Toasty's '98 Montero Build

RThompson · Nov 13, 2022

I'm looking at Juki and Consew Machines does anyone on here have any experience with these things? They're kind of expensive and I don't want something that will be a pain to use or breaks all the time.

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Both Juki and Consew make great machines. Get one with a walking foot if interiors are gonna become a regular thing. . If you are mot planning on sewing thick leather it’s amazing what you can pull off with old Singer or Bothers from the Goodwill and a quality upholstery needle. Make sure the when you are choosing cloth or vinyl it is UV rated for outdoor or marine. Otherwise olors with fade fast.

Toasty · Nov 14, 2022

RThompson said:
Both Juki and Consew make great machines. Get one with a walking foot if interiors are gonna become a regular thing. . If you are mot planning on sewing thick leather it’s amazing what you can pull off with old Singer or Bothers from the Goodwill and a quality upholstery needle. Make sure the when you are choosing cloth or vinyl it is UV rated for outdoor or marine. Otherwise olors with fade fast.

Walking foot, good to know. The cloth I want to use is for commercial vehicles, I want it to be really easy to clean and maintain. I tend to get interiors wet or muddy or worse things like transporting children.

CharlieNorth · Nov 14, 2022

I guess I am old fashioned, well logical since I am old. I use a early 50s Singer that was in the family before I was. Recently mostly marine work, Boat covers in Weathermax, Assortment of cloths, fabrics and vinyl. The machine is flawless even being 70+ YO.

Toasty · Nov 28, 2023

Finally moving forward with the wiring

nwoods · Nov 28, 2023

Much Respect! Wiring up a loom like that is no simple thing. My friends at Technica make a good bit of money building those. Keep up the hard work Toasty! I hope the end is in sight!

Toasty · Nov 29, 2023

nwoods said:
Much Respect! Wiring up a loom like that is no simple thing. My friends at Technica make a good bit of money building those. Keep up the hard work Toasty! I hope the end is in sight!

Wow, they make a really nice product. Harnesses from scratch is something I'd like to do someday maybe I'll start with an older MItsu for that though 😄

Toasty · Apr 12, 2024

Been slowly chipping away at the wiring, went from tagged connectors to marked and verified connectors with individual wire ID. My friend Drew made me these labels with each wire number, color and duty printed. I got the Lexus side done last night as well.
One challenge we faced was the cruise computer location, there really isn't a lot of room to work up in there and there is not a male version of that connector (26 way AMP/TE Multilock Hybrid 040/070) to make a pigtail. I think what we're going to do is salvage the socket on the computer itself and bus the pins from the inputs we need (cruise switches) into the now unused output wires so that we can retrieve them elsewhere and feed them to the Lexus PCM. I thought that was super clever, glad I have someone helping me because I would have definitely done this the absolute hardest way possible or removed the dash.