You got it. Pm me if i can answer any questions about my posts.

 

I had a high pressure week at work and when the clouds lifted Thursday, I decided to PTO myself right the heck out of there for Friday. I had stopped by the registry on Wednesday eve just to recon and one of the 3 (yes, for some reason they need 3) security guards advised me first thing Friday morning was best. So, this morning i was in line, paperwork in hand, at 7:55 before they opened the doors. I was blessed to make it past the first level of bureaucracy and was the 3rd person served. The counter agent was a pleasant, attractive woman who actually recognized that 4runners were somewhat collectible. If i was a single man…no, never mind. I got plates, paid the reg and taxes on the card to get air miles and beat it for home.

The boy got to do the honors of attaching the plate and having the first drive - straight to Harbor Freight after he broke my breaker bar tightening the lug nuts. And, as he was checking the tire pressures, he dropped the air hose on the ground and it ejected the chuck through the fence, into the neighbor’s yard, and took a half hour to find it. Can’t make this stuff up. But hey, valuable lessons learned, right? (Where’s the “person strangling another person” emoji?)

We put about 30 miles on it so far including Friday afternoon traffic and a little highway. Drove a couple towns over to where the only semi truck wash is, but after looking at it, they politely declined to do an undercarriage wash on it so i’m off to the car wash in the stealth of night.




Looks to me like it says “SPAM”

Things that still need work:
Brakes are sketch
both front axles have torn boots
muffler
back up lights not working(probably a connection since we took the shifter apart)
horn circuit not working(horn tests ok)
interior overhead light intermittent
radio antenna

 

This is such great news! What a coincidence, I got my son's Corolla legal this past Wednesday after waiting only 20 days for my appointment. The CT DMV doesn't allow walk ins. BS , and after only an hour and a half after my appointment it was good to go.

his plate looks like Vice President Mad Guy!

First official drive was to take us grocery shopping.

 

I like the rims and white letters out. Old school!
Mass registry offices make up their own rules about whether you need an appointment or not, inconsistent with their website.
The security guard told me if i came at 5:30 pm they might not serve me because they are open till 6, but the employees need to leave on time.
The Google reviews of these offices is so bad any private sector company would cease to exist.

 

Yeah, our DMV would be closed if reviews ment something too. I do have to say once I made it to the employee the process only took 5 minutes. Usually it's a 20 minute process. I thought the other guy was just being thorough in the past. Then one time I had an employee so upset that I didn't need some form that he threw it up in the air. Probably an ex prison guard. I even asked about a picture of a fish he caught that was on his desk. I asked if it was an American Shad and he said " yes it is NOW BACK TO MATTER AT HAND....."

Back to the matter at hand, I see a recurring theme with dome lights. On our 4runner it usually only works when the door is open but if we switch it on and off enough it comes on. Probably corrosion in the switch and my son's Corolla it doesn't like to come on with the door open. Something is up in the wiring in the ceiling we've worked on it and it was working for a while.

Good luck with the goo runner!

 

Update, today we hit the road for more testing. We started at the car wash to see if the pressure wash would do anything to the goo covering the chassis. It did remove a lot of it if i could get the wand close enough. So that means we will lift it up in our driveway on ramps and stands and really get under it and blast it and will be able to clean up the mess that is sure to happen.

Then we pointed north up the coastline and cruised Salisbury beach, Hampton Beach NH, Rye and Portsmouth NH and stopped in at Gary’s Guitars.
The total was about 100 miles, truck ran fine with no mechanical difficulty. But we did observe a couple things that need closer inspection.
1) Sometimes there is a vibration accelerating up to highway speeds. Steady state it’s not bad, but when you lift off the gas it gets worse. At least some of it may be tire balance, but i need to check ujoints also and pinion bearing. I know the PO did axle bearings and they seem fine.

2) I think the driver’s side front wheel bearing is noisy when you load it on a turn. I can deal with that when i fix the torn axle boots.

oh, and we received our first 👍🏻 from a little kid with his dad in a big truck.

