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Loving the updates! Nice clean up on the interior. Can't stand it either. Not sure about removing the rear heater to remove the carpet but definitely a good idea to give it a flush. Looks growdy!
Do you want to keep the rear heater? You could always cap it.
Yeah i think Ill probably keep it, I think it pretty cool having all the extras that come with the 4runner vs the pickup!
Finally got a bit of time to do a little more work. I did a leak down test on the motor, which came back fairly decent actually. I do not believe it has been rebuilt at all, and all the cylinders came back between 91-96% which to me is pretty impressive considering its a 3.0 over 200k miles. So at this point, I am thinking I will to some much needed maintenance on the 3.0, valve adjustment is really needed.. put a catalytic converter on it and try to get it running good so i can register it again. This helps a lot so I can put off doing the 3.4 for a while and focus on all the other major things.
When i took out the plugs to do the leak down, they looked awful.. and they were gapped at .060" instead of the ~ .035 range! So put a new set of plugs in and while that didnt help the initial cold blooded startup routine I have been experiencing, it did start up almost like normal when it was warm several times after which it wouldnt do before. I think it just wants some love!
Then I spent a little bit of time on the brakes, the master cylinder has been leaking for what appears to be a very long time. Took off the brake booster and cleaned that up (was in poor looking shape with all the brake fluid stripping the paint and letting it rust) then got to put on the new master cylinder and some fluid. I have brakes! A bit spongy, will need to bleed all the lines really good and get new fluid all around but some brakes are better than none!
Some bad news! The motor is most likely toast. I dug into it yesterday with a simple plan to adjust the valves. Noticed the some of the camshaft caps were on backwards (3/5 of them) on the passenger side, took a look underneath and they are very scored and the oil feels kind of gritty. Checked the rest of the caps, the cams are really scored up bad, I assume the rest of the bearings look the same which would explain the noise I heard when I had it running. I had hoped it was just valves but I dont think so anymore.
Time to shift gears again, going to hold off on getting it running/driving and continue to work with what I can right now. Still a lot to do on the interior and general maintenance. Not ready to start the search for a 3.4 yet.
It sounds like the person who worked on it last did not know what they were doing.
I think your right.. I am really curious to know the full history. The heads had definitely been redone at some point already as I found machine shop markings on the heads. At first I was happy to see that, it had been freshened up but then i noticed the cam caps backwards.. There was also sand in the lower intake area and around the injector seals for some reason. Someone must have taken their river crossing at full speed I guess
Originally Posted by 84 yota dude
Major bummer. Maybe you can pick up a 3.0 off of craigslist for cheap?
I thought about it, but really since I want to put a 3.4 in there eventually, I would rather save the money (since i would also have to get a cat for it and probably do a tune up on the CL one) and put it towards the swap to keep the total cost down.
Originally Posted by Melrose 4r
Maybe you only need a head/cam setup. You could probably find a used one cheap to get running again.
I am going to drop the oil pan eventually and see what all is down there, I really think that whatever got in the oil went through the whole engine and most likely tore up all of the bearings like it did to both cams and heads unfortunately. Will have to wait and see though!
Originally Posted by rufflz
interior looking fresh now! I need to gut everything out of mine and do this one of these days..
In other news, I got a call back from the CA state Ref today. I wanted to get clarification on the current rules on the 3.4 swap exhaust routing in our trucks, which has changed again!
New Rules ( according the ref who called me back )
You can no longer swap a car engine into a truck
If you are swapping an OBD2 engine into an OBD1 vehicle, you are allowed to mirror the exhaust from one side to the other
If you are swapping an OBD2 engine into an OBD2 vehicle, you can NOT change the exhaust routing, it must match the routing from the vehicle the engine came out of
So yes.. we can again (in CA) do the drive side drop..
We will see what they say when I go in eventually..
The interior is slowly coming along, as gross as it was at times things are starting to look a little more presentable. These carpets and seats are not fully coming back from the dead but they have some life left. I would really like to put a new carpet kit in but that money is going into the 3.4
The brake fluid that leaked inside the cab for however long did not cause as much of a mess as I had expected which is great. I was able to peel up a lot of the rubber insulation with little to no trouble though since the fluid had seeped all around, but no rust had started to form exept in a few small areas that were very easy to wire wheel clean with little effort. I am glad i went through the trouble though as the paint/primer inside the driver foot well was peeling off with no effort and obviously was compromised. After cleaning it up and prepping it, i put a few coats of primer and paint to seal it back up, then laid in some new 80mil thick rubber sound matting to replace what I tore out. Added a little extra in places but nothing major.
