Square Holes and Foot Pegs

Injecting an XR/L into an FJ40

Ok, I'll admit it, I'm not one to take defeat easily. If a plan or idea appears to be "out there", I want to find out for myself whether or not it will work.

In just a few days, I'll be traveling from my new home here in Texas all the way back out to Los Angeles to what I'm refering to as my "summer job". From there, I'll be working for my old boss which in turn will allow me pursue some new goals; many of which will take place in my home away from home in the nearby Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Part of the challenge with this trip will be packing everything I'll need for the four months that I'm away into the Landcruiser. And since I was planning on taking the XR/L, purchasing a small trailer was on the list of things to do. But with my recent move and relocation there remained one hurdle, at least with that last item on the list... money.

Trailers, even small ones, can be costly. By the time I was through I'd be looking at around 800 dollars for the complete package including the power converter and hitch. And honestly, I could think of better ways to spend that money.

On the way home from the trailer dealership I started to think (always a dangerous thing!). I wondered if it would be possible to fit the XR/L into the back of my Landcruiser using one of those small cargo carriers that fit into a vehicles hitch to rest the front wheel of the bike on. Kind of a half in half out kind of a deal. Let the experiments begin!

The first step was to begin taking measurments of the opening to the back door to see if the bike would even fit into the truck.

The only real problem I ran into was the height of the bike. The Landcruiser's rear door frame was around 39 inches high but the bike's rear- end exceeded that by a few inches. And since I'd planned on backing the bike into the truck, this could prove to be the end of what at first seemed like a good idea. Time for some out-of-the-box thinking.

Using two tie-down straps attached between the bike's upper rear frame and swing-arm, I proceded to compress the rear suspension until the bike's rear height was under 39 inches. It worked and I could feel that familiar, sinister grin of satisfaction begin to creep across my face.

Compressing the rear suspension

With the recently purchased and slightly modified cargo carrier in place, using an eight foot plank, I began backing the bike into the '40. Not knowing just how hard it would be to muscle the bike into the truck, one of the initial plans was to rig up a small hand winch used on boat trailers but luckily I was able to back the bike in under my own power. So far so good!

Ramp and cargo carrier in place

Once the bike was in place I secured it to the truck using several tie-down straps. When I was finished, the bike was rock solid!

Securing the XR/L

Ready for another adventure!

Tail pipe extension

When it came time to test drive the crazy contraption, I noticed that the open rear doors were allowing deadly carbon monoxide fumes to be sucked back into the vehicle. In order to eliminate this problem, I decided to fabricate a tail-pipe extension that would help to re-direct the fumes up and away from the vehicle.

The extension was a relatively simple design which attached to the vehicle using two muffler clamps. The boys down at the local muffler shop whipped it up in just a few minutes for about thirty dollars. And since I'm alive and well and able to type these last few paragraphs 1200 miles later from my summer job in California, the extension appears to have done the trick.

Sometimes it can be tempting to start throwing money at a problem and I suppose in this case I could have just added the cost of the trailer to my credit card. Yes, that would have been the easy way of doing things but I doubt if signing my name on a dotted line would have taught me anything new.