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Well as some of you know I had a 74 k10 that I worked on more than I drove.
It was a good learning experience for me as it was my first "complete" build doing a conversion to fuel injection and overdrive, however, it was pretty much done. I didn't have any other major mods I wanted to do to it and it was just over all rough and was broken most of the time. I decide it was time to get something different. I always wanted a 2nd gen 4runner. I have my 89 I was gunna build into a crawler until a Studebaker 3r took that claim
Found a local guy on Facebook looking to trade a 94 3.0 5speed for a full-size truck. I offered up the k10 and after a couple months of him sleeping on it and looking at a few other REALLY nice trucks he for some reason made the agreement. He even delivered.
The day I got it.
its in excellent shape. Couple small dings on the bumpers and some rough paint but that's it. Runs good and drives good. Interior is perfect except for small tear on the driver seat and two cracks on the dash. I couldn't have asked for a better runner and best of all I spent only like 1500 on the k10 so that's essentially what it costed me. Pretty good deal I think.
Last edited by Kolton5543; 07-31-2017 at 01:37 AM.
The next day I decided since I finally had something to hit the snow with I'd better check it out. Went up Trip Canyon and couldnt resist snapping a couple pictures while I was up there
Once we got back down to the desert my Jeep buddy talked me into hitting one of the local mud holes. Got close to getting all the way through but started getting uncomfortably hot before so we pulled it out with the Jeep.
I regretted it in the morning. I had to dig out all the clay packed into the suspension and t-case cross member. It got down to 12 degrees that night. I've never felt anything more painful than having.my arm that cold. I warmed my hand back up with the ice water that came out of the garden hose while it was about 30 degrees outside still. After that I learned mudding isn't my favorite hobby.
Finally was time I started doing a few mods. This one is a gunna stay pretty basic. I like my trucks low so it's not getting any lift. First things first, the 30 Michelin hts just didn't cut it for my purposes. Ordered up a set of 33x10.5 ko2 mounted on another set of wheels I had around. Couldn't be happier with the performance and look.
The next day we went on another trip. Decided to hot Carter Canyon this time which is the first more technical trail I've done with it. Unfortunately, nature had taken over some of the trail and you can't get up to the old logging mill any more bit we were still able to get pretty far down the trail. Of course it's had to snap a few pics
We saw a big ole' rock so we climbed the big ole' rock
It was this day I decided it was time for a locker. I'm on a budget and decided to go the cheaper route and buy a Spartan locker like a month later. Put it on the lift after work and put it all in. I changed the axle seals out and put in the 89 shafts and brakes since the old bearings were no longer bearings. Seemed to work fine. But never got to actually try it. Went to a party that same night. On my way back home I downshifted into 2nd rather hard and it made a loud pop followed by a loud horrific grind. Drive shaft now had about a 1/4 turn of play in it. Pulled it all back apart after work the next day. Found the outer pinion bearing exploded and dropped the pinion into the carrier.
I put my 89 4cyl carrier in its place and it's been there since. I should be getting a parts runner this week. If the rear end is in good shape I'll be swapping it in with the locker again. Hopefully it has lower gear too.
Took it to another local place called P-Ranch. Lots of cool trails and back roads out there. And took a few more pictures.
It won't be in order but I'll write about the now visible highlift mount later. PS anybody have a set of factory roof rack cross bars sitting around? I'll gladly take them off your hands as I don't like my spare sitting directly on the roof.
Made a random cruise one day and found myself in 2wd when I shoulda been in 4. Didn't make a small sandy hill and slid down the side a bit. Only option was to back up and hope I didn't fall in a muddy rut made from a crew cab Chevy the night before. I fell in.
So there I sat for 2 hours in my lawn chair waiting for the Jeep guy to save me again. Shout out to that guy. Aint nobody likes him because he has a Jeep. I like him though. He ain't biased too much (even though he still wants a jk) so he still comes and gets me. Being nice to the Jeep guys are sometimes a good thing. My Ford friends are too cocky so I can't call them. My Chev friends are usually too busy. My other Toy friends have full blown rock crawlers so they got the pirate4x4 attitudes so I don't do much with them. Moral of the story is
keep some Jeep friends around. They come in handy.
