stayingretired

I can clean up my original tail lights if someone is interested. They will accept LED bulbs. Please message me if interested. I also have a variety of interior parts I am removing as I am insulating the interior also and the original blinds, lights, etc. will be removed.

Tried searching for information related to winter insulation for four season use. Got really frustrated by the search function. Tried the Boolean method following the suggestion in the search box and got every single post which used the word AND as a result. I think more people would search if we knew the secrets of the search engine. Alternatively, upgrade the search engine with more functionality such as a "must have" keywords field and a "without these" keywords field. I don't want every post using the word "insulation" for example, but if it has the words "insulation " and "winter" it narrows down the 1600+ results. A suggestion.

If you are going to drive as far as Panama, be advised that the roads between Mexico and Costa Rica are dicey at best. Lots of folks make it as far as Panama and rebuild their entire suspension. THe good news is that labor is relatively cheap and lots of people know how to work on old Toyotas. Parts would have to be all new, of course. Additionally, there are few emissions requirements (if any), so if you wanted an 'illegal' modification to your 'Yota, you could find someone to do it for you. If you have the fantasy of selling your ride once you make it to your destination, be sure that you export your vehicle from USA or Canada (wherever you are) with all of the Customs documents so you can import it to the country you want to sell it. Lots of people drive as far as Panama, are tired of traveling and try to just sign over title to the vehicle, which is a no-no.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone did the rear differential upgrade to 4.88 gears in the V6

Dead link.

I moved into the Yotabago as an emergency solution and discovered that the front window has developed a minor river at highway speeds, nevermind that it is June and I am clearing snow and ice from the windscreen. This will be a Rest Area when-nobody-is-looking fix. Will try to find butyl tape at Home Despot. Am open to community suggestions.

As the history of transmission service is unknown, it might be a good idea to take it to a reputable automatic transmission servicer (e.g. a specialty automatic transmission shop) and get a transmission flush. Like most of our sensors, they can get gummed up over time and, if it sat for 20+ years with the original transmission fluid (29K is very low to flush, not just replace, but flush) the transmission on a daily driver might need to be flushed and the sensor checked at a shop familiar with this sort of thing. Over time, all fluids change and, even though you changed the fluid, there's no guarantee that there isn't a glob of goo stuck to your temperature sensor. My experience has been that they will look it over while they are in there, since you are giving them money already.

There are 12V LED strips available on fleabay for under $3/each. My one replacement lens cost me upwards of $8. Unless you are doing high-end photography or have specific issues besides not tripping over stuff, you may wish to replace the lamps themselves and get one 'nice' full-spectrum incandescent 12V lamp for reading. Unless you want to spend money, in which case I will sell you all of mine at a really good price.

The OP indicated that they were aware of ventilation issues. Article on RVgeeks referenced need to vent battery area. AGM batteries vent hydrogen, not hydrogen sulfide (toxic to mammals).

There's no requirement to vent AGM batteries. The wet batteries need to be vented, but the AGM system is completely sealed, so there's nothing to vent and, likewise, no danger of it venting toxic gasses to the interior. You should put some thought into preventing your system from overcharging the batteries, which might cause a release of energy in the form of a small explosion (hence the need to vent the more volatile lead-acid 'wet' battery type.)

My 92 Warrior has an additional 2 batteries installed in the void under the bench seat (over the existing battery). I won't look at amperage until the sun returns and the rain goes away. Okay, I have three Trojan 27TMS 12V 87Ah Flooded Deep Cycle Marine batteries. I got them bone dry from the PO, so my guess is that they're still pretty sulfated. Getting the Battery Jesus to resurrect them is on my To-Do list. I don't run anything more than LED lights, the water pump from time to time and the stock ventilation fan, but it won't run the fan all night, so my guess is that they're on life support with the 2- 100W solar panels.

