Knowledge, Overland Kit, 80-Series Land Cruiser
Gear For Land Cruiser Camping – Tools
Gear For Land Cruiser Camping – Tools
There are four essentials when camping from your Land Cruiser:
Food, Water, Shelter, AND TOOLS!
Words & photos: Rodney Wills – Like backpacking, food, water, and shelter are three of the four main categories, and in many ways, these all cross into two and four-wheel camping. If you want to semi-deep-dive into those categories, start with my favorite book, “The Complete Walker IV” by However, we will move on to the tools category for this particular article.
Tools – The FSM & Peli’Case
If you are starting your overland adventures in Land Cruising, the most essential collection to assemble will likely be your tool kit (along with your ten essentials for hiking)! From day runs and weekend worriers to week-plus-long remote trips, having your tool kit ready at all times is simply a mindset model of self-sufficiency. The Complete Walker IV will have all your “house on your back” essentials, but with the addition of a mechanical vehicle for transportational purposes, we will want to have tools as “essential kit.”
While the tool kit will consist of a plethora of tools, one item most folks overlook is a factory Toyota Service Manual. In addition to the factory Toyota service manual for your Land Cruiser, we will also discuss recovery gear, the tools themself and how you organize and carry your tools, gear and that paper service manual that is the size of phone book… depending if you old enough remember those and too, if your town was big enough to warrant a 8.5″ X 11″ X 3″ 3.5-pounds of bound paper.
When I purchased my 1992 80-Series Land Cruiser in 2008, I knew nothing about the rig other than it was a Toyota Land Cruiser, much less the difference between my newly acquired 3FE engine and the more sought-after 1FZ-FE engine. Luckily, I was already in the habit of carrying “additional” tools on my adventure motorcycle, as I was deeply entrenched into the ADVrider.com forum, riding solo on many desert excursions. However, the first crucial “tool” I purchased was the 1992 Toyota FJ80 Land Cruiser Factory Service Manual for the newly acquired Land Cruiser.
During my days of participating in SCCA Rally, we were required to carry both tools and a factory service manual, so this is where the habit was formed. Acquiring such manuals is a task, but I visited EBAY and found the FACTORY service manuals, which are more comprehensive than the Haynes or Chilton versions.
But how do you carry such a massive manual in the field? (Older Land Cruisers = not so massive manual) But the point is, before you toss all hope out the window, once you get past the fact that you WILL carry such a thick book in your Land Cruiser, the “how” is relatively easy!
In my rally car, just tossing an 8.5” X 11 “X 1.5” 3.3-lb paperback book in the car is not going to fly… Well, technically, that is exactly what you do NOT want: a 3.3-lb paper object flying around in the vehicle. You want to be able to actually use it when you need it, and missing half the pages is simply not worth the expense of the factory service manual.
Enter my slight obsession with Pelican Case protective cases! Not just for carrying my factory Toyota Land Cruiser service manual but all of my tools as well. And aside from a lot of my camera gear, Pelican cases have been an industry standard for the movie and events industries.
Before I intentionally ” afforded” myself a Pelican case just to carry my service manual, I purchased a Stormproof Case (now owned by Pelican). I put my rally car’s service manual in the box and then strapped the case to the car’s floor.
Now the 2-pound paperweight was secure because the GravelCrew ZX2 was known to fly!
Land Cruiser Specific
Let’s tone it down a bit! Whether you’re overlanding, 4-wheeling, off-roading, adventure crawling, or whatever you want to call it, carrying a factory service manual is simply a good idea. Maybe you have a photographic memory and have already scanned all the pages, or maybe you are “super Land Cruiser certified” and simply do not need a factory service manual to remember the wiring diagram of the fuel cut-off switch. But for the 99.999% of the rest of us, having the Toyota Land Cruiser factory service manual is a good idea.
FJ80 FSM in a plastic bag, into an old laptop computer bag, into a Pelican 1550 case, into ADV80.
Maybe you’re not the most comprehensive wrencher, but most likely, you will find yourself in a situation armed with the service manual, and someone will come along who may be more mechanically inclined. This person will only need the proper instructions on how / what procedure to perform. Or maybe it takes you eight hours to perform a four-hour task, but at least you have proper instructions! There is no such thing as LUCK! It’s called Learning Under Correct Knowledge!
You never know when your 80-Series will fly, so always fly prepared!
GOING IN DEEP – This is the story that GOT ME!
Back on August 25, 2012, Jonathan Hanson of Exploring Overland published “The One-Case Tool Kit, Part 1”
(Link down below for extended reading)
This is the story that GOT ME! It sent me down the “rabbit hole” so many times! And here it is, 10+ years later, and I am still returning to this series of articles! My two big “takeaways” from this 4-part series of posts are “quality tools” and “THE PELICAN CASE.”
And not just any Pelican, but the 1550 Pelican Case! Jonathan states, “I’ve finally wrapped up my project to assemble a comprehensive one-case field tool kit—and I’m really glad I restricted myself to a Pelican 1550.” I took that as my signal to search! I had eBay searches going for days – weeks! Finally – I found five of them all at once – one deal! So I purchased them, one for me and four for my buddy as he built his “98 Jeep ZJ “SHTFV.” They are BRIGHT YELLOW, but the price was RIGHT! Yes, I could have purchased new black ones, but I was-am… “THRIFTY!”
I scrubbed the screen-printed company name off the bright yellow Pelican Case and slapped the company logo for whom I was working for at the time onto my newly acquired 1550! The black Pelican Case is my first Peli’s for my photo gear from the late ’80s to early ’90s.
I shot all the videos while working for Axial (2010-2018). We had some nice camera gear and we filmed in the dirtiest of conditions for authenticity. I secured all of our camera gear in Pelican Cases!
Jonathan Hanson of Exploring Overland published the following articles:
WHAT I REALLY NEED TO DO NEXT
I stayed another week in the UK after attending the 2001 WRC Network Q Rally of Great Britain. I witnessed this WRC Prodrive Rally Tool Kit in action again while servicing the Group-N and Gravel car that Travis Pastrana was training in. Seeing this tool kit in action has forever scared my soft-matter memory hard drive! Twenty-plus years later, I have yet to actually detail out my tool kit as such! I need some Anti-Procrastination! But I simply love how the UK motorsport rally team carries/transports tools!