Hi all! After lurking the YotaTech forums for a few years in search of tech tips for my pick-em-up, I figured I'd try my hand at putting together a lil build thread to track and share my progress on my 1990 22re extended cab over the years. This is my first time ever using a forum as anything other than a viewer, so, any feedback in the form of a comment or PM is more than welcome! Fair warning, this is going to be a lengthy post as I've already been working on this truck for a few years at this point. If you're more interested with what's happening to it right now, feel free to gloss over the pictures and skip to the end

I little bit of history since I've owned this truck for almost 4 years...

I've loved Toyota trucks since I was a wee lad thanks to growing up riding around in my dad's 1986 SR5 4x4 and my mom's 100 series Land Cruiser. 7 year old me was devastated when both of these trucks went off to new owners. As I got older, I really fell for the 3rd gen 4x4 pickups and looked high and low in the Seattle and Portland areas for one almost exactly like the silver one that had been sitting at a house around the block from me for as long as I could remember. All that searching was for nothing as I ended up taking ownership of the silver one 1000 yards from my house in May of 2017.

Obligatory first pic I took...

The truck truly was misty-eyed to be back in regular use again.

I was over the moon with my new-to-me 27 year old daily with 290k miles on the clock. Oh, to be 18 and naive again. The short list of not-so-little issues the truck had right from the get-go: almost bald mudders that made the floorboards feel like they were going to vibrate apart, a mysterious extra flange I knew nothing about (more on this later), a rather questionable emissions delete, the parking brake assembly was sitting in the back seat, the entire exhaust after the LCE header consisted of some lengths of pipe booger-welded together with one of the smallest mufflers I'd ever seen in the middle (probably about Super 10 sized), the entire fuel and intake systems seemed to be sourced from the cheapest depths of eBay, an absolute rat's nest of wiring under the hood and in the cab and, dumbest of all, a disintegrating gearbox. But hey, at least I paid too much for it. I managed to convince myself otherwise when I started getting compliments and trade offers for it pretty regularly. That didn't last long. About two weeks later, I hopped in my truck after school and it gave me a no-start. I took a peek at the handy-dandy pressure gauge on the $12 fuel pressure regulator that came on the truck and it was reading absolutely naught. Still being a total novice when it came to wrenching, I left replacing the dead fuel pump to some nice fellas I knew across town that owned a shop. This was only the beginning of the woes that would come to plague my trusty new steed. While replacing the fuel pump, it was found that the fuel pump hanger assembly was absolutely mangled and apparently had a bad ground arcing off of it that would have probably sent my truck and I straight to Valhalla in a most dramatic fireball if it had started that day. Big Yikes. I lost even more faith in the truck when I spied a foul-smelling puddle of gear oil under it. This was when I'd had my fill of troubles from it and ended up parking my "daily" for a month or two.

A couple pics from right before I lost all hope...

The bug guard was cracked and flopping around in the breeze so, I did away with it.

I was so proud of the thing for making it the 20 miles to where these were taken. Also the last time the leaky sunroof was opened.

With a bunch of tools, parts, and vigor, I finally tackled the botched PCV system and changing the fluid in the gearbox and transfercase. The gearbox was mostly empty and looked like it had a liquefied disco ball in it, and the transfercase was low but otherwise clean. Wonderful. It became pretty obvious at this point that I would be doing a lot more work on this truck than I ever intended. Being a college freshman meant that I decided to see how far I could get on a mostly broken transmission out of avoiding the expense and time without my daily. Pretty far, as it turned out. I drove the truck about 40 miles a day for a year while just keeping up with some basic maintenance and topping off the gearbox once in awhile. The only time it decided to fail in a dramatic way during that time was when the plastic tank on the radiator practically exploded. Enter a 3 row CSF radiator, OE thermostat and hoses, and a stock fan clutch to replace the electric fan setup zip tied to the old rad, and the problem was solved. The only other bigger changes in that time were those I elected to do on my own. I got a set of Pro Comp Series 51 wheels (15x8, if memory serves me right) and 31x10.5 BFG KO2s when 4WheelParts was having a smoking deal on the whole set mounted, balanced, and delivered for about 800 bucks. I also got my little mittens on a decent shape SR5 cluster for the enormous sum of zero dollars from my cousin's broken 3vz truck that was going to scrap.

Visual changes...

After new wheels, tires, taking the CB antennae off, and a good scrubbing.

