Toyota Landcruiser ramblings

[oscar]

I kinda love this truck.  It's rough as hell with four HD sets of leaf springs but so useful, starts instantly, cold or hot despite being a carbed engine.  Rock solid with over 400K Km on the clock and usually reliable, until this morning.  My 13yo son and I met up with some others to fly RC planes.  Just a recent hobby that's taken precedence over many things lately but we chucked the 1.5m wingspan cessna in the back and took off 10km out of town.  No crashes at the field for a change, a pretty good session.  Jumped in the ute and the starter spins freely again and again with each turn of the key. We ended up push starting and heard a screech noise as we drove off, not sure if it was us or came from elsewhere. 

I got home and started work on it.  It's due for rego soon and a service was always on the cards.  it's the first I've given it and man, these pushrods are so much easier to check valve gaps on.  That little job was over in under half an hour without rounding a single nut.  But on to the starter motor.  I removed it from underneath and found the pinion missing   I near cried.  Be damned if I was going to fish a pinion out of the bell housing.  But I got up from under the car and to my amazement the pinion gear was sitting against the ring gear, half hanging out the gaping hole where the starter goes.   It's clearly come off as I removed the starter but I'm clueless how I managed to drive home and it not fall into the depths of the bell housing and damage itself and the ring gear on the way.  Anyhow, small miracles,  just need to get spring clip and washer and all should be well.

The pinion was precariously laying at the bottom of the hole against the ring gear.


All cleaned up, nearly ready to refit.

[Big_Richard]

Toyota engines do last a long time.

a "friends" 2 liter 4 cylinder has 500k on the original engine in her rav but its now stuffed with a catastrophic internal failure. I'll probably be the the mastermind orchestrating and performing the engine swap when we find a suitable donor. I hear that on the rav's they're a bit of a prick to work on.

[oscar]

Last year when we went to NZ we hired two rav4s.  One for North and South Island each.  Not sure what they're worth and of course they were newish and didn't have huge mileage on their clocks, but I was impressed.  Pretty simple setups with the usual standard modcons.  They went fast enough, climbed hills fast enough, were comfortable and we fitted 4 suitcases in the back.  I probably wouldn't buy one but it was great for what we did. 

Good news on the 'cruiser, she's up and running again.  Another advantage of this thing is the height of the chassis means you don't need stands to do what I did today.  However, I've wanted to take a few leaves out of the rear especially and the chassis is so fricken high there's no way I'm going to be able to find a hard point for stands with the equipment I've got.  Unless stoop to using bricks and blocks and so on but I wouldn't be game.

[nathan]

Oscar,
i care not for these ramblings of praise for another automobile.
what i do care for though sir, is the talk of remote control vehicles!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ5i0Cxpml8&feature=related
this is awesome. havent got into the planes, but my brother just bought this RC airwolf, the thing is about 2 1/2 feet long!  picture it now, i can hear stringfellow hawk!
im into the RC cars again after a 25 year absence...i bought my son this Unimog which is pretty cool (tamiya). now just have to wait for the Gwagen!
regards
nathan

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[oscar]

I should've started an RC thread. That airwolf's impressive and great action shot of the Unimog. 

I wanted a Tamiya Hornet in the 80s.  You'd remember them, and the Grasshopper and Wild Willy's Jeep.  Well I never got one so 15yrs or so after they first came out I saw it at a ToyWorld and bought one (for my son)  .  We thrashed and trashed it ages ago and we were going to stick to 4 wheels.  Was looking for offroad stuff including searches for proper RC MLs and Gwagens at the time but we made the leap into rc planes instead. 

The motivation in particularly was I think 2009, we were on our way to Sydney and passing through Temora where the Temora Aviation Museum is and saw a sign that they were holding an invitational RC modeler's plane event.  So we had to stop and have a look.  There were RC jets worth thousands of $ each, 2m wingspan scale replicas with model radial engines...Awsome gear there.   I got into RC planes after that but have only started doing it regularly this year.  No clubs, as there's none in town but two other blokes at work took it up about the same time plus there's a bunch of others in town who fly.  Quite a few nitro choppers about too with guys that throw them around, going inverted, cutting grass.  Though that's impressive I admit, I prefer to see things fly scalelike, just like that airwolf does.

Anyhow, we've got 4 planes and here's a couple of our latest.  A short vid of my son's micro P51 and we both fly a 1.5m wingspan cessna 182.  He's piloting in both vids.
micro p51 10sec
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGZ7Ct0547Y&feature=related
cessna 182 1:04
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bllyIZKjeyc

[koan]

Grow up you two, next you'll be telling us about your Barbie dolls.

koan

[oscar]

You call em Barbie dolls, I call em action figures, especially when she wears cargo pants and khaki crop top.

[Mforcer]

I wanted a Tamiya Hornet in the 80s.  You'd remember them, and the Grasshopper...

I had the Hornet and my sister had the Grasshopper I guess we still do, or what is left of them. May be interesting to pull them out and see if they still work. The problem with these two (from memory) was that the engine of the Grasshopper was smaller than the Hornet and so was never competitive and constant winning/losing loses it fun. I had a friend putting petrol engines in his hornet

I guess that is where I honed my skills as a master mechanic

I'm looking forward to having reason to buy new ones in a few years