New 120 Owner

**eeyore** · 11th April 2012, 07:03 PM

Hi all,

Well, after missing out on the eBay auction, I found another 120 ute and picked it up during the Easter break. No pictures yet, but it's pretty tidy, especially for a 25 year old, 450K km ute. The original owner kept meticulous service records from new until 420K km, when he passed away and his nephew sold it to the person I bought it from. It has spent the last couple of years sitting largely unused on his father's farm.

It has a bit of surface rust in the usual places below the windscreen but no chassis rust at all. The passenger floor (as distinct from footwell) has some significant rust in places and will need to be replaced. Pretty confident about the engine's health given its service history and the LT95 gearbox is tight and positive. Drives nicely except for predominantly two issues. First, there is an off centre vagueness in the steering which I guess is box wear, with an associated leak. Second, the new raised King springs fitted by PO are *** hard

. I hope it'll behave more like a land rover and less like a leaf sprung toyota with some weight in the back.

No doubt there'll be a (hopefully fairly short) list of things to fix - rust aside - once I give a good tidy up. I've got the CD on order from Dave's shop but if someone could tell me what the part no.s are for the propshaft unijoints I'd really appreciate it. At least one needs replacing - I'll do them all while I'm at it - but I'm not positive I'm reading the Bearmach catalogue I'm using correctly. (Assuming as well that 120 drivetrains from bellhousing back are the same as 110 except for rear propshaft length too).

A quick thanks to everyone who offered 120 buying advice on my previous thread too, and especially to Offender90 and Justinc who were particularly helpful. Or, depending on one's point of view, particularly culpable in encouraging such vehicular folly

**c.h.i.e.f** · 11th April 2012, 08:08 PM

good to hear

any pics of the new beast?
any big plans with it such as turbo etc etc?

**Tote** · 11th April 2012, 10:07 PM

Congrats, was that the one on carsales?

Regards,
Tote

**Offender90** · 13th April 2012, 02:43 PM

Congrats, you've got yourself a very tidy truck! Can't wait to see more pics.

Tote, it was the one on carsales (with a Thomas PTO winch).

Rear spring stifness is usually a compromise on 120s. 110's of the same vintage came with a load leveller and soft rear springs to compensate but they're getting rare and long in the tooth now.

If you want a good ride regardless of weight you can fit airsprings in the rear (or on all 4 corners) if you like. Have a look at rovercare's 120 (now 130) or Rangier Rover's 120 for inspiration.

Isuzurover has done the Canning with airbags on the rears and apparently a lot more comfortable ride than a sprung 110.

Mine is set up for a loaded Trayon on the rear but I often run unloaded around town - you get used to it.

Hope that fix list isn't too long by the way!

**eeyore** · 17th April 2012, 08:35 PM

Finally, a couple of pics. The last one is of the 'endless air' style air con unit converted to supply compressed air. This seems to work unlike the PTO winch, which seems to be frozen at both the PTO takeoff engagement lever and the clutch lever on the winch. First priority is to pass the roadworthy though...

c.h.i.e.f, there are a number of big plans for the ute. First will be fitting a slide-on camper of some type. After that, the certainty of further plans becomes fuzzier. A turbo is probably pretty high on the list, maybe airbag suspension at the rear, even an extra cab perhaps