I can't believe you installed all those brand new shiny parts but then left the rotors/control arms all dirty along with the tired CV joint... sheesh.

Just kidding/giving you poop.

Looks good dude, it's coming along.

What's next?

 

youre not wrong tho. i just dont have the time. in a perfect world. i would have removed the dust shields and cleaned/painted them and use the drill mounted cheek poker to clean up and paint the caliper and hub body. those(save for the inside of the dust shields) are relatively easy to do down the road. as for the control arns, well, since ive gotta torch the bushings out, ill be cleaning them up real quick along with giving a quick spritz of paint. The CV boots are ripped(all 4 believe it or not) but im hesitant to replace them since we will be going LT soon-ish. Next up is trying to get the TBar adjusters out. Dealer says that the PN for the 87 4runner has been discontinued, so hopefully i dont snap em.

As soon as the front suspension is buttoned up, i want to hit up prairie city or rattlesnake bar. so get your pile of junk running right so we can go!

 

Nice, Troy and Family, it is good to see something going right for once. Now I am headed over to my buildthread. I have not been on YT for to long and it looks like there are some posts over there I need to look at.

 

Last nights activities were successful. Ended up getting the T-Bars out very easily(i was worried about those snapping, but they look almost brand new and no rust), the UCAs out pretty easily(The top 3 bolts were a pain but nothing the big miluakee impact gun couldn't fight through), and the bushings all burned out of the UCAs. surprisingly, the drivers side was still pretty tight. passenger side was waaay roached. so, some torch work and a screw driver, and we were able to get the UCAS stripped and ready for their cleaning and modifications for the bj spacers today. Do a little bit of chop chop, a little bit of paint paint, and slap all the goodies in. The LCAs should be a breeze. @MaK92-4RnR gave me a set that was torched off a rig for IFS many many many years ago and , thankfully, i havent thrown them out. so, those will get the busings burned out tomorrow and same cleaan/paint routine. they will go in after the uppers are back in and holding the spindle. I think the thing that im most nervous about is trying to get the new sway bars in and indexed correctly. Oh well, we have until sunday to get this buttoned up before the sloooooooooow drive into town for the alignment.

Pics as usual

T-Bar jamb nut just popped right off. kind of confirms my theory that these were already cranked up when we got it.


Toasting the marshmallows for the smores.


My dad going to town with the screwdriver on the crispy/melty bushing.


Brand new Energy Suspension Poly bushings ready to go in


How we left the spindles hanging so that they dont separate the CV. My dad jokingly commented that this truck is officially being held together with duct tape and bailing wire... :rolleyes:


Box-o-parts ready to get doused in superclean, scrubbed with a rag, and pressure washed. Its gonna be nice putting this back together and not getting covered in grease.

 

Glad the IFS carcass is doing you some good. I actually briefly remember buying that pile because of the rotors, calipers, hubs, brake lines and such. Not sure if it still had CV joints when I gave it to you or not? Who knows.

 

On the T bars, From memory, i want to say you almost can’t mess up the control arm end.
On the other end, i did get one off when installing the stockers but was able to remove and correct the rear piece without too much trouble.
Glad to see the old ones were cooperative!

 

Same dude. I think im gonna junk the spindles and the CVs since the balls on the CVs are packed with dirt and grass, but the LCAs have come in handy and im gonna hold onto the calipers to maybe rebuild and prep to swap into this truck. Thanks again, brother!

 

The rear, where they anchor to the frame, have a keyed spline, i know that, but im not sure if the front anchor at the control arm is keyed as well. Thanks again for the T-Bars and the advice! i should be getting them today some time.

 

finally making a bit of progress and, of course, there's a bit of backwards momentum, but its the little victories, right?

on Friday night we got the control arms cleaned up, the lower bushings cut and then burned out. we also got the new Poly bushings wrapped in Teflon and greased with that gorilla snot they call lube. stuff is more like contact cement. anyways, since we were kind of at a stop waiting for the Sway A Way T-Bars to show up, we grabbed the cutoff wheel and chopped the upper control arms to fit the BJ spacers in. First one took quite a bit of time to get right, but it finally went in. the second arm i did isn't as clean because i cut what i thought was the correct amount, but i cut off a tad too much in the corner. oh well, it fits snugly anyways. after slapping in the upper BJs and putting some paint on the cuts to prevent rust, we called it a night. it was late and the T-Bars didn't show up. We decided to wait until the next afternoon to give them time.

