An Honest Review of The China Reproduction Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 Body...

Alot of people are commenting on this video and need to watch the entire video. We still think the concept is cool but is super disappointing when you are sold on this product actually working. I figured a few things would be off since it's aftermarket stuff I get that... but everything was off and some stuff by a mile. The average customer who is a weekend warrior cannot make this work in reality. I hope in the future the manufacturing company can make these products better and consumers would actually spend more money on them if they were actually correct. They also need to know if they are selling to usa customers that the vehicle or "US SPEC" land cruisers are different. A few people bashing me as well for making this video; it's an honest review and knowing this now we would have probably fixed what we had unfortunately or told the customer the new body requires 200+ hours to make work or we spend 200+ hours repairing the original one. I'm just an honest business owner trying to build quality vehicles.

Hagerty has a video tour of the factory that made these in China. The stamping dies were hand finished with angle grinders from extremely rough casting of extreme rough cnc milled master. They probably only went down to 2~3 inch milling bit from the look of it. The workers nap on the gound during lunch break. Your video is super cool. Shows the attention to detail that should have been there during the manufacturing of these things.

Thank you for the honest review i have been looking and wondering about this product. From the looks of this video you saved me a lifetime of headaches

I would like to see what Haggarty thinks about your video. The guy/photographer was saying one thing, like it was an infomercial for the company, and you’re a real-life example of what they’re really putting out.

It is challenging to get an individual aftermart panel to fit and function correctly. Multiply that by EVERY panel. You are a brave man

The problem is someone thinking that they can order a body like this, drop it onto a frame they have, and spend a few weeks adding an interior and glass and other components and be able to do it themselves is going to be in for a nasty surprise For the amount of labor going into this, id rather resto an original body 🤷‍♀️

Wow Greg what a journey, so sorry to hear all the differences and wrong finishes but it is what it is...well done to vent this to us, so we can have a better idea of this China bodys, looking forward for the next video.

Just watched the Hagerty video of this company's manufacturing process with Larry Chen, got me looking into that early bronco body and the ae86 not gonna lie..😊

Greg , welcome to China ! I live in Thailand. I found if china sends you something, you can’t return it. My wife laughs and says throw it out you can’t return it or complain 😅 It is totally hit or miss. Some stuff is so cheap you wonder how they built it for that cheap and it’s great . Other stuff total $hit. It’s like they don’t have much of a jig for all the small stuff. I watched one of the China companies making regular jeep bodies and they didn’t even have a sheet metal brake , they pounded the angles on the side of a wooden bench ! This company has been in business for a long time and I figured they would have some nice equipment by now. Anyway it sucks for you to have to go through this. Thanks for the honest video.

We always had reservations getting the full body from the same company. We bought front fenders, hood and the front bezel and all were off from 2-5mm. Aftermarket support though was better than your experience as the company from china were able to send replacement parts though the measurements are still off but at least we get to keep both the old (worst quality control) part and the replacement part sent. I just had to shoulder the shipping expenses. Thank you for sharing your insights and in depth review. Guess will be doing sectional repair for our next J40 resotartion. Cheers

Thats a devastating reality. If it takes a seasoned specialist in a pro shop to make it fit, like you said, some dude in his driveway is doomed.

Very common problem is I didn’t make even though I sold it , and the factory saying you didn’t buy it from me , I am dealing with an issue right now with the same attitude from a supplier and factory !

I don't think it's an aftermarket thing, I think it's a Chinese manufacturing thing. I can remember from my days in the collision industry when aftermarket bumpers fit better than the OE bumper covers.

I’ve worked with a few of their products and this has been generally in line with my experiences as well. They really would be better off making hard to find small parts like air intake cones. And sticking to just making patch panels instead of full components. I also agree you probably are the first to actually have one of these on the road.

I saw production video of Chinese factories welding Fj bodies and their assembly process.. their body jigs were ok (still questionable), but the men welding and cutting were basically eye balling it with hand held spot welders, mig welders and hole cutters on the ground, some men didn't even have welding masks and just closed their eyes. QC was low and depending if those workers ate that week the end product may not be as bad as others but still not correct. Not factory standards but a step in the right direction for keeping classics on the road.

I'm glad someone finally made this video. As you described, everything this Chinese factory makes is horrendous, as is their business practice. I carried some of their body parts a few years back and supplied the parts to a restoration shop like yours on the West Coast with extensive collision repair experience. It didn't take long for them to realize that everything was wrong with these parts. There were misalignments, holes in the wrong places, missing or poor welds. Nothing fitted properly, and quality control was non existent. Even a simple, small piece like the wiper motor cover had many flaws. I couldn't imagine the disaster that would come with a full tub. I have my doubts these parts are actually 3D scanned by them. They have a business relationship with an equally horrendous body panel manufacturer out of Colombia, and I have a feeling they borrowed some of their jigs. From my experience, the factory personnel didn't know crap about Land Cruisers, and couldn't care less about the heritage. At the time I dealt with them, there was plenty of enthusiasm and well wishers. There's an abundance of expertise in the Land Cruiser community they could've leveraged, but the manufacturer wasn't interested in making improvements. They were mainly focused on cranking out garbage and shipping out as many units as possible. This place is among the worst of the bad apples.

Great video, I dont know how you were able to not say the company''s name or maybe I missed it, but people deserve to know, its a lot of money and time to just not respond to you even while they were getting a featured video for free, thanks for the info, I have a 69 that I love and with no rust at all, but this was a nice idea for someone that needs a new body and you are saving them by exposing this,

Thanks for your honesty and integrity. 👍

I saw the Haggarty video, I was wondering about how things would fit. I've used the aftermarket body panels on a few hoopties (im not a body guy), and they all needed somesort of trimming, fitting, mounting hole modification to get them to fit good enough for a hooptie.. It would take even more work if I was trying to fit onto a nice car. In video, there were broncos, 240z's too... For someone like me to put one together, I'd end up with a brand new hooptie with 1/2" body gaps

Dreams = crushed Liked and hyped. Hopefully some exposure like this will motivate them to improve. Really sucks that you offered to help them with that and got crickets.