Happily sold the Tundra wheels with mudders yesterday morning. Down to two sets of wheels/tires for it, need to carry the stock ones down into my basement. Not super excited about that, they're heavy!
Getting the front windows tinted to match the rest of the truck on the 25th. Need to decide if I want to spend the $750 for the Beat Sonic Apple Car Play module or not...
So I dropped my dog off at the kennel a few days ago. Kennel is about an hour from my house, out East of Denver, right near the race track, HPR. Off the highway it's a long (maybe 3/4 mile) private dirt road. It'd rained all day and then snowed. On the way in I notice that the mail man in his Tundra had slid off into the ditch, further down the road was my kennel owner's white minivan, also in the ditch.
I drive in no problem, staying in the middle of the road. Doesn't seem too slimey. Drop the dog off and offer to pull the kennel owners minivan out. I have a recovery rope, figure it won't be too hard with the land cruiser. Well, that didn't really work as planned.
Turns out the mud is super slimey and goopy. Her minivan's right front wheel was just totally entombed in the mud and instead of pulling her out my truck crab walked sideways into the ditch. Then the passenger wheels dug down into the mud at least a foot when I tried to get out. Didn't matter what I tried, crawl control, 4 low, center diff locked etc. Maybe, just maybe having front and rear lockers would've helped.
Anyways, there I am, have to get home somehow, leaving town the next morning. I call Hagerty for tow coverage, none of their providers wants to come out. Then I remember a body shop I'm friends with the owner is on that side of town and also runs a tow service, so I call them. They're say they'll be there in 30 minutes, sweet!
Their flat bed gets stuck in the ditch of this road, maybe 1/4 mile from my SUV. Then the F550 tow truck that comes out to recovery the flat bed gets stuck. The flat bed manages to winch himself out, using a fence post as an anchor, then comes to winch me out. Which takes 3-4 tries! After that he winches out the F550 and then finally, the minivan owner.
I spend thirty minutes at the power washer station cleaning the mud out of the wheels. Still have a little bit in there. Crazy, it just didn't seem that bad but it was like quick sand...
In reply to docwyte :
Oh my! Well at least once the tow truck got stuck you knew it wasn't poor effort on your part. Glad it worked out!
In reply to dculberson :
Yeah! Gotta say that once he got stuck, then the F550 got stuck I was a little worried that I might have to leave my SUV there until it dried out...
We were wheeling last year at an ORV and the Tundra with us got stuck in a muddy area. I had the Raider and decided I would just pull him out (with a non-kinetic tow strap). Nope, we just ended up with two 4x4s stuck with a strap tying us together :) So that was embarrassing.
Luckily, another guy in our group had a 12k winch and pulled us both out at the same time with his fullsize (sitting 20 feet away on dry ground)
Now I use a kinetic snatch strap. Even on glaze ice, that little bit of kinetic action gives enough of a "bump" to get the hard part (suction) out of the way.
I bet you're regretting selling those mudders now. Lol!
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
I need to get one of those kinetic ropes, clearly better than the static one I have...
In reply to CAinCA :
Haha! Nope! They were the wrong tires for me for the way I use the truck...
docwyte said:In reply to CAinCA :
Haha! Nope! They were the wrong tires for me for the way I use the truck...
I get that. I just thought it was ironic that you sold the M/T tires this week.
Over the summer I went back to H/T tires from A/Ts on our truck because they were a better fit for our use case. No regerts. ;^)
In reply to CAinCA :
It would've been worse if they'd been on the truck the day before, but I removed them the morning after I picked up the truck. They'd been sitting in my backyard for the last 3 weeks...
Most tow straps are kinetic, if you didn't already know. You don't need to spend a ton of money on some Overlander Approved™ rope to get that feature. Unless you're into that kind of thing of course 
Had the front two windows tinted with ceramic tint last Friday. Was pretty warm here this weekend, so that let the tint dry properly but it was hard to not roll the windows down! Used it to go mtn biking last Sunday, so happy with it! It was weird having to lift my mtn bike up onto the rack, the tow hitch is so much higher than the R's was. However it was great to have all the room to put my gear on, and particularly nice to sit on the tail gate and put on my shoes and hang out after the ride.
Ordered the tool for the oil filter canister last night. Will change the oil on it this weekend, then it's pretty much good to go.
So last weekend I also took my pressure washer to clean off the rest of the mud from the getting stuck debacle. Remember I'd spent 30 minutes that evening with a pressure washer cleaning off the body and wheels.