An oil pressure sensor, an odometer swap, and minor adjustments to the tach resistance and speedo cable were all that was needed for this project.

The truck really was pretty good to me after ironing out those couple issues. My best average from a tank was about 19 mpg but it usually hovered around 17ish. It even managed to go on some adventures when it wasn't making the commute to school. Lots of trips into the Capitol Forest for plinking and little hikes and testing the GVWR a bit with all but the rear diff and HICAS from an R32 GTR stand out as highlights.

Say what you will about the hippies, Washington is a beautiful place. Mt. Rainier from the Capitol Forest.

Fun Fact: a fully dressed RB26DETT with front diff and R32 gearbox and transfercase installed weighs approximately way too much! (~1000 lbs. I don't recommend/condone trying to haul anywhere near this much weight in the bed.)

She soldiered on until the front main seal decided it no longer felt like doing any more front-main-sealing and let about a quart of oil out on the 25 mile drive home from school, soaking everything under the hood in oil. This was right after I decided to do any future work it needed myself. Dandy. The crank bolt didn't put up too much of a fight when I put the truck in 4th gear and had someone stand on the brakes while I went at it with a breaker bar. My troubles came from the crankshaft keyway having a little nick on it and refusing to let go of the balancer pulley. No worries, we'll just get the good 'ol puller on there aaaand it doesn't fit. Long story short, I had to drain the radiator and take it and the cooling fan out. This only made the project take 3 times longer than it should have.

It was messy and tedious but, at the end of the day, it now had an Aisin oil pump in place of the no-name knockoff and it wasn't leaking. Mission accomplished.

I decided to take a day (that naturally turned into two) to clean up some of the wiring at the start of the pandemic shutdowns when my school was closed. I'm still kicking myself for not taking before pictures because, at the end of the day, I removed something like 50 feet of unnecessary wiring from under the hood and it looks a million times better now. I also re-lengthened the AFM plug wiring with solder, shrink wrap, and various lengths of wire (Good News!™) to make it reach the stock airbox location in anticipation for swapping the battery back to where it normally goes. It was shortened and taped back together by a previous owner at some point.

Almost caught up now!

Earlier I mentioned a mystery flange. It would end up leading to the goriest of my Tales of Toyota Ownership. At some point, I assume the rear pinion seal was leaking and a previous owner fixed it themselves. This thought comes from a strange howling I heard under the truck one day coming out of the Capitol Forest. This howling quickly led to a popping from the rear. Not good. Then the rear wheels locked up when I let off the throttle. Really not good. I drove it up onto a trailer and hauled it over to my uncle's to put it on a lift for surgery. With the weight off the rear axle, I rotated the driveline by hand to see if I could spot any weirdness. Weirdness was immediately spotted. When I would stop and turn the driveline the opposite direction, the slip yoke would extend slightly and the pinion itself was pushed further into the 3rd member. With the driveline off, I could see that the big 'ol pinion flange nut that is normally torqued to many ft lbs (92, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong) was backed halfway off the pinion. Whomever it was that replaced that pinion seal absolutely did not torque the nut down properly. They also decided to use an entire tube of black RTV to seal the 3rd member to the housing again. Lucky me. After a brief eternity of doing battle with the seal under the truck, I finally broke down and pulled the entire rear axle assembly to make removing the diff from the housing easier/possible.

The following pics are aftermath/ how she sits now while I wait for parts in the mail...

Losing all the battles but winning the war is what this picture feels like.

Hungry, hungry pinion taking bites out of the carrier.

I was shocked that the ring and pinion actually looked halfway decent, given the fact the pinion chewed up the carrier pretty badly. The truck is kinda just sitting in limbo right now while Marlin Crawler waits for their parts supplier to get my parts to them. I plan on having another local guy help me set up the 3rd member since I've never done one before and I don't think I even have the tools to do it. After that, I'm hoping it's just a fresh coat of paint on the housing and it'll be back on the road. My laundry list of stuff to do to the thing definitely goes on from there, though. It still needs injectors, a fuel pressure regulator, and I might even take a crack at rebuilding a spare W56 I have lying around if its internals are good. I've also been mulling over the idea of a 3rz swap since it has been down for the count but, I'm still quite a ways off from that big of a project

If you've made it this far into the thread, thanks for taking the time to do so! I know it's silly that the post is as long as it is even while omitting a lot of the details of the projects I've done on it so far. Now that it's all caught up, however, future posts to this thread should be a bit more specific and digestible. Any insights as to how to improve my project and this thread are greatly appreciated!

