PEER DISCUSSION: Stephen Bajkiewicz
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About This Video
A Patreon-exclusive peer discussion with Stephen Bajkiewicz. The series gives Spirited Man patrons a platform to share their own experiences with craft, creativity, and the spirited life. Van listens as much as he talks. That is the point.
Transcript
all right so how why land cruisers what happened to you um so as
i guess as every you know every boy when he's coming of age of wanting to drive there's something in particular that you want
for me it was a 66 mustang i wanted one really really bad and i was scheming trying to make that happen and then one day
a kid at my high school pulled in the parking lot and an fj40 and
my wife changed i mean it literally was that one vehicle i don't think i'd ever seen one before or had not
been cognizant of them but it was in our parking lot at school and i saw it and it's just been on since then that
was when i was 15. so i know what year that was that was uh 1990. yep we're exactly this we're the same age
um what color was it um so the guy actually had two of them the first one that he pulled up in was a
73 and it was primer gray of course and then i was really intrigued by that one and
then [Music] another day he showed up and he had an 82 that was lifted fj40 soft top it was beige with a brown and orange pinstripe going down the side of it and that one was just like wow that was
that was over the top was he like a special kid was he was he like a rich kid or was like he a football like was he was there something
about him that made it like not necessarily i mean the guy was i mean i guess he was pretty popular yeah in school but
i've never been somebody who really cared too much about trying to you know fit in or or have people like me i mean i'm i'm a
pretty confident and comfortable person in my own skin so um i think he probably has his folks had
had the funds to be able to afford it so i think that aspect of it was there but that wasn't necessarily something that was
oh and they were cheap back then they weren't i mean they weren't cheap relatively but let's see so he had an 83 yeah it was an 82 and a 73. okay so one
of them was 17 years old right and one of them was because i bought a toyota celica gt
in 1992 and it was 650 bucks and it was like perfect rand per brick stick shift and
everything so how much do you think he paid for that thing um so i recall so my mom at the time actually knew his dad
pretty well and as it turned out my mom had called him and kind of gotten the story behind it
the 73 was one that they had bought to sort of fix up and they bought it and it was all camouflaged painted and so they
bought uh i think a case of gray primer and just painted it one weekend so it wasn't camouflaged anymore and
it was kind of cool because i thought my mom was sort of going to be a champion for me here and try to help you know negotiate this thing and long story short i think they
were willing to sell the 73 for like three thousand dollars so how much would that be today how much would a 73
in that condition be probably in that condition i mean probably amanda probably has paid 10 grand for it nowadays i have a guess that sounds
a good deal still fairly reasonable i mean um but you know at the end of the day um
i grew up as an only child my mom was a single mother and she didn't have the means to be able to
foot any sort of expenses and repairs and that sort of thing and at the time even though i was mechanically inclined
i didn't have the knowledge so it didn't happen for me yeah and as far as actually having one to drive and so then what
so then what transpired for you to have like a kingdom at land cruiser kingdom fortunately back in the day
um there was one thing in particular that i could you know this is before the internet this was before
um you know all the visual stuff that we have now that we can easily see that stuff but there was one thing that was available and it was spectre off-road
okay and i was aware of spectre off-road and so i ordered the spectre off-road catalog yeah and so i mean it was my bible
i would just go through it and just look at it and learn and absorb it and it was just it
it turned into an obsession the 66 mustang that i wanted never transpired i wound up with an 84 honda accord hatchback that i loved dearly and
i drove it you know until it wouldn't go anymore i mean when i was in college finally i did buy a land cruiser my first fj40
was a 73 and at the time it didn't run i still didn't have the mechanical skill set or knowledge to be able to to make
it happen but it just made the obsession grow more and more and i had a good friend of mine actually in college that i met on my
college orientation strangely enough i'm just putting it together that these were all 73s but he had a 73 fj40
that had been converted to a 350 chevrolet and that's the first one of those i'd ever seen so he and i actually kind of we piled around and we geeked
out on cruisers together and when i bought that first one in college i was living in an apartment at the time
his brother had a house and was kind enough to let me keep it at his house so i kind of i i had it and i tinkered with it for a little bit and
it was still too early and you know with my skill set that i had at the time i get it running i never got it running
okay but i wound up selling it um fast forward probably five or six years after that
i graduated from high school and i moved back to my hometown and i had gotten a job you know working in corporate america
and had had my first access really to some funds to be able to do it yeah so you graduated from college i'm sorry graduated from college okay yeah uh
moved back to my hometown uh in tennessee and i wound up buying my very first fj40 that actually ran
and at that point i had already owned um an 86 toyota pickup and out of necessity i learned how to
rebuild an engine yeah okay so it was a 22r and so the first motor i ever rebuilt was a 22r with a hanes manual
and a very basic set of tools and some guidance from i forget who it was but somebody when i
was in college kind of steered me in the direction of machine shops and that sort of thing so i learned how to rebuild an engine and so when i got back to my
hometown of chattanooga and had a real job then i was able to buy that first running fj40 which was a 76.
