welcome to wacky Wednesday's where everyone has a chance to show off their
car mods and here's this week's winner, good afternoon on this thundery
afternoon in the Philippines today I want to celebrate the birthday of this
old car our hoopty 1999 Toyota FX
1.8 GLX just really want to give you a brief history first the story starts
over 40 years ago in Indonesia Toyota Indonesia developed a car that started a
phenomenon in the whole of Southeast Asia they invented essentially what we
call now the a UV everybody's heard of SUVs well this is an AUV an asian
utility vehicle Toyota Indonesia introduced a car called the Kijang or
Kai yang I make no apologies for my complete lack of Indonesian anyways
indonesian word meaning small deer and the idea being it was a great big
monstrous rectangular square-edged brutal thing here's one I'll show you
now that was in 1977 and 40 years later in 2019 people still love their a V's
Mitsubishi have been making the adventure for many many years to my
Susan's been making Highlanders and sport Evo's all essentially the same
thing rugged no-nonsense vehicles with a
massive carrying capacity durable bodywork and chassis rear-wheel drive
choice of diesel or gasoline massive seating capacity I mean this one you can
seat 10 legally and comfortably and how a ground clearance very important to
Southeast Asian roads anybody who's been to Cambodia will vouch for me and the
Philippines well frankly some of the roads here are atrocious and you need
that ground clearance and helps with flooding too in the
Philippines the car was marketed as the Toyota
tammer al FX and this is the fourth generation of the tamara and on the
badge even there it says Toyota tomorrow FX ray Roy this is the first of the rave
oohs but still it has the little Tamara I'll head that tomorrow is a small water
buffalo in the Philippines we have the carrabelle which is the big version and
that's the national animal but the Tama L is just like a mini-me that I love
that badge this kind of like a little bit of history albeit quite recent and
you know what it's the same platform as the indestructible Hilux the 6th
generation Hilux anybody who's a top gear fan but from the clarkson May and
Hammond era will remember hopefully that wonderful wonderful series they did
trying to destroy a Hilux they dropped it off a mountain they dropped it off a
building they burned it they crushed it with a wrecking ball and still guess
what it ran the reason it ran quite simply those days the 80s and 90s
they were very much the Golden Age of Toyota that company then was spending a
fortune of its yearly budget just on quality control and it paid off
they've been subsequent revisions to the model line over the years they started
putting clad on the wheel arches along the bottom of the doors and
on the rear bumpers front bumpers overall adding weight didn't do anything
for the car it was just like a revamping looks but also had the problem that it
hides where rust might start so you get rust so I prefer this clean look even
though it's a little bit more dated but I preferred it's more efficient it's
tougher here on the rear lights alright this is additional garnish that the Sun
previous owner put on it's just I think it's plastic but anyway and they added
another fake bit of lighting here and it really is it's just a stick-on unit that
looks like lighting but is not it's just fake and it doesn't light up
it doesn't illuminate just we're at the back let's start at the back got a
reversing mirror very useful you don't need a camera this shows you the
distance between the things you're about to hit rear wash wipe strong steel
bumpers these are extras obviously that someone's put on the rear step and this
is all steel there's no plastic or at this trim is plastic but this is steel
how many cars these days can you tap and actually find steel got the original mag
allows they're very strong very durable they're not gonna go out of true very
fast and 20 years on we still get no leakage from the tubeless tires side
steps have been added by a previous owner personally I don't like them they
just reduced ground clearance minimally I'd rather not have them and
it may take them off at some point we've got rear drums front discs when I bought
the car in October six months ago the pads look new the Rif shoes look new
because we've been over this car we wanted to know what we were getting at
the front here I think that's quite a handsome front and you think what's that
gap at the bottom I'm gonna get a bit of a mesh grille stuck in there and some
people say oh no fog lights the later models have fog lights built into the
bumper this one's got fog lights look here that's the headlight
that's a fog light both sides so it has got fog lights they're just built in and
again solid steel factory fitted roof rails rain gutters fitted
power mirrors have got a fuse box here and there's the bonnet release just on
the left side of the steering column this is the heart of the beast he's
looking very mucky actually very dusty that we're coming to the end of the
Philippines summer and anybody who knows the Philippines knows how dusty it can
be this is the heart of the matter 7ke engine east anding for electronic
fuel injection which you can see here obviously and the 7k is the series of
motor all of the k engines were cast iron blocks and aluminium heads all of
them were non cross-flow engines so that means obviously here we've got the inlet
only exhaust on the same side very basic no overhead camshaft
it's push rod operated with hydraulic lifters so it's pretty much self
adjusting it's a 2 valve engine with a very long stroke and you know what
obviously that gives very very good talk performance it's not built for high revs
because of the long stroke it's really designed for plugging away
uphill up mountains through floods carrying as many people and as much
stuff as possible that's the beauty of the 7ke engine and this engine has been
around since 1983 produced these 108 foot-pounds of torque at 3200 RPM and 83
horsepower at 4600 now i sell them take this car up to over 4,000 rpm I'm
just cruising along using the torque maximizing fuel economy it's very basic
there's plenty of space to work is very simple we've got sir versus brakes big
air filter needs it here and clutch master cylinder we replaced and the
clutch slave cylinder we replaced and apart from that 160 something thousand
kilometers 20 years that's pretty damn good going I think you'll have to agree
I love this car it's an incredible car it's so strong is
so durable and I know it'll outlive me now
to the inside this is the cockpit area you see the
only additions I put in is a cup holder and a vape holder Toyota security system
there's an electronic clock up there aircon controls it's all very very basic