This time I went for a midnight cruise. Found myself in a very narrow wash with some tall walls. Tried to turn around. Ass end went up a hell and flexed it out. Wish I had the locker still cause I would have been just fine. Tried to go back down and just stuck the front driver corner into the wall. And left me sitting immobile.
Had to jack up the rear with the high lift and shove it back off the hill which put the front even tighter into the wall. Made me kinda sad but it's the name of the game.
Almost forgot this one. Damn thing started making some clicking noises sometimes couldn't figure out what it was. I thought it was maybe a CV that's been working its way towards the exit since I got it. Drove it for a while and turned down a little dirt road. Sped up to about 30 and the front end just dropped. I just sat there as I watched my tire leave me for about 200 yards. (This was before I got the new wheels and tires). Luckily I just got my highlift a few months back but never had a use for it.
Put the tire back on and took it home. I then checked every nut and bolt I could find. I had the oils drain fall out once on the highway before that and something else fell off too but I don't remember what it was.
Finally I get more recent into this month. Hit a trail in Solomon Pass and found a good picture spot right before I got hit with some hard rain.
Finally I decided the front end was annoying to look at so I pulled it apart to see how much effort it was gunna take to fix it up. Managed to get it looking reasonable without having to replace anything
I also rewired the lights while I was in there so the corners are marker/turn combos. This is a supporting mod for some future lighting mods I have planned.
I also went out to some where some of you might actually know about. Turkey Creek in Aravaipa Canyon. Had to drag some fallen trees out of the way and make a few trail mods due to the recent monsoons. Unfortunately i didn't really take any pictures. We were focused on how far we can get before the flash floods roll in. Didn't have time for any poser pics but I'll be sure I'll snag some next time I'm in the area.
I think that makes pretty much everything up to date. Today I finally broke that CV that's been clicking for a while. I have plenty of spares. I plan to just keep shoving them in there till I run out. This one lasted 7 months so if they all hold up like that then I'll officially buy new ones in a little over two years. I also managed to break the reverse light circuit to. I posted a desperate thread on that issue if y'all want to put in some input.
Last edited by Kolton5543; 07-31-2017 at 01:33 AM.
I put my 89 4cyl carrier in its place and it's been there since. I should be getting a parts runner this week. If the rear end is in good shape I'll be swapping it in with the locker again. Hopefully it has lower gear too.
Well I figure its time for a well delayed update. I have done a few things to the 4runner before now but I'll get to them. I'm not done with this current project but I figure I'm far along enough I could start posting it.
Lately, it's been really down on power. I've tried and tried to get it to run real good again to no avail. Its down on power, has a bunch of blow by, been burning some oil and leaking it out almost faster than I can pour it in. I finally decide that something needed to be done about it. I Thought about rebuilding the 3.0 but because of the cost and I've never really been happy with the power of it and its already been replaced once, I just better not. I decide this needs priority of other projects and put my LT1 swap for my truck on hold. I did a bunch of research and concluded that a 3.4 swap is gunna be in the very near future. I did a little shopping around to get an estimate of the cost of this project. During this time I found out that the pull-a-part in Tucson had a 98 4runner on the lot for three days and a 99 for seven. I got a hold of everybody I could think of that owed me some cash and picked all the change out of my couch. That week end, running on hopes and dreams, I made a trip to Tucson with $600 in hand. I got to the Pull-A-Part and found the 99 to be pretty much stripped clean. There was almost nothing to it. The 98 however had been almost untouched up front. Everything was there except the alternator bracket, ignitor, MAF, and EVAP box. The 99 however did have the EVAP and Ignitor so that saved me some money.
Here it is when I found it.
