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Alistair's 1986 VG40 Toyota Century


Simon

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Nice car; nice price, wouldn't have minded grabbing this myself if I were still living in NZ. I owned a 1987 Nissan President, so a fan of exclusive archaic Japo barges like this..what's the power like in it? I know these aren't powerhouses but does the 5v cruise along ok? Another question is does this beast have air suspension?

Always thought that it was culturally a bit subservient of the Japs to have english written all over their cars instruments, but for the JDM only Century they stick mainly to their own language..some might say it looks tacky but we know better.

Best idea for this is to get the air con working, tint, legit whitewalls and keep original..loving the fact that you have ordered more original hub caps. Just enjoy this beast the way it is, I can imagine what it's like to drive be very similar to my President..the dash makes it feel like your driving a giant juke box, and the interior is like the inside of a high ballin' jap karoke lounge bar. Here's some pics of the Pres I used to own for comparison reasons...

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Enjoy the car dude.

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Cheers man, very tidy President you had! The 5V get's along quite well actually. It's not a complete slug and even tried to turn a wheel when I left a wet intersection in my haste to get to work. :lol:

I haven't checked to see wether the air suspension in the rear of this has been disconnected as from memory then had separate ride levelling pumps. Phil was saying that the previous owner may have had these replace with standard shocks but as I said, yet to confirm this.

Yep will definitely sort the Air Con for summer and get the tints re done as a couple of them have bubbled and gone yuck!

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All good..I've had many toyota crowns with the air suspension .. so this originally had it? (will have buttons for the ride height on the dash - low, med, and high) The car should move to low automatically once she hits 90km/h. The pump if it has/had air susp will be inside the left front guard. There will be a pendulum near the diff that controlls the rear ride height. In my opinion air suspension is more trouble than it's worth, and nearly impossible to convert to normal struts without the ride turning to shit.

Saw your comment on the blue century that's on Tm atm..I'm with you on the bench seat, it's kickarse...my President had a bench seat which is rare, most Presidents have buckets but all have the column shifter. My president was fairly tidy but prob not as tidy as your century. It had massaging heated rear seats as well but they never worked.Apparently when it was being vinned in NZ, they had to pull out the rear seat to install seatbelts and never reconnected the wiring again.

The air con compressor is more than likely gone on yours, what you'll find is that it's the same unit that's used in Crowns/ cressida's of the era, nippo denso which means $$$, cheaper if you pull it out yourself and get it bench tested and rebuilt.

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From what I am told the air con compresser is sweet it is just noisey when it was used so they took the belt off it.

I know the height control you're talking about as my UZS131 crown had the same thing. I'm 95% sure this never had a control to adjust height as you can see from the pictures below the parts breakdown is for Height Control Auto Leveler which would adjust the air in the shocks. So they have a spring and the air shocks unlike the Crowns air cylinders. This is why I think these once adjustable shocks have now been replaced with a stock shock.

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Should make it easier to give it a minor lowering with some appropriate spring and shock mods :)

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It was definitely an option on later ones to have full bags, but most Ive seen are shocks and springs

I'm always checking out century stuff on yahoo looking out for engine bits. You'll find reconditioned AC pumps on there all the time for not to bad pricing, noisy isn't usually a good thing!. More importantly does it hold gas? as a leak can be a pain to find/fix, but is usually just a o-ring

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It was definitely an option on later ones to have full bags, but most Ive seen are shocks and springs

I'm always checking out century stuff on yahoo looking out for engine bits. You'll find reconditioned AC pumps on there all the time for not to bad pricing, noisy isn't usually a good thing!. More importantly does it hold gas? as a leak can be a pain to find/fix, but is usually just a o-ring

Again don't quote me on it/Fuellip may jump in here but I think it was regassed etc not long ago then the pump got noisy. And yeah there is acres of VG40 parts on yahoo jap, is super sweet!

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