Project Chronicle

I have a connection with the local Lexus dealer that has proven helpful over the years. Joe Manzi, a former technician with the now-defunct Oxford Motorcars, joined the Lexus dealer technician team in Warwick, Rhode Island, a few years back. Joe worked on my E21-chassis BMW 320 and my extremely obscure 1981 Toyota HiAce wagon. He was a life-saver time and again on that HiAce and I'm sure he was grateful to see it go onto a new owner. 

The Lexus LX450 I picked up recently had some needs. The power steering leak, non-working rear hatch, warm A/C, and no evidence of recent transfer case or transmission fluid changes. All told, I wanted to get Joe's capable eyes on it to address some standard, deferred maintenance along with flagging anything I should be mindful of over the long-term. 

He has yet to text me with an update, which is good and bad. It either means he's found nothing out of the ordinary or the list of needs has quadrupled he's afraid to call me. To that end, you have to take advantage of the few perks going to a dealer affords you, so I didn't hesitate to take the complimentary loaner car they offered me while they work on a 248K mile LX450 that is profusely leaking power steering fluid. 

And hey, for a brief minute, the neighbors may even think I've come to my senses and purchased a reliable, late-model vehicle. Joke's on them! 

The Lexus LX450 arrived with a pretty powerful stream of fluid terminating from below, and the best guess so far is the power steering oil cooler. Of course, the cooler consists of hard lines and therefore can't be replaced. 

There's the possibility that the leak is coming from the power steering reservoir itself, as there's a few accounts online of a misdiagnosed leak being traced back to the very cheap fix of replacing some O-rings inside the tank itself.

My friend Jeff, a professional mechanic who arranged the sale of the LX450, said it's the hard lines going into the cooler. I have no reason not to believe him, so I tracked down a used cooler assembly from a place in New Hampshire that deals exclusively in Land Cruiser parts. I've also got an appointment on the books for the truck to go to the local Lexus dealer for this repair along with proactively swapping the water pump, thermostat, and drive belts while it's there. My good mechanic friend Joe Manzi, from the now-defunct Oxford Motorcars, will be handling this job, which I'm pretty psyched about. Joe's a great guy and an excellent mechanic. 

The tags from Vermont should arrive shortly, and then we can get this thing some beach passes and take it on the sand! 

I've often referred to 944s as a German Pickup.  Open the hatch, lay down the rear seat, and you have the open space to rival any comparable car.  They will swallow bicycles whole or all the camping gear for two.  Here we see my 944S serving as a communications platform for the 2011 Mt. Washington Climb to the Clouds.  Tucked away under the upper hatch lip on both sides of the car are threaded hard points for mounting a rack.  I fabricated a good looking bracket to use the right hard point and provide a mounting surface for a 60" Amateur Radio antenna and we provided radio communications support for the marshal station 3 down from the top of the mountain.

This was just three months after acquiring the car and in the last picture you can see a pair of cosmetic details I later resolved.  The stone guard on 944s is a 6-piece set around the wheels.  The original material ages and eventually turn black.  Look at 944 ads and you will see most are discolored.  The fix is simple and relatively cheap; but so many owners miss this detail.

My mechanic Jay has been working on (what he very much wants to be) final punch-list items for the '89 Isuzu Trooper RS. I'm a little melancholy, as there was a comfort that came with knowing Jay has been fixing plenty of little items along the way, and now it will be incumbent upon me to figure out what still needs doing.

In this latest installment, Jay has installed four new Old Man Emu shock absorbers and replacement sway bar links; replaced the valve cover gasket and adjusted the valves; and even done some body work by installing a replacement bumper up front and replacement bumper ends in the rear. He did note the hood latch cable is shot and needs replacement.  

He also threw on the genuine RS grill I snatched up a few years ago along with a set of good headlights and turn signals, parts that all disappeared when the Isuzu was still being occasionally scavenged for parts in the boneyard. 

It really can come home at this point, but I'm not sure if it will be towed or if it's ready for an interstate trip just yet. Jay is going to perform some road tests near the shop to see if there are any last-minute fixes to perform. 

Well, although it seemed like a pretty done deal, I confirmed today I will finally be a Land Cruiser owner as of tomorrow. I've been searching for a very specific truck - the FJ80-series Land Cruiser with the Lexus trim, otherwise known as an LX450 - and my friend Jeff, a local mechanic, snagged this one from a customer. 

The cherry on top was to find one wearing the pretty shade of blue/green paint that was unique to the Lexus variant. This truck, which I inadvertently took a picture of in the background of a photo of my departed Trooper, belongs to a family from Newport, RI. I visited it in person today and while it needs a serious detailing and has some rot issues to resolve, it's surprisingly solid for a New England truck. 