Decided to finish cleaning up the rest of the floor, the old rubber looks pretty gross but its 'clean'. There was quite a bit of dirt and random crap that had somehow found its way under the carpet, it feels good knowing its cleaned up now and I dont have to worry about it anymore.
New old carpets going back in, my old Tacoma floor mats even fit pretty well! They will do a good job as replacements. Doesnt look perfect but its 10x better than the before pictures up above. I was kind of dissapointed in it when i was installing the carpet until i went back and saw how bad it was before i started again
The carpet looks much better!
how did you clean it?
I use some variety of part store de-greaser like purple power or whatever is similar, a brush to scrub the bad spots a bit and work it in and a pressure washer. The pressure washer does most of the work, i just leave it on kind of a mid fan shape and really push the dirt out. It works great!
Been slow going the last few months with the holidays, and the painful process of trying to find a 3.4 to swap in. Which thankfully is finally over. So far in my search for the 3.4 the lowest quote I have been able to get on a decent one with everything I need was $2500 (CA prices..). Too much for me to feel good about it, and these dismantlers know what they have and don't want to deal at all. So i said screw em, ill just buy my own wrecked vehicle. Easier said than done, after trolling Craigslist forever I never found one that fit the vehicle criteria I wanted or was not on the doorstep of a total engine rebuild. After browsing the auction sites a bit, I bid on and won a 97 4Runner v6 manual trans 4x4 sr5 with 157k miles from a Copart yard. Learned a lot about the process and honestly I would be very hesitant to do it again. The FEES are just too damn high. I had been searching for too long and the right vehicle at the right time popped up online at an auction, so I decided to take the risk and try it out.
I am planning to go pick up the 4runner this week and start the swap. Feels good to finally have real work to do that will get me closer to getting it back on the road!
The other bonus is that the 97 seems to have a nearly new set of BFG ATs on it which I desperately need. Current tires are worn so bad from what I seems to be no on ever getting it aligned after installing ball joint spacers..
P.S. if you need any parts off a 97 4runner, let me know . Trans, transfer case, glass, doors, seats?!
Good update! I know what you're talking about with finding a swap vehicle. I swear I've read on the forums how people find these crazy low milage engines and I'm like HOW?!
Is the yard in CA?
I've always wondered about Copart, would you tell us a little more about the fees you mentioned? What was your purchase price, and how much did the fees add to it?
Hey yota dude, glad your still around! Yeah the yard is in Sacramento, about 100 miles from where im building the 4runner, so not too bad. That was the clincher for me honestly, it was close enough to get myself on top of it being a perfect donor. I say perfect now, hopefully I am still saying that tomorrow after I get it home and get a chance to look closer.
Jake, I am still really frustrated with how much I ended up paying in the end. I thought the broker fees were high, that was until I got to see the final Copart buyer fees.. Ill break them down, you guys should know incase you ever try this.
I used AutoAuctionMall.com as the middle man to allow me to bid. There might be a better way to do this but its what I ended up using. They were actually really helpful, but they are not cheap.
$1600 - Vehicle Price
$299 - Auto Auction Mall base fee
$85 - Auto Auction Mall Documentation fee..
$59 - Auto Auction Mall Banking fee...
$25 - Auto Auction Mall Incoming Wire Transfer Fee........ (why is this not covered in the 'banking fee', i have no idea)
$572 - COPART Buyer Fee (I was blown away by this. How can they charge almost 35% of the price in a buyer fee when they also get seller fees!?! They make money hand over fist doing this.
--------------------------------
$2640 Total
I knew about almost all of these fees going into it. The big outlier was the Copart fees. I couldnt get a good idea how much they would go up with the price, and it was more than I expected by a lot.
This is more than I wanted definitely. I am hoping that by trying to part out what I can from the 4Runner I will make some of this back. If the engine is good and doesnt need any major work, and the BFG All Terrains that are on it are like I am hoping, that pretty much covers the cost for me and I will feel good but definitely not a 'deal' until I get some money back from parting it out.
Hey yota dude, glad your still around! Yeah the yard is in Sacramento, about 100 miles from where im building the 4runner, so not too bad. That was the clincher for me honestly, it was close enough to get myself on top of it being a perfect donor. I say perfect now, hopefully I am still saying that tomorrow after I get it home and get a chance to look closer.
Jake, I am still really frustrated with how much I ended up paying in the end. I thought the broker fees were high, that was until I got to see the final Copart buyer fees.. Ill break them down, you guys should know incase you ever try this.
I used AutoAuctionMall.com as the middle man to allow me to bid. There might be a better way to do this but its what I ended up using. They were actually really helpful, but they are not cheap.
