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Text by Carl Montoya // Photos by Marc Bowers
Our plan was to build up our 200 Series Land Cruiser to make it worthy of ‘Cruise Moab’, the Toyota Land Cruiser Association sanctioned event in Moab, Utah. This is what we used to make this iconic Toyota unstoppable!
Suspension
We started with a long travel setup using OEM Tundra lower control arms, tie rod ends, CV shafts, billet Icon upper control arms, TRD Pro Bilstein 60mm piggyback shocks with Internal Zone Control Progressive3 rate dampening, Old Man Emu rear coils, 1.5″ rear wheel spacers for a 3″ wider track, 3″ front lift, and a 1″ rear lift for a level stance. All that adds up to a considerable increase in wheel travel. Under the modded suspension are TRD Pro 18″ wheels and Nitto 285/75R18 Trail Grapplers. After running it that way for a while we thought the rear needed more damping and swapped in a set of Icon shocks to compensate for the weight being added, and set the damping for a more comfortable high speed ride. The new shocks made a huge difference in rebound control, taming it considerably on the bigger whoops.
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Axles
Nitro Gear 4.88 gearsets are mounted to ARB air lockers front and rear with an ARB twin compressor mounted under the hood giving us the ability to air up the tires after a run on the trail. With Moab in the plans, locking diffs were a must and the ARB units offered the strength and reliability we were looking for in this project.
Armour
This is a big Toyota and even with the lift and bigger tires we knew the belly and rockers would be vulnerable off-road. With that in mind, we put a full ARB skid plate system underneath, with some minor modifications so this system (designed for the Aussie diesel model) would work on the US spec V8 powered Cruiser. With fantastic strength to weight properties, the ARB underbody skid plates give us piece of mind in the rocks and should slide easily over obstacles. We installed a very heavy-duty set of Slee Off-road rockers that still act as steps when needed.
Winch
Up front we used a hidden winch mount setup behind the OE bumper with a Warn 9.5XP winch running a Factor 55 thimble in the hawse fairlead. The solenoid pack was remote mounted under the hood and a Warn remote control unit added to allow winch control without opening the hood. Why the hidden mount? We just weren’t super excited about any of the winch bumpers out there for the 200 series and at least for now like the clean appearance the hidden winch setup gives us.
Interior
We ran out of time on a couple things before Cruise Moab, but did get an ARB dedicated locking fridge plug/harness installed to power our trusty ARB fridge and ARB fridge slide/drawer for easy access. We’ll be installing additional drawers in the tail at some point in the near future as well as locking storage for better security.
With all the initial mods completed we’ve driven the 1600 km (1000 mi) to Moab and been putting this Cruiser through its paces on the rocks. It’s amazingly capable for it’s size, has great flex for an IFS rig and the lockers and gears have been giving us the traction when we need it.
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