It's not real pretty and doesn't look all that promising. Its in a truck with 232k on the clock and not wrecked. Usually I don't like buying things out of a non wrecked truck because that's just a bad sign of why it is in the yard. I looked it over a bunch. It looks well maintained. The timing belt was done within the last 50k with a mitsuboshi belt. The plugs were the factory style NGKS and looked good. The tops of the cylinders looked clean. Turned it over by hand it turned freely and felt good on compression. I decided to connect the jump pack to it to crank it a couple turns. Compression sounded strong and even. I thought about it some more and then came to the idea that even if the engine is no good, everything else attached to it was worth the price I was going to pay.
So an hour and half and $420 later, I had this thing sitting in the back of my truck. Its got just about everything I need, even a harness and an ECU. I'm very happy with my purchase.
When I got it home the first thing I did was fill it with some cheap oil, pulled the plugs and ran a compression test. I was very surprised by the results. 180-185 psi on all six. That doesn't seem right for 220k. I think I may have gotten a better deal than I thought and bought an engine that's been reworked recently. I quickly went through a few wiring diagrams and powered up the harness. Shot it with some carb cleaner, hit the starter and it fired right up. Sounded clean, smooth, and no concerning sounds. That called for the go ahead to start dropping more cash into it.
I got it put up on the stand with its mess of parts. I tried fabbing my own alternator mount and attached a cs144 to it. Didn't really work out. I went ahead and started ordering parts. Ordered up a MAF, alternator bracket, Aisin water pump kit, LUK clutch and flywheel, knock sensor wiring, gasket and seal kit and a bunch of brass freeze plugs.
While I waited on some parts and a paycheck to buy more I decided id start tackling the electrical. Excel is your friend when it comes to this stuff. I dug through all the diagrams I could find and mapped out all of the wiring on excel. I did it for the 98, the 94 and also for a 95 which is what I got wire pigtails for. My plan is to not have to modify either harness to integrate it. I'm just making and adapter harness from the pigtails that will plug into both harnesses and just run.
After a few hours I made a bunch of corrections and sorted it down to what I needed and made a new spread sheet listing what I need to do to make the pigtails splice together.
After that I decided I'd start to fiddle with the exhaust. I cut up an old y-pipe for a TBI chevy small block. I modified it to what looked like would fit good. I then cut out the flex joint and flanges from the original cross over. A 2 1/8" hole saw and a drill press made easy work of this. Lube is your friend.
I lined things up, cut, bent and cut some more. After a while I became pretty happy with what I had going on.
Here it is all tacked together
And here it is after welding it all up. The welder was being picky that day and I couldn't seem to get it to burn hot enough. There's a few extra passes on the flanges because of that but its not going anywhere. I still gotta shape the bottom and get a flange on it and get it wrapped. I'm going wait till I can test fit in the runner first though. I don't want to go to far and make it too difficult to change if something doesn't fit.
Finally I got in a bunch of parts so it was time to start tearing it down and get it all fixed up. Pulled the valve cover and got even more excited. It doesn't get much cleaner than that.
Got a bunch of upper end components nice and clean and then hit them with some black enamel.
I gotta post this picture just because I think these little engine just look so cool in this state. Not sure why. I just do.
After a timing belt, every seal and gasket I could reach, every freeze plug I could see and a bunch of paint, this is how it sits. I'm pretty happy with how it looks. I hit the intake and valve covers with black enamel and sprayed the coils and upper timing cover with a clear. Looks damn good I think. Unfortunately I got some brake cleaner on the upper plenum before it was cured and it caused some orange peel. I'm not sure if I'm just gunna leave it or try and fix it up. I scrubbed the lower end of every thing but didn't bother much with paint. I still gotta clean up the accessories and see what else is worthy of paint.
As of right now this is where I'm at. I should get the accessories taken care of during this week. This weekend I should be getting the 3.0 pulled. After that I can start test fitting things and it should all go pretty quick from there.
I figure I outta update this. I got a lot done. I still have a few small things to do but its basically finished.
