Took a several mile walk just a few hours ago, and not two blocks from home I spot these nearly kissing cousins. The Dolphin is a permanent fixture in front of that house, apart from when it’s in use. The Californian? No clue. Fellow Toyota motorhome enthusiasts, for certain.
Before I continue, there is crow to be eaten. In David Skinner’s Holy Grail find a few days ago, I boastfully boasted of keeping a spare digital camera in my car or on my person at all time. As you have no doubt noticed, these pictures are not up to my usual robust standards, since I neglected my own damn advice and only had my phone on me. So bad are they I cannot even read the model of the second Toyota. Sunfire? (Sunraider – Ed) Lesson learned. But wait! It gets worse!
Maybe six blocks down the same street sits this heavily “custom” gem. The sun was failing me, like I have failed the CC faithful. I will tear my next CC Key Mainstay Contributor paycheck in half. Hopefully I won’t be canned entirely.
Speaking ripped in half and cans, my landlord said he’d put a new muffler on my Old Toyota for a case of beer. Yes, he’s a redneck. However, he found another leak in a second feed near the catalytic converter. The aluminum pipe was small and thin and quite torn up, so he grabbed another small and thin bit of aluminum, tore it in half, and clamped it around the leak.
For perhaps the first time in history a cheap and terrible beer has made a guy’s exhaust quieter.
Well, I have used cans, coat hangers and muffler cement to great effect over the years. The left-over coat hanger can be used as welding rod.
I love seeing jerry-rigged fixes. Great use of bartering too! A case of Coors is less than 10 Federal Reserve Notes.
He had empty cans already. I actually spent $17 on a half-rack of Mirror Pond.
Beer cans have long been a handy and effective source of aluminum for all sorts of vehicular repairs. Robert Pirsig wrote about this in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”:
“His handlebars had started slipping. Not badly, he said, just a little when you shoved hard on them. I warned him not to use his adjustable wrench on the tightening nuts. It was likely to damage the chrome and start small rust spots. He agreed to use my metric sockets and box-ends.
“When he brought his motorcycle over I got my wrenches out but then noticed that no amount of tightening would stop the slippage, because the ends of the collars were pinched shut.
“You’re going to have to shim those out,” I said. “What’s shim?” “It’s a thin, flat strip of metal. You just slip it around the handlebar under the collar there and it will open up the collar to where you can tighten it again. You use shims like that to make adjustments in all kinds of machines.”
“Oh,” he said. He was getting interested. “Good. Where do you buy them?” “I’ve got some right here,” I said gleefully, holding up a can of beer in my hand. He didn’t understand for a moment. Then he said, “What, the can?” “Sure,” I said, “best shim stock in the world.” I thought this was pretty clever myself. Save him a trip to God knows where to get shim stock. Save him time. Save him money.
“But to my surprise he didn’t see the cleverness of this at all. In fact he got noticeably haughty about the whole thing. Pretty soon he was dodging and filling with all kinds of excuses and, before I realized what his real attitude was, we had decided not to fix the handlebars after all.
“As far as I know those handlebars are still loose. And I believe now that he was actually offended at the time. I had had the nerve to propose repair of his new eighteen-hundred dollar BMW, the pride of a half-century of German mechanical finesse, with a piece of old beer can! Ach, du lieber!”
Thanks for reviving that memory. I’m going to have to read it again; I think I was probably a bit young to fully appreciate it when it came out.
I’m thinking the same thing.
This is the third time I’ve seen Pirsig mentioned after one of my submissions. A zen thing?
I just shot those two Toyotas the other day too. Birds of a feather…
It like they’re both four bangers too. The V6s have a badge on the grille; these don’t. Makes for leisurely traveling; but who’s in a hurry?
There’s an old Toyota motor home on Front Street in downtown Toronto (near the Metro Toronto Convention Centre) that’s been converted into a chip truck…complete with a frying pan fastened to the hood.
How do those overwhelmed-looking Toyota RV chassis stack up in efficiency compared with Big Three competitors (comparably kitted out)? I know a direct comparison isn’t possible, just looking for ballpark figures.
They get substantially better mileage, like 15-16. That’s compared to about 6-9 for a typical Class C, of that vintage. As a consequence, they have an enthusiastic following (like these two).
The four cylinders require patience, especially on grades. But they do the job. The V6 does pretty well, but probably get a couple mpg less.
The Sunraider (the fiberglass one) is very sought after, the best of the bunch. They still have a good resale value.
Toyota stopped making this chassis because the motorhome makers kept putting ever-bigger and heavier bodies on them, and as a result, some rear axle failure happened. Toyota got scared of possible liability issues and cut them off abruptly. That’s why there’s none newer than about 1992 or so.
Was this chassis sold directly by Toyota with the dual rear wheel axle? I ask because one of the very big differences I see in the vehicular realm in California that I never saw on the east coast is a large number of dual-rear-wheel Toyota pickups (all pre-Tacoma) with longer-than-usual wheelbases and stake beds. I’ve seen a few other makes like this – I think one Nissan and one Mitsubishi – but almost all are late-80s and early-90s Toyotas.
You just don’t see “dually” compacts on the east coast.
I’m not a true expert on these, but here’s what I remember: Toyota brought out a 1 ton pickup, which was often converted to a flat bed truck, and had dual rear wheels adapted to it. And sometimes, the frame was extended too. And converted into mini-motorhomes too.
Eventually, Toyota sold a dually bare cab/chassis, specifically to be used as a flat-bed/van (U-Haul had a large fleet once), and for motorhome use. If you look at the two motorhomes, you can see that the Sunraider (left) has proper dually wheels, including on at the front. The Dolphin still has regular single wheels, with an adapted dual wheel arrangement in the back.
Anyway, the motorhomes kept getting bigger, and the frames longer, and folks loaded them up with lots of stuff, and eventually the axles started breaking. It’s a testament to the Toyota’s basic ruggedness that it could take such loads at all. But Toyota pulled the plug.
Don’t forget that the heyday of these was the early eighties, when gas was sky-high. As prices came down, the interest shifted back to full-size Class C motorhomes.
And with gas sky-high again these things keep getting more expensive. And I want one!
Thanks for the background. From what I can tell, the M-B Sprinter chassis gets the best mileage among class C alternatives today. But Ford might be catching up now:
http://www.ford.com/commercial-trucks/transit/2014
Toyotas proved to be one of the most solid and reliable chassis’ in smaller motorhomes. I have seen more than my share of very well worn motorhomes on a Toyota chassis with 300,000, 400,000 even 600,000 miles on the odometer (original engines) and they run like a champ. The old Chevy 350’s and 454’s are blowing smoke at 50K and needing overhauls by 60K; the Dodge’s with the 440 are notorious for valve lash and throwing rods prematurely; Ford’s somehow do pretty well with the 460, 351 and the diesels they used in the 80s. But Toyota just did everything right. And they’ve kept that tradition going today. Sure the Toyota motorhomes were kind of underpowered, but everything was slow back in day!