My wife always laughs at me when I go knock on people's doors to buy something off them that isn't for sale. Most people don't mind talking to me about what ever I'm interested in. This time I drove by this business every day to and from work. After about five months of seeing this Lexus sitting in the same spot every day I decided to go take a closer look. What I found was a pretty rough looking truck, since the bumpers were both broken, the tires were all basically flat and the interior was a mess. The first thing I think of is how cheap I could probably get it for. Bumpers are really no big deal, and tires probably just need to be repaired. I know how reliable these trucks are, so any basic maintenance would also be no big deal. I went into the shop of this business and asked who owned the Lexus, they pointed me towards the front office and I found the nice lady who owned it. She ended up just buying a brand new Acura and had no need for the Lexus any more. The Lexus started having some small issues and just needed love. If you take a vehicle like this to a dealership you will end up paying thousands and thousands of dollar. She owned this Lexus long enough and was ready to move into something smaller. Thats when I come in and offer two thousand dollars, she says three and we settle at twenty seven hundred. I am actually very excited to buy this because I love Lexus's just as much as Toyota's (same thing). Here is the Lexus when I found it. It's hard to tell how dirty it is in the photo's but it was kind of gross. This was my first time taking a vehicle to a full service car wash, for a hundred dollars they did a really good job. This was the instagram photo showing everyone what I bought, obviously I had to take a photo of the best corner haha. Looks pretty good doesn't it? First off I had to sort out some of the problems, like the engine light being on. The code told us that it was the O2 sensor. I changed out both of the O2 sensors and the engine light went away. The hood shocks were shot, I tried ordering new ones off of Amazon but for some reason they couldn't get them shipped to my house. I gave up on trying to get new ones so I just use a piece of wood to hold the hood up every time haha. Every once in a while I was able to hear this sound coming from underneath. I was quick to realize it was the compressor for the air suspension..... but some one else in the past removed the air suspension and replaced it with a typical coil spring, so the air compressor does not need to be running any more. I was able to find the fuse that ran the whole system so I just unplugged it and now the compressor stopped trying to fill up. Next up is the running board lights, I noticed that the passenger side worked but not the driver side. I found the plug that it plugs into and the wires were broken off. I did a half-ass fix since I didn't have much wire to play with. As long as it works though.

I was always against getting ourselves a camper until I realized how much easier it was going to make our lives. Especially since we have very young kids. The plan is to hop back into roof top tenting as soon as we can. Anyways! the camper we bought is a 1979 Fleetwood Prowler camper, it is 18 feet in length and weighs about 3,600 pounds. I happened to be the first person to go look at it while it was up for sale, which was really good since there were five other people waiting to look at it. This camper is in such good shape for the year and price. The interior looks like its been used ten or fifteen times only. The exterior is in really good shape for the year too. Obviously there are a few flaws though, like someone must of jumped on the bed once because there is hockey sticks for legs now haha. There must of been a kid sleeping up in the bunk since there is stickers all over the place. Another thing that bugged me was that the plumbing was bypassed past the water heater, so it obviously must not work. Right after buying I realized there was a broken leaf spring and that the trailer brakes didn't work. Both those were fairly easy fixes. Enough talking, time for pictures. Almost a forty year difference but they still suit each other very well! First up, wire in a new trailer plug This is with the trailer sitting level and next to it is how high my truck is. I either need to buy a new drop hitch or customize this one! Some of those drop hitches are very expensive, which is why I cut the old hitch up and re-welded it back together! I don't think this is the proper way to do it since there isn't much steel for it to hold onto but I figured it should be strong enough. This hitch has made it 3,000 kilometres pulling the trailer already with no problems so good enough. The next day after buying it I tried plugging it in and had no power at all. I even called the previous owner and asked him to come over and show me how it worked, he told me there is no special trick. I decide it's time for me to figure it out. First thing first try and find the Inverter, which actually took me some time to find. It is under the bench at the kitchen table. What I find in there is a terrible wiring job and some loose wires. Voila, and there's power! I thought that was going to be an expensive fix. The inverter works perfectly fine.

We might as well start right here for this trailer! A 64 inch wide axle to match the width of my 4Runner, equipped with electric brakes and my old wheels and tires off of the 2015 4Runner. I also needed a adapter to go from trailer axle to Toyota bolt pattern. The main goal of using these wheels would be that if I got a flat tire I could share a spare tire with truck and trailer. A little more info on why I'm building my own trailer. I was never going to build my own trailer because I do not have the experience or know how to tackle a project like this but the price of buying a trailer that I was looking for was ridiculously priced. What I did have though was a little welding experience from working on the Land Cruiser, some fellow co-workers telling me its no big deal to build my own trailer, and lastly............ the internet! haha All you need is the time to read forums, and some motivation and drive. It's really nice you can just buy a axle and spring kit, you just need to purchase the steel yourself. I followed another trailer build pretty damn closely but I still did this all by myself.( yea I'm proud of myself haha). There are many different ways you can build a trailer but what I am going for is a off-road trailer, possibly strong enough to roll on a trail and withstand a rough and bumpy trail or road hence why I'm using this heavy tube steel. I spent a total of $2200 to build this trailer minus the wheels since I already had them. Figuring out how tall I want this trailer to sit, so I'm measuring the height of my 4Runner to match it to that. Got all the steel cut and laid out on the ground! I don't know how professional it is to do it like this but that's how I'm doing it. I will make sure it's square and flat as possible before I actually weld it all up. It's also very nice that I have the opportunity to use a shop full of tools! I'm using a band saw to cut all these pieces. Got the springs attached to axle and bolted down to the same width as I built the trailer. Trying to keep it tight as possible while I tack it together. Just tack welded for now until I know this is how I want it. Here's my best guess at where I think these springs should be positioned. If I screw this up the trailer could pull down the highway terribly and possibly sway all over the place. I just the rebar in the tube there to help me move the trailer around by myself, its slowly starting to get heavy. Next up figure out my tongue length, I know that I want to be able to jack knife without hitting the trailer.