I decided to use the 3.0 dipstick tube. I just drilled the plug currently in the block to be a normal union. I then took some old bracket of some kind and welded to it and bolted it to the exhaust manifold. Not the best looking but functional.
I tapped the old with an 1/8" NPT tap and put a plug in it. Works perfect. Don't have a picture of it with the plug in it.
While Installing the 3.0 motor motor brackets I found the A/C compressor bracket won't clear. Every body says they work perfect but that's not the case for me. I decided to just cut out a small portion of the A/C bracket to clear the bolt head. I also had to put some washer in the top bolt hole because the motor mount bracket wasn't thick enough to fill the gap there. That's another thing that never seemed to be mentioned.
Finally it was time to pull the 3.0. Here's the runner parked in the shop. Thankfully I had all that nice concrete to lay on.
And about two hours later I got the 3.0 sitting in the air.
Looks surprisingly clean in the pictures for some reason but believe me, it is filthy.
Here's the engine bay. Its got plenty of dirt and oil grime caked on every where.
And after a good pressure wash. Much nicer.
Finally the 3.4 goes in for its first test fit.
My home made precision eye ball measured crossover fits great on the passenger side.
The driver side however just kissed the firewall.
So I made some modifacations. It doesn't look has nice and has a little bit of a tighter corner than what I would like but it'll be alright. Hard to tell in the pic but it clears good now.
At this point I found a set back. I set the engine down on its perches and slipped the bolts in. I found the trans to be sitting away from the motor a good inch or so.
I went and inspected my old motor mounts which were broken. You can tell the entire engine and trans had got pulled backwards quite a bit and was like that for a while. Been that way so long the mounts actually lean back now before they broke.
These pictures don't do it justice but you can see my cross member had been hit by a rock or something and has pulled the entire center back an inch or so. I ended up just slotting the holes ad moving the trans mount forward on it for now. I'm now currently on the look out for a new cross member.
Finally I decided to finish up the exhaust cross over. I found an cat with a nice flange attached. I cut it off and transferred it to my cross over.
Landed almost perfect.
Despite what people say, I got tire of my toes getting extra warm in the summer. I decided to go with wrapping the exhaust. You can see I also got my shiny new clutch installed finally Indicating no more test fits.
Finally I got the motor in and bolted up. Its a good thing this was the last set down. As I was putting it in a seal on my cherry picker let go. I could drop the engine down but I could't raise it at all. It made it a little trickier. Made sure I got it right on the first try.
Finally I got around to finishing up the wiring. I'm pretty happy how the adapter turned out. It fit perfect in the kick panel and worked exactly like I had hoped.
Now I had to do the alternator. I didn't like how my Toyota alt felt and sounded so I decide to go with a GM alt. They cost less, are easier to find replacements, and is an upgrade in power. I tried experimenting with what I had already. I really wanted to use the CS140 but there was just no way to make it physically fit. The CS130 I already had only has the 120* ears and wasn't going to work. I ended up having to buy a new cs130 with the 180* ears. At least it's shiny.
You can see it sits damn close. The rag joint does just barely clip it some times so I'm going to have to get that taken care of. The Toyota alt would definitely fit fne but I don't want to use it. I'll keep it in the truck as a road spare.
Nice work! I really like the wire adapter idea, let us know how it works out after you are up and running.
I'm really slow at updating. I'll have to get some more pictures ready. I've actually had it running for a few weeks now. Already 1500 miles since the swap and its been almost perfect.
Well I figure its probably time I go about updating this thread. The swaps been on the road for about 6k now and hasnt't let me down. I covered most of what got done already but im still missing a couple little things.
Here is the intake. I didnt want to use the stock intake for two reasons. One, because I didn't have one. Two, was space. As always space is at a premium so the smaller the better. I found a one foot long section of exhaust tubing that adapted from 3" to 2.75". I cut and welded it to a small angle and attached s shiny new amsoil filter to it. You can also see the ignitor attached to the wirewall and my new fuel pressure service port behind the filter. Works pretty good.
