Hi all! I joined here back in 2010 mainly because I was on the hunt for a clean old yota. I found one soon after joining up and sort of fell off the map here for a long time. I'd drop in time to time and read threads and such but never really said much. Well, over the course of my five years with my '83 hilux my toyota obsession grew with each passing mile. But I really couldn't really bring myself to mod my truck as it is too damn original. Then an interesting opportunity came my way.... I was working for one of the auto parts chain stores and always had my '83 parked around back. All of the regular customers knew who's ride it was. I had one customer with a '76 yota that I would help whenever he came in. I also really liked his truck so it was fun. One day he came in and said he was getting fed up with it giving him trouble all the time. Without thinking I blurted out, "Hell, I'll buy it then!" He said no initially but a few weeks later I got the call to come and buy it dead parked at the grocery store. A call to AAA to and $350 later I was the proud owner of the truck. It is way rough but I think thats what drew me to it. I've been working on it ever since and it is almost ready for the road. I still have a lot planned. I'll post up a build thread here soon. Now i'm all in, I want to join the toyotaminis for real this time.
And here I was trying to think of a nice way to say it... Yes, Welcome. And can you tell us what the PO did with the grille?
Yeah nice grille right? The PO must've crashed it at some point and rather than finding a replacement decided to make his own "custom grille" Flat steel with painted on grille bars and headlight "bezels" I've seen the truck in town for years and that was on it as far back as I can remember. I picked up a stock grille that was a bit cracked off of ebay for a few bucks. I'll put the custom grille on the shop wall as a memento.
I think the fact that they took the time to paint white trim stripes onto that is far more shameful than anything else about it. They were just doubling down on poor decisions.