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Hi,
First things first.Merry Xmas to everyone and hopefully a prosperous new year,
This is my story of how I caught the "Surf" bug,
It all started 6 years ago,I was working for a friend of mine who owned a Haulage\Skip hire Business and I would maintain and repair a fleet of Scanias,Dafs,Volvo plus numerous bits of plant,I had a company Transit van for a couple of years then out of the blue he got me a MK4 Toyota Hilux Double Cab 2.4TD GX in white on a W plate,This was my first taste of a Toyota 4X4 and I was hooked,I used it every day for a couple of years and loved its simplicity,reliability etc,then hard times came to the Waste\Haulage industry and my boss decided to sell all the lorries\plant which put me out of work but before I left he gave me the hilux to keep,fast forward another year and I bumped into him at a friends farm where he asked if I wanted to sell the pickup,at that time I had no need for it as My wife and I also shared a car,Sold him back his own pickup for an agreed £2000 and regretted it ever since !!
He lives in a remote part of Kent and in the snow its his only transport,has never let him down,I still borrow it now and then,I had it for a few months in the summer and installed a new clutch,blanked off the EGR valve and replaced a couple of missing exhaust manifold studs,the problem is every time i borrowed it I didn't want to give it back so I started looking on ebay in Auto Trader etc to find a MK4 Pickup not realizing that for around £3000 all you will buy is piles of crap,ex builders trucks with dented panels,ripped interiors and then the dreaded VAT on some of them,That's when Surfs caught my eye,I had often noticed the ads for them and thinking you get a lot of 4X4 for your money,so I did my research and came to the conclusion that the model I wanted\Could afford would be a Gen 2 3.0 TD SSR-X,I steered clear of the 2.4 version not because of the head problems but because the 2.4 is in the MK4 pickup and found it sometimes struggled pulling up hills,Anyway after a week of searching Autotrader,Ebay ads I came across a 94 "M" reg Gen 2 3.0TD SSR-X in Dark Metallic Blue 88000 miles in Mint condition Inside,Outside,Underneath everywhere,The guy I bought it from had done all the hard for me because he spent 2 months trying to find an un abused,never towed or been off road specimen and lucky for me he found this one,This was June 2010 ,first thing he did was fit a new Heavy duty Transmission cooler,Heavy duty "Roughtrax" rear springs and a new tow bar with dual electrics as he intended to use the Surf to tow a caravan to Wales,In July 2010 had new Rad,Cambelt and Tensioner,Full Service,Oils,Filters etc,Fast forward a few months and a Bereavement in his family meant he had to sell the Surf without even using it to tow the caravan,I bought it and travelled from Kent to Birmingham by train to collect it,I drove it back via M6 M40 M25 approx 140 mile, Putting £50 Derv into an almost empty tank for my return journey I thought it was more than enough fuel and I thought I would still have over 1/4 tank left time I got home,well how wrong was I !!!It probably didn't help that I did most of the journey at 80 mph but the Surf was so smooth and quiet to drive that it was only when I looked at the rev counter I realized I was pushing the Surf a bit hard then with 50 miles to go I noticed the fuel gauge was getting close to the 1/4 mark and thought I was not going to make it home without another fuel
stop,backed off the speed for the final run home on the M25 and got home with about an 1/8th of a tank left,Not a happy bunny,was expecting similar fuel consumption as the 2.4 TD pickup,left it on my drive for a week and hated the sight of it when ever I looked out of the window at it, just as I was about to put it up for sale a miracle happened !! it snowed that's when it all made sense,The Surf and snow are a marriage made in heaven,I have had no end of fun these last 2\3 weeks looking for any excuse just to take the Surf out and play one day the snow was so heavy I was the only vehicle that could get out of the road I live in,So back in love with my Surf I decided that fixing the excessive fuel consumption was first on the list,Starting with the EGR valve the p[revious owner had cable tied the vaccum pipe which is all well and good if the EGR is in the closed position but I suspect the later is true with my one but still have not been able to blank it off due to the weather then thursday last week I was looking on Formula 4 website at the accesories they have for my Surf and noticed the "Tunit" Chip box for the Surf ,Now I have experiance with remapping diesels and own a cheap KW2000 interface and was successfull in remapping my Astra 1.7DTI (I also managed to f@@k it up a week later but thats another story!!)So I have seen all the cheap so called "Chips" on ebay and given them a wide berth as all they do is trick the ECU into thinking the engine is cold and giving it more fuel,If theres one thing I have noticed the people in 4X4 community be it owners or 4x4 Spares Accesory retailers are a friendly and helpfull lot so when I see the Tunit box on Formula4 site I went and had a good look and within an hour of research it was a no brainer,6 hours later I was at Tunits Southern Branch In Horley Surrey waiting for them to open and praying they had one for my Surf,Well they did and half an hour after buying the kit I had it working and boy does it work,the 50 mile drive home was memorable for 2 reasons,1 the power delivery is in the Nissan Navaro Adventura 2.5 Dci terratory !!! and 2 the fuel gauge stopping actinf like the tank had a big hole in and hardly moved,The Surf is totally transformed ,The fiqures quoted by Tunit on thier website of expected horsepower of 160 bhp and 267lbs\ft (133bhp and 213lbs\ft standard) after fitting thier box are in my mind bang on,My Surf is now a differant Animal and the box has 10 settings so I can fine tune it to suit the engine,What I cant get my head around is I cant find any mentoin of the box being fitted by any other Surf owners on these forums or am I the only one whos all excited
First things first.Merry Xmas to everyone and hopefully a prosperous new year,
This is my story of how I caught the "Surf" bug,
It all started 6 years ago,I was working for a friend of mine who owned a Haulage\Skip hire Business and I would maintain and repair a fleet of Scanias,Dafs,Volvo plus numerous bits of plant,I had a company Transit van for a couple of years then out of the blue he got me a MK4 Toyota Hilux Double Cab 2.4TD GX in white on a W plate,This was my first taste of a Toyota 4X4 and I was hooked,I used it every day for a couple of years and loved its simplicity,reliability etc,then hard times came to the Waste\Haulage industry and my boss decided to sell all the lorries\plant which put me out of work but before I left he gave me the hilux to keep,fast forward another year and I bumped into him at a friends farm where he asked if I wanted to sell the pickup,at that time I had no need for it as My wife and I also shared a car,Sold him back his own pickup for an agreed £2000 and regretted it ever since !!
