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So I joined this forum back in 2009 but this is my first post. I've owned a couple of old yotas in the past, an 88 pickup and a 2005 Hilux diesel when I lived in Australia. This weekend I'm picking up my 3rd, a 1988 4Runner SR5. I'm flying from New Orleans to Colorado to buy the truck and drive it back to the Crescent City this weekend.
The truck was lived its life in Arizona and is 100% RUST FREE! The current owner, an enthusiast in Elizabeth, CO (maybe even a member here, dunno) has had it for 5k miles and did the timing chain, cover, water pump, etc. along with a new clutch and a fresh set of rubbers. 170k original miles
The bad. Some PO attached an aftermarket roof rack by drilling holes through the topper and headliner and installing steel backing plates on the inside. To waterproof it, they rhino-lined the whole thing.
The interior is pretty rough and will need some TLC for sure.
And someone made a mess of the windshield install and ditched the SS factory trim
I've got a lot of work ahead of me with this ol' rig but I'm excited to bring her back to full glory. I'm also excited to become a part of community of enthusiasts here at yotatech. If any of y'all have had success with some of the projects I've got in front me, I love free advice! Look forward to chatting with y'all.
As for the top, i would just find a new top to swap, too much time and effort to try to fix/repair/restore that top. You should be able to find one relatively cheap, ive seen them go for $100, other times people just give them away to get them out of their hair.
Very nice project! Looking forward to following your progress.
One thing I have learned during my restoration was to do the interior BEFORE any body work or paint is done. You will spend hours cleaning dust out of your new interior pieces.
Very nice project! Looking forward to following your progress.
One thing I have learned during my restoration was to do the interior BEFORE any body work or paint is done. You will spend hours cleaning dust out of your new interior pieces.
Nice find, looks like you'll be rescuing it just in time! The interior is a little rough, but it's cool that most everything is there. Mine's still missing all the interior trim for the fiberglass shell, it's hard to find. That little screw in the passenger side a pillar is gonna be a rust maker down in your state. I'd at least grease it's threads for now.
Ditto on not replacing the chrome trim. I haven't figured out a great solution either, but I developed a bad windshield leak from all the crud trapped in there.
Does the rear window still roll down with the key switch?
You are correct, nice catch! I don't think I've heard of the "Bosch" series, only the 15th century painter. Is their a series about him now?
Well, it's clear I don't know much about art history! The Bosch series is an Amazon show based on a Michael Connelly book about an LA police detective...it's a good show. And the lead character's name is Heironymous Bosch...Harry for short.
Very nice project! Looking forward to following your progress.
One thing I have learned during my restoration was to do the interior BEFORE any body work or paint is done. You will spend hours cleaning dust out of your new interior pieces.
Yeah, I can imagine all that fine metal, bondo, primer and paint dust would not be fun to get out fabric or nooks and crannies. Thanks for the advice!
Nice find, looks like you'll be rescuing it just in time! The interior is a little rough, but it's cool that most everything is there. Mine's still missing all the interior trim for the fiberglass shell, it's hard to find. That little screw in the passenger side a pillar is gonna be a rust maker down in your state. I'd at least grease it's threads for now.
Ditto on not replacing the chrome trim. I haven't figured out a great solution either, but I developed a bad windshield leak from all the crud trapped in there.
Does the rear window still roll down with the key switch?
I did get it in the knick of time. Beyond the screws in the pillars, there are 5 holes on the roof above the windshield where someone must have previously installed a visor. The screws have been removed and big globs of silicone put in their place. I may give these areas attention sooner rather than later before rust gets into them. For all the screw holes I plan to weld in small backer plates, filling the holes with the weld before filler, primer and paint.
I am super worried about safeguarding the truck from the Louisiana climate. I'm considering removing body panels and applying a finish on the back side to prevent rust. I wonder if anyone out there has done this and can recommend a good finish for this purpose.
I'm glad I've got most of the trim on the interior (aside from the missing console!) but the pieces are all old and brittle. That's going to be a problem when I remove the parts and prep them for a new coat of vinyl paint. One step at a time!
My rear window operates marvelously from the key! Really don't like how clunky that gate is though, need to go through the seals. Hell, most of the exterior seals on the whole truck could use replacing.
Thanks for all your advice! Feels good to be part of a community of folks that love these trucks at least as much as I do.
First things first, you just went from the high desert dust bowl to the swamp. Locate and clean all the frame and body drains of all the dirt dust and gunk. Getting the water to drain freely is the best bang for your buck in preventing rust.
Silicone is better than nothing for keeping oxidation down, so atleast they tried. Unless they are huge holes I wouldn't use more than a good polyester resin (glaze) to fill them, if you can't TIG or MIG with the gas on the back sides, just recess them a bit first and then skim.
Just to be clear poly resin is not Bondo style body filler. There are no fillers in it just the good stuff, doesn't shrink doesn't absorb water. It is a finishing product.. sorry in the boonies on dialup and kind of lazy, Google is your friend it'll find it!
The gate noise is probably from a missing piece. There is a torsion spring along the bottom of the gate, it is supposed to ride along a plastic ramp that attaches to a small stand off at the rear and the cross brace at the front. With out this it's just rolling across the bottom side of the bed.
I remember seeing this ride pop up one CL, it's quite an eye catching paint job. It's not quite as memorable as the giant pastel painted eagle, I still kind of want that one, but it sure pops compared to the normal solid colors.
First things first, you just went from the high desert dust bowl to the swamp. Locate and clean all the frame and body drains of all the dirt dust and gunk. Getting the water to drain freely is the best bang for your buck in preventing rust.
