Toyota and part numbers

Though Toyota continues to manufacture parts for the FJ40s, there are still so many parts that are no longer available. Available parts for the 1958-1974 thin-door cruisers like this one are becoming fewer and fewer. Mostly what is still available is limited to just what it takes to keep them running. In the short time since I had my truck painted, Toyota has stopped making the lower doors, the bump stop for the spare tire gate, the headlight buckets and the rear reflectors. I'm sure there are plenty more that have been discontinued that I haven't stumbled onto yet.

I can't blame Toyota, though. The 1975-84 cruisers are more plentiful and more desirable for the average owner, so parts for the old ones can't be much of a priority. Even the most popular disc-brake years, 1976-84, are not what one would call common on the road anymore, so parts for them couldn't amount to much sales. It's simply out of a sense of loyalty to the FJ40 that Toyota still makes this stuff.

There are more than a few parts that I would love to be able to find new, and one of those has always been the hose clamps that Toyota made for these trucks. They are wire, as seen above on the upper radiator hose, instead of the banded or spring kind that one sees today and they are very distinctive. Seeing the more modern band clamp installed just doesn't look quite right.

Specter has long had them listed as discontinued, but after stumbling onto a Toyota dealership that has the entire Toyota parts catalog online, I found that they had only changed part numbers a multitude of times and were largely still available. With the help of Ed Dale at our local Toyota lot, we tracked down all of the other clamps and figured out all the right part numbers.


This is the lower radiator hose at the inlet for the heater loop. It was probably time to replace the hoses anyway, and having the old-style clamps makes everything look right. I even used some silver enamel paint to clean up the heads after scratching them while tightening them.


Probably most conspicuous are the eight clamps that are visible in the cabin that service the front and rear heaters.

I was glad to have a set of photographs taken from a 1973 that was offered for sale with only 17,000 miles. I asked the owner to send photos of everything around the truck before it sold and they have proven very helpful. It was nice to be able to know which way the clamps were installed originally.

Foolishly, I bought the two supply lines that go to and from the front heater, above, from Toyota hoping they were formed or marked in some interesting way, but I ended up paying nearly $30 for less than two feet of 5/16-inch heater hose.

Oh well.



Probably the most fun item that the Land Cruisers that were shipped to North America featured is the rear heater. I rebuilt the blower motor that sits in the middle of this and had a local radiator shop sweat the core back together. All the parts of the outer assembly were sand blasted and painted while the core was re-galvanized.

After it was reassembled, I installed it in its spot right behind the seats, but without the right hose clamps, I was reluctant to connect it to the coolant system. Now, I charged it and it works really well. Our little late-winter cold snap made having both heaters finally working fun.

For those who might need or want this, here are the current part numbers and how many you'll need:

96112-10220 1/2-inch heater hose clamp (8)
96112-10250 5/8-inch heater hose clamp (10)
96111-10500 upper radiator hose clamp (3)
96111-10580 lower radiator hose clamp (3)