Well we pulled the ol 350 out of the runner and painted it Chevy orange. Turned out awesome!
Before:




And after:

 

Looks very good.

 

IS that a toyota motor? Or is that the chevy 4.3 motor

 

you pulled it out just to paint it?

 

lookin good!

 

I'm jealous. That looks awesome. I love Hugger Orange. Thats probably one of the best looking engine bays I've ever seen in a Toyota.

 

That is a Chevy 350. Well, we had to take the intake off because it was leaking oil like mad. We wanted to paint it, because it didn't look too good, so we took the radiator and accessories off and were going to paint it sitting right there. But I wanted to do it right, and it's nothing to get this motor out (unlike a 3.0) so we went ahead and yanked it out. We also wanted to take it out because the guy "jimmy rigged" alot of stuff on it because he got tired of working on it. He basically did enough to get it running. We had to redo all the wiring, hoses, etc., so it could be done right. Thanks for all the feedback guys!

 

Awesome! The truck and motor looks nice! What kind of mileage do you get?

 

Its always good to have things done right...that way you don't have to worry about seeing guages rise all the time or shrapnal flying from the back!

 

Nothing as pretty as a freshly painted clean motor.

 

Where did you get your headers?

Also would like to know your Average MPG...

 

Looks real good

is there an engine mount and tranny adapter to allow a small block chevy to drop into say a 95 4 Runner that originally had a 3.0

is there an adapter to allow it to mate to the 5 speed?

thanks

 

yes cheak out advance adapters....

how long have you ran those headers they like to crack around the welds some blockhuggers would work better

 

Right now it is getting 13-14 mpg. Not too shabby, given the motor that it is. We just took the old Holly dual line 650 cfm off and put an Edelbrock 600 on there. Helped mileage tremendously. We were getting 7-8 with the Holly. With a little more tweaking, we should be able to get about 15. Those headers are from Downey, and have been on there for probably about 3 years. They are specially made for this swap. As you probably know, it's insanely tight around the steering column. No signs of cracks yet. They do make adapters to mate that motor to the toyota trannies, but our Runner has a 700R4, and an adaptor to make the stock transfer case mate up to it. The truck was actually a 5-speed when the 3.0 was in it, so the T-case is actually a manual one mated to an auto tranny. It works fine, you just have to be stopped and in neutral to shift into 4-wheel. The radiator is also from Downey. It works well, usually runs between 180-190 degrees. All in all, this thing has turned out way better than I thought it would. We have most of the bugs worked out, and everything is running fine. We just need to figure out how we're going to hook up the a/c!!!!

 

HM
3.0 @ 14 mpg
350 @ 14 mpg with twice the HP
I'm sure you could do even better with fuel injection.

Sure would be fun to have the extra HP!!

 

Yea we would love to get a TBI setup eventually, but we just bought the new carb, so that will have to do for a while. It is EXTREMELY nice to have twice the horsepower with roughly the same gas mileage as a 3.0. I'm sure if we let up on the skinny pedal a little more we could do even better........lol. Can't resist nailing it every once in a while though. A 330hp 89 4Runner is definately fun to drive. It's also funny to see the looks on people's faces when you pull up in a Yota that sounds like this.

 

I would love to paint my motor. But I just dont have the means to pull it out and paint it. Its my daily driver. Look good man

 

What would you say the total cost was for the conversion, Minus the Motor/trans...

 

Well, the whole thing (including new crate motor, new trans, all the necessary adapters, etc., and a 4" Pro Comp suspension and 3" body lift was about 10,000. Depending on which direction you want to go with the trans, the motor mounts, adapters, and all the other "little things" you'll need can run anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000, depending on what you want to do. This includes a new radiator.