, the snorkel is of good quality, it is NOT on the same par as the Safari Snorkel, it is however, well made and came with everything needed to install it, sans instructions... none, nothing, nada, no instructions of any kind.

The kit did come with the Snorkel, the fender air duct, template for holes, snorkel hood, all hardware (nice quality).

Before Shot...

I used masking tape to cover the area and keep paint chips to a minimum, this worked out just fine.

I pulled the tire off as well so I could have better access to the inside of the fender for removing the spray skirt and the OEM air intake and hardware. I also pulled the antenna to make the fender level for fitting the snorkel.

 

[Rezarf <><]

After I taped off the fender I pulled the inner fender spray skirt. If you want to replace everything in the same day you might have a few of the pop in plastic hardware on hand, I managed to break about half of them getting them off. No biggie, but I will replace them so I don't get a bunch of flapping or excessive mud up in the fender.

Here is a shot under the fender looking toward the cab of the 100 you can see the air intake tube and the antenna. Both come out with just a few simple bolts.

Here is where the air intake tube turns into the air cleaner box. It is a two part system the elbow is removed with two bolts on the inside, then it can be removed from the engine side.

Three bolts hold on the air cleaner box, remove those, then loosen the air intake hose clamp to the engine and the whole box can be swung up out of the way to access the air intake tubing better.

Then remove the 2 bolts holding the elbow on and separate the from the inner fender tube. It takes just a little effort to separate the two since they create a "water tight/air tight" seal.

 

[Rezarf <><]

Next up, time to start cutting holes!

I taped the template down and checked it's alignment a few times, then held the snorkel up to the fender to make sure everything looked good. I had no reason to think it wouldn't line up, so I marked the holes with a sharpie and center punched the holes so my bits wouldn't wander.

Before cutting the holes I pulled the template off in case for some reason I needed it again (Heaven forbid!) You can also see in this pic that I lightly traced out the antenna hole so I could make sure the snorkel would line up well with it. I just smeared the grime on my glove onto the tape.

This is likely the scariest part. I measured again, everything looked good, trusted my measurements and fired up my 4.5" hole saw. Honestly, the saw cut like butter and I was through in a matter of seconds.

Most of the way through, I use technique of letting only a little of the hole saw bite at a time then work the saw around in a circular pattern until I am through. If you plow into any material using a hand held drill and a big saw like this it'll tend to grab and jerk out of your hands causing paint damage or worse. I use fast speed on the blade, light pressure and let the saw cut through before moving towards uncut material.

No turning back now, I'm either installing a Snorkel or an aggressive right turn signal!

 

[Rezarf <><]

Yup, big hole. I cleaned up all the holes with a file, I used my leaf blower to blow all the metal chips away from the paint and avoid scratching. The hole saw makes a huge mess.

Test fit. This is the part where you have a sigh or relief or freak out that the hole is in the wrong spot. I got to enjoy the fact that I did it correctly. The fit looked really good and using a 4.5" saw allowed me to fine tune the adjustments before drilling all the other holes that needed to be drilled to mount it.

Here is the body line I was most worried about, the fit of the snorkel is actually very accurate all the way around. I was stoked at the fit against the body once I was able to test and flush mount the snorkel.

Here is one of my two gripes about the quality. You can see that there is an "open pore" texture on the surface of the snorkel. My Safari snorkel has some of the same but nearly as noticeable nor prevalent. However, the seams on this snorkel are of much better quality than the Safari. For a $300 difference in price, I can live with it.

 

[Rezarf <><]

Next up was punching out the other holes. I used a freshly sharped 1/8" drill bit to pilot each hole then I used a step bit and opened each hole to 1/2" to give me wiggle room I wanted to fine tune the fit of the snorkel into its final location. These bits work exceptionally well in sheet metal and make clean smooth holes fast!

Once I had the snorkel bolted up and mounted firmly where I wanted it on the fender I turned my attention to the A-Pillar mount. It is as simple as screwing it on and marking the holes with a sharpie, I ended up using masking tape and marking the location of the bracket then removing the snorkel, lining up the bracket and marking the holes before drilling.

The snorkel kit came with rivets for the bracket, but I didn't like the idea of rivets for this application so I pulled out a few 10-24 nutserts and used them instead. They work on the same principle as a rivet, as they expand behind the sheet metal to create a mechanical bond but they leave you with a threaded insert so you can bolt things down, adjust, remove the item being attached.

Holes drilled for A-Pillar bracket.

Before moving on, and permanently attaching the snorkel and bracket I cleaned up all the holes with a file, light sandpaper and then used a color matched paint to treat all the exposed edges. I used a heat gun to get the paint to flash then let it sit for a few hours while I played with the kids. Making sure the holes are covered is more important than the color or finish smoothness obviously, but I have used this for paint chips with great results and it lays pretty smooth. The color is spot on.