 

First test of the CD player. My son chose these.

Near Salisbury beach campground

1 fargin crazy bastige

Rye NH area


Good stuff at Gary’s Guitars!

 

Nice trip, love that Salisbury Beach! Your son needs to do a camping trip there with the 4runner. There is more room in the 4runner than my FJ. I regret sleeping in a tent instead of the back of the 4runner the one time I did take it camping.

 

Yeah we drove around that campground. There were still people there. He definitely wants to go camping with it.

 

Oh yeah that's another thing I like about that campground, they will stay open til late November if the weather permits!

 

The Mass registry says you have 7 days to get your car safety inspected once it is registered. So that gives us till Friday. If on Friday it doesn’t pass, you have 30 days to do repairs and try again. If you take longer, you have to pay the inspection fee ($35) a second time. So the plan is for the boy to take it for inspection this Friday.

The things that we will certainly fail for are muffler, no backup lights, and no horn. So we started working on those things today.
The horn was simple. Just trace the wires from the doorbell button on the dash to discover the horn was not plugged in.



Not a factory horn circuit.

 

Also under the hood, we added a heat shield on the exhaust manifold and organized the plug wires away from the hot parts.


Looks better.

 

The muffuleta had a nice big rust hole in it. Good thing I had a used spare. I painted it up with some VHT and got a coupling from Autozone to be able to attach the existing tailpipe. Much better.

 

Now just have to work on those backup lights. I thought since we had the shifter out the other night we might have left something disconnected. Nothing obvious at the shifter, but as i type this i think there may be a connection underneath?


oh, and the last thing we did was tighten the slop out of the steering box for a very noticeable improvement. 👍🏻

 

The reverse light switch is usually on the transmission. The wiring goes by the starter under the intake. I had to ad a different plug for that on my son's Corolla. The wiring in the engine bay was very similar to the 4runner. Someone added a later engine and transmission to the car so the plug was a different style and the wiring on the transmission was slightly different. Then I found the wrong bulbs were installed. They put in duel element bulbs (1157) .

 

Friday my son took the truck for MA state safety inspection. To my surprise, it failed only for the backup lights not working. So now we have 30 days to fix it(or pay $35 for another inspection). So we’ve got the R for now.

 

Saturday was in the 80’s so we pulled the hard top and headed up the coast line. First we happened upon downtown Stoneham trick or treat and had to stop and see this 58 Corvette race car. Owner was nice and gave us a tour of his man cave garage space under construction.Next destination was the Parker Wildlife refuge where there is beach and 5 miles of dirt road.



Very wicked big block powered vintage racer.



Took a short hike to beach.

I rode in back for a while to catch some rays.

 

I just want to throw something when I think of how the previous owner thought there were so many good things about this truck that actually are not good. I’m not saying he mislead me, but he didn’t really know. Case in point, he said there were new drums and brake shoes on it. Yes, while that is true, the backing plates are severely rusted, and brakes were poorly adjusted, likely because the adjusters were rusted solid!

so Sat night i started out to do a Zuk mod that turned into rear brake resto project.



By some miracle the axle seals and brake cylinder are not leaking.

She’s a no adjust.

Look at that backing plate!

 

I debated whether to add a leaf or Zuk mod to level out the droopy rear. Even with the top off, we were bouncing off the bumpstops. So, i bought some 100 lb springs off An ebay seller that were recommended for zuk mods.

the key to doing this is disconnecting the shocks and letting the rear fully droop. I didn’t have a real spring compressor so i improvised with clamps and that worked fine.


Try this at home.


Looks better.

“My baby’s on the level…”


The test drive felt good. It’s not too stiff with these springs. The brakes are at about 80% now. Still have to inspect/service the fronts. I would not be surprised to find seized pistons in the front calipers. Stay tuned…

 

It looks better with the good old Zuk mod!