thanks, rob!

 

alright, more pictures
the first picture is of my sst for the crank bolt in action. since the engine was on a stand, i installed two of the flywheel bolts to the crankshaft, then wedged a big combination wrench in between them and the engine stand. this worked for removing and installing the crank bolt.


and here are some of the 3.4 going in


the big, impatient looking fellow in the pictures is my coworker, who was probably wanting me to put down the camera and get back to the whole engine installation deal


almost there!


and it's in!!!


ready to be towed back to the house, where i was thinking i'd be able to work on it undisturbed. ha!


the exhaust is pretty much tied up. the flowmaster needs a couple of hangers, which should be going on sometime this coming week. right now the muffler is only attached by the weld. it's good enough to drive on pavement for a while, but i don't want to take it offroad until that's taken care of.

i've put somewhere around a hundred and sixty miles on it this week. everything seems to be working properly so far. no issues at all really. yesterday, i installed the second o2 sensor and lengthened the wires to it. i also had to lengthen the wires for the 4wd indicator since they wouldn't reach either. i've put 110 miles on it since doing that and the check engine light hasn't come back on( knockknock ). so far, so good.

that 110 miles has included some highway driving, and also some pretty good hills. i can't believe this is the same truck! i think toyota should just say they're sorry to everyone who ever had to have a 3.0, and install 3.4's for them free of charge. just kidding; i'm much more satisfied that i did this myself.

 

It is a strange sensation to be behind the same wheel, same windshield and same hood... yet have the skinny pedal behave so differently.

 

x2

 

my little helper


me and jack. he has this game where he'll go through the house turning off the lights and then repeatedly ask, "where'd jack go"? so that's what he was doing with my worklight while i was trying to install the alternator

 

Ah, the satisfaction of doing it yourself is worth the cost. The stupid grin doesn't hurt, either. Maybe next year I'll supercharge mine!

 

i've been pretty busy between working, trying to tie up loose ends with the swap, and trying to make up for lost time with my family. oh yeah, and i've been pretty busy driving also! so, back to the updates.

i had originally intended to use the 3.0 evap canister as others have done. the idea of the smaller box was appealing, but in the end i decided that there were enough things taking up space on that side of the engine compartment, while there was practically nothing on the driver's side. without the evap box in the way, i had a straighter path for the engine harness to travel, which worked out well for me because i have just enough wire to plug in the ecu and still be able to position it so that the kick panel could be installed without any modification. i decided the easiest thing to do was just install the 3.4 evap box, since there was plenty of room between the clutch and brake master cylinders and the now relocated battery. i took a piece of bracket that was left from pulling the running boards off my coworker's dodge. it's a piece of angle that was about a foot long. i decided to mount it using the fender bolts. since these bolts have nuts that are attached under the lip of the fender, i pulled the original bolts out and found two in my bag of bolts that were just a little bit longer. i figured out how long i needed the piece of angle to be to reach both holes and chopped of the excess. it already had holes that were conveniently drilled exactly where i needed them to be . i then rounded the corners and buffed the remaining piece of angle and spray painted it with low gloss black paint. i installed the longer bolts in the fender, slipped the angle onto the posts, and then installed a second set of nuts onto the posts to hold the angle on. the original nuts also acted as spacers so that the bracket wasn't partially under the lip of the fender.


here is the final fitting for the evap box. i still haven't decided whether to cut the bottom bolt tab off or to make another lower bracket for the box. there is already an existing bolt hole there, but the box is pretty secure the way it is. as far as location, i'm pretty happy. i still have plenty of room to reach the bleeding valves, and there isn't really anything else for the box to interfere with. i think doing it this way served to spread everything out equally rather than have one big blank area and one really crowded corner. plus all of the wires for the evap system come out of the engine harness on the driver's side, so everything just laid out more naturally that way.


another picture of the evap area. in this one, the vapor pressure sensor can be seen in it's new home. when i pulled the parts from the tacoma, i took all of the brackets as well as the components. the vps bracket had a tab on it that was a mount for part of the wiring harness; this was now a large and entirely useless part of the bracket, so i ground it off, buffed off the sharp edge, and repainted it. right under the evap box's new home was an empty bolt hole that just screamed vps location to me, so i listened.


i should really be asleep right now, so i guess that's it for tonight. the truck is running great. i've got a huge increase in mpg; the lean code that had me chasing my tail with the 3.0 had the truck down to somewhere around 11 mpg. now, even with my currently heavy foot, i'm getting at least 18 in town. with gas prices where they are, it will only take about six months for the savings to eclipse the expenditure. i've got about 300 miles on it since i put in the second o2 sensor, and still no codes( knockknock). everything that is hooked up seems to be working perfectly( knockknock). i still have to do the tach mod, hook up the obd2, arrange a connector for the 4wd transfer switch, figure out the ac wiring, cut out the old battery tray, secure the new one, and a few other loose ends that are eluding my tired brain. ugh, good night

