Fuck, this is becoming a trilogy of trilogies at this point. Hence, I’ve renamed the past couple posts to fit with this unintended theme.

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Okay, where to start?

Well, I have literally the most inconvenient year of BJ60 that was produced. “sure, yeah right,” you may be thinking – Allow me to elaborate.

Remember how I had an issue with my master cylinder not fitting due to the time it was made? Yeah no, that’s nothing compared to this. The reason my slave cylinder wouldn’t fit on soon became a source of confusion for me.

“surely they wouldn’t have had multiple bell-housings made for one model year, right?”

Guess what.

Yep. One year of BJ60 – 1985 – Toyota used a different mounting point on the bell-housing; not even slightly compatible with other years. I came to this discovery upon finding no record anywhere of a part like mine existing. The only source that even listed it was PartSouq and even then it was out of stock. Nothing else showed any sign of it; the only part anyone had anywhere that could fix my problem, is a genuine rebuild kit.

Out of curiosity, I called Stampede Toyota to see if they at least had a slave cylinder. My conversation with the Toyota Parts Guy ($TPG) went somewhat like this:

$TPG: okay, yours is… ’85 you said?

$Me: Yes, the 4 cylinder diesel.

$TPG: hmmm…

He does that about 6 more times. Over the 4 minute span of searching his catalogue.

$TPG: So as it turns out, your truck is the only year that Toyota used this part. Ever.

$Me: okay….?

$TPG: And that part is now completely discontinued.

$Me: …huh. What about cylinder rebuild kits? Any chance there are any sitting around anywhere still?

$TPG: Well, the catalogue shows one left in all our inventory. All the way in California, for $88. Once it’s gone, that will be discontinued.

$Me: welp. Thanks for searching around, I appreciate the effort

So that was that. There’s one rebuild kit left in Toyota Motor Corp.’s stock, and it costs twice as much as PartSouq’s rebuild kit. Fun. I’ve ordered the part, FedEx claims it’ll arrive at my house by this Friday the 22nd. I can’t goddamned wait.

Lesson learned, I suppose. If you have an old import vehicle, check before you order parts that they’ll be the right ones. I’ll update this when if the parts are installed this weekend. Sigh.