{"id":649,"date":"2018-04-17T19:01:50","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T02:01:50","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2021-10-08T15:12:17","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T22:12:17","slug":"introducing-our-land-cruiser-79","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuckinlowgear.com\/staging\/1919\/introducing-our-land-cruiser-79\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing our Land Cruiser"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our chariot is the 70 series Land Cruiser,<\/a>\u00a0which shares the\u00a0crown for the ultimate Africa Vehicle\u00a0with a\u00a0Land Rover. \u00a0The Land Rover of course has it’s merits, but for us the Land Cruiser 70 series is where it’s at.<\/p>\n

The 4.2 liter diesel engine remains largely unchanged since it was\u00a0brought into service in 1990. \u00a0The inline 6\u00a0generates\u00a0an underwhelming 129 hp, it has\u00a0no computers under the hood, it’s under powered, slow, and it’s been said that it’s\u00a0shudder on shutdown will register on\u00a0the\u00a0Richter scale. \u00a0But it is also dirt simple, faithfully reliable, parts are widely available and mechanics the\u00a0across the\u00a0continent are familiar with it.<\/p>\n

It’s unimpressive speed is hardly an issue when on dirt roads, as one\u00a0can’t drive that fast anyway, and even on tarmac many of the roads in Africa don’t allow for much speed either due to poor road condition, steep inclines and or\u00a0optimistically\u00a0sharp corners. \u00a0Particularly when loaded one must\u00a0plan overtaking far ahead of time, and you can forget about passing someone while going uphill, it’s just not going to happen.<\/p>\n

To illustrate, on a particularly empty stretch of pretty flat road in South Africa we thought we’d test our 0-60mph time. \u00a0So Jenny stopped in the middle of the road, I got the stop watch ready and on the “3, 2, 1, Mark!” she was off…slowly. \u00a0The manual says 0-60mph in 30 seconds. \u00a0Not much to write home about to begin with, and that is unloaded. \u00a0We were in full overland configuration and at 30 seconds I was starting to laugh as\u00a0the Cruiser gently trundled faster every so slowly gaining speed. \u00a0Jenny wound up the revs,\u00a0mashed through the gears and at 60 seconds I was starting to lose\u00a0it, marveling at our spectacular slowness. \u00a0We made it up to the big 60mph in….90 seconds. \u00a0I was laughing so hard I couldn’t tell Jenny how bad it was. \u00a0But to the Cruiser’s credit I think there might have been a slight incline, and it’s\u00a0also possible that Jenny could’ve been more aggressive on the revs and the gear changes, but it’s hard to thrash your new to you engine. \u00a0Or maybe it was the altitude? \u00a0Yeah…that’s it. \u00a0The altitude.<\/p>\n

The 70\u00a0series is made in many configurations. \u00a0We have the 79 double cab pickup. \u00a04 wheel drive, low range gear box, front and rear diff locks, long range (130 liter) fuel tank. \u00a0It’s also fitted with a snorkel, not just for those more-daring-than-we-should-be water crossings but also to move the air intake higher off the road, which reduces the amount of dust being sucked into the air filter. \u00a0An awning to provide shade in the sun and keep us a bit dryer in rain. \u00a02 full size spare wheels, high lift jack, spade, air compressor, tool kit, first aid kit, 12v fridge, recovery kit, gas cooker and many more accouterments.<\/p>\n

The goal of all these numerous extras is to turn the vehicle from a capable 4×4 into something that we will also want to live out of\u00a0for the duration of our trip. \u00a0More details about the vehicle setup in future posts.<\/p>\n

\n

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Our chariot is the 70 series Land Cruiser,\u00a0which shares the\u00a0crown for the ultimate Africa Vehicle\u00a0with a\u00a0Land Rover. \u00a0The Land Rover of course has it’s merits, but for us the Land Cruiser 70 series is where it’s at. The 4.2 liter diesel engine remains largely unchanged since it was\u00a0brought into service in 1990. \u00a0The inline 6\u00a0generates\u00a0an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[102,103,55],"tags":[14,12,11,13,15],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-logistics","category-resources","category-travelogues","tag-africa-d81","tag-land-cruiser-70-series","tag-land-cuiser","tag-lc-79","tag-overland-d45"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stuckinlowgear.com\/staging\/1919\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/website-pics-7-of-21-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbRTYJ-at","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuckinlowgear.com\/staging\/1919\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuckinlowgear.com\/staging\/1919\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuckinlowgear.com\/staging\/1919\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuckinlowgear.com\/staging\/1919\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuckinlowgear.com\/staging\/1919\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stuckinlowgear.com\/staging\/1919\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2399,"href":"https:\/\/stuckinlowgear.com\/staging\/1919\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions\/2399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuckinlowgear.com\/staging\/1919\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuckinlowgear.com\/staging\/1919\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuckinlowgear.com\/staging\/1919\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuckinlowgear.com\/staging\/1919\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}