Hello,

I am desperately needing a new vehicle, and this late 90s 4 runner popped up down