Bayou Kid's GX460 Build

[Bayou Boy]

With my oldest getting his license this coming summer and my mom buying a new Grand Highlander I took the opportunity to add her old 2012 GX460 to the fleet for the kid. The general plan is to turn it from a granny mobile into a super cool car for him to drive that is capable of doing the mild dirt we need for hunting trips and general playing around in Montana.

The car arrived a couple of weeks ago from Louisiana bone stock. Mechanically it is 100% but the tires are up there in age and it needs shocks bad. That works since...why would we keep the stock tires and suspension.

As it arrived on the transport and him seeing it for the first time for pickup.

First on the list was removal of the factory PPF and trimming the running boards.

We added some Wet Okole covers for the front seats.

Tires and suspension are on the way. We are headed to the Moab area in the SuperDuty in the background next week for spring break so it will be a couple of weeks for the next update.

 

[TLar25]

Nice! Lucky kid to have that as his first car! What are you going with for suspension? Everything up to date with the transmission services? I've read the earlier model year 460's have pretty common transmission issues if the fluid hasn't been changed regularly, and maybe even still if it has been.

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[TLar25]

There's a pretty active group of people on the GX460 sub-forum of mud in case you're not already on there.

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[Bayou Boy]

Nice! Lucky kid to have that as his first car! What are you going with for suspension? Everything up to date with the transmission services? I've read the earlier model year 460's have pretty common transmission issues if the fluid hasn't been changed regularly, and maybe even still if it has been.

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The Eibach Stage 2 kit is on the way.

As for the transmission,it was a little behind schedule when we decided on this move last summer. The I had my mom do a drain and fill and the plan is to repeat that every 5k for a few rounds to get us back in a good place. The car has 120k on it so it isn’t that far behind compared to some.

That said, you hear the same “transmission issues” line with pretty much every car that has a decent following. My opinion is that lack of maintenance across all cars has more to do with that than anything. In general, people just don’t service transmissions on any car.

 

[AggieOE]

Removing that film and restoring the headlights will do wonders for it!
Also, new tires in general can really change the look of a vehicle. Kudos to you for getting him something fun, safe, reliable, AND something to learn to work on with.

 

[Bayou Boy]

Removing that film and restoring the headlights will do wonders for it!
Also, new tires in general can really change the look of a vehicle. Kudos to you for getting him something fun, safe, reliable, AND something to learn to work on with.

I went all out on one of the lights with the 3m kit last weekend. Results were meh. There is some crazing and cracking internally so I'm just going to replace them with new and find a good set of LED bulbs that I can verify have decent cutoffs. It's dark a lot of the year here in Montana so good headlights are a must and these stock ones suck after a decade plus of driving stuff with great LED and HID setups. A good portion of the year his drive to school will be in the dark and we have a ton of deer in the neighborhood so we gotta do what we gotta do.


Need to finish this darn thing up though. This is kind of putting my Carli setup on the Tremor on hold. Grrrr.

 

[Bayou Boy]

Quick trip to Moab for the kid's spring break cut short by me coming down with something. Needless to say, BayouKid wants to come back next year with the GX and we will be happy to let him follow the Tremor around.

In GX news, it's time for wheels, tires and suspension. Found these lightly used Toyo AT 255/80r17s and TRD Wheels on Marketplace and someplace was having a 15% sale on the Eibach Stage 2 Coilover setup so that was a no brainer. The plan is to get this stuff installed this weekend.

 

[Bayou Boy]

Lift and tires done. Bayoukid learned a ton of stuff. Screwing with the front KDSS re-hookup is dumb. Rear is easy. Toyota could have made rear shock tower access 100% easier with an additional half inch trim on the body seam. Overall not a terrible install though. We used the method of unbolting the lower control arm from the ball joint, loosening the alignment bolts, then swinging the lower control arm down for easy coilover access. I really like how the control arm/ball joint interface is done for super easy maintenance there. Ride is 100x better than the OG 125k mile shocks and 6 year old Bridgestone tires. You can feel the stiffness of the E's for sure but it's definitely not uncomfortable. I think we ended up with the perfect stance for what we want.

 

[Dougnuts]

I love this so much!

 

[AggieOE]

That thing looks great! He looks pumped.

 

[Thinkofsomethingkwik]

What a first vehicle!!!