um and i really kind of you know cut my teeth on that and it was a good running truck but the
transfer case needed to be rebuilt because it had a big crack in it so i learned how to rebuild a transfer case how are you lifting this heavy stuff
oh i it was where are you doing that like in your parents garage well at this point i actually uh
when i first bought that truck i had a roommate um who had a house and had a small garage in it and so some of the
small stuff i was able just to do sort of tinkering around like carburetors and that sort of thing but it was after i moved out of that house
and i bought my own first house i had an area where i could where i could work and no i did not have a lift what i did to drop the transmission and
transfer case out of that first one is i pulled the entire interior out of it pulled the transmission tunnel off of it
and i used two step ladders one on either side of the truck and then a six by six
uh beam wooden beam that's aluminum maybe fiberglass i don't remember but i mean it wasn't a whole lot of weight at
that point i mean it was it was substantial enough to be able to handle what i was going to be you know
lifting it's a six by six by six beam going across and um a harbor freight chain hoist
is that this is this oh wow that was uh that was strapped to the beam with the
ratchet strap okay yeah and so yeah yeah so um and so then i was able to you know strap
this thing to this chain hoist and unbolt everything drop it out of the bottom and then put it on a wheeled dolly and
then i wheeled it out from underneath the truck and then from there it was easy enough for me to be able to you know negotiate it negotiate it to
get it on a bench and tear it apart and you know so tell me about the transition from corporate what was your corporate
america job so i worked in the long-term disability insurance industry i did that for uh i did that for about 10 years when i
was in tennessee and was that you go to an office same building every day or is that you out it was cubicle land so i managed
long-term disability claims and so dealt with you know customers and essentially workers that had become
either disabled from an on-the-job injury or due to sickness or something like that so um
so i did that for 10 years and i started getting a little i guess over
trying to climb the corporate ladder so you're like 32 or so around there yeah that would have been about right 30 uh
32 yeah early 30s somewhere in there um and then um
i guess the transition point was uh my now wife okay so we went to high
school together in tennessee but she was a couple years younger than me she and her family moved to utah
and we hadn't seen each other in 17 years so i went to a wedding of a really good friend of
mine well turns out that my friend who was getting married she was a good friend of my wives yeah you know at the time you know i guess we
were just reacquainting but um so amelia who was living here in montana came back to tennessee for that wedding and
we you know we reconnected and you know long story short i wound up
moving to montana and did she encourage you to do this business like how did you because that leap from like a corporate job you're getting a pension you got
health care you've probably got a retirement thing it's every week you're getting that check and then you've got to do this terrifying
super high overhead and you need to manage mechanics and stuff how did that how like how did you get the guts and how did the what were the circumstances how
did it unfold so when i moved to montana um i didn't have a job i really didn't i i wasn't doing anything i had i had enough money to
float me for a while just kind of you know getting the lay of the land figuring out what i was going to do i moved out here not knowing what in the world i was
going to do my wife's a photographer we had had aspirations of um of building her photography business
which i did for a long time i've i used to shoot when i was in high school and in college i'd gotten out of it and when we
reconnected i picked the camera back up again so i helped her for five or six years photographing weddings
um shot a lot of weddings um and yep and so i kind of got out of that i was like i don't really like shooting
weddings anymore but in the meantime i wound up uh i got back in the long term disability industry my one of my former
bosses at my old company said you should call so-and-so who works at this other company they're allowing people to work from home so i got in touch with them
and i wound up back in the disability industry for another five years working from home um but at the end of the day it was still
the same corporate america i had no control over my own fate and it was just it it wasn't gonna it wasn't
gonna work for me long term so i had befriended another local mechanic here in bozeman who was a toyota guy but he didn't want to work on
anything with a carburetor so he started sending people that had fj60s and stuff like that to me and i was working on them out of my garage at my
house and it got to the point where with working in disability i was like i just can't do this anymore
and so my wife and i had bought a house and i was like all right i'm pulling the plug and
i'm gonna go start my own business she thought i was crazy at first she was like she was really terrified she's like there's no way that you're going to be able to
smart yeah well i don't think she was a w my wife is very smart but i don't think she was aware of the demand right for these vehicles right were you
aware of the demand or did it come as a surprise when you started i knew there was a demand for it but i was not at all prepared for
the uh the amount of demand and how high it is so i started the shop in 17 july of 17
so we've been in business for a little over five years we're in our third shop now um because of the growth um we've got more work than we can
then we can handle is that there's a troopy over there that's really from oman yes yeah the owner of that lives in
alabama and he purchased it and um got it to us and we're going to be doing a commons r 2.8
conversion in that truck and we're still working out what the full scope of that build is going to be but yeah that's going to happen because i've