$1600 - Vehicle Price
$299 - Auto Auction Mall base fee
$85 - Auto Auction Mall Documentation fee..
$59 - Auto Auction Mall Banking fee...
$25 - Auto Auction Mall Incoming Wire Transfer Fee........ (why is this not covered in the 'banking fee', i have no idea)
$572 - COPART Buyer Fee (I was blown away by this. How can they charge almost 35% of the price in a buyer fee when they also get seller fees!?! They make money hand over fist doing this.
--------------------------------
$2640 Total
I knew about almost all of these fees going into it. The big outlier was the Copart fees. I couldnt get a good idea how much they would go up with the price, and it was more than I expected by a lot.
This is more than I wanted definitely. I am hoping that by trying to part out what I can from the 4Runner I will make some of this back. If the engine is good and doesnt need any major work, and the BFG All Terrains that are on it are like I am hoping, that pretty much covers the cost for me and I will feel good but definitely not a 'deal' until I get some money back from parting it out.
Yeah $572 to do what? List the vehicle and take some pictures of it? That's crazy! I hope you can part most of it to make that money back!
Yeah $572 to do what? List the vehicle and take some pictures of it? That's crazy! I hope you can part most of it to make that money back!
I hope so too! It it's crazy how they break down the fees..
Originally Posted by 84 yota dude
Curious to hear how the pickup went!?
I don't even know if I can tell the story properly, but I will give it a try. You can not even imagine how much bad luck i had trying to get this thing home and parked in it's final resting place.
Left at 6am Friday morning to head down to my parents (where I'm keep the 4runners for now, I don't have space currently). Borrowed my friends f250 and went to pick up the trailer at a ranch we store it at 30 miles away. All is good, until we get to the auction yard. I owed 5$ storage since we didn't make it within 3 days ( it was less than 72 hours but 3 nights had passed.. so I reluctantly paid (they don't do change either.. paid $10 all I had) . After a 2 hour wait they finally have time to get to me and load it up on the trailer.
As we start tying it down to the trailer it starts hailing hard (very rare in CA). That's fine, we wait out the worst of it and get on the road. it's randomly pouring rain and hailh then sunny. Everyone driving and merging like maniacs, slow lane piles up and everyone slamming on brakes.. im following what feels like plenty of room, slam on the brakes, slide.. side... Almost rear end a stack of cars but am able to pull off to the shoulder/offramp and barely avoid plowing into someone with my friends truck. After my heart rate settles back down, and a few miles later we pull off an exit just past Sacramento to double check the tie downs and chains. This is where it starts to go bad! I pull a semi tight uturn for having a 2 axle trailer behind us. The left hand uturn really drags the rear right tire on the trailer and the rim literally splits. Woosh of air sounds, I look back expected to see a semi truck releasing their brakes?? Nope, nothing there. Must be a tire. In my rush to get out there we forgot to make sure we had tools and the spare for the trailer.. we didn't. I call AAA, they won't help because the wheel is on the trailer and my membership won't cover that. Even though I've had AAA for 15 years and never called them ONCE!!! So pissed at this point! Unhook the trailer, drive 20 minutes back to Sacramento and buy some sockets and a breaker bar and bottle jack at harbor freight. Head back to the trailer, get the busted wheel off. Head back to Sacrame again and get a new rim mounted. Make it back to the trailer and get everything in order. Make it back to my parents with out further issue at 4pm. Was a long day, we decide to deal with getting the 4runner off the trailer in the morning.
Literally takes all day to get the 4runner off and parked i .The driveway. The left front wheel is probably 8 inches firthfu back the the right. The frame is so tweaked.. the wheel is just pinched against the cab. So I pound and pound, cut and trim the body. Jam wood blocks between the bump stops to stop the suspension from compressing. Remove the brake caliper and put on the small spare tire from the 88 4runner to get every last millimeters I can so it will roll. Finallllly it clears the body under it's weight. It starts too! I top off the oil cause it's low, and try to drive it off the trailer.. puke!!! It dumps oil all over the trailer, I think the coil cooler is cracked, hard to tell with the frame jammed against it. No driving it off at this point.. it dumped the whole oil pan out in 30 sec. Back to basics, between yaking it around with my dads truck, a come-along and a few wheel dollys we get it parked!!! By the time I get the trailer back to its home and everything put away it's like 2.5 days lol.
Anyway sorry for the long winded whining story, just so glad it's over!! I did a leak down test on the motor, came back with 71 - 85% (cold). Its not great but I'm gonna just freshen it up with a timing belt kit, valve adjustment, a good cleaning and install it.
09-24-2018, 09:10 AM
