So I got bamboozeled and I ended up with a 95 pickup that I paid way to much for that needs a lot of work. The short of the story is that it needs a new engine and a lot of front end work. I am not a mechanic by any means but decided to keep it and do the work myself as I think that it's a valuable life skill to have. Took it to the mechanic and here is everything that he told me was wrong:

Rear main seal leaking
all valve seals need replacing
timing chain gasket leaking
idler arm needs to be replaced (replaced this myself)
needs all new shocks
ball joints have over an inch of play in them
needs all new tires
needs new brake master cylinder
low compression in #3


He quoted me $3500 dollars for everything and I promptly told him no thanks. Since the engine has 258,000 miles on it I just decided to keep dumping oil in it (it loses about a quart every tank of gas) until the engine gives out and then replace it with one from lc engineering. So, after much research on this forum I think that I can accomplish all of this by myself as I am not an idiot just don't know a lot about vehicles, but I am pretty good with my hands so we'll see how it goes. This truck is my daily driver so I can't do an engine rebuild myself because I just don't have the time, otherwise I would. Next is going to be ball joints, can I get these from autozone or would anyone recommend something better. I am going to try and go one step better as I replace these things.

 

Are ball joints an autozone purchase or are there certain ones that are better than others?

 

Personally, I have had the best luck with rockauto.com. They typically have several choices in parts, great prices, and very quick shipping. Parts shipped to my door instead of me chasing them is very valuable to me. The quality of everything I have purchased there has been fantastic. I rebuilt my entire front end with their parts.

 

Thanks gdavis, I ended up going with duralast upper and lower from advance auto parts. They are having a sale right now, if you spend more than $50 you get a coupon code for $25 and free shipping on anything over $75. Seemed like a good deal to me since I plan on buying new shocks all the way around in the next few weeks. I have 31x10.5 r15 right now and plan on going to 33x10.5 in the next year or so. I would like to add about 1 to 2 inches of lift, is this as simple as getting shocks that are a little bigger?

 

scratch that question, answered by searching the forums, my bad

 

If you are interested, I'm getting ready to SAS my truck and will be taking of the 2" ball joint spacers that are on my truck as well as the shocks. They are from 4crawler (the spacers) and are brand new. Maybe 50 miles on them. The shocks are doetcsh tech. The rears are still in a box. If interested, pm me.

 

Ran into a little snag this weekend trying to change my oil, The oil drain plug is completely rounded off. The good news is that by the way it leaks I can completely change out the oil in about 5 tanks of gas. The bad news is that I really just want to change the oil. Is there any way to get this bolt out without dropping the differential? Because if I do this, I will most likely just change out the whole oil pan because I'll already have the diff off.

 

Try a small pipe wrench. They work miracles.

 

So I dropped the wife off at the airport on saturday so she could go home and visit her folks for awhile. That means I had all weekend to tear into the yota. I have all four ball joints, all four wheel bearings and the breaks to do. Got down to just spindles on the front without many problems and used a pickle fork to break the top ball joints on both sides. My only question is this, is there a way to safely replace the upper ball joints without removing the steering knuckles? I got one replaced but I had to jack the upper A arm up with a 2x4 and it seemed really unsafe to put my hands in there while it's supported with only a bottle jack and a 2x4. It took a considerable amount of pressure to get it up and seemed like it would really slam down if the 2x4 came out from underneath it. I saw the write up in here where the guy removed the shock as well. Would that let the a-arm swing freely? Or am I right in thinking the torsion bar is keeping the pressure there. Anyways, I'll post some pics later of the progress.