Landcruiser 100 turbo diesel

Brian I got a Mac so she COULD use it, and without help :-)
Turist

PS :-) Thats Mac talk for a smile

You poor boys. You just dont have any colour in your life apart from your Bushtrackers, do you? How sad. Angie's heart just bleeds. Angie

I know Angie ... it is kinda sad !! I've taken to using youngest's crayons to colour little hearts on the screen itself. Seems to be working .... <technicolouryawn> <cheekygrin>

Anthony

Hey Anthony, I've been thinking of the TD100 that you mentioned (Message 7) that dropped the tail by 73mm & raised the nose 27mm. This may be total iggorance on my part, but would the cause of the tail droop have been exacerbated by a ball weight problem in this case? I'm trying to envision how many bags of cement it would take in the rear of a 100 to give a 73 mm sag. I'm assuming the ideal ball weight for a 19' BT would be about 200-250kg(?). Would this give that much sag? If so would the idea for Weight Distribution gear be to eliminate the nose rise &, say, halve the rear end compression? Did the addition of WD solve the problem, or were these figures WITH the WD gear??!! All this makes a strong case for Motley's Ball Weight Guage post. Too little or too much - either way you're stuffed. I'm beggining to sense a bit of a discontinuity in information & approach between BT, the vehicle manufacturers & the Suspension Mod "Experts". I'm a little surprised that BT haven't been finishing the job by ensuring the right jockey wheel / hitch / WD setup for the client's selected vehicle - they should be the experts &, I would have thought, the first port of call for set-up advice when moving to a new vehicle. Maybe I expect too much, but my approach when supplying "add on gear" (which is what a van is to the tow vehicle), is to ensure compatibility. Why the mystery & the need for BOGGERS to be spending so much mod time on hitches etc? I could understand if Jayc avoided the issue, as they would have to work out the myriad combinations possible given their range & the hundreds of legally usable tow vehicles. BT, on the other hand, produce vans in the 2.5 to 3.5(?) tonne range with a limited number of hitches (2 or 3 in their history?), coupled to a very limited (say 10-15) locally available tow vehicles. (I'm counting LC78 & 100 as '2', Mercedes 270, 320, 500 & 55 as '4' - though marginal at 3365kg - & Nissan Navara, Patrol Diesel & Petrol as '3' - though again marginal at 3000, 3200 except for the petrol 4.8 at 3500. There just isn't that much choice! Should have been sorted by now, methinks (Must have been something he ate) Griff

Griff,

The Cruiser in question was completely stock in the suspension area with no WD gear fitted. It was my BT we had on to test the cruiser before John's arrived. The ballweight was 190 on mine at the time so we added 60kg via a person standing on the a-frame and took measurements.

The problem was solved by using the first ARB rear spring set above standard. I think they were 40mm lift before settling and rated 200kg extra per spring. Check with ARB.
A 350kg Hayman Reese WD Hitch was also fitted (after grinding off jockey wheel mount) by
Vehicle Components (Bris) and prob was solved. He only fitted the rear springs because John will eventually use BT as a base camp and camp in vehicle for a night or two with associated gear.

Van has now been driven Bris/ Melb/Adelaide via inland then back up east coast. Is now in Cooktown ... no towing probs so far !
I also came across a gentleman when I was getting another car serviced he was selling his BT because he had a couple of scares ... regarding swaying. No WD and not enough ballweight. Tow vehicle was a chipped TD5 Disco. The BT had sat idle for quite some time when I met him. A few hours at my place .... hooked my WD gear and van up to his disco and a few espresso he was on his way to Vehicle Components for a grind and fit of WD gear.
This rig is currently in SAust and Rob is having a ball driving all over the place. Still to this day he cant believe the difference .... from selling BT to safe towing. From memory the figures for the cruiser were nearly the same on the disco ,before WDH, with my van hitched.

Anthony

Anthony When you said that the jockey wheel mount was ground off, how did they re-attach it. Was it rewelded further back, moved and welded onto the inside of the A frame or bolted on somehow somewhere??? Just need to know as this is what I am intending on doing to have WDH fitted. Thanks always for your input - very very informative. Jeff

Bruce, my Jockey wheel bracket was also ground off and it was re-welded on further back by Bushtracker. They attached bracket on Turist's new van by bolting it on at his request so as not to damage galvanising.

Both the vans in question were welded back on ..... If I ever get the chance again I'm going the Turist route ..... bolted on ! Would not be hard 1/2 inch U bolts welded to wheel plate and a holding plate on other side of chassis. I not sure how Bob's has been done ?

Anthony

Anthony, isn't that a photo of Bob's bolted on jockey wheel in the Hitches album marked Hitch #2? Or is that from his old van. Its dated 8th May 2003 and looks like a bolted on jockey wheel. Maybe the photo doesn't show enough detail for you to quite make out their process. Angie

Just an innocent little question here (or maybe opening a can of worms?). Given that we've been covering weight-distribution gear, grinding jockey wheel mounts off, instability problems, BTs falling over (rare, I'm sure), etc - why is there no comment/advice/excuse/blame from BT? Is there an official BT view on what the recommended tow vehicle is for different size BTs? Are there statistics on the percentage of owners towing with LCs, Patrols, F250s?
One of the stated aims of this forum is to open dialogue between owners/potential owners and BT management. Have we (do we need to?) invited them to join us? I doubt that anyone who chose to unfairly attack BT would be tolerated by any of us on this forum, so where's BT?

Imagine the time they would have to spend in here answer questions etc. You could put a staff member on full time just for this forum.

I think they are just plain busy, busy, busy !! They are certainly open to any discussion at their front door, at the shows or on the phone. This is the great thing about the group ... any concerns here can be raised with BT by the person with his particular van/vehicle combo.

Lord knows I must annoy them sometimes ..... I can hear Peter now... run Anthony is on the phone !!

Anthony

I would have to agree with Anthony on that one. Living so close to B/T I often call in and say hello, see what is happening around the place while having a cuppa. When I walk in the staff all say hello Brian, I've been there so often. Went I went to get Graham & Jans photos, Tracey went out of his way to show me where their van was and talk to me about their van. Their PR and after sales service is excellent. As for tow vehicles, when I went there 2 years ago with a 100 Series Toyota Steve kept telling me how many Toyotas he had killed and how good his F350 was. I originally asked them for a 22ft van but they said it would be too big for a Toyota, and recommended a 21ft van as the maximum for a Toyota and they are probably right.

I think BT are too busy to be on here answering questions, methinks they are actually trying to figure out a plan of action for when Angie arrives on June 2nd! Probably will go something like - "Quick, hide, here she comes" "No, I was hiding here first!!" "Get out, find your own hiding place" "I want my mum" Well they can run, but they can't hide - 'cause Angie is comin and she is well armed with her list thanks to the BOGGER site!

OK. If it looks like a can of worms it must be a can of worms.(wink)
But, I didn't really mean that we should dump a Q & A forum onto BT; just that an official response or point of view from BT would help put to rest any of the bigger issues. For instance, if the jockey mounts need to be ground off to fit WD gear there must be a reason why BT doesn't make allowance for it. An answer posted here beats fielding a dozen phone calls asking the same question and avoids losing customers who otherwise might start wondering if there's something lacking in the engineering department.

Lets shift this to its own thread .....I've re-posted it .

Anthony