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Nightwolve · 18-08-2015, 02:08 AM

So, the first modification took place in october of 2013:
The first thing to do was to get some new suspension and tires. Since I live in the alps, it can happen to have snowy and icey conditions on the road at about 6 Months a year. I chose some 265/70 R17 Cooper winter tires, which are a bit bigger then the stock tires and offer quite good all-terrain and excellent winter grip. The lift comes as a kit of eibach springs and HT-shocks, which offeres a lift of about 35mm at the front and 25mm at the rear. It replaces the front strut and springs, and the rear shocks. The shock control was deactivated and the Airbags got lifted by tweaking the sensor-brackets.

I really like the new suspension. It drives much more directly, safer and stiffer on the road, and gives some additional load, clearance and articulation for the car. It's a bit harder than an OME-Kit with middle-springs and sport shocks. And the "hanging nose" is gone

Everything got fitted (and made street-legal) by some southern Germany Toyota 4x4-specialist...Offroad Nestle. Here's what the Cruiser looked like after picking it up at Nestle:

Stay tuned for more^^

Ozpat · 18-08-2015, 10:22 AM

G'day Sven. Great start on the Prado but you'll never be satisfied with what you've done so there's nothing for it but to move to Oz where the sky's the limit on your mods. Keep 'em coming.

mjrandom · 18-08-2015, 01:32 PM

Welcome Sven! Breathers are important and easy to fit so you should do them. Do offroad Nestle also do coffee?

Always happy to read about a Prado especially foreign (to us) ones.

Hazza · 18-08-2015, 08:45 PM

Hi Sven,

Always great to hear and see a new build especially OS. There are so may mods you can do to enhance your ride and all these ideas have been posted by so many enthusiast on PP.

I would love to see some photos of the factory dual battery system.

Hazza

Nightwolve · 19-08-2015, 02:30 AM

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome!

Originally posted by mjrandom View Post

Welcome Sven! Breathers are important and easy to fit so you should do them. Do offroad Nestle also do coffee?

Always happy to read about a Prado especially foreign (to us) ones.

Haha no they don't make any coffee, only for the little talks about Toyotas and their mods

http://offroad-nestle.de/de/nestle/

Yes the breathers are a ToDo, because it's cheap and relatively easy to do...and quite important when you want to cross creeks and water.

Originally posted by Hazza View Post

Hi Sven,

Always great to hear and see a new build especially OS. There are so may mods you can do to enhance your ride and all these ideas have been posted by so many enthusiast on PP.

I would love to see some photos of the factory dual battery system.

Hazza

Yes that's why I love PP, I've been reading in here for a long time, longer then a own my Cruiser

You can see the dual batteries a bit on one of the following photos...but I'll have a look if i can find or take some better photos of it. The batteries are placed behind the headlights on both sides.

So some description and pics for the next step that followed - the Vision-X driving lights.

Since the front of the Prado is quite useless for putting some lights on (plastic bumper, no steel directly under it, up-swinging grill when opening the hood), and the fact that steel and alloy bullbars are forbidden in Germany since 2005 (due to "pedestrian protection in case of accidents"), I had to make some toughts to get more light at the front. A possibility for getting an ARB or TJM Bullbar street legal is to install a winch - but I did not want to...and even then, any nice hoops or bars on top of it/in front of the grill are forbidden. I do not like Bullbars without bars on it

So i decided to get some lightweight and street legal LED lights up to 170mms, with enough power for nice night onroad driving.

And here they are: The Vision-X light cannon in about 130mm size and 25W power. I constructed some mounts for them, which are directly bolted to the chassis in front of the cooler. Then i modded the standard brackets of the Cannons, so they can flip to the front when opening the hood easily.

See the surprising output of these little spotties in the next post...

Nightwolve · 19-08-2015, 02:45 AM

So here are some beamshots and pics of the Light Cannons:

Normal Prado light:

Prado driving lights+Vision-X Light Cannons:

Glow-in-the-dark-signs on the snap-on covers:

And some random pics of them I took (can also be seen in the vision-x europe offroad catalogue, they asked to use some

):

Nightwolve · 24-03-2016, 04:15 AM

Gday all,

long time no writing in here. Since I put my new summer tires on yesterday, I thought i could update my Thread a bit.

So first the most current update:

Goodyear Duratracs in 265/70 R17.

Check for one of my bullets in the mod list (the AT-tires)!

First thinkings after about 150kms:
Great tire onroad, low noise (drove 120km/h max so far) and good grip/stability. Even on wet bitumen, it works very good. I like them very much.
This night the forecast says something about snow - let's see how the tires will handle that

An offroad-test has to be done soon - I'm really looking forward to that.

By the way...a TJM Airtec snorkel is lying around here, waiting for installation...and some TJM sidesteps are on their way in a container from Australia to Germany!!!

Stay tuned for pics!
And in the next few weeks, the Pioneer Platform and Foxwing will get back onto the Prado...I dismounted them for winter, due to the ugly salt on the streets.

Regards
Sven

chappy · 12-05-2016, 12:24 PM

She's coming along nicely mate.

Stewie1964 · 12-05-2016, 01:27 PM

Sven

Looking good mate

Regards
Stewie

Nightwolve · 09-06-2016, 06:07 PM

Thanks guys

Sorry for the late reply, I was on holiday for 3 weeks

So now, as mentioned before, I want to show a pic of my Prado with the all new
TJM Airtec Snorkel
It got fitted a few days before we startet our journey to sweden/danmark/northern germany.

