I bought my 2012 Hilux second hand in July after I wrapped my 2005 Corolla around a telegraph pole in June.
Although it is in actual fact my third car, in a sense it is my first car because I've never had a car I gave a damn about before, or ever been able to really choose what I wanted before. And I love it to bits.
The Hilux is a manual 2wd diesel single cab with three seats and was on 140 000km when I got it, I've since put a further 10 000km on myself. I chose it chiefly because it had a really flash aftermarket tray made by O'Brien here in Sydney and it was manual/diesel/3 seat. My previous cars were both automatics but I always wanted a manual. I also quite liked the metallic black colour, all the others I could find with similar features were boring white...
About me:
I'm 24, turning 25 in April. I'm studying a Master of Teaching at Western Sydney University, my teaching areas are TAS (Industrial Arts, etc.) and Visual Arts. My first degree was a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours), majoring in Jewellery and Object Design at the University of Sydney. In between my degrees, I worked for a year in a precious metal factory.
I'm a Medieval reenactor in the SCA, my persona is from 6th century post Roman Britain and my focus in the group is combat, we fight full contact with wooden swords, we armour all the squishy bits and all the crunchy bits but still get lots of bruises. I fight with a short sword and oval shield. This is what my Hilux mostly gets used for so far, transporting large amounts of gear to and from SCA events.
I always had servicing done by mechanics on my other cars, but with the Hilux, I was interested and wanted to do it myself, I never had the inclination when I drove boring passenger cars.
I changed the oil at 145 000 myself and did every service item that was in the logbook service for 150 000 except for the front wheel balancing, I had that done at my local mechanic.
I've also added several accessories and I have more on the way.
It came with tinting, a towbar with a brake controller and the aforementioned aluminium 2 ton dropside tray with a rear ladder rack and a tool drawer. The only gripe on that count is the holes drilled by the previous owner where the (now gone) tradie toolboxes were attached - the holes (6 of them) aren't even symmetrical!
I fitted the following:
Nudge bar with front ladder rack.
Tonneau cover (fitted by auto trimmer).
Polished the entire tray with an inline polisher and removed the rust that was stuck onto the aluminium from the aforementioned tradie toolboxes.
Rubber combined shin guard/towball cover.
I am waiting on the remaining parts so I can fit the following:
Dawn forged utility swivel vice in rear right hand corner of tray (waiting for stainless bolts from eBay).
New single DIN head unit and single DIN UHF radio to replace the utter garbage Toyota GPS head unit (waiting for nutserts for UHF antenna fitting in rain channel).
I also have a 1800w inverter I want to fit but my electrical knowledge barely extends beyond jump starting so I don't know whether I want to learn how to do it myself or have an Auto Electrician do it. I'm also planning on getting a dual battery and the same question applies there.
Things I plan to fit in future:
Wooden storage compartment behind seats.
Dual battery + inverter.
Tray work light/s.
Under tray mounts to stow the front ladder rack.
Under tray toolboxes (wheel arch type) to supplement tool drawer.
Maybe a roof console - unsure whether this will make the middle seat any more uncomfortable than it already is.
Maybe a roof luggage basket - only if it can be lower than the tray and nudge bar ladder racks (no sides).