Silicone is better than nothing for keeping oxidation down, so atleast they tried. Unless they are huge holes I wouldn't use more than a good polyester resin (glaze) to fill them, if you can't TIG or MIG with the gas on the back sides, just recess them a bit first and then skim.
Just to be clear poly resin is not Bondo style body filler. There are no fillers in it just the good stuff, doesn't shrink doesn't absorb water. It is a finishing product.. sorry in the boonies on dialup and kind of lazy, Google is your friend it'll find it!
The gate noise is probably from a missing piece. There is a torsion spring along the bottom of the gate, it is supposed to ride along a plastic ramp that attaches to a small stand off at the rear and the cross brace at the front. With out this it's just rolling across the bottom side of the bed.
I remember seeing this ride pop up one CL, it's quite an eye catching paint job. It's not quite as memorable as the giant pastel painted eagle, I still kind of want that one, but it sure pops compared to the normal solid colors.
PS/edit: OK I got sort of unlazy. Here is my buddy over at swrnc to explain better..
There's nothing lazy about that reply! Striking gold right out the gate! Also, it's good to meet another yota dude from CO. I'm actually from there, moved to NOLA a year ago. I saw that truck with the pastel eagle and the sun on the hood, it actually looked like a pretty solid truck. Not sure what part of CO you're in but maybe you saw me getting around in my old 88 PU years ago. The cab was covered in astro-turf and the bed skirts were cut off and what was left of the bed and the camper shell were painted in crazy day-glo murals. That truck was an absolute rust bucket so I painstakingly applied astro-turf to the exterior, looked like it was painted on. I've got some pictures of that monstrosity kicking around somewhere.
I'm gonna get her to a manual carwash this weekend to blow crud out of as much as I can and start isolating any fluid leaks that will lead to ongoing crud build-up; I've already identified one coming from the power steering pump.
I've used polyester resin heaps in fibreglass fabrication and glazing putty specifically in fibreglass form construction. Should I use give the holes a couple of little taps with a conical punch to recess them a bit first?
I was thinking something along the lines as you said for the gate, thanks for the specific info. The driver door's a bit clunky as well; I'll pull both panels this weekend and inspect all the hardware and mechanisms.
So I drove the ol' girl 1500 miles home from Elizabeth, CO to New Orleans, LA and it all went pretty well. I managed to snap off one pic en route, on the side of a desert highway somewhere in NM, SE of Raton.
In the photo, you can see some dingus added his own flourish of pink airbrush to the already great factory striping. I'm hoping I can polish that crap off of the vinyl decal. Speaking of which, I've been told that this striping was factory applied and is pretty rare. I know the VIN doesn't call out paint code and/or striping but is there any identifying marks on the truck that tie it to it's original paint scheme?
So here's what I learned on my trip home:
The truck has developed a high idle, which I've been researching ad nauseum. It sounds like this is a pretty common problem on these 22re's and it can be a whole host of things. She idles at 1000-1200 always, unaffected by any input variables, ie brake being depressed or temperature of engine. I've done a casual run through of the vacuum lines with no obvious fault. However, In pulling and reconnecting lots of vacuum lines, I noticed almost no effect on engine idle and their doesn't seem to be a ton of vacuum pressure in the lines. How much pressure should I be reading? This could be a dead giveaway for a fault somewhere in the system. The PO did the timing chain, cover seal and valve cover gasket. Am I correct in assuming that a bad seal in any of these would affect my vacuum pressure?
Another thing I've read that can affect vacuum pressure is a bad water temp sending unit. Which leads me to the next set of problems. It has an SR5 gauge cluster (Which I find odd as the VIN seems to come up as a DLX; it also has lots of features that I thought identified it as an SR5 - door panels, pull button for gas cap, rear window defroster). On the left side of the cluster is the oil pressure and water temp. Oil gauge is dead, water temp is intermittent with erratic readings. I checked water temp throughout the trip with my IR thermo and it ran cool as can be the whole way home. However, I also read that a faulty temp sending unit effecting idle is a problem the later 22re's had, could it affect mine as well? Both gauges on the same side of the cluster being faulty seems to point to a problem in the cluster but I think it's just a coincidence.
Somewhere else I read of debris in the cooling system causing idle issues. The guy just did a new radiator, water pump, and thermostat. I wonder if some debris caught in the IACV or elsewhere could be causing my woes.
Beyond the idle issue, I've noticed an intermittent miss when cruising at roughly 2000 rpm, no miss above or below that point.
Also, in 2nd at 2000 rpms, there's a slight vibration that appears to be be coming from the transmission. Beyond that, she runs through all the gears without a hitch.
It appears someone has done an H4 headlight swap, which is great but the three-way switch at the steering column is a little dodgy.
That's all I can think of for now. I'm going to try to track down this idle issue this weekend. Hope everyone's had a good week. Happy Friday!
PS/edit: OK I got sort of unlazy. Here is my buddy over at swrnc to explain better..
Great video but had a hard time listening to ol' mate talk to that woman like that. Like to hear him give that a shot with my old lady. He'd get his teeth knocked out.
Great video but had a hard time listening to ol' mate talk to that woman like that. Like to hear him give that a shot with my old lady. He'd get his teeth knocked out.
Yeah Pete is quite a potty mouth for sure, sorry I didn't post a warning. guessing he was talking to Minnie, she's a tough Texas girl she'd whoop him if she wanted to.
01-05-2017, 04:27 AM