The snorkel was fitted by my toyota-garage, since I did not find any time due to preparing the trip. They did a very good job. So first, the template for the holes was very good and easy to align properly - good job TJM.

The Holes in the fender (12mm and 111mm) where done with step-drill and holesaw, which I brought myself. The holes where made rust-proof with wuerth anti-rust-primer and some layers of paint. Additionally, the complete inner side of the fender and all holes got freshly protected with anti-corrosion-grease. That's all very important in southern germany, due to the hard winters and a lot of salt on the streets, against icey roads. This salt completely kills every kind of unproper protected metal within months, even faster than ocean-water.

The two holes in the bracket for the A-Pillar got drilled up to 5mm and sunk. Why that?
I did not want to use the strange metal-screws for fixing the snorkel to the A-Pillar, cause the screws did not seem to be very strong and long lasting, and propable rust issues again... So we used two stainless rivet nuts in the A-Pillar (7mm), and stainless M5-countersunk-screws, loctite and much of anti-corrosion-stuff for finally fixing the upper bracket to the A-Pillar. This solution seems to be very strong and long lasting.

Finally, the snorkel got neutral-silicone-sealed to make it waterproof, and some 3M-sealing-tape was put on the back side of the snorkel, to make it fit even better. That's not necessary in my opinion, but they did it :lol:

And tadaaaaaa, that's what it looks like on my prado (holiday shot with RTT):

(Additional Photos will follow)

My impressions after about 4.500kms with the snorkel: Low to nearly no additional wind noise (did not go faster then 130km/h), slightly better engine-sound (turbo...raaawrrr

), fuel consumption seems to be nearly unchanged. The quality of the snorkel seems to be perfect, same for the fitting. Even after driving in very very heavy rain in a recent violent storm, the air-filter was absolutely dry.
So the Airtec-snorkel seems to be a good purchase, I'm happy with it - and my girlfriend loves the wistle of the turbo, too

Nightwolve · 05-07-2016, 06:33 AM

Hey guys and gals,

as mentioned, I want to bring some pics of the most current mods on my Prado.

Let's start with the snorkel. I gave already a little description of my fitting of the A-pillar-bracket.
Here's a little pic of the countersunk screws and the stainless rivets.

Next, we have some pics of my
tablet mount for navigation
Although my Prado came with a factory navigation system, I needed some extra navigation for offroad and prepared gpx-tracks in general. So I'm using a Medion 7'' Tablet with Locus Maps for Android. A combination which works great so far.
But how to fit the tablet in the cockpit? I did not want to stick this fat brick to my windshield, so I searched for other solutions. And here it is, found at RAM Mount USA:

It's a no-drill universal mount, which fits (more or less in case of the 120) in the rails of the passengers seat. It consists of a steel basement, where an plastic covered, adaptable alloy-tube is inserted and bolted in. I spaced the front screw of the seat rail a bit and bolted the RAM-Mount with a longer M10 1.25 screw. To get a tidy look, i modded the plastic cover of the rail, so that the basement of the tablet mount fits under it.

The 7'' tablet gets grabbed in a so called "x-grip" holder, which gets fixed to the top of the alloy-tube. It has spring loaded rubber fingers and is adjustable in ervery direction via a rubber ball joint.

Both items are made by RAM-Mount USA.
That's how it looks like in the cockpit.

If you're interested, I will search and post the part-numbers.
EDIT: Here they are:
Universal no-drill mount RAM-B-316-1-238U
Universal X-Grip 7'' tablet cradle RAM-HOL-UN8BU

Cheers
Sven

Nightwolve · 05-07-2016, 06:59 AM

Hey folks,

the most current step (haha) was to fit my all new TJM modular side steps onto my Prado.

First impressions: Big and heavy! Seems to be good quality. The mounting kit is very easy to understand. The sliders bolt directly in the chassis in the back, and grab around the chassis rail in the front.

Installing the steps is quite easy, however when you're alone a bit hard due to the heavy weight of them - holding and bolting at the same time is not that easy. TJM recommends two persons for that, I did it alone. It took about 3 hours to fit them, including dismounting the OEM-toyota-sidesteps and a short check of the chassis area where the new steps get mounted.

So now, let's show some pics:

What is nice about the steps:
The shape of the steps fits the Body of the Prado perfectly, and the quality of the steps and the mounting kit is very good. Just the wire-screws, that have to be put into the chassis rail at 3 points are a bit unhandy, but I think necessary.
The Clearance between front and rear wheel gets bigger, I think by about 6cm.
The wider design of the steps is useful for putting things on the roof-rack, I like that.
Overall, it seems to be securing the sides of the Prado much better than the OEM steps.

What I think could be better:
The steps could be a little (about 2cm, see gap at the first pic in the next post) closer to the body. That would fit better, and the steps wouldn't look thaaaaat wide as they do. The shape of the steps and the plate would be already correct for that, but the arms of the brackets are a bit too long. On the other hand, this gives the rails room for deformation, in case of heavy contact or accidents, without touching the body of the car immediately.
Due to the plus in height, my girlfriend though has now some issues getting into the Prado (she's only 1,53m tall), she's not really amused about that :-/

See some pics of the finished project "TJM side steps" in the next post...