I registered my Landcruiser last October after it was off the road for three years by the previous owner and two months of maintenance to get it back on the road. Before getting registered, a lot of things were fixed, replaced or serviced. Since then not much has changed, I have only probably done around 200-300 km’s with it seven months on. During this time their has been various items requiring fixing.
1. In for maintenance
One of the main issues since it being registered has been the carburetor not working properly, something that I was aware of before purchasing the car. The carby would ever only stay good for one week, before it started playing up after fixing it. The first occurrence was out bush with the MAF ministry team. So this lead to it being rebuilt twice over a period of four months. Which in the end did fixed it, but again there was something terminally wrong with it to function well. So in the end I did all that I could to save buying a new carby, as a new one from Japan was almost the value of my car. So I purchased a new Holley carby off ebay, by far the cheapest option with the help from the Aussie Government. Since the installation and fine tuning, the car has been running with a large improvement since I have had it (sounds beautiful).
2. The old setup
But as you would expect nothing has been smooth sailing. As I fix one thing, something else breaks in the process or after something is fixed. One Saturday when I was driving out to work to overhaul the carby, the engine overheated and I almost blew my head gasket. But the radiator all of a sudden had a serious leak. So this involved removing the radiator which was a hassle, and was pretty much a throw away. But all my search over a few weeks for another one, ended no where as they were way too expensive. One I found was half the value that I paid for the car. But in the end I was able to get it repaired, which it continued to leak to some extend and repaired again. Then when the car was running the best it had, it started running rougher than a 40 year old two stroke lawn mower because some how a large amount of water got mixed with the fuel. And also in the process the exhaust manifold started to leak.
3. The new setup
So there has been a long list of things just breaking or not working out of the blue, big things or little things (I won’t bore you with a long list), it has been unending. the hardest thing has been getting parts, as most parts I have to buy overseas and have shipped here. So what could take a day in Australia, can take one to two months to fix. Plus getting access to certain tools can be difficult. Cars here are expensive and are worked hard. The Landcruiser has given me a project, I have been learning a lot more about cars, especially bush mechanics (did you know you can stop a radiator leak by packing it with soap?). The only time I have to work on it is Saturday afternoons, and sometimes then I don’t have time. It has also been testing my patience too. I do look forward to the day when it is good enough to take out bush with confidence (hopefully sometime soon). But for now it is quite good to get around town and out to the airport. It is a blessing to have a car, it is a good car in PNG standards and slowly getting a lot better, with more work awaiting.
May 7th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Sounds like a bit of a headache, good on you for persisting with it. Continuing to pray for you man, hope your doing better than the car!