bikeski303

Hi everyone,

First of all I am new to the forum, as well as Toyotas, and am hoping some of you veterans can help me improve my winter comfort and driving experience in my new (to me) 1995 4Runnner 4x4 w/ the 22RE. I bought the truck in November as a spur of the moment purchase because I needed 4x4 transportation to get back into the woods to finish elk hunting season. The first part of the season we were using a 1997 Chevy 2500 diesel and the electronic 4x4 wouldn't engage on our way up a gnarly forest service road. Boy, I'm never going back to electronic 4x4 if I can... the manual engagement with locking hubs on the 4Runner is reliable and the thing just crawls up the steepest, rockiest, iciest forest service roads here in Colorado. And the 22RE is impressive as a humble and reliable workhorse that purs, it has 187k miles. I say all this to show that I love the truck! Despite a few fixable, but in the meantime frustrating "character flaws".

You see, whoever had the truck prior to me at some point had to get the AC evaporator/heater box/housing replaced due to the factory one dying. I didn't discover this when I test drove the truck because it was warm outside and I didn't think to test the heater. However once we drove up into the mountains, my brother and I quickly realized that something was wrong with the heating system because it barely blew hot air even on full blast. The air was hot, just the pressure coming out of the vents was super low. My brother, who was sitting shotgun, felt cold air billowing in down by his feet for 3.5 hours on our way from Denver to Steamboat. That weekend the average temperature was probably in the upper teens... Upon getting back home, I looked underneath and noticed a bunch of old crusty duct tape between the blower motor unit and the AC evaporator/heater box. So basically, the whole time the blower was just blowing out cold air because it didn't match the AC box. That was problem one... To solve it I got some aluminum duct seal tape and re-taped between the two. My seal was much better than before and there was a significant improvement to the pressure coming out of the ducts. However, I still noticed cold air coming out near the floor, sort of up against the firewall. I stuck my hand behind everything and felt that there is about a 2 inch gap between the AC/heater box and the duct manifold where the conditioned air is sent throughout the ductwork in the car. After dropping some expletives, I realized what the culprit was. Some doofus installed the wrong model AC/heater box that didn't match either the blower side or the duct manifold side... I have been dealing with this for almost 4 months now, and yes winter is almost over, however I finally worked up the motivation to reach out to the forum. I have been to a few junkyards in the Denver area, namely YotaYard, looking for the correct box for my truck and haven't had any luck yet. When the guys at YotaYard looked up the part they told me that it was specific to my exact configuration of 4Runner from November of 1993-December 1995. I considered the aluminum duct tape fix like before, however there isn't enough clearance behind the gap and the firewall for me fit my hands in there to seal it. Also I'd have to take everything apart anyways so I just figure I may as well replace it with the right one...So my primary question for all of you is do you you know of a good place to source this part from? Or, do any of you know if I can use a box from a different model that will match closer than what I have? Note that the unit I am referring to is just to the left of the blower motor underneath the glove box. From right to left it goes: blower motor unit, AC evap/heater box, and then the duct manifold. I really need to fix it because I can never convince my wife to trade cars when I have to drive around a lot for work since it's always freezing in the 4Runner. Plus we do a lot of winter activities besides hunting and it would be AWESOME to have a working heater. I appreciate any insights you can give!

Thanks,

Bikeski303

Co_94_PU

iTrader: (-1)

There is also yota jims in denver. I can tell you for sure there are a few mid 90's 4runners at the upullandpay out in aurora. And the gold one, don't remeber which row it's in it's moved a few times. But the majority of the dash is already out of the way, and has the blower box (partly?) seperated from the part you want.