Here you can see i just welded a nipple for the PCV and a peice of small tubing that fit the small MAF. Also, I converted to the small MAF both for space and cost.
Here's the part that excited me the most. Everybody says you need a minimum of 2" body lift to clear the hood. Heres a picture of the hood installed no lift what so ever. I simply cut down the throttle bracket a little and its good to go.
For the resto of the exhaust I just cut the original flange from the stock exhaust and welded on the new flange. I also welded in a short flex joint to alleviate any leverage the rest of the exhaust would have on the crossover. I really don't want to replace it if I don't have to.
The converter soon collapsed so I just cut the flanges off of it and welded them to a section of tubing. The 3.4 on a 3.0 muffler and no cat actually has a pretty angry sound to it. It aint real loud but it sounds good. That combined with the real short intake makes for a good sounding little engine.
And well that pretty much concludes the swap really. If I think of something important that I missed I'll be sure to add it.
Next up was the batteries. I didn't want to use the 3.4 intake because simply relocating the battery wasn't an option with duals. I got tired of batteries getting wrecked by the powersteering pump so made a tray out of angle iron and bolted it to the body. I then made a hold down from some 1" squar tubing and without a doubt that battery isn't going anywhere. I installed a 200 amp relay to the side of the fuse box bracket and wired it up with a bunch of 4awg wire. I also upgraded the wire in to the fuse box, the original body ground, and the charge wire all to 4awg. The ground and the fuse box upgraded certainly helped with my slow power windows so that was well worth it.
Here you can see I did the same on the passenger side.
Here I have a couple of auxilary post. I did this to make it easy to wire more accesories with only one cable being attached to the battery terminals. It makes it easier to work with when pulling a battery and just makes it look nicer. the red one is auxiliary battery and the black is the main.
Her I have the engine ground running to the frame.
Here is the passenger fram ground. One runs to the engine and the other to the main battery.
Here is the driver side frame ground. One goes to the auxiliary battery.
And the other runs to this big guy. Found this thing on ebay for $279 shipped. Its identical to the Harbor Freight 12k winch except its the cost of the 9k and comes with synthetic line. Oh and its got wireless built in. So far its been well worth the money. Last night a buddy got stuck and broke an axle. I put in probably a total of an hour of pull time on it and only got warm to the touch.
To attach it I got a step bumper reciver adapter and welded it to some 4"x3"x1/4" angle and bolted it to stock holes in the frame. I was worried about its strength at forst but it has been proven to be more than adequate.
Last edited by Kolton5543; 04-17-2018 at 08:49 PM.
Now the funnest project ive done so far is OBA. I got tired of not being able to air up after a ride so I decided to come up with a solution. I ran my options. I wanted something that would be reliable, fast, capable of running pneubatic tools and most importantly, it had to be cheap. I weighed my options and decided electric wasnt the way to go. I opted to go the route of a moddified A/C compressor. I considered the york but its physical size wasn't going to work out under my hood while retaining A/C and dual batteries.
As you can see here, I totally believe in the yourk. This is my home compressor I put tegther with a 65 gallon tank and a york 209. Works great and is quiet.
I did some research and chose the physically smallest one way swash plate compressor made to my knowledge. That wound up being a sanden sd710b commonly used in Geo Metros. I picked one up for $40 at Pull-A-Part.
AS you can see I thought about the compressors I had on hand and didn't like any of them. The SD710b is all the way to the left.
Heres a good comparison of the SD710b next to a york 209. The york dwarfs this little guy.
