2 days ago
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Nothing makes you feel more like a slap-happy amateur mechanic than watching true professionals go about their work.
And stepping into Walkinshaw’s dedicated conversion facility in Melbourne’s industrial suburb of Dandenong South, I felt particularly self-conscious.
It’s a clean, organised and tidy space, which sees a Toyota Tundra enter as a left-hand drive vehicle, and snake around a multi-step process of disassembly, modification, reassembly and testing. And finally, it re-emerges as a right-hand drive model ready for the Australian market.
It's on the eve of the Toyota Tundra going officially on sale in Australia, which is a momentous occasion for Toyota in particular.
It's the first time Toyota has handed the keys of development and production over to a third party, choosing Walkinshaw Automotive Group locally to convert the Toyota Tundra for the local market. Not just in Australia, but globally.
This comes after a soft launch of sorts, where over 250 vehicles were leased to hand-picked customers to evaluate and survey.
For somebody like myself, who has a garage full of old cars, disassembled parts and no shortage of chaos, this was like walking into a utopian dream of organisation, order and cleanliness.
The sawtooth roof of this old factory building lets natural light flood into every corner, and the vintage red bricks of the walls contrast strongly against the clean, bright floor.
There are separate stations, lines and teams throughout the area, which looks befuddling at first glance. But once you’re given the lie of the land, it’s a simple system.
It’s all managed by a simple and familiar system of whiteboards and tables, outlining teams and workflow for each shift and station.
After being initially checked over for damage or imperfections outside, a left-hand drive model is pushed into step one and goes through a range of stations to complete the transformation.
Broadly speaking, it can be broken down into four different categories: disassembly, conversion, re-assembly and testing.
Each ‘station’ here takes around 80 minutes, timed with a bell system to keep the schedule running on time.
The line is currently spitting out five Australia-ready right-hook Toyota Tundras per day and can do around 100 to 110 per month. That means a current production capacity of around 1200 per year.
For context, Ram has sold around 270 Ram 1500s per month this year, while General Motors Special Vehicles does around 200 examples of the Silverado 1500 per month.
In other words, Toyota won’t be leading the charge in overall sales in this new and competitive segment. But the likes of Ram, Chevrolet and Ford would be sweating on the kind of market share Toyota would be looking to take over.
Early on in the stage, the Toyota Tundra’s hybrid powertrain gets de-energised and the vehicle goes through a process of ‘de-marriage’ (or divorce, maybe). The cab is split from the chassis and goes on its separate way But don’t worry. Like all good romances, they do get back together eventually.
On one side, the cab gets work done to things like the dashboard, air conditioning, seats and other details. Some changes – like seatbelts for example – are more for Australian Design Rules (ADR) compliance, while others are done to meet the standards and requirements of both Walkinshaw Automotive Group and Toyota.
The most major work is done to the steering system, moving the steering wheel to the other side of the cabin. Firstly, a new flipped dashboard is installed. Parts that carry over include the air vents, infotainment system, air conditioning controls and lever for the glovebox compartment.
Once the cabin is disassembled down to the point of having the crossbar removed, you’ve got a nude firewall (the steel panel that separates the cab from the engine bay) ready for modification.
Using jigs, this firewall is cut into and subsequently welded. On one side, where there are holes for things like brakes and steering, a new panel is welded in to fill in those apertures.
On the new driver’s side, it’s the reverse process: Cut out the offending sheet metal with jigs, and weld in a pre-fabricated section that has the necessary holes in the right places. Seal and cure on both sides, then move on to the next step.
With a new dashboard and modified firewall, the steering column now runs down the other side of the engine bay This feeds into a steering rack that’s borrowed from the 300 Series LandCruiser.
Don't forget: despite having disparate body designs, rear suspension setups and wheelbase lengths, the LandCruiser 300 Series and Toyota Tundra share the same 'TNGA-F' platform.
On the other side of the production line, an additional mounting point is welded onto the subframe for this rack, which needs to have its tie rod ends widened by 4mm on each side to match Tundra steering geometry specifications.
