Ooops.

"Ted Ladue" (ladue-it) 04/18/2014 at 15:39 • Filed to: None

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For the two months I've had my 95 Land Cruiser FZJ80 in the shop under the knife. There were two main reasons it was in there: 1) the knuckle seals on the passenger side had failed - likely due to something I did wrong when I swapped out the birfield - and needed to be rebuilt and 2) the radiator had finally crapped out after 263K miles. While it was there I also considered finally finishing the lift and swapping in new springs and shocks up front, but in the end I opted to just the two main things and to skip the lift.

I finished up the hub about a week ago, and put the final touches on the radiator (what a pain in the ass, btw) on Sunday. Of course I had to take it for a test drive, and decided to do a little wheeling close to the house.

It drove great, everything seemed to be fine and dandy. Sure it was a little noisy, but I've been driving the new Tacoma, so attributed it to that.

Monday morning I'm off to work. As I pull out of the neighborhood, my buddy pulls in front of me in his nice 5 series. I follow him for a bit and we both take the "back way" onto the main road. At the first veer to the right, I notice some "pebbles" being thrown up by the driver side wheel. Not terribly unusual, the big 35" knobbies are rather exposed and things fly around. At the next fork, neighbor goes straight down the hill, and I decide to veer right. Or at least most of me does- the driver's side front tire decides it wants to follow the neighbor down the hill. I scream a very manly scream as the truck slams down onto the rotor and grinds to a stop after about 50 ft. While this is going on, I watch in horror as that big ole knobby tire picks up speed as it chases my pal down the hill.

As soon as the truck stopped I leapt out and chased after the tire. It lost some of it's momentum when it hit a school crossing sign, but did a pretty good job of dangerously staying in the road. In fact it rolled up the other side of the hill and back to me by the time I got to the bottom. Luckily no other cars were around when my tire went for a joy ride.

I must have loosened the lugs when I was considering doing the shocks, but since only worked on the the passenger side hub, I didn't think to check the driver's side nuts. Damn.

So yes, I'm an idiot.

HammerheadFistpunch > Ted Ladue 04/18/2014 at 16:03

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dang dude, that sucks. And I know your pain. I redid the entire cooling system on mine at 230k and im about the start the HG. Watch out for those lugs though...they'll get you. Whats your mud name?

Satoshi "Zipang" Katsura > Ted Ladue 04/18/2014 at 17:03

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Oh God, that's painful and horrifying... Glad to see no harm done to anyone, though!

Ted Ladue > HammerheadFistpunch 04/29/2014 at 08:51

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The cooling system is a bitch, that's for sure. Haven't redone mine, but the little bit I've worked with has been rough. I'm probably due for a HG soon, got some leakage and white smoke on start up. Hell, I'm probably ready for a rebuild since I'm at 263K.

I'm really not on mud that much. Sure, I use it for to get info and ask the occasional question, but I'm more of a lurker. You?

HammerheadFistpunch > Ted Ladue 04/29/2014 at 11:21

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same name on mud, i try and post on thing i can. hg should be done this week. cant wait! talked to the mechanic and the bores are round and walls look great at 241, id get on that hg before too long though