I've been bringing back to life an 87 4Runner off and on for the past couple years. She was originally a Turbo, PO swapped motor and tranny to a 22R and 5spd G52 or G54(not sure which). I built her back to 22RE and worked on just about everything except for the Engine and Tranny. Engine is next as there is a bearing like knock and she's burning oil. I've had to teach myself everything, had no auto background. If I rebuild motor, I'm going to try it myself, which brings us to the question.

I have two dreams for this truck and my life with it. One is to eventually drive the Pan American Highway with it, the other is to restore it to a Turbo. Would a Turbo build with components such as an LCE Performance kit (link below) be a reliable motor so far from home? Obviously there is quite an expense with rebuilding to Turbo, these performance parts are not cheap.

http://www.lceperformance.com/Pro-Tu...-p/1071010.htm

I've got a lead on a 22RTE block w/o head and an R151F (no bellhousing or transfer case). I'll sure do some head scratching trying to figure out what to do with that R151F w/o all the parts. But anyways, what do you think? Should I take a 22RTE with fancy LCE parts on it to South America, or should I just focus on making the strongest 22RE I can and leave the Turbo badge as a memorial of what once was?

 

Quite a bit of money for not really much gain.

Then this is going to be an expensive project so another major expense might not matter to your budget .

Plus hard to get parts if you venture South !!

Lots of parts for the 22retc are now obsolete

Do you happen to know if the whole engine was swapped ??

 

well, i believe the turbo will also net you better economy, not just power. i'm not sure what, if any stock ret parts you would need other than the block to make it work, though.