Well. Let's just say that the entire underbody was *coated* in mud still. I spent another 30 minutes blasting it off, laying on my driveway to get it all. This is what my driveway looked like. Then I had to scrap this off and sweep it off, twice! Only to have my wife razz me about cleaning the driveway. Thanks hon....
So the guy I bought my seat covers from listed another set. The ones I got from him were actually for an older version of my truck. They fit but don't fit the center armrest for the back seat. The ones he just listed were exactly for my truck and they're black, which I like more.
So I sold the ones I got locally for what I paid for them and ran up to Broomfield yesterday to pick up these. Put them on this morning. Much happier with the fitment and color
Well, I got restless and when my wife went out on some errands, I decided I'd do the oil change on the 200. Can't be that hard, right? Ha!
First thing once I got the truck on the lift and in the air I found there was still a TON of mud stuck everywhere. So I grabbed a flat head screwdriver and started chipping away. Ended up with this. At least all the large hunks are off, just a little dirt here and there now
Next up was removing the ARB skid plates. Turns out they're put together in such a way that you have to remove all three sections of them. There's no access panel in the front one for the oil filter and you can't pull the middle section without taking out the rest. Great. So that took me awhile, plus they're freaking *heavy*. Then they were also mud coated on the inside, so had to clean them up too.
Finally got to the oil change part. 14mm on the oil pan, that drained no sweat. But while it was draining I decided to sweep up the mud from my garage floor. That's when the oil draining out decided to run down the pan some so it'd totally miss my oil tank basin. Awesome! Oil all over the floor. Drain plug back in with a new gasket left over from my old GX470. At least Toyota didn't change that...
Next up is the oil filter canister. I removed the end plug with a 3/8" extension but no oil came out. After I had the canister off I remembered you're supposed to plug this thing into the bottom of the canister once you remove the plug so the oil can drain out. Ooopppsss.
This truck was always dealer serviced. Apparently the dealer employs Gorillas, because I had to use a 1/2" drive 18 inch breaker bar to get the cap loose on the oil filter canister. Given that it's plastic, I was worried that it'd break, or was cross threaded. Happily it came off. I replaced the two O ring gaskets, popped in a new filter and put it back together properly.
New oil back in, reset the service light (easy, no tools needed!) started it up and checked for leaks. None, sweet! Then I got to wrestle the insanely heavy ARB skid plates back up into position, solo. I ended up using my pole jack to hold them in place until I could get a few bolts started.
Wow, what a PITA!
That's an interesting design on that canister with that drain. Is that a Toyota thing?
In reply to newold_m (Forum Supporter) :
Think so, this is the first time I've seen it too. My old GX470 had a regular metal oil filter vs the replaceable paper element on this truck. What sucks is all my other cars with replaceable paper oil filters have the canister mounted up in the engine bay. Where it's easily accessible and also doesn't make a mess because the cap faces up, not down like this one.
The oil canister and drain design is a Toyota thing, we have the same thing on our Rav4 with the 3.5L. The little plastic plug never really works well for me, you need to seat it perfectly all the way around, or the oil starts going everywhere. I'm 0 for probably something 40 when it comes to not making a mess.
The theory is great, but in practice it's a mess (literally).
In reply to dj06482 (Forum Supporter) :
Hmm, ok. Then maybe I'll keep doing what I just did, which is to crack open the filter cap enough that the oil leaks out into my catch basin. Not that doing it that way is particularly clean either...
TLDR: Yes, skip the drain plug and just pull the whole canister.
We had a 2010 Highlander with a canister style oil filter. I was complaining to a friend who worked at a dealership about it and he told me that none of the mechanics there used those things. Drain the pan and then carefully remove the canister. You'll probably have less spillage that way than dealing with the drain adapters.
So when I first bought the truck I replaced the wipers with a set of Bosch ones. Like these, didn't think anything of it
See how far they stick up off the glass? Not nearly as flush as the stock ones. Turns out Toyota sells just the rubber inserts for the stock wipers, so I didn't need to replace them and even when I did, I should've kept them. Doh! So I ordered up a new pair, making sure to specify the OEM ones, as the dealer sells some off brand ones too, and grabbed a rubber insert for the rear wiper. Picked them up last week and installed them, much better!
Nice Yeti! SB5.5? I have the same one if so!
In reply to golfduke :
Yeti SB5C "Lunch Ride Edition". Really like it!
My personalized license plates showed up on Friday.