Converting to 4WD from 2WD involves adding a transfer case, totally replacing your suspension (okay, maybe only 99% needs replaced/upgraded; I'm guessing at some of this) and adding drive train components to the front end. Most 4x4 vehicles are built to higher specifications, so you will be replacing perfectly good parts with identical-looking parts that are tougher. If you are not passionate about auto mechanics, you will hate it. I have seen such ambitious projects wreck marriages. Maineah has the right idea. Budget in the upper thousands. If you are still considering it, there are lots of Toyota forums for gear-heads who do this kind of thing for fun. It would be easier to find a Tacoma 4x4 and transfer the camper box over to it, or custom build a camper from scratch. (I'd build it from scratch.)

I had the best luck on fleabay. While my measurements did not match perfectly, I was able to pop them in. The lens has no marking, but the lamp itself may. Try there perhaps? It looks similar to the listings for Progressive Dynamics lens here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Progressive-Dynamics-Replacement-Lens-for-Single-Interior-Dome-Light-for-RV/392068683484?epid=1522687819&hash=item5b491d56dc:g:kAgAAOSweW5VYjea ...which is too big at 5x5 inches. I found the make/model on the body of the lamp itself and searched for that one in particular.

The difference is that we, the consumers, are paying for this idiocy. Mr. Nissan would probably have been willing to reach a compromise directing car buyers to the Nissan Motors website before the ugliness began. I know most people don't read legal filings. In this instance, the lawyers seem to have been instructed to win at all costs and, when they lost, instructed to destroy Mr. Nissan's computer business out of pure spite. How many MBAs does it take to make a rich playground bully? The Chinese, on the other hand, have figured out that one does not compete directly. Instead, they tempt their competitors with deals 'too good to be true' and, once they have figured out their competitor, simply outperform them. In the 1980s, There was one Japanese pickup truck in Latin America. It went by various names- Toyota, Nissan, Datsun, Mazda, Mitsubishi, etc. The parts are interchangeable. The trucks are virtually indestructible. The Japanese don't do this anymore, but follow the American business model of 'engineered obsolescence', a term coined in the 1950s. They are designed to last a certain period of time (engine-hours, for example) and then break. Today, the Chinese appear to be following a similar strategy. A passenger bus made by Great Wall is indistinguishable from a passenger bus made by Mercedes. They even have the same engine. Even the seats are interchangeable. And the Germans, with all of their social taxes and expensive pensions cannot compete against the Chinese on price, since the Chinese have eliminated the "Iron Rice Bowl' social safety net which the West (including Japan) seems to be adopting. I'm not a banner-waving, protest-marching, sign-carrying activist shouting at the top of my lungs. I'm a quiet activist: I vote with my wallet. In business, that's how you hurt someone. You attack their bottom line. What you do is up to you. (For the record, I avoid most brand-name products because they're mostly marketing machines. Dish soap is dish soap. Most cereals are the same; you pay more for the brand name most of the time. Besides, high fructose corn syrup is toxic - why am I drinking parts cleaner mixed with rum again?) Coca-cola is great for cleaning rusted, corroded greasy engine parts. Works good on laundry, too. The generic brand is just as good, but cheaper.) We have lots of choices these days. I was chased into a parking lot in Rapid City, South Dakota by a woman who informed me that I was the only other Winnebago Warrior owner in a one hundred mile radius. She wanted to see if I had upgraded the interior. (I was in town to have the head gasket recall performed.) Nice lady, if a little unconventional. For the price, buying an older vehicle and restoring it is less costly than buying new. There are simpler systems, fewer sensors to go bad, more room for adding modifications to increase performance under the hood and so on. With advances in materials technology, a lot of the heavy plywood (or pressboard) could be replaced with carbon-fiber or engineered metals and plastics. Smaller, more efficient air conditioners can be installed. Curtains can be replaced with solar panels (or the windows eliminated altogether.) Flexsteel couches weigh a ton! We can replace the oven and microwave with a convection oven for less weight and less space! Why won't we change? If you really want more performance out of your Yotahome, pull the engine and blueprint it- that's replacing all of the parts so that it is built to the original engineering specification. Or, you can have the cylinders bored out and custom pistons installed. While you're at it, have the racing shop (because that is the only place where you can get this kind of custom building done) install a high-performance camshaft. There are small superchargers available if you are creative (and have the space under the hood that a 22R-series engine has, unlike the 6-cylinder versions.) The same can be done with your transmission/ drive train. (We can't go fast because the gearing is for top highway speed, which was about 55MPH back then.) Of course, it will all cost money, but so will a new one. A new Chinese motorhome will run about $42,000USD at current exchange rates (assuming a model described in the linked article above would be allowed into the US market). Let's pretend that you have $20K into your rig already. What could you do to it for an extra $20,000? A motorhome built on a Sprinter van chassis (Mercedes Diesel with automatic transmission) with over 200K miles was for sale last year for over $50K. You could buy the same used cargo van for about $10K-15K in US Dollars. Customize it all you want, but it will never be the same as a little Toyota motorhome; not even close. Let's face it - We're in the same category as the classic car enthusiasts. We are driving a relic from an earlier era, when Evil was Communist in nature and we were embarking on a voyage into a bright new future of peace and prosperity. Today, you can get faster and shiny-new, but you will be driving something more like a spacecraft than a motorhome, with all of the tire sensors, collision-avoidance radar and whatnot. Fuel economy still sucks, but we are traveling in time machines that remind us when life seemed simpler, safer and saner.