 

sorry for the snail's pace with the updates. i've been working myself up to covering the wiring, and stalling because i know it's going to be a long post... probably posts.

still no signs of trouble. performance aside, the 4runner is running better than it ever has since i've owned it. i can't help abusing the power from time to time but mostly i only use a small fraction of the pedal. i guess that's because that's all it takes to outperform the 3.0.

more pictures. i had to spend a lot more time screwing around with the front and rear heater lines than i would have liked. everytime i pulled off one of the truck's lines, i ran into corroded metal. i ended up pulling out the two tees that divert coolant to the rear heater and cleaning them up with the wire wheel on my bench grinder. i also had a collapsed return tube on my heater core which i had to cut back, expand with needle nose pliers, and then clean up with a file.



i decided that this would be a good time to flush both heaters. i used some old sections of garden hose and some of the old pieces of heater hose to make my own white trash flush kit for the front heater. i used some pipe fittings we had laying around work to do the same for the rear heater. when doing the rear heat, you have to be able to turn the heater on to open the valve; luckily i had already rebuilt the battery harness by this point and was able to just hook it up and turn the heater on. in both cases i had plenty of garden hose to send the flushed coolant out of the engine bay and away from the vehicle.

here is a picture of the end result.



i didn't have any hose with molded bends, but i did have plenty of hose to make everything work by making it longer. of course, this takes up more space and i was concerned that the lines would stick up too far. here the clearance can be seen.



and here is a progress picture, even though it was actually taken right before completing the heater lines.

 

for the battery tray, i used some scrap aluminum i found at work. one piece was a large flat rectangle which i cut and buffed to fit around the overflow tank. i also found a foot long piece of aluminum angle which i cut to the same length as the tray. with a combination of cutting, filing and buffing, i rounded off all of the corners so there would be less sharp things for me to slam my knuckles into... and because i like the way rounded corners look . i attached the angle to the tray with four short screws placed in predrilled, countersunk holes. once the screws were completely tightened, i ground off the protruding threads from the bottom of the tray. i also countersunk the holes for the bolts that hold the tray in the engine compartment, so that the top and bottom of the tray are completely flat surfaces.

here's a picture i took of the test fitting.



the tray sits on a small piece of steel c-channel and on the wheel well. i plan on spraying it with oxide primer and painting it black in the near future. i am using the plastic tray that came from the factory with one of the trucks( i have it from both), and i also used the battery hold down from the tacoma. i did have to drill a new hole to do that, though . i'll post pictures of the end result when i'm finished.

 

Now that is a battery tray!!

 

thanks, elvota! i like yours better. however, since i don't have a welder, i am pretty happy with how it turned out.

 

got the tach mod done last night, and plugged the wire in today at work. this was another one of those parts that i was not looking forward to, so i kept putting it off. now that it's finally done, i'm kicking myself in the keister for not doing it sooner. certainly not as big a deal as i was making it out to be in my head. i didn't bother taking pics; the bottom of page two of mt_goats' thread covers this pretty well. i used a 10k ohm 1/4 watt resistor from radio shack.

the idle is right where it should be and no fuses are blowing, so i guess i did it right. i still can't believe how trouble free this whole swap has been; everything just seemed to fall right into place. largely in part to those who have gone before me. thank you all for posting your experiences.

the list of remaining tasks continues to get smaller. i'm going to need a new project soon

 

Need a bigger challenge?

Pull it back out and swap in a 1UFZE.

 

you first, buddy

 

I hear ya Screamer. I just pulled my wife's '95 4runner into the garage for a little "tweaking". I scored a 2000 3.4 w/all the essentials on ebay for $600.00! No rest for the wicked. On this one, I'm going to try and document better and share with everyone.

 

hrdted, i'd say you're nuts for wanting to jump right into another swap, but i've been exercising an enormous amount of restraint ever since i saw an ad saturday for an '88 v6 4runner with a blown motor for $850. i've always wanted one of the 1st gen 4runners, but i think if i came home with it, my girlfriend would have my testicles hanging from the rearview mirror

good luck with the new project(not that you need it) and congratulations on a sweet deal! i'll be looking forward to the write-up.

 

It's on the list of "wanna dos".

But I'm with you. I think a 3.4 into a first gen 4Runner would be cool. Especially a supercharged 3.4...mmmm...

 

can anyone tell me how to attach a pdf that is larger than the forum's limit of 48 kb's?

 

If you figure out how, let me know. I'm not sure if you can host it somewhere else and post the URL here.

 

well, i figured out that if you download a trial version of the newest adobe acrobat, multipage pdf's can be split into separate files. two pages seems to be small enough to post as an attachment. you can also convert pdf's to jpeg's using acrobat 9, but imo they don't come out as clear.