and very simple that's a non factory CD unit which someone's put in we very
rarely use it we like to talk and stuff hazard warning lights here here we've
got power mirrors controls fog lights which I mentioned earlier the front fogs
even a cigarette lighter that's a sign of the times isn't it
the steering isn't adjustable the seats aren't adjustable for height but they do
tilt they do recline and they do slide one hundred and sixty four thousand five
hundred and five kilometers she's doing great
sorry he's doing great absolutely great on the left here very basic we've got a
fly a dead fly Auto drop on the front window so it just drops when you click
it all the way down controls for all four windows stop the kids playing with
the windows at the back and central locking the remote control works here to
the left of the driver we've got the fuel flap release and by the way before
I go on everything in this car still works the back seats three at the front
three in the middle four in the back but we'll show you that in a moment we've
got four three-point harnesses safety belts and two lap belt belts one in the
middle each row but plenty of legroom plenty of room and the second row seats
slide and recline and fold up power windows on all the side windows and
another sign of the time ashtray with a flower seating for four
in the back one two three four these seats obviously you can see they lift up
the back the middle rope tilts forward all the way so you have a flatbed all
the way through I'll just tilt the smaller side to show you this is the
winder to release the spare wheel but you can see look what
a little bit that is I know people have carried wave scooters Honda Wave
scooters in the backs of these because you've also got the height plus you've
got the wonderful dual aircon aircon at the front and aircon at the back and it
all still works we can make this car like a 20 year old refrigerator flipping
nerveless it's got six speakers stereo from the factory I mean it's all just so
easy to fix and easy to use it's an absolute joy now this car I bought it
because I'm not rich yeah I know if a lot of rich people
would buy a new car and they'd get better mileage better economy more
performance more speed more probably better handling but there's a price to
pay if you're buying say say a brand new a Mitsubishi Montero Sport it's probably
going to be okay for the first two or three years but after that all that
technology starts to break plus it's just much lighter built modern cars are
built to light for performance and for economy this thing's solid it's not
built for economy or performance it's built to last
and that it's what makes it special it's going to outlive me I don't think that's
probably too much of a challenge but it will help lift me and and that's one of
the reasons I love it my two hundred and five thousand pesos in October has been
an investment I think is sensible most of the time if you buy a vehicle you
know you're gonna lose a load of money will lose nothing on this provided we
keep maintaining it we keep fixing it it runs on a 40 weight mineral oil which
is perfectly adequate for this machine modern engines they need a much lighter
oil the engines are so much more complicated but this
last forever seriously it'll last forever and when you work out miles per
gallon and economy don't forget running a car is more than
miles per gallon or kilometers per liter running a car is about losing your
capital investment the cost of repairing it when it goes wrong and multi words
half of these modern cars on the road today even Toyotas because unfortunately
Toyota's Golden Age is over and they spend much much less on QC quality
control these days a friend of mine has a Corolla Altis with variable valve
control but it's not just that his dual variable valve control very complex and
you look at some of the Ford pickups high-performance
high-performance good economy massive power diesel engines running at high rpm
running under great stress to produce this performance they are going to wear
out quicker this is the way to go with motoring if you're not a millionaire
this is the way to go promise Plus environmentally friendly it
is people say how can it be as an old car well we're not building a new one
any idea how much energy that takes to build a new vehicle in the world today
how many valuable resources it consumes to make it's not just a headline figures
like fuel economy and carbon emissions me I love this car I love the fact that
it's made of metal I love the fact that it starts every time that everything
still works and it just never feels like it's gonna let me down we took it on a
very long road trip four and a half days we did nearly 1,400 kilometers it was
really hard going there was traffic there was city but mostly open roads
hills and mountains volcanoes it was amazing
this old car apart from the aircon being extremely cool when we needed it and
apart from the fact that it was durable and spacious and had enough room to
carry all of our stuff without any discomfort to us it also
managed to return 12 and a half kilometers per liter on the trip overall
now that I find astonishing that is incredibly good for a heavy steel
thumper of a car it's big it's heavy and it's gasoline twelve and a half
kilometers per litre that is incredibly good generally speaking expect somewhere
between nine and eleven if you're mixed driving think if you're stop start and
driving crazy or rather trying to drive crazy you're gonna get a lot less maybe
seven or eight but that's not the point of this car this car is an a UV and
never forget that an Asian utility vehicle no okay we're only doing 50
kilometers an hour our dear great streets I've just slipped up into fifth
gear Top Gear
and we're running it under 2,000 rpm it's a very very relaxed engine there's
an ideal test for us in the middle of a rainstorm heavy rain strong bit of
flooding on the road it's no bother for us even the D mist function is working
flawlessly flawlessly after all this time the handling despite its weight is
actually pretty reasonable there's no sports car but what to expect
it's tall and can carry 10 people but even when it's full is still performs
and the fuel consumption really doesn't change much so I'm telling you if you've
got a limited budget and you've got people to carry you really couldn't go
far wrong with this we live in this world of built-in obsolescence so modern
cars their built-in obsolescence is really a key factor in profitability for
the motor corporations for this old car this was built with a completely
different mindset
I think sums up what I have to say about my old
ready
god bless well that was this week's video and to
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