Pushing the envelope with our first 300 Series custom rear bumper and rock sliders.

There's no better feeling than when a returning customer phones to inform us that he's got a new project to challenge us with! In this case it was Jon's 300 Series Toyota Land Cruiser!

When he approached us at the beginning of 2024 there were hardly any accessories available for the 300 Series in South-Africa, and that's where we got to roll-up our sleeves.

The front was already equipped with an ARB front bumper, but just like in any local pub, the backside sometimes attracts more attention. Having limited space in the back of the 300 as an overlanding vehicle we came up with the idea of adding a spare wheel carrier on the driver side and a separate carrier on the left hand side with a universal mount for extra storage boxes.

Keeping the slimline look of the new generation Land Cruiser we decided to incorporated the carrier inside of the bumper and after two carrier prototypes we got the winning design.

The carriers has been designed to open by themselves when un-latched with the provided gas struts keeping the weight of the spare wheel in mind. As we know Jon, he doesn't blink to tow some of the industries market leading trailers all over the continent, therefore we've removed the original bolt-on towbar piece and constructed a heavy duty towbar incorporated into the chassis and the bumper together with an removal hitch and two connected Harrison plugs for the trailer's power source.

Since the spare wheel might take up some visibility of the rear lights, we've added led tail-lights into the carriers along with reverse lights for extra visibility on the trails.

(Ready for action as both carriers are locked-in)

Now when you stroll out the pub you might sometimes hit a curb on the way out, if you were a vehicle that's where rock sliders come in!

Knowing Jon doesn't hold back when hitting trials we didn't hold back on toughness when it came to the sliders. Constructed out of 3mm steel and 10mm mounting brackets directly to the chassis, one can lift this 300 off the floor with an forklift at the provided high-lift jack points! Covered with black raptor coating matching the tone of the vehicle and extra toughness! We followed the original plastic sliders design in a way to keep the new ones as slimline as possible.

This is only a few mods done to Jon's Land Cruiser, for more details on the complete build visit his Instagram page at empire_overland!