Saturday afternoon the T-Bars still werent delivered so i made the choice to install everything anyways since i had the appt for the alignment at 1pm on sunday. the UCAs went in pretty smoothly and so did replacing the stock T-Bars. The only thing that gave us a bit of an issue was forgetting that the passenger T-Bar needed to be installed before the UCA got bolted in. After that, we tackled the LCAs. those were a little more of a pain in the butt, however, we still managed to get them all in and installed. pro-tip, do NOT tighten the torsion bars until you have the LCA installed.
After getting everything in place and tightened for the control arms, we moved onto the shocks. here is where the first major snag(besides the TBars not showing up) reared its head. i knew that in order to install the Downey double shock kit back in the day, the previous owner had to cut off the upper shock tower. Instead of actually measuring the shocks, i just assumed that they were stock length shocks, which was a bad idea. they were not. The shock tower was moved about an 2" higher than factory. So the shocks that i got that were 1" longer than factory were a good bit away from working. It was late saturday night by this point so we decided to call it with the plan of me getting shock extenders(yea, i know, eew, but it would work temporarily.) the next morning as soon as the parts store opened.

Sunday morning i get up at the crack of light and head down to the local parts store(15 miles south of me). they do not have the shock extenders contrary to what the google machine told me the night previously. the closest store that had them was 30 miles north of MY house. so, i hop on the freeway headed north and called several other chains to see if they had them in stock. no luck. so i drive to the way north to the hood, get my part, luckily i dont get mugged in the parking lot, and head home. once home i get to work fitting the extenders to the upper bolt and.......theyre the wrong thread pitch. it never dawned on me that shocks could have different threads on them, i assumed they were all standard. So, plan B(that should have been plan A) was to take some measurements and move the bracket holes on the shock tower up an inch and a half, thereby lowering the tower down. once we didt that, we fitted the shocks, got everything all greased and tightened, and threw the wheels on. Man, i cant win for trying. everything looks great except for the Cen Cal pre runner squat and the fact that the front tires are rubbing the UCAs. This issue was easily fixed by pulling out the original 29" street tires that were on this rig when we bought it. they are a little aged, but becuase ive had them inside on my shelf for the past 6 or so years, the dry rot is pretty minimal. best part is, NO RUBBING!

All of this was completed with just enough time for me to change my shirt and wash my hands before driving VERY slowly the 20 miles of back roads to the Firestone. we made it there with plenty of time before the appointment. After they were done, they let us know that the only issue was that the drivers adjusting sleeve was seized(odd since i had just rotated them) and the front passenger camber bolt was partially stripped and wouldnt hold the specs tight. So, ive got a little more work to take care of and some more parts to order to completely fix the issue. but, shes aligned, tracks straight, rides pretty smooth, and i dont have to worry about the front end falling apart anymore.

Now to move onto getting the 63" chevys that i need for the spring swap, getting new tires that wont rub anymore, and getting the front T-Bars tuned correctly(theyre a little high right now and i want to change to the newer style hardware.).

On to pics, as usual.

Not pretty, but it works. i cleaned it up a bit after this.

Doesnt look like it, but the balljoint actually fits pretty snugly in there.

Got a little carried away with the second one. the bottom right corner was cut a little deep because i got the angle of the cutoff wheel wrong.

Installed and ready for shocks.

Shock towers getting scribed for new holes to be drilled.

Getting the center of the holes.

Cen Cal Pre-runner squat. it looks funny with the baby tires on it.

after the alignment, took it down to go shopping. still cant get over how goofy it looks with little tires. Also, Doomy forgot to install the centercap on the right rear. OOPS!

Back home and starting to clean up the shop. There is a LOT of stuff in the shop right now because my grandpas wife finally sold the house they had. He passed away about 6 years ago, so we had to bring all his stuff and stage it in our shop to be sorted through for the family.

