This article is from the old blog in 2020:

Early January 2020 I picked up Eeyore from my garage where she has seen some much needed mechanical TLC.

All fluids, engine oil, differential oil, gear box oil, break fluid, etc have been changed. That also included the oil and diesel filters. In addition, every 100,000km a major engine service is necessary to prevent future catastrophic consequences. The timing belt, some idlers, pulleys and tensioners were preemptively replaced.
Furthermore, the air filters of the engine and the cabin were as black as coal and were replaced with OEM ones. Now the engine and the car’s passengers can breath fresh air again. A couple of bulbs had lost their lives in the past months and needed replacing as well. The old windscreen wipers were hard as rock, so new ones from Denso, Toyota OEM, were in good order.

After almost 100,000km on the odometer the clutch was on its last micrometers and was replaced with a brand new OEM Toyota kit.
There is a short anecdote to the clutch. As part of my negotiations with the previous owner of the car, I asked him about the service history of the car. He referred him to his former driver who willingly told me that the clutch had ‘just’ been replaced in April 2019. He further told me, that the owner and driver apparently went to Bosch in Abidjan and bought a new clutch kit for the car that was later allegedly fitted by a local mechanic.
Now looking at the replaced clutch plate, it speaks for itself and tells a completely different story. It is still the original OEM Toyota clutch that had been fitted by the factory and was completely worn. I had already noticed that when he test drove the car in December 2020. Therefore, the suspicion is, that the Bosch clutch kit was indeed bought by the previous owner, delivered to the garage but never built in but charged for the never done work and instead probably sold second hand.

In our driveway, Eeyore was taken apart to properly clean it and then convert it into an overlander. She was filthy! 10 years of grime and dirt from Tunis and Abidjan and no proper cleaning had left their traces. Additionally the interior is beige, where every spill and dirt stain clearly shows. I also stroke luck and am now rich! While cleaning I found 90 Tunisian millimes, about 2.8 Euro cents, worth of coins. Now it is time for a proper shampoo and scrub over the weekend! Part two of the TLC programme.