JBurt

So I figured that I would finally get around to starting one of these. I enjoy looking at other peoples and it will be good to have a record of when and how I did things that way when I forget I can come check.

A friend got me into toyota trucks a couple years ago. At the time he had an 82 pickup and I had a 96 maxima. I liked the maxima but there is nothing to do here and I figured I should get a car I can take into the desert and go camping/exploring.

After spending about 6 months looking anywhere within 500 miles of here I found this one here in town. It had been totaled in phoenix. Someone hit the front passenger side and a body shop bought it at an auction. They had several 4runners so they put it together and tried to sell it. Apparently it had been for sale on their lot for several months and no one wanted to buy it because of the color. That didn't bug me so for $3500 I brought home my rig (with the e-locker too!).

Here is how it looked when I brought it home.



It's an SR5. When I got it, it had 178,000 miles, OME shocks and struts with OME 906 springs in the rear and 881 springs in the front. It sits pretty level. 36" from the ground to both front and rear fenders. It rides really stiff compared to my friends stock 98 2wd but I don't think it will change any time soon. Taking out the rear sway bar helped quite a bit. I haven't noticed a difference in handling. I'll leave the front one in. Maybe Christmas will bring some quick disconnects from WabFab.

The body shop told me that all the speakers were there, it was just missing a head unit. Over the last year I found out that the front speakers and tweeters were also missing, along with all mounting hardware, and the back speakers were blown. It now has a stereo and new front speakers, just need the rear. The power antenna mast is gone so I figured I'd to a taco whip mod but then found out that there is an antenna in the rear window also. I bought an adapter to have both hooked up at the same time and put in a rocker switch to control when I want the power mast to go up and down. The rear antenna gets pretty good reception. Good enough that I get a couple stations from palm springs and haven't felt the need to buy a new antenna mast for the front. I followed Rock Slides write up here.

Since I'm still in school I haven't done anything really cool. Luckily my wife loves the rig and going places so I'm still able to do somethings. I should be done with my Masters in a year and a half so then I can get a real job and do a lot to the 4runner (interpret paint it).

JBurt

When I got it home the battery was in sad shape. Lots of corrosion. I cleaned it up pretty good and when I hooked it back up the alarm went off. This caught me a little off guard because the body shop told me it didn't have an alarm. They didn't have a remote and nothing I could do would stop the alarm so I just ripped it out.

After about a month I was out goofing around in the superstition dunes and my airbag light came on and my horn didn't work. After research I found out it was the clockspring. Easy fix but I didn't put he steering wheel back on straight. You can see where the cable kinked and broke.




When I checked the coolant last may I saw this around the cap.



My first thought was milkshake! I had bought a B&M tranny cooler and hadn't installed it. I flushed the coolant and this unholy mixture of red and green came out.



I flushed it until it came out clean and filled it with toyota red. Just rechecked it and no sludge. I guess it was from water deposits and mixing coolant.

After that scare I figured it was time to put in the tranny cooler. I did a lot of research on them. FogRunner's posts were very valuable. Nothing really special here. I went with a B&M 70264. I mounted it using the tabs in front of the a/c condenser.



Last month I changed out my spark plugs. Turns out they weren't so bad.

JBurt

The brake pedal has always felt too soft to me. I replaced all the rubber brake lines with the goodrich stainless steel lines last feb. and that helped but not enough. I knew my front pads didn't have much life so I figured I'd try more once they wore out.

Two weeks ago I got 231mm calipers and rotors from a boneyard in san diego. My rotors were warped and thin so I figured I'd upgrade instead of replace.

I wanted to take a lot of pictures but I didn't. My wife's uncle was a mechanic at the county garage until he retired last year and I asked him to check out the calipers to see if I needed to rebuild them and when he came by he said, "lets just swap them in right now", so we did. It's so much better. The car doesn't pulse and squeal when I stop. The only down side is that my wheels rubbed on the calipers. It just a little. I needed the car that evening so I went and got some 1/4" wheel spacers to get me by. They work ok, but I'll probably wind up just grinding down the calipers where they rub.

BigFishAllDay's write up here on toyota4runner.org has some fantastic info on everything you need to know on the upgrade, so I not going to loose any sleep over not taking pics.

As far as tires go it came with two no name 265/70/16's in the rear and two mismatched tires in the front of the same size. I've been saving up for new tires and after a lot of research I decided to go with the treadwright guard dogs. I ordered them on Thursday and they should get in on Tuesday.

I thought about getting the 285's but I wanted a full size spare without airing it down and it rubbing on the panhard. Plus I didn't want to worry about them rubbing on the front control arms. Their website says the 285/75/16's are 33.2" diameter and the 265/75/16's are 32.2" diameter. I figured for the half inch difference in ground clearance I would just go with the 265's. In retrospect maybe I would should have gotten the 285 and just done offset wheel spacers and a rear hitch spare carrier but that kind of negates the savings of going with treadwrights. I'll post up pictures when they come in.

4runn3r

nice, I like the color

jason in tn

nice runner ,looking forward to seeing how you like the tread rites, I thought about going with them on mine but opted for the pro comp extreme a/ts.

