my son and i
 

My son and I are handy ( we have all our thumbs) and we have decided to on a project together. I have an 88
4runner which I purchased new. We have decided to rebuild it. It has a 3vze engine with an automatic tranmission. We (my son) have decided that we should begin with a good 5speed manual transmission. (I think he plans to go places which I never considered when I bought the truck). Anyway, youre help, recommendations, knwledge or humour would help.

Welcome to YT! I may not have much advice at this point, but I really like what you are doing. Good Luck!

3.4L swap and the 5spd :bigok:

Yeah 3.4 would definately be the way to go

They already said that they have decided on rebuilding the 3.0. Converting automatic to a manual might be an issue however. Quite a bit of work there.

Welcome. My dad and I talked about doing something like this but never got around to it (moved for school). I'm finding it helpful to look at pics of other rigs to get ideas for what I might want to do.

Great to hear you and your son are taking on this kind of project.

so I want to ask, what do you two plan to use the truck for after?
DD with weekends offroading?

Do you want to lift the truck?

If you give us a general idea on what you want to do (aside from rebuilding and doing a 5sp swap) we can give some advice.

Now for the 5spd swap, there are a few guys on here who have done the swap, but im pretty sure they all did it on later gen trucks/4runners.

If you search 5sp swap, you will probibly get some good information to get you guys started.

Best bang for the buck way more horsepower way better MPG then do the sas he will be the envy of the school when done.

Putting the manual in shouldn't be a big problem. You will need to fix up the hole in the floor for the shifters, change the computer, maybe a bit of wiring, get the 5 speed crossmember and change that out by just unbolting it and change the ds lengths. Shouldn't be too bad. I went the other route when I did my diesel swap. Went to an auto from a 5 speed. I did the same process except had to add wires rather than take away. If you have some decent knowledge and a welder it can be done. And if you have a lathe you can do your own ds work like I did.