After lurking on the forums for a couple of years i decided to finally give up on the toyotas and i bought a '95 XJ sport.
It cost 5 grand and come with an alloy bullbar, spotties, radio, 2 inch lift (shithouse), and brand new 31's (shithouse) with a home made rear wheel carrier which is pretty good.
Ive given it a decent service and new fluids almost everywhere. It generally runs on the 100 needle on the coolant guage when driving. (i live in rockhampton qld, its pretty hot at the moment). when i stop the car at traffic lights the needle creeps up to a few mm shy of the last white line before the red zone.
Ive replaced the waterpump, thermostat, hoses and flushed the radiator and this only helped the problem marginally. I took it for a beach run yesterday up a few dunes and it ran terrific apart from on the long beach runs where it would sit just on the red zone at speed and get well into it at idle.
What do you guys think. New radiator, or new clutch fan and thermo?
All in all tho I am very pleased with the XJ