Marge

Hi everyone. I am very new to the world of Toyota. I just bought my first one about 1 month ago. It is a V6 5spd manual 1991 4wd Toyota pickup DLX regular cab with longbed and ~150,000 miles. So far I love the truck except for one small problem which I will post in another thread. I was wondering what people recommend in terms of things to do/check on the truck?
Thanks,
Marge

Here is a list of what I have done so far:
1) Changed oil and filter
2) Flush and changed coolant
3) Changed spark plugs, wires, distributor cap, and rotor (though I didn't use OEM parts for this, which I have read are better)
4) Changed fuel filter
5) Changed air filter
6) Changed fluid in front diff, rear diff, transmission, transfer case.
7) Changed brakes in front, checked brakes in rear.
8) Changed shocks
9) Changed power steering fluid
10) Greased driveline
11) Cleaned throttle body
12) Cleaned cold start injector

eric-the-red

Looks like you've got everything covered. Time to start the mods

snap-on

check the coolant hoses. both upper and lower, but also the heater hoses at the rear (they have a tendancy to rot out from age/heat)

check belts (glazeing, cracking etc)

look for scarry wireing mess left by pervious owners. expecially if they had just ripped out a sound system or something. electrical gremlins are NO fun to hunt down.

Marge

Mods? I would love to. As it is I am almost broke. I have done a few minor mods. I put air bag suspension in between the rear axle and frame. So far it seems to work really well and when loaded up the truck handles awesome. When I have a heavier load I just pump them up with my compressor and I am good to go. I also put in a secondary fuse block, tach, cb, and new radio. I would like to put in an oil pressure gauge but haven't looked into it yet.

Luckily the guy just had the radiator replaced and they did all the hoses too, so those are brand new. As for the wiring mess...gnarly! The truck had power everything that didn't work, after market cruise control, after market alarm, after market radio with a hack install job. So I pulled out all that stuff though there is still some wiring that doesn't look stock but it seems to be connected to some unknown stock wiring so I will leave it for the moment. I pulled out all the power crap as I don't particulary like it anyway and put in standard window cranks. It is starting to be a little more utilitarian except for the CB and the radio which I suppose are unnecessary but damn fun.
Thanks for the input,
Marge

Rather Diesel

What airbag suspension?

Roy

AH64ID

Which spark plugs did you use? I have found 22RE's to only like NGK cheap plugs. I made the mistake of putting nice platinum tiped plugs in and after 300 miles the truck stopped running...

I love my reg cab...they are great LITTLE trucks...

Marge

Hiya 4x4nala, hmm, not sure about the exact brand of spark plugs. I think I might go and get some OEM recommended plugs/wires/cap/rotor just to rule out a power loss problem I am having. I am pretty new to Toyotas and from everything I have heard they are really sensitive to the type of ignition components you install. Just as you had mentioned with your 22re. Yeah, they definitely are super cool trucks. I love it so far.

Howdy Roy, I put on the FireStone ride-rite airbag suspension. It is just helper suspension for load leveling. They are fairly expensive but worth it if you carry a heavy load sometimes. Here is the website from which I bought them: http://www.truckspring.com/firestone...rear-2400.html
I have had them on about 3 weeks now and they rule! The whole reason I bought this truck is for surfing trips in Baja. The main problem I face when offroading in baja is that I have to take around 500-600lbs of water for my surf trips. So my truck tends to bottom out on large bumps. I put add-a-leafs on my last truck and they worked great when the truck was loaded but when I would drive the truck unloaded I thought I would slip a disk! So I wanted something adjustable. Another cool thing about them is that they support the axle against the frame and not on the leaf spring mounts so the leafs and mounts don't get overloaded. I think the only downside is that they limit suspension travel but since I don't drive very fast that is not my problem, my problem is bottoming out when overloaded. For some reason I can only add the link to the pictures. Oh well. Here are some pics of them mounted on my truck.
Here is the driver side airbag. You can see the fill tube in red coming out of the top of the airbag:

Here is the passenger side airbag:

And here is the passenger side fill valve. There is one on the driver's side of my license plate too. But I can just air them up with my portable air compressor or drive to a gas station and fill them up there.

Let me know if you want any more info on them. I think they are a great upgrade for stock suspension.
Later,
Marge

Rather Diesel

Did the air-bags provide any lift? Thanks very much for the info. This is perfect for the truck that has wide-varying loads. It's exactly what I needed.

Roy

Marge

It depends on how much air pressure you have in the bags. For instance before I installed the air bags I measured from the axle to the wheel well and got 21 inches. When I installed the air bags and put in 5 psi (the airbags are always supposed to have at least 3-5 psi so they don't bottom out) of pressure in them then the measurement was 21.2 inches so the ride was basically the same. But when I put in 20 psi then the measurment became 25 inches and stiffer. When I put 50 psi then the measurement became 27 inches and a lot stiffer and so on. So you can lift it depending on what you want but it also stiffens the ride. The truck will handle much better on the road around turns but as soon as you go offroad and want to absorb bumps like you used to just air down the bags until you get back to your stock ride height, the psi will vary depending on what your load is though. It is really cool. And they are easy to install (~1.5-3 hours). No drilling/welding required. But you do have to cut off the stock jounce bumper so that the bags will fit in between the axle and frame.
Oh and I didn't do this but you can mount psi gauges for each individual airbag and compressor etc. with dash mounted switches and all that. Pretty cool if you want to never leave the cab to raise the truck.
Hope this helps,
Marge

CANADA4RNR

Register your rig with toyota...they will contact ya if any recalls campaigns are needed

Marge

That is definitely a good tip. I found out about that shortly after I bought the truck. The owner gave me a recall notice about the steering rod relay. When I brought it in the Toyota service facility had me register as the new owner. I was also able to check and make sure that the head gasket had been replaced due to recall and not due to failure.
Thanks for the great tips,
Marge