1980 Toyota Pickup from North America - Comments

To start with, several things were wrong when I bought this car from a farmer's widow in central Texas. The most obvious of these was that the bed was completely rusted out. Well, not completely per se, but about %70 of the bed was gone, and the rest was badly rusted. Inquiring about this, I discovered that it had been sitting in a field for a year, and the bed had filled with rainwater...

This however, did not prevent the truck from being driven. What did was that, upon a test drive, I discovered that it would die every time the engine was allowed to idle. Constant pressure was required on the pedal in order to prevent the engine from shutting off. This turned out to be a twofold problem:

1: The choke was trashed. It just flopped around without actually doing its job, and.

2: The fuel pump was non-functional, having been installed on a circuit that lacked the juice to properly turn it on.

Both of these were relatively easy to fix. The choke simply had a spring mis-aligned, and a new circuit was run for the fuel pump.

The truck ran flawlessly for about a week until it decided to stop turning on at all. This was isolated to the severely corroded battery terminals. after much cleaning of the massively corroded electrical system, she once again ran fine.

As another poster has mentioned, I did have the clutch slave cylinder go bad and need replaced. Simultaneously, the main seal on the engine cracked, spewing oil everywhere. While an annoying breakdown, installation of a new seal was not amazingly difficult. Fault goes to the previous owner for setting the V belt far too tight, which pulled the crankshaft over and loosened the seal.

The next thing to go wrong was the tail lights. this, however, was the fault (as quite a few things have been) of the previous owner, who had wired them incorrectly after the installation of a third-party bumper. Easily fixed by running the correct wires.

The most recent failure was a bit more catastrophic. The bearings on the alternator seized, snapping the V belt and overheating the engine. Replacing said alternator was amazingly simple; it only took me 45 minutes!

Right now, the engine still runs a little rich, and she tends to vibrate between 50 and 65 mph, but, other than that, she's still trucking!

I love this truck! Although it has broken down a few times, the repair has been universally cheap and easy. It really is a dream to work on; it's like working on a toy! I have not yet had anything fail that cost more than $30 to fix, even the alternator was only $27. The most difficult was the main seal, and that only took a few hours.

I cannot be sure how many miles are on it. The tenths place on the odometer turns, but the rest of it has remained the same, despite driving it to school and work every day.

I've gotten about 20 mpg since I bought her, and, should I ever figure out exactly why the engine runs so rich (turning the mixture setting screw has been to no avail thus far), that number should improve.

As someone else said, the engine tops out around 80-85 mph, but it gets there fast. I wouldn't drive it there for long, though, in a four-speed. One can actually see the fuel needle go down.

She handles well, although, with the lack of mass rear of the cabin, care must be taken on sharp turns, as she tends to slide.

Forgot to mention that, as someone else has said, it really is a truck for warm climates. Anything below about 60 degrees Fahrenheit and one will begin to notice a significant performance drop. Mine has never had any difficulty starting, even in freezing temperatures, but, at such a temperature, I have to floor it just to accelerate to forty miles per hour.

The truck didn't outlive me.

I hit a light pole at 35mph, crushing the front end of the truck. My girlfriend and I were in the hospital for two days, myself with a broken nose, and her with over 50 stitches worth of facial lacerations.

The faithful pickup protected us though. The police and ambulance crews took one look at the truck and thought that someone had died. But we were OK.

-Terry; http://obsolete.freeshell.org.