been looking at license plates and then the lady who works here was telling me all the provenance of all these different where everything's coming from
and you had a on the trailer you had that truck oh right there yeah you have that truck from like one county away from where you
where i grew up in tennessee so that's that that was really cool when that truck showed up i'm like you know i don't know it was it was it was a cool
feeling when that came here and yeah we're doing all the stuff on that so that's gotta come in our 2.8 conversion we're nearly done with that truck we've got a
couple of days worth on it work on it and then it's done so so i you know i try to encourage people to get
a skill like this to especially i try to encourage people to become land cruiser mechanics actually i know i've seen it in your uh in some of your
videos so and so like what would you have done would you have done anything differently you think because it's hard to know like
you're suppo you go to college you want to get a professional job and then it's hard to know that like i can't deal with
the day-to-day of this and like would you have like if you were talking to yourself back then would you
how would would you have done anything differently or do you think it kind of just unfolded well i mean
life is different for everybody you know the path that we wind up taking you know some people know it
very early on in life and you know i was listening to something the other day a concert pianist that just had this natural ability to
play the piano starting at age five and that path was already laid out for that individual
for me you know it was a different thing it was one of those one of those things that i went through
a lot of different jobs and a lot of potential careers but in the back of my mind
and i guess i'd kind of forgotten about this until i went home recently to tennessee and one of my good friends there was like out of all of us you're the only one
who's really doing what they always wanted to do and i i had forgotten that when i was in high school and when i was in college that this was really
what my passion wasn't when i what i wanted to do because i'm also a musician and i've always wanted to you know make a run at doing that but
there are certain pitfalls that go along with that lifestyle and it's not the era for it yeah it's not it really is not like the 90s were the era for it you
know you could have one hit and then buy your house and your ranch and now it's just a grind like every other thing it is but i mean i i still
you know i play locally and you know music is is probably been i don't know maybe my first passion actually i take that back my first
passion has been airplanes i always wanted to be a pilot when i was growing up and coulda shoulda woulda do you have your license i don't but either but i
intend to get one my brother's a jet pilot oh nice i've got a actually one of my customers who's a good friend of mine he's a pilot and
uh we've we've talked about you know the possibility of him giving me some lessons but yeah before before i make my grand exit
out of this life i will have checked that box so um you know i i guess it's just different for everybody and
my path in life took the circuitous route to ultimately land me doing what i'm doing now
from all the other jobs that i did which i think ultimately prepared me to be able to have the
all the different necessities in the skill set to be able to run a business and who do you look to for like guidance
or who you know who do you listen to do you have a mentor do you have a i don't really no i don't um
i i guess it's my gut yeah and doing a lot of research and
i i've always had a necessity had to figure things out on my own um gen x i i suppose
growing up uh i i you know i was not from a wealthy family if i wanted things i had to make it happen and so that's
just it's just you know i guess our generation and again what my path
wound up from you know for me so i just i do my best to figure things out on my own
and i'm definitely not above reaching out asking for help i think probably there was a time where i was like oh no i've got this i can i can make it happen but
there's too much in life to try to you know figure everything out on your own you've got to have help experience keeps a good school but a fool will
learn and no other that's that's a very good way to look at it and you know to be honest with you i probably look for a lot of guidance in my employees
which i don't necessarily i don't necessarily look at the guys that work here as quote unquote my employees i mean we're
a team and everybody here has um has a different set of skills to bring
to the table and we work really well together and you know if i've got a question about something or if i you know
need a different perspective yeah i can ask the guys here and we usually come up with
the right solution yeah so uh i'm i'm super grateful for for the guys that work with me well i'm very proud of you
and you've done a fantastic job and this is incredible and i'm so psyched that my truck is in your hands
uh it's an honor and uh anybody who's willing to bring a vehicle uh from as far away as you've brought
yours it's an honor because it means that we're doing something right and we've done something to be able to attract a discriminate
individual who wants a job done um it's uh it's what i want to be doing so
i'm grateful so thank you all right man and we just met we just met yesterday i feel like i've known this guy for my whole life but we just met yesterday
all right super alright well let's get to the airport i guess what time is it
Products & Tools Mentioned
- Overland Cruisers essential — Stephen's Land Cruiser shop in Bozeman, MT
- Cummins R 2.8 essential — diesel engine swap for Land Cruisers
- Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 essential — multiple models discussed: 73, 76, 82, 83
- Toyota Land Cruiser FJ60 essential — model discussed
- Toyota Celica GT mentions — Stephen's first car, $650 in 1992
- Toyota 22R engine mentions — first engine Stephen rebuilt
- Spectre Off-Road recommends — Land Cruiser parts catalog, Stephen's 'bible'
- Harbor Freight chain hoist uses — tool used for transmission work
- Chevrolet 350 engine mentions — V8 swap in friend's FJ40
- Haynes manual uses — repair manual used for first engine rebuild
People Referenced
Stephen Bajkiewicz