Looks empty without the 4runner in here and all the cardboard cleaned up.

Portable table cleaned up and ready to clean tools

How many tools did we need? eh... probably did NEED this many tools, but we had access to em.

 

4Runner is coming along, Troy. What's left now? When are you ordering the Blazeland kit?

 

blazeland will come after taxes. some things need to be done first thing, like buying tires and sliders because Doomy is gonna have a hard time getting in and out of her truck now.

still debating on going with FAO coilovers or keeping with the T-Bars. Maybe ill run the T-bars for a while and upgrade later on? who knows. One thing that MUST be done is to get the Total Chaos shock tower and then order some custom length shocks. even though we lowered the towers down, i believe that these shocks will limit downtravel and i dont want to damage them if i can recoup some money by selling everything as a complete set.

 

Yeah, it kind of sucks that the Blazeland kit is upwards of about $1600.00 now. You're only about $500.00 short of JD fab or Total Chaos, at that point.

Personally, i'd just run the T-bars for now and see how she does. You spent the money getting aftermarket bars. Might as well utilize them.

 

You know, the price is a little higher, but then again the price of steel has jumped up incredibly high. and, yea, the JD fab LT is super stout(TC is cool, but dont like the tubular design), but the main drawback is having to ream out the spindles to 3/4". that makes going back to stock impossible. If i have an issue where i need to pull the kit due to breakage or some other unforeseen reason, it'd be nice being able to just grab a set of stock control arms off rock auto or the parts store.

I think i AM gonna run the T-Bars for now, i think theyll work just fine. after i armor the front and start adding weight, ill think about swapping. The question is, do i look at getting bypass shocks with this setup to compliment the T-Bars, or should i go with a standard shock?

 

Didn't i give you a spare pair of spindles with that IFS carcass? Modify the set on the truck and keep the others for spares. I doubt you'll have issues with anything anyways with whatever kit you're using.

What's the price difference between bypass and standard shocks? I personally would run ~2" lift ranchos until they're no longer required. Remember, my 92 4Runner had a TJM front bumper, 8k winch, Budbuilt belly pan, offroading lighting and the 3vze and still never had an issue with the front IFS suspension. I had KYB shocks in that thing.

 

Those spindles got junked. the whole point is that i dont want to have to have a whole other suspension setup sitting on my shelf taking up space.

idk what the price difference would be because i dont have any shock lengths to get quotes on. im not talking about running bypasses on the stock suspension, im talking about running them after i go LT. i know there will probably be a large difference in price, however, bypass shocks can be used IN CONJUNCTION with coilovers when i end up swapping to them.

 

Lol why did you junk the spindles? Seems like they would've come in handy, at this point. I doubt there would be any integrity issues from drilling out the stock stud size to go to a 3/4" stud w/ a 1" uniball.

 

Not that I have ever looked, but personally I have never seen a spindle brake? What is the stock size for the hole? Could a bushing be machined that would insert into the larger hole to run stock balljoints?

Run with the T-bars Troy. We still need to get the rear dialed in. When it comes to coilovers, all that is modular and easy to changed in the future; get the big parts out of the way first, such as adding weight.

 

Plenty of spindles/knuckles have been damaged. Usually from a wheel bearing locking up and gouging the spindle surface. Only repair would be weld build-up and re-machining. Probably very cost-prohibitive. I've also seen a couple with boogered up threads on the end. This can probably be repaired though with a bit of skill. Also lastly is what we have in this thread when the tapered hole at the top is drilled out for whatever reason. If you wanted to make a bushing to convert it back, you'd have to bore the knuckle to a larger taper again, then make a bushing with a tapered OD and a tapered ID to match the upper BJ. This would leave the spindle with less peripheral material around the hole and bushing. There might be enough meat there but it's something to consider. And you cannot simply make a bushing with a cylindrical OD and tapered ID, it would simply pull right through the knuckle. The tapered connection between the BJ and knuckle is important for strength.

 

Exactly. Ive never personally seen a spindle break, but if I do, on the off chance, break one(say, out on the road on a long trip) I'd like to be able to replace it with stock if need be.

 

If you break a spindle, not only would you be the first to do so but you also have to agree to SAS.