JBurt

Look what came in the mail today!



They got here early enough that I was able to go from this



To this




I am super stoked. I'm going camping out in the desert this weekend so I should be able to test them out fairly well. They are 265 75 16's. I had to trim the plastic in the wheel well a little bit for them to fit. My buddy is borrowing my jack so I couldn't get them fully stuffed to see if they rub anymore. I think they might but I took it for a test drive around town and there was no rubbing with regular in city driving.

I was excited when they showed up because they are the old goodyear mt tread design and they are goodyear mt/r cases. They are load range D so 8 ply. The cases look great. No cracking and no chunks missing. I'll post better pics when it's light outside. Probably tomorrow morning.

matt92yota

nice 4runner man, i think the color is awesome!

stockwell45

iTrader: (1)

Is that a stock color? I dont believe I've ever seen that before, but I like it!

Tires are lookin good!

JBurt

Thanks. Thats definitely not a stock color. It was dark green from the factory, at least that's what the door jambs tell me. I got it pretty cheap because no one wanted that color. I thought I could always paint it down the road, but it is kind of growing on me. We'll see.

JBurt

Here's a pic in the daylight.



Sigh. The wife drives it to work and I get to take her prius 100 miles away for my 13 hour school day...

JBurt

So the Treadwrights are awesome. I really like them. They are a bit loud but I don't mind. I've never had any other MT's so I've got nothing to compare them to.

I've gone wheeling a couple time out in the desert and not had any problems.

Today I finally gave the rig it's Christmas presents. My wife surprisingly bought both of them. The first was a rockin Yotatech sticker. Instant 7 whp!



The other gift were some Kicker KS525 5.25" speakers in the rear doors. I took out the plastic oem speaker mounts and made some out of 1/2" MDF. They sound so much better than the blown crappy speakers the PO had in there. Sorry I didn't take any pics but it's really straight forward. The only think I thought about after putting it all back together was to spray the MDF with some sealer. It swells up if it gets wet.

JBurt

I just realized that every pic of my rig here is in my driveway. Lame. I've got to take some more when I'm out. Anyway here's a couple





Not of the rig but I took them in the rig

jason in tn

Cool pics, glad to hear your happy with the tires Ive read a lot of good revues about them.

Jeep Killa 99

That is a cool color man. I have never seen that before on a toy.

JBurt

Not much to update. Hopefully I'll replace the rear shoes this weekend. The only other thing on the radar right now is to fix the AC. For the last year or so it will go out for a day/hour/few days or whatever it feels like then it will blow nice and cold again. I think it's probably the expansion valve. It doesn't bother me much but we found out my wife is pregnant and she doesn't want to be pregnant with no AC. I guess I can't blame her.

I guess the kid will further block progress on the 4runner but we're really excited about having our first kid. Next big mod: get a carseat by November!

JBurt

Word to the wise, wash off bird crap. I was out of town for a few weeks and when I got back the 4runner was covered in it. When I washed it off it had eaten through the paint. Not really bad but cracked all the same. Super Lame. I think whoever had it painted last didn't put on a good clear coat or something. So tonight I waxed it hoping that would help protect it.

Still haven't torn into the AC. Maybe next week. I did notice that there is a slight squeal coming from the AC compressor. Maybe that's the issue. My wife's uncle was a mechanic for 35+ years and when he gets time he's coming to help diagnose. Great guy. I never noticed that the squeal was coming from the compressor because it's always on. It's already been 116* several days here. Not too fun.

JBurt

So I was bored today and decided to clean up my engine bay. Nowhere close to Teuf's but better than before. While I was at it I took out the air elbow. Really easy. I don't think I'll do the deckplate mod but removing the elbow made a lot of sense.

While I was doing it I turned on the truck to take out a cd. When I put everything back together the cel came on. Could turning the truck on with the maf unplugged make the cel come on? I don't have a code reader so it'll be a few days till I can pull the code.

I've been thinking about getting one for a while. While a scangauge ii would be nice I'm not going to fork out 170 right now.

Has anyone used Torque Pro for an android phone? It seems like it would work well and has thousands of positive reviews. One thing I haven't found is how it connects to the car. I think it would use an obdii to bluetooth adapter like the one here.

Anyone have any thoughts?

**Update: The next day the CEL light turned off just from driving around town. Nice.

JBurt

ItHooked up some ac gauges on thursday. When the ac blew hot the low side ws raound 5 psi and the high was still around 200. So then I ordered an expansion valve and drier. Sould be her by wednesday. I'm really excited for ac

JBurt

Look what came in the mail today



I was hoping that both the drier and expansion valve would come in the same package but the valve should be here tomorrow.

It was really overcast and rainy here today (87* instead of 111*) so I decided to head out and see what damage the rain caused. The drainage in this valley is terrible










The first two are two flooded fields where the freeway had been closed last night due to flooding. The third one is where the ground gave way and flooded a drainage ditch and the last one is the ditch. They are usually about 15 feet deep and nearly empty. Not that one. Only got stuck once in the mud (It was everywhere) and my locker got me out quick.

Taylor Burt

Egads, that's a lot of water. Congrats on getting AC.