Chris had loaded the boot of the Cruiser up with the rear row of seats, which he’d kept in storage, and all the spare parts he had for it. He’d found his missing second remote for the central locking (saving us $44, which is how much Toyota charges for a replacement) and mounted the roof rack. We really would have preferred not to take the roof rack, but I guess he just wanted to get rid of it to clear out some space in his shed.
Driving back at night, we discovered that both the glove box and ashtray have internal lights, which is very handy, but that the Toyota stereo is too well lit, making the dashboard distractingly bright. Fortunately, we still have our mp3 CD stereo and UHF, which we kept out of our previous vehicles, which we will be installing instead.
The colour is Dark Green Mica, but it is an unusual chameleon-like colour - depending on the angle of the light, it looks green, blue or even black!
The first job was to remove the roof rack so that the Cruiser would fit under our roll-a-door and be parked in our garage. With a little help from a mate (who is also kindly allowing us to store it at his workshop), the rack was removed Friday night. Unfortunately, this means my poor little Mazda has been banished to the driveway once again, lol.
Over the weekend, Steve attempted to mount his spotlights to the bullbar, but we have discovered that, although the plastic SmartBar may indeed be nice and bendy and “pedestrian safe”, the fact is that it is bloody useless for mounting spotties. It’s far too flexy, so that the spotties vibrate annoyingly and can’t be adjusted to the right angle. We also need to change the bracket for the aerial mount for the UHF, so rather than spending a lot of time messing about trying to get it right, Steve is looking around for a second-hand alloy or steel bullbar. He just phoned to tell me he may have tracked one down already (can't let the grass grow under your feet, lol). Next on the list is stripping and re-tinting the windows.
I now officially have too much on my keyring! (Not that I am removing any of it) Who knew that one Toyota key and a central locking remote could add so much extra weight? Maybe the plastic is heavier on the 100 Series key than on previous models?
It's good to have a Cruiser again!
