ktincher

Well folks, I have been spying on you guys for close to a year now without anything to say. Lately that has all changed as I am officially hooked!

I bought a 98 4Runner, 4wd, 5 speed, earlier this year. She had 102k miles on it and in great condition. I had the running boards off right away....

First off was the deckplate mod. Easy to follow with the great writeup on here. I can really feel the difference at high RPM's. Sounds great.

I started the process of de-chroming her by taking off the factory fender flares. You can hopefully see the difference in the pics.

Yesterday, I installed a new TJM-17 bumper. I only have a pic from evening time, so I'll update it later. But I wanted to get this on there, as a before and after. Let me know what you think! The installation went fairly smooth, except for the rusted bolts that, along with a cheater bar, ate 3 of my socket wrenches.

Thanks to Steve at Sonoran Steel (great guy to work with, as we all know), as well as the Schug for helping me out with the install.



The day I bought her.


Pretty darn clean inside....




And now for the recent pictures with the TJM....

Man4God

Nice truck!

jlohr

very nice.. should get some better pics for sure tho

Elton

use photobucket.com

icerunner

Very very nice...
BTW Hey what did that cost you total....?
How much money did you spend for that and how much time for bumper removal and instalation?

ktincher

icerunner, PM Sent.....

New photos posted with a little help from daylight.....

ktincher

The removal of the OEM bumper took less than an hour once I got a cheater bar to remove the 11/16" bolts from the frame. About another hour to install and you're good to go. The writeup from Bob (http://www.4runners.org/writeups/tjm17/index.htm) is excellent and helped out tremendously.

Thanks for the comments!

fireteacher

those bumpers suck! LOL j/k (sig)

Welcome to the money pit!

next mod should be the cup holder mod for you, dont want to spill your hot chocholate on your tunes!

cgeorge

Great looking ride.

How much weight would you say the TJM added? I have no idea how much those weigh..

ktincher

This is from Bob's writeup mentioned above, which I would say is right. "the TJM pieces including the nuts weighs 70.0lbs. My 1998 stock bumper and brackets weight 21lbs---a huge 50lb difference."

I didn't measure to see how much my front went down after the TJM, but I would guess less than a half inch.

Thanks!

cgeorge

Can you tell any weight difference? I'm assuming you can't since you didn't really notice a drop of the front end..