Salvaged 2005 GX470 Project - Now with Rebuilt Title & Plates!

Wow! Great work! Sad I missed this so long

lol

 

Cleaning the drivers seat and decided these are way too shot. I'm gonna call up Ridies tomorrow to place an order for replacement seat covers. Going with Nappa leather, and thinking diamond stitch suede for the center inserts(?) Comes out to around $1000-1200 for front and back seats.

https://ridies.com/Product/27521/20...ser-Prado-OEM-Replacement-Leather-Seat-Covers

 

Actually just placed my order lol. Double checked my research from some other forums and ordered Light Tan, Nappa Leather, Diamond stitch, no suede or perforations

+ $1125

Will look like this (but that color is Ivory)

 

Nice! Great build! About 4 years ago I picked up a GX as a second vehicle, been my daily since. I still drive the Tundra every now and then (2014 w/23k miles) but I love the GX (2005 w/182k miles).

Typically the awnings aren’t on unless I’m going to use them. This was when I was testing out the QD mounts.

 

Ridies called me this morning to confirm my order. It's actually an extra $150 to have the rear seats upgraded to Nappa leather with Diamond stitching. They wanted pictures of my seats to attach to order, and they stressed sending me sample colors before confirming the order because there are no returns once the product arrives if the color was the issue. They are sending an Ivory and a Light Tan sample out. Factory color is Ivory Tan...so you can see the confusion around color matching. 7 - 10 days for samples to arrive. No biggie since they're all made-to-order and ships from Pakistan, takes 5 - 7 weeks for delivery.

 

Nice! looks very clean. I'm going to have to do an entire paint respray on mine to look the same

 

Was there any particular reason you're going with Ridies over something like Katzkin? I'm curious as I'm looking at having the 32y/o seats in my MR2 re-done (and possibly the Tundra, next year), so I'm trying to gather info.

 

I was following the Katzkin leather thread for years on Tacomaworld, but they didn't show Lexus as an option on their site when I looked. Asked the vendor in the thread for recommendations but didn't get a reply.

On search through forums only showed L-seats and Ridies as recommendations for a full cover replacement and not just a seat cover. But only Ridies offered the Nappa Leather upgrade.

 

These are new full covers as in hog ringed in place around the frame & cushion instead of covers?

 

Correct. It's required to remove the OEM leathers, and reinstall the new covers with hog rings

 

Good call those seats were trashed??? Pakistan??? Could you pick a further place to order them?

 

Thanks!

Can’t wait to see your final build, great progress so far.

 

Got the rust hole in the rear passenger fender well filled with JB WELD Steele putty. Also painted the seat loops in the floorboard.

 

Drove to corner car wash and sprayed down the engine bay

 

OEM floormats are absolutely trashed. And the OEM cargo mat, it's bottom liner is disintegrating.

Oh and that picture is after the floor mats were hung up at the carwash and blasted with the sprayer....

WeatherTech liners arrived

 

Those mats are late for the garbage! lol

When was the Tundra sold? Did you get a good deal?

 

They're in the garbage now!

I got a fair deal, ya. $46.6k. They'll probably get $50-55k out of it. It was in and out of the body shop and sold to carmax within 5 hours on Thursday.

 

Harbor Freight shopping

Spot welder
Slide hammer set
Small manual winch
Nylon body panel remover set
Gloves and masks

+ $300 15% off coupon

 

Ditching OEM running boards and the minivan look. There's some modifications I need to do to the existing running boards, cutting them up, to retain the slim painted part. So it has a more finished look

 

Ordered Quarter Panel and Quarter Extension to repair damaged area of GX.

+ $1400

 

Drove the M3 up to the cabin for some winterizing

 

Ordered replacement tailgate. presumably it's the entire thing, glass, trim, and all. We'll see. It's off ebay and the whole front of the GX is crushed but the tailgate looked fine. It's an off silver color from mine, but close enough. I plan to repaint the entire car anyways.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/285447895884

+ $972

 

Keep car-part.com in the back of your head. It's a searchable source for a lot of salvage yards all over North America.

 

I have had great luck with them. Got my '19 Sequoia cluster, '21 RC-F throttle body etc from them. The TB was from LKQ, was new & 1/2 price!

 

Same in terms of luck. The only time I got shafted was when I found a TRD skid plate. Pictures showed the red TRD letters and the oil access cover, but when it arrived, both were gone. And I had to buy hardware. I still came in under what a new one would have been.

 

I looked there for the tailgate and all were about the same price. Two in Denver were $522 + $225 local pickup fee. Like that's crazy to charge that much for local pickup!

 

Doing some electrolysis baths for smaller parts that came off the bumper. Like magic! After a while the rust just flakes off!

 

Didn't want to leave it going overnight. Started round two. I'd say 50-75% of the rust came off during the first go. Will spray paint the parts after

 

Sweet, it's the entire tailgate including wire harness. Good news because the plastic housing for the electric door lock broke when I was getting the original (damaged) tailgate off