He lives in a remote part of Kent and in the snow its his only transport,has never let him down,I still borrow it now and then,I had it for a few months in the summer and installed a new clutch,blanked off the EGR valve and replaced a couple of missing exhaust manifold studs,the problem is every time i borrowed it I didn't want to give it back so I started looking on ebay in Auto Trader etc to find a MK4 Pickup not realizing that for around £3000 all you will buy is piles of crap,ex builders trucks with dented panels,ripped interiors and then the dreaded VAT on some of them,That's when Surfs caught my eye,I had often noticed the ads for them and thinking you get a lot of 4X4 for your money,so I did my research and came to the conclusion that the model I wanted\Could afford would be a Gen 2 3.0 TD SSR-X,I steered clear of the 2.4 version not because of the head problems but because the 2.4 is in the MK4 pickup and found it sometimes struggled pulling up hills,Anyway after a week of searching Autotrader,Ebay ads I came across a 94 "M" reg Gen 2 3.0TD SSR-X in Dark Metallic Blue 88000 miles in Mint condition Inside,Outside,Underneath everywhere,The guy I bought it from had done all the hard for me because he spent 2 months trying to find an un abused,never towed or been off road specimen and lucky for me he found this one,This was June 2010 ,first thing he did was fit a new Heavy duty Transmission cooler,Heavy duty "Roughtrax" rear springs and a new tow bar with dual electrics as he intended to use the Surf to tow a caravan to Wales,In July 2010 had new Rad,Cambelt and Tensioner,Full Service,Oils,Filters etc,Fast forward a few months and a Bereavement in his family meant he had to sell the Surf without even using it to tow the caravan,I bought it and travelled from Kent to Birmingham by train to collect it,I drove it back via M6 M40 M25 approx 140 mile, Putting £50 Derv into an almost empty tank for my return journey I thought it was more than enough fuel and I thought I would still have over 1/4 tank left time I got home,well how wrong was I !!!It probably didn't help that I did most of the journey at 80 mph but the Surf was so smooth and quiet to drive that it was only when I looked at the rev counter I realized I was pushing the Surf a bit hard then with 50 miles to go I noticed the fuel gauge was getting close to the 1/4 mark and thought I was not going to make it home without another fuel
stop,backed off the speed for the final run home on the M25 and got home with about an 1/8th of a tank left,Not a happy bunny,was expecting similar fuel consumption as the 2.4 TD pickup,left it on my drive for a week and hated the sight of it when ever I looked out of the window at it, just as I was about to put it up for sale a miracle happened !! it snowed that's when it all made sense,The Surf and snow are a marriage made in heaven,I have had no end of fun these last 2\3 weeks looking for any excuse just to take the Surf out and play one day the snow was so heavy I was the only vehicle that could get out of the road I live in,So back in love with my Surf I decided that fixing the excessive fuel consumption was first on the list,Starting with the EGR valve the p[revious owner had cable tied the vaccum pipe which is all well and good if the EGR is in the closed position but I suspect the later is true with my one but still have not been able to blank it off due to the weather then thursday last week I was looking on Formula 4 website at the accesories they have for my Surf and noticed the "Tunit" Chip box for the Surf ,Now I have experiance with remapping diesels and own a cheap KW2000 interface and was successfull in remapping my Astra 1.7DTI (I also managed to f@@k it up a week later but thats another story!!)So I have seen all the cheap so called "Chips" on ebay and given them a wide berth as all they do is trick the ECU into thinking the engine is cold and giving it more fuel,If theres one thing I have noticed the people in 4X4 community be it owners or 4x4 Spares Accesory retailers are a friendly and helpfull lot so when I see the Tunit box on Formula4 site I went and had a good look and within an hour of research it was a no brainer,6 hours later I was at Tunits Southern Branch In Horley Surrey waiting for them to open and praying they had one for my Surf,Well they did and half an hour after buying the kit I had it working and boy does it work,the 50 mile drive home was memorable for 2 reasons,1 the power delivery is in the Nissan Navaro Adventura 2.5 Dci terratory !!! and 2 the fuel gauge stopping actinf like the tank had a big hole in and hardly moved,The Surf is totally transformed ,The fiqures quoted by Tunit on thier website of expected horsepower of 160 bhp and 267lbs\ft (133bhp and 213lbs\ft standard) after fitting thier box are in my mind bang on,My Surf is now a differant Animal and the box has 10 settings so I can fine tune it to suit the engine,What I cant get my head around is I cant find any mentoin of the box being fitted by any other Surf owners on these forums or am I the only one whos all excited
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