Makes more sense when you see the plate I have on my KTM dual sport motorcycle
I still need to move the stock wheels/tires from my backyard down into my basement. Really wish I had basement access from the backyard! Given the stitches in my fingers and the weight of those wheels/tires I'm going to wait another week before I move them. I did organize the basement a little bit yesterday to make room for them tho.
So I used to have a GX470. Decent enough SUV, hated the rear barn door it had. Kept it pretty much stock, put in the Bilstien 6112/5160's and a set of BFG K02's. Got tired of constantly working on it, literally everything wore out between 115-125k miles. When the steering rack started to weep I tapped out. I really needed a larger SUV like it as a replacement but instead I got a Golf R. Really fun car actually fairly utilitarian but my son and I would fill it when we went away on a ski weekend. Plus when I started bringing my 85lb Golden Retriever to work with me, he and my son didn't really fit in the back seat well together.
Ok, time to get a larger SUV again. I considered the choices, GX460 was out, no barn rear doors! I thought about a 4Runner as well as the German SUV's. I'd had a cayenne turbo and my wife has a cayenne diesel currently. Nice driving rigs but I want something bigger. The German SUV's also (usually, weird market we're in now) depreciate like rocks and I wanted to avoid that. I also rather have a tail gate and a V8, so the 4Runner was sorta out there. That led me to the big boy, the 200. After driving a 2014 I knew I wanted the 2016+. Found my current one on eBay, where it was a no sale. I reached out to the owner and worked out a deal.
2018 with 20k miles, black with terra interior. Came with ARB skid plates and recovery point, Tundra wheels with mudders (eww), and Safari snorkel (not a fan). I immediately took off the Tundra wheels and sold them, replaced them with Rock Warriors and Falken AT3W tires. I'd rather have Bud Built or Slee skid plates, the ARB don't have access panels for the oil filter cartridge or drain plug. The Safari snorkel just seems like a poser mod to me but the cost to remove it is prohibitive, so it's staying.
What I've mostly done is protection, I got the Weathertech floor mats and Escape Gear seat covers, then removed the 3rd row and put in the D ring covers that Aussie guy makes. Oh yeah and a phone mount. I've put maybe 3500 miles on it now, here are some of my thoughts.
I'll start with my dislikes:
#1 No Apple CarPlay in my 2018. This, to me, is bordering on the absurd. It was Toyota's flagship vehicle, their most expensive offering, by far and no CarPlay. I shouldn't have to pay to add it.
#2 No tap to pass turn signal. Again, strange that an expensive SUV like this doesn't have the turn signal tap to get 3-4 blinks. Have had it on my other cars for 15 years, can't add it on my 2018.
#3 I have big hands, the steering wheel diameter is dinky. I feel like I need to put my pinky out. Would also like the heated element to cover the entire steering wheel.
#4 Fuel mileage. She hasn't passed a gas station she doesn't love. Wow, even with the 8 speed transmission I'm getting 14mpg, that's just bad.
Last one and not really a fair one but I would've bought this with the 4.5 liter turbo diesel motor the rest of the world can get over the V8 in a heartbeat. I live at altitude so the turbo diesel would make the same horsepower as the V8 gasser motor does up here while making a few more hundred foot pounds of torque and getting at least 10mpg better. Yeah....
Here are my likes:
#1 Anvil like reliability, I shouldn't have to do anything but typical maintenance for a long time.
#2 Very little depreciation, I figure I can run this thing for 5+ years and get most of my money back out of it, as I can depreciate it all in one year through my company.
#3 If I don't like a feature, there's a button to turn it off and it stays off, no matter if I cycle the key
#4 Buttons and knobs! It has buttons and knobs and doesn't bury everything in the touch screen infotainment.
#5 Very quiet, comfy ride, lots of space for the dog, my family and stuff. Right after I bought it I took it on a ski trip with me and 4 other people and all our gear, still had room to spare
#6 Tail gate! Love it! Use it all the time to sit on and put on ski boots, mtn bike shoes, hang out, etc
#7 Decent tow rating, can carry my KTM 690 dual sport on the hitch rack no problem
#8 Holding down the phone button on the steering wheel to get Siri to work is cool. The voice integration works really well.
#9 Real 4WD with a switchable transfer case and real deal 4 low.
So yeah, pretty happy with my purchase, it does what I needed, which was carry people and stuff around while being reliable and not costing me a ton of money in either maintenance/breakage or depreciation.
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