Heres the cool parts. The pulley is already a four groove and ready to go. It's tiny. Its easy to mount but besto of all, it'll move more air than a york 210. This is a seven piston compressor and displaces 6.1 cubic inches. Sure its less than a 210 obviously but the pulley is only 4" vs the york 7" meaning this compressor will be overdriven on the toyota. I did some math and if the compressors are turning at 1500 rpm the your will put out 8.68cfm while the sanden will run only 5.29cfm. After factorying pulley size, with the wngine speed at 1500rpm with a stock 6.5" crank pulley, 210 will put out 8.1cfm while the sanden will run 8.6cfm. At idle (700 rpm) the 210 should be 3.76cfm vs 4.02cfm. So yeah, more air and les space. Keep in mind these numbers are under no load. I'm not sure how to factor load into the equation.
Any way, now that I got the compressor I needed to make it work. I wanted to make it essentially maintenance free. I didn't want to have to keep adding oil to an oiler and din't want to run a drier. I wanted to keep it compact, cheap and make it almost completly automatic So I chose to pack it with grease. Now its on to modifying it to work for my needs. I needed connect air lines to it. on the back of the head there was a pressure relief valve. I removed it then drilled and tapped the hole with 1/4" NPT. That will be used as my new discharge port.
The hole from the front side of the head.
Right here is the port where the compressed refrigerent used to flow to get to the discharge port. The original discharge port I reporposed as the suction port.
To do this I needeed to get air to flow through the port into the suction side of the head. I strated by tapping the hole for a 1/4" bolt.
Installed a bolt and ground the head off to fit.
Then I cut out the divider. Now air flows from the original discharge port into the suction side of the head, get compressed and flows out the new port.
The suction side originally went straight into the crank case and flowed through the case to the head. Since I don't want it to pump all its grease out these holes needed plugged. I stuck paper towel in the bottom.
Then filled it with JB weld. Once cured I pulled the paper towels out the bottom.
Next I needd to connect fittings to the original ports. They aren't very universal I used the original fittings
I cut the hard line off flush.
Then drilled and tapped it to 1/4" npt
Both done and installed on the case.
I got everything cleaned up, packed full of a moly grease and reassembled.
Now I needed to get it installed. I cut some 3/16 plate into a basic shape and bolted it to the front of the alternator bracket.
I put a tensioner pulley on the other end. This one is advertised for a Dodge Durango.
I set the tensioner in the middle and measured 65" for a belt. I couldn't find a 4 rib readily available locally but I did find a 6 rib so i just trimmed 2 ribs off of it. Fits perfect. This routing ended up slipping on the crank pulley when the fan clutch engaged. I rerouted the belt over the tensioner first and that solved that problem.
I finnished the upper support on the bracket and smoothed out the corners. I also made a tensioner bolt and a small bracket that both, supports the rear of the compressor and is used as the spacer for the GM alternator.
With it all intalled with a small air filter.
Here you can see the small support bracket.
I coiled up some 3/8 copper tubing to dissapate as much heat as possible and connected it with a compression fitting and put a bubble flare on the end to connect to a hose.
Using some high temp hose it runs to anohter copper section on the fire wall. The hose goes into a retainer bolted onto the intake. This keeps it from pulling on the copper coiled section to help prevent it from work hardening and eventually cracking.
This section runs into a load genie. The load genie has a check valve and automatically depressurizes the compressor when it shuts off. The air manifold has a nylon tubing that runs to mechanical gauge on the dash, an air chuck below the front bumper, a 165psi relief valve and 120 on 150 off switch and a ball valve for a 3 gallon air tank in the rear. I still gotta finsih intalling the the gauge, plumb line to the tank, and properly wire everything.
Basic air tank on some brackets I made that boltot hte spare tire bolt holes.
The air chuck under the front bumper
As of right now this is how things sit. The compressor works awesome.I raise the rpm a little and air up the tires as quick as a tank would. Its almost dead silent. The best part after buying the belt, pulley, brass and other odds and ends it cost about $120 so it was cheap. And its certtainly unique. One thing I considerd when making this is if it ever gets a super charger. I made it so I can easily add another idler pulley to the left of the compressor and change to a longer belt and a supercharger should still run no problem.
Last edited by Kolton5543; 04-17-2018 at 08:28 PM.
07-31-2017, 12:03 AM