 

The truck looks great, no real rust issues out there in Wash State I guess. What are your plans for the diff? Keeping the stock ratio and what, adding a locker? What parts are you waiting on from Marlin?

Check out www.gearinstalls.com if you haven't already, TONS of pics and helpful info on diff setup.

 

Thanks for the link! I'd heard of ZUK in the past but have never seen that site before. It's rainy here but, the roads don't see any salt in the winter. Perfect frame but, the doors have a few lil bubbles on them. It's a factory 4.10 open diff and I'm keeping it as close to that as I can for now. It doesn't really see any offroading other than some fire roads and driving out to some more remote trailheads so, I've not been left wanting for more traction. Yet. I'm planning on 4.56 gears in the future just so it'll be happier on 31s but, I probably won't be in a very good place to regear both diffs until I'm done with school taking up my time and money for the next couple years. Especially if I'm looking into E-lockers or something like that. Marlin Crawler is waiting on a 4.11 Ninja Gear set for it right now. I imagine their supplier is probably backed up from the shutdowns so, I can't be too upset about it taking a long time. Other than that, Marlin is also sending a setup kit with bearings, spacer, bolts, etc. and a few little odds and ends like driveline bolts and a drain plug (the ones that came off of it were almost round). I also had Yotashop in La Center send a gasket and the 29 spline flange I'd need for the new pinion. I'll *hopefully* have the parts by the end of the week and be putting it back together shortly after.

 

Progress has been slow to say the least, but, I've finally got all parts in hand and will hopefully have the diff back together early this week. In the meantime, I've made a little progress on cleaning up everything before it goes back together. The axle perches were giving me a funny look today while I was giving my old Chevy a wash so I decided to take a few hours with wire wheels and rattle cans to clean and paint those, the U-bolts, and brake drums. I just used some Krylon primer, paint, and clear I got from a local hardware store. All in all, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. No idea how long it'll last or if anyone has had any luck with it on their rigs but, at the very least, I get to feel good about doing some rust proofing for now.


Little before and after with just a bench top wire wheel on the U-bolts

After a little grinding on the axle perches. Turns out the original coating had held up pretty well.

End results for now.

In hindsight, today was not an ideal day for painting given how terrible the air quality is right now (Seattle and Portland are going back and forth for worst air quality in the world, according to IQAir). I plan on hitting the axle housing with another coat or two of black and then a clear once the 3rd member is reinstalled. I'll try to remember to give some updates on how the rattle can job holds up down the road. One of the studs on the housing looks like it has a little nick on one of the threads but, it doesn't seem bad enough to hold me up from getting it all back together again. Other than that, I think I'll be getting away with using most of the old hardware again. I did test-fit the new driveline bolts I got and they seemed like a good fit. It should finally be off the lift by next weekend and hopefully broken in by the 21st to start making the drive to school. Fingers crossed!

 

Okie doke, exciting stuff. I haven't had a chance to post sooner so, here comes the post op update. The local guy I had rebuilding the 3rd member managed to get it back together with the new bearings and R&P just a couple days after I could finally get the parts to him. I picked up the rebuilt 3rd at about 8 PM on the 17th and immediately set to work. I pretty much worked the whole night through painting and wrestling the reassembled axle housing back into the truck. All in all, it went pretty smoothly considering all I really had to work with was a little bitty floor jack and a couple of jackstands. I convinced myself it would be easier to torque down the axle backing plate nuts with the housing off the truck. Spoiler: it wasn't. While it was really easy to do on the floor, it would have been equally easy on the truck and I wouldn't have had to deal with how heavy the whole assembly with axles and brakes on it is. Oh well, dumb lesson learned.


Far and away one of my proudest moments in recent memory. Hanging on its own.

Obligatory super-bright-flash install pic. Note how badly I've already scratched up the paint job.