Another 300 Series stolen part is in the HVAC (Heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system. Conversion to right-hand drive means this system has to be flipped over, so it sits behind the glovebox instead of the steering wheel. With 300 Series and Tundra parts married up with a Walkinshaw-made part, this means the Tundra uses a 300 Series cabin filter accessed from the usual spot (behind the glove compartment).
You get a sense of the challenge here, to maintain a high level of quality and repeatability, and reduce the chance for errors to be as low as possible.
Think about it: most factories operate at a much higher speed but are only concerned with the process of assembly and inspection.
Here, the Walkinshaw team needs to handle inspection, disassembly, modification, re-assembly and final inspection before calling the job done.
And it’s not a simple modification, either. Welding the firewall and chassis is serious business, and needs to completed to a high standard, repeatedly.
And the many other small changes are challenging not in each individual, but in the burden of quantity.
This is highlighted by the time taken at each step in the line. Instead of a bell dinging every sixty second to five minutes, we’ve got well over one hour spent at each stage.
It’s fascinating to see the steps that are undertaken to keep order and control here. Disassembled nuts and bolts go into a tackle box, compartmentalised specifically for each fastener and locked to a vehicle.
It certainly beats the bowl I take from the kitchen, which I probably ate breakfast out of earlier, to throw all my nuts and bolts into.
Larger components like ABS modules and master cylinders, along with things like door handles and trim pieces, also get placed in an ordained space in a shelving system. Specific safety items get scanned and barcoded, to ensure 100 per cent traceability down the line.
Organisation, structure, training. Repetition, testing and checking. This is the recipe.
Many parts of this right-hand drive Toyota Tundra for Australia are developed by Walkinshaw and brought in through its own suppliers: Air conditioning and brake lines, door trim pieces, carpets and many other bits and bobs are replaced with Walkinshaw-sourced parts.
And there are things you might not even realise. Windscreen wipers need to be flipped over, so they rotate in a clockwise direction to suit the driver’s position. This requires new wipers, as well as various extra parts and a modified plenum.
One example of a small but important change was a bracket for the high-voltage cable, which runs between the engine and control unit. As the engine shakes around on its mounts and now with the cabling running in the opposite direction, Walkinshaw’s development found Toyota’s original bracket would break.
This testing is done on a specific shaker rig, which can replicate road conditions in controlled conditions and seek out weaknesses in the chassis, suspension and body.
Back to the drawing board for that piece. Walkinshaw developed a new part (complete with its own part number, and a place on the shelf in Toyota’s parts warehouses), that passed the test.
We aren’t privy to every small change, but Walkinshaw engineers told us there were many, many minor updates and changes like this bracket.
Headlights are replaced by Toyota-sourced units to sight right-hand drive, along with seat belts and the wiring harness for the instrument panel. Other bits are pinched from the existing Toyota parts bin (like the LandCruiser 300 Series), while Toyota developed the right software for the infotainment and driver’s cluster to suit our market.
While Toyota wasn’t the first to undertake this kind of process which was no doubt an audacious move by Neville Crichton and Ateco Group some years ago, the fact that this is the first time that Toyota has engaged (and entrusted) a third party to touch their vehicle is significant.
Considering Toyota’s brand reputation in Australia – especially amongst their range of four-wheel drive vehicles – this is a bold step for the typically conservative Japanese carmaker.
The Toyota Tundra in Australia – with its 326kW/790Nm 3.5-litre turbocharged hybrid powertrain – provides a point of difference to the Ram 1500, Silverado 1500 and Ford F-150.
Toyota likely won’t have problems clearing the initial supply of vehicles for the Australian market, and it has scope to increase production volume when Walkinshaw’s new facility comes online in the coming years.
Sam Purcell has been writing about cars, four-wheel driving and camping since 2013, and obsessed with anything that goes brum-brum longer than he can remember. Sam joined the team at CarAdvice/Drive as the off-road Editor in 2018, after cutting his teeth at Unsealed 4X4 and Pat Callinan’s 4X4 Adventures.