The marker lights I got from Amazoom work fine, but will not mount flush unless I want to move the mounting holes (which I did not want to do) so be prepared for filling fiberglass to accommodate smaller mounting screws (less room in LEDs for bigger screws used in incandescent lamps) and possibly using silicone caulk for filling up the space left between the lamp and the camper body for the wires that you can't fit back into the camper body. In the top corner on one side (or the other) may be a rat's nest where the marker lamps connect their wire to the wire that goes down to the power source - leaving four wires to run through your two connectors on your lamp. In the end I used some rather flimsy-looking drywall anchors which I epoxied into the holes. I got them at Ace hardware in gauge six. Other brands were much larger diameter and I didn't want to drill away that much fiberglass just to mount marker lights. There is a rectangular cutout for the wiring in the fiberglass camper body. Mine measures about 2 inches by six inches. Did the swap last month. Between the rain and the wind, what had started as maybe being a photo-essay tutorial turned into a grind. A fun time was not had by all. The white 'wedge thing' is a spacer and detaches from the Bargman lights. If you order black lights, you will either need to mount them to the white spacer/ base or paint the base. The mounting screws go through the Bargman light assembly, through the white spacer and attach to the camper body. Be careful not to strip out the screws or their holes, as they may be screwed into plywood behind the camper body exterior. The coloured lenses are screwed in separately to the lamp assembly and should not require your attention for many years, if ever. The light assembly is available on Amazoom and Fleabay. I ordered mine from eTrailer and was disappointed in the shipping time and lack of overall customer service; for a few dollars more it would be wise to order them from elsewhere. There are instructional videos on the eTrailer site if you are unfamiliar with DC wiring, but it is not incredibly complicated. If you are using Bargman lights, there are difficult-to-read guides on the back of the lamp assembly explaining which wires connect to which lamp... On my Warrior the ground was Green and the power was Purple. Your wiring may vary. It is easier to swap out one wire at a time and test each connection along the way. Good project for a youngster to help you with as they can turn the lights on and off and press the brake, etc. without drinking all of your expensive craft beer. The white base/ spacer will need to be sealed against leakage. I needed to scrape away the existing clear silicone with a razor blade and buff it with a nonabrasive pad and some window cleaner to get it clean enough for fresh silicone. The previous screws had rusted and the heads crumbled under the force of the screwdriver tip, so what appeared to be a quick one hour project turned into half of the day. The previous repair guru also used four different bit types (#2 flat, a star-tip security bit, #1 square and #2Phillips) which helped reduce the monotony of quickly removing each screw one after another.I've learned to approach small projects as if they are big projects and so on. Best wishes.