That Zuk mod really looks good…what a difference! Good thing you decided to do that. Those brakes really needed some attention. Hope the front ones are in better shape!

 

Did some actual off roading in NH today on what they call a class VI road. The truck performed well.




Some deep water, but solid below.

End of this trail.

That looked too deep, with big rocks and no recovery gear, we had to turn back. Next time we’ll come from the other side.

 

Those trails look fun!

 

I had to drive the Goo runner to work this week and it was in the 20’s. Drivers window wouldn’t seal up all the way due to a split weatherstrip. So i decided to use one i had bought for the beach truck but never got around to installing.

Removing the old one is a simple process of lowering the window and pulling straight up on the sides, but installing the new one is a bit more complicated. I wound up disconnecting the window and setting it down inside the door frame. But before you do, clean the glass and attach a long strip of duct tape or two to help raise the window to put it back in place.

 

Removing the lower rear window channel helps allow the window to be move around in the door shell. One 10mm bolt near the door catch holds this in. I discovered mine was loose and cracked, so tack welded it back up.

 

My vent window was a bit loose, so i decided to address that while i was here.




The frames on these can completely deteriorate. This one has just a small amount of life left in it.

 

A video i saw said to use the window raising and lowering to help get the new weatherstrip in. I tried that but had about 8 inches too much that would’t seat, which is why I had to take it so far apart. So i put in the rubber weatherstrip in this order
Rear
Top
Front
window glass
rear lower

Afterwards we took a test drive to enjoy the absence of wind noise.

 

I picked this up from Road and truck .com on sale black friday. I’m very impressed and it is very well made.

 

More work on the Goo runner today. Started on the backup lights, got distracted by more interesting problems and found more stuff to fix. For one, the pitman arm is loose in the centerlink and would not tighten and could not remove the nut, so that’s coming off with the angle grinder once the new pitman arm arrives.

Then i decided to put the front pan back on and found two of the mounting bolts broken off in the diff support. So i pulled the diff support to make it easier to work on. A few minutes of heat with a map gas torch and the broken bolts came out using small vice grips.





Then just out of curiosity as to why this truck idles low when cold, i checked the idle air control valve and found it passes nothing. Yay, another thing to fix.

 

Major weekend for the Goorunner. Friday night i installed a new pitman arm. Saturday at dawn we took off for CT to buy some used axle shafts and brake backing plates from a guy we got parts from before. I wound up getting the whole lower front suspension and diff from him for $75. More stuff than i need, but the price was right and he just did a SAS on his 4runner so didn’t need any of it. 250 miles round trip, mostly highway, and the truck returned 18 mpg. We may be able to improve that in the future.

Today, i swapped in a used Idle air control valve. I’m looking forward to fast idle next time i drive it to work. No photos of that.
Then I returned some of its dignity with new B-pillar badges i got off etsy.


Antes.

Feeler gauges and a heat gun work well to remove the originals.

Despues

 

Last operation of the day, mounting the snorkle. My Dremel came in really handy for cutting the large hole and egging out the others. The alignment could be better, but we can work on that later. More fabrication needs to happen to get it mated to the factory air cleaner box.

Template provided

I didn’t have a whole saw large enough. Dremel cutoff wheel for the win.

This bracket is supposed to rivet to the A-pillar.

Decent hardware, but if you don’t get the alignment perfect, the studs wind up too short

That took way too long

 

Recently threw some new brakes at the Goorunner. I had a feeling there were some stuck or sticky pistons on the front calipers so i basically bought new everything for the fronts. I didn’t have time to pull the rotors that day, so i just installed remanufactured Raybestos calipers and Bosch pads. The old calipers were quite rusty and pads did not move freely. I’m quite impressed with the calipers and pads.



Nice calipers

 

I should back up a litle to say that i wasn’t happy with the brake feel at all. There was a lot of pedal travel before you felt any low, hard braking.
The new pads and calipers helped, but i figured something was up with the pedal travel. Like other things the PO thought were great, the master and booster were replaced but not quite right. The pedal height adjustment was all the way out on its pushrod so i left that as is. I knew from previous experience that a minor change in the booster pushrod can really be felt so i focused on that.

The adjustable rod was rusted and after it came out of the booster i used heat to free it up. I added about .030” to the length and test drove. Definitely better. I took it apart again and added another .025” and took another drive. Now the brake pedal grabbed much higher but there was drag on the brakes and they were starting to smell. Brought it back in and took about .015” out of it and thats where it sits. I think i could do better with the special adjustment tool shown in the factory manual, but it’s pretty good now and i still have the rotors to install.






7mm nut on the adjustment.

 

yikes, i thought mine was bad the first time i did anything under it. this is another magnitude of sludge (to the amount of oil on the bottom of the frame/powertrain)

 

Yeah I plan to pressure wash it off but now I’ll wait till spring.

 

It’s been a while since I did much with this truck but now have some time on my hands and the revived seats were not very comfortable due to the compressed foam. I decided to go back in and see what i could do by adding new 1” foam


You can see the backrest is kind of saggy

Need a whole pack(4x 1” panels) for each seat

Looking better. I also added more to the outside of the bolsters.

Works well for gluing new foam to old foam

 

I’m super happy with the way the “refoaming” of the seats came out. Amazingly more comfortable. So, bottom line, each seat needs about 4 sheets of 1” foam i bought from a fabric store. The cost per seat was $25 or so.

Today it’s really cold and windy out again, so i decided to try a fix i could do from the passenger seat with the door closed. I’ve had no clinometer or climate control dash lights and i knew there had been hackery as the PO had run the heater fan off a switch mounted on the dash.

I theorized that the wiring may have been hacked into for this redundant fan power and i could see from the schematic that the lights were fed by the same circuit. Turns out to be a simple fix. It looks like one junction was left disconnected by the last hack.



This was disconnected.

Light ‘em up!

 

Love the easy fixes!

 

nice work on the seats. i probably need to do something similar within a few years as well.

 

Thanks. I’d be happy to help you if you need it. I’m thinking I might try to do upholstery professionally one day, offer replacement seat covers for these trucks. I really enjoy it.