Over the years, we’ve worked on hundreds of Land Cruisers with previous modifications. Some of the modifications were done by owners and some were done by shops but they all fall into one of two categories, acceptable and unacceptable. Let’s face it, changing something about a vehicle’s functionality is sort of a risky proposition. Unless you have every modification approved by an engineer, it’s just a guess whether or not your design will even work. Savy do-it-yourselfers with experience and trained professionals usually succeed in these endeavors but sometime modifications fail, it’s part of building things.
We have been building Land Cruisers for a long time, and even though the market keeps things moving, and we like to stay on the cutting edge, I’m confident that we are well past the learning curve on all of the basics of automotive modification and repair. To put it candidly, we’ve “been there and done that”, many many times. It’s all that experience that allows us to look at vehicles and just know what will work and what won’t work more often than not.
I used to want to build all of the Land Cruisers. Now that I’m smarter, I know that that’s not practical. Plus, there is a deep feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment when somebody upgrades or repairs their own vehicle. I want people to experience that. So, I want to help where I can with some of the more common errors committed when building Land Cruisers. In this series of blogs, I’m going to take advantage of opportunities around the shop as they present themselves. Opportunities that highlight the right way…or at least one right way…to perform some of the most common repairs or modifications on Land Cruisers. Eventually my goal is to make this part of Proffitt’s Resurrection Land Cruisers TV, but for now. looks for blogs titled “Proffitt’s Tips and Tricks”.