It drives nicely; runs cool; and any negative surprises (so far) have been pleasingly mild. I keep forgetting this is a Lexus from the golden-era of Toyota's luxury arm over-engineering everything they built. The Lexus does have some leaks, primarily an oil leak from the pan gasket area and a power steering leak. The rear hatch took a direct hit near the lock mechanism, and as such, it doesn't open. The driver's window falls off the track if it goes down all the way, and the radio just blows static.

Overall, minor faults, and while the rust will need to be addressed, it's contained and I have a good local resource now for rust repair (even though he hasn't called me back about when the Cosworth can come by....) More to the point, we can use it as I've always intended, which is a vehicle we all fit into that can drive down to the beach and back when called upon. 

And, when funds allow, we'll find some must-have off-road pieces, like a set of wheels from 1552, larger tires, and an ARB brush guard with some period-correct off-road lights. Exciting! 

This was a big day. I really wasn't expecting to do much when I stopped by German Motors other than to get a code read on my 2011 328xi, which finally let me know that the passenger front axle and speed sensor are crying uncle. But Gerry tossed me the keys to the 190E so I could see how confident I was driving it out of there next week. Let me just say this: what the hell. 

May I remind you I bought this car sitting on its belly. No wheels, no radiator, no indication it would ever run again. As of this week, it happily runs up and down North Main Street in Providence, rowing through the gears, maintaining temperature and a steady idle. It's as fun to drive as I had hoped. It makes absolutely no sense that I bought this car, but I now feel increasingly vindicated that I did the right thing by saving it four years ago. 

This is also a reminder of just how incredible Mercedes products of this era are. These are overbuilt machines, a quality I certainly recognized after owning a standard 190E 2.3 and my father running through a lineup featuring two W126s and two W124s. He was not kind to his cars, and those machines held up incredibly well. 

There is still an incredible amount of work to be done on the Cosworth. But knowing I can hop in and drive this car at a moment's notice is a pretty rad feeling, even if still looks like a complete deathtrap. 

When I had the blue '86 Trooper, one of the best days was when the General Grabber 31" tires went on, mounted to the stock steel wheels. It just transformed the truck, even with the stock wheel fitment and offset. 

One of the long-standing goals I had with the Trooper RS was to get the original wheels it came with - a full set, including the spare, of American Racing Outlaws - mounted on the 31-inch Grabbers. It would transform the truck while also offering a nice upgrade for light trail driving. 

Taking the recently powder-coated Outlaws over to Melvin's Tire Pros (which matched Tire Rack's price for the tires), I had the tires thrown on and dropped them off with Jay today for eventual mounting on the Trooper. I also gave him a set of Old Man Emu shocks and he'll throw those in when he's got the truck back on the lift for a transmission service.

I also found more rust....sigh. I hope this thing stays with us for a long time once it's done. 

I swung by German Motors today to see the 1986 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth that now runs, drives, stops, and turns without issue. It's hard to put into words how good it feels to be at this point, especially with the bodywork stage ready to begin. 

I discovered the Cosworth in a junkyard in September of 2018. It has been sitting in storage and slowly picked away at ever since. Today, I watched it go on a spirited drive down North Main St. in Providence, and the engine is healthy; the transmission shifts as intended; it holds a steady idle; it does everything you could reasonably ask of a car with such a colorful history. 

To me, seeing a car at this point after it was discarded so carelessly is incredibly rewarding. Like the Trooper RS, it's total vindication for taking a potentially risky path to saving worthwhile vehicles. Now, the list of things the Mercedes needs is still incredibly long. For instance, the windows don't work. The rear windows are just hanging in place with no regulators. The dash is cracked. The three-pod gauge cluster that sits below the radio hasn't been installed. The rear suspension accumulators are shot. The alarm was proving to be quite annoying and has been disconnected. And so on. 

But at the end of the day, I will be driving my high school dream car this summer. And while I can't go back and take the prom queen to the homecoming dance, I can rip along backroads in the car from my 16-year-old fantasies, and that's pretty great too - especially doing so in a car that was thrown away and rescued after a chance phone call in 2018. 

Incredibly, my 1986 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth has seen the open road for the first time in 10 years or more. It only went about 20 feet, but progress is progress. 

I told German Motors that the "secret" bodyshop that is willing to work on the numerous rust spots can get the car in the first week of May. The one thing holding the project up was installing that power seat module I reported on tracking down a few weeks ago. In order to install the seat, the seat frame had to be re-assembled because the replacement Recaros I found came without bases. I understood this was a pain in the ass project, so I didn't push too hard - but I was happy to see it was finally done and Gerry, the shop owner, took the Mercedes on a maiden voyage.

You can see a quick, low-quality video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLJJq4svJj8

I'll swing up to the shop on Monday and hopefully get to drive the car myself for a few seconds before shutting it down and assessing what else it may need in order to drive it to the hidden bodyshop under its own power.