One of the biggest time-killers on this was actually just watching paint dry. I have a strong aversion to putting dirty things back dirty, so, I ended up painting the 3rd once it was in, the rear shocks, and shooting the whole assembly with a coat of clear before it went back under the truck. The leaf springs are still pretty ugly and mostly flat, so, hopefully Ill be able to change them out soon. I didn't torque the nuts on the housing studs just because I knew the FSM-recommended 38 lb ft was a bunch of baloney and I'd heard of some folks actually breaking studs when they went to the adjusted 18 lb ft. I decided to go with the "Tighten 'em till they're tight" method in a star pattern instead. The jack I was using was a wee bit too short to reach all the way up to the leaf spring guides and the lift the truck was on had to be maxed out the get the wheels off. This made getting the axle housing to its home way harder than it should have been. I ended up having to get to a height where I could get the U-bolts through the axle perch and lift it the rest of the way by carefully torqueing down the nuts onto the U-bolts. I threaded the last nuts on and tightened them in increments until they were at 90 ft lbs with anti-seize on them. The Marlin driveline bolts went in easily, as new hardware usually does, and weren't all that difficult to get torqued to the recommended 54 ft lbs with threadlocker. I found a post on another forum (think it was toyotaminis but I don't remember) that said to torque rear shock bolts to 19 ft lbs. It seemed a little light just based on the size of the bolts but, the bushings squished down nicely and they seemed tight so, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I didn't face too many other annoyances with the install other than giving myself a gnarly lil blood blister with the driveline and the rear brake hardline not wanting to cooperate. I finally got the hardlines and parking brake assembly back together, threw the wheels on (torqued to 83 ft lbs), and set 'er on the ground before realizing that I had worked on it pretty much the whole night through.


This was the truck's first time on the ground in something like a month. Pic taken at 3:40 in the morning.

I left the truck for the night and decided to finish it up the next day since I didn't have any silicone hose to bleed the brakes with and the thin bead of RTV helping the cork gasket needed time to cure . I came back, once the sleepless delirium had worn off a bit, bled the brakes (while only dousing my face in brake fluid once), found the biggest allen wrench I could find to tighten up the Marlin low-pro drainplug, and filled up the diff. This is when I remembered that I was a major dummy while taking it apart by using the truck's stereo to play music. Now the battery was just dead enough to not start the truck. My good 'ol Chevy had to come to the Yota's rescue one last time before I could declare the fix "done".


D'oh!


Some better pics of the install in the daylight:


Presenting the least "crawler" truck to wear a Marlin Crawler sticker.

I came back that night after work for the first drive to bring the 'ol girl home. I'm happy to report, the diff is nice and quiet and she rides great.

This is an inside joke with a friend but, Bunta bless.

Since then, I've put about 70 miles on the truck just doing the first four heat-cycles on back roads around my house and it's still quiet, riding great, there aren't any leaks, and all of the bolts were nice and tight where I left them when I climbed under the truck to retorque all of them. This project really came down to the wire considering I start school about 12 hours from when I'm posting this. I'm planning on doing a little bit of parts hoarding in the next couple months and working on the truck as time allows with school and work. Next on the list is probably going to be basically the whole intake system because this:

... ain't working for me any more. Engine pic I found from before I cleaned up and fixed a bunch of the wiring. The truck runs fine but absolutely hates starting. By that I mean it gets way too much fuel on cold starts (sounds like it's got a big 'ol cam when it doesn't) and it misses and dies on hot starts until it's had a second to rev up to idle. It throws an intermittent CEL once in a blue moon that is always the codes for rich and lean conditions, the idle is kinda tricky to adjust on it and stays around 1k no matter what I do to it. Any input from anyone that's experienced this combination of nonsense is greatly appreciated. I'm pretty sure that goofy little silicone elbow that makes up the "cold" air intake setup is the cause of a major vacuum leak, though. I've had an eye on the LCE stainless intake kit because it can work with the OE airbox I've had lying around forever (that actually pulls cold air from the fender instead of hot air off the header) and it seems to come with some decent quality fittings. I've also heard good things about their rebuilt injectors so, I'm aiming to throw a set of those in to get rid of the eBay Bosch-style Yellow injectors in it. Yotashop also sells OE fuel pressure regulators, so, I'd probably get one of those and do all of them at the same time and just make a little weekend project of it. Updates to come...

 

Impromptu truck update: It died again. At this rate, I should probably change the title of this thread to "Eskay's Toyota-Based Suffering (When Will it End?)". I've been driving the truck as much as I can to get the first 500 miles on the new Ring and Pinion so I can change the fluids and not have to think about it for awhile. I decided to take it for a spin up to my school to pick up a couple things when the parking brake light came on. Being the first time I've ever bled brakes and knowing the light comes on when the master cylinder is almost empty, this freaked me out until I noticed the battery light on beside it. A glance at the voltmeter showed the gauge was pegged over 18 volts. At almost anything over idle, the dash would light up and the gauge would peg. Thankfully, I wasn't very far from home when this happened so, I turned off the freeway and lugged it home very slowly on back roads. After thinking it over for a few seconds, I decided it was probably the voltage regulator since it seemed my voltage was going un-regulated. I ordered a new alternator since it was something like 80 bucks more than just the regulator from Toyota. Fun Fact: Toyota won't take a core return if the stickers on the part haven't survived 30 years and 300,000 miles of heat and oil leaks. Irritating, but, understandable. Anyway, I also had a mechanic friend do a smoke test on it recently to track down any vacuum leaks and found a big one on the cold start injector. I ordered a new gasket for the injector and, being a super financially responsible adult, decided to throw in a set of steering stop caps just because I felt dumb for paying 5 dollars shipping on only a 3 dollar gasket. Everything showed up the same day so, I got to make a little project of it.


New alternator next to the OG

Honestly a little bummed the new heat shield wasn't powder blue.

I managed to get the old alternator out and the new alternator in by going in from below the radiator and getting a little creative with some angles. Little bit of trial and error, but, I didn't have to take anything apart for more access.


Shiny new bits nicely contrasted by a wooden battery tray

I popped the cold start injector out easily enough to find a non-OE paper gasket covered in black RTV and falling apart. Par for the course so far.


"Falling Apart and Covered in RTV", the story of Eskay's Toyota.

I popped the new gasket in with a little bit of Ultra Gray on either side when I'm met with some major disappointment. When I went to tighten down the injector's bolts, I found that the threads were stripped out of the manifold on one of the holes and the bolt would just endlessly turn in it and not actually torque the injector down. So now I get to add an upper intake manifold to the list of stuff to do. A stock 3RZ is sounding really good right about now. I've never re-tapped threads before so, I don't know if this upper is going to be fixable or if a different one is in the truck's future. I absolutely disgusted myself by resorting to more Ultra Gray for a temporary fix while I look for a decent used upper. I haven't gotten to test anything out yet since I wanted to give the silicon its best chance of making a vacuum-tight seal by leaving it for the full 24 hours. But hey, on the bright side, the steering at full-lock almost definitely won't startle every pedestrian in a parking lot anymore.

3 out of 4 worn through, 1 out of 4 missing all together.

As a Clarkson-friendly project, steering caps can be done using just the right claw hammer.

So long as the next round of fixes gets the truck to be consistently usable (the power steering is the only thing that hasn't failed at this point, knock on wood), I hope to start slowly collecting some of the niche little parts that go into a swap for this thing (oil pan, bellhousing, etc.). If I can, I might also look into a HD W56 gearbox from Marlin sooner since it can be used behind either engine with the right bellhousing and the truck does badly need a new gearbox and clutch. I originally wanted to do a restoration on this truck to stock spec but, the longer I look at the thing, the less sense it makes. I still go back and forth on ideas just because of the parts that are original (all the body panels still wear factory VIN stickers) but, mechanically, the thing is pretty far gone. Sourcing good examples of the missing parts and, inevitably, rebuilding the engine (the cheap aftermarket timing cover and head castings bother me way more than they should) would probably cost just as much as a swap. I'm open to any input as to whether or not I would be evil for doing such a thing to such an original truck lol . As of now, I'm thinking I want to paint it the color I want and source a bunch of different parts from a bunch of different trucks for it, but who knows. This thread might be 5 years old by then and I doubt it'll be my only Yota in the future, so, maybe it will stay OG spec. Y'all can be sure we'll find out together, though.

 

You can fix the striped threads pretty easily. Get some thread-zerts, drill it to the correct size, screw in the thread-zert and bingo, new threads. Easy peasy.

You didn't mention: did you pull the cold start injector off it's fuel line? Or, vice versa, really, did you pull the fuel line off it? If so, did you put new crush washers on it when you went to reinstall it? Those crush washers are most certainly NOT reusable. Any time I do any work that even might involve them, I always get three times as many as I think I'll need. It's never been a waste to date. There's always some reason or other I need to use at least two, and if you don't have any extra, the last one will invariably jump off, fall all the way to the ground below the engine, and vanish. I must have a heap of the bloody things where I do my work, but I've never found a one. I've used strong magnets, searched on my stomach with the truck moved, you name it. Never found a single one. Sneaky little buggers...

Anywho, nice work, overall! Welcome to 30+ year old Toyotas. They are never done getting repairs. You'll be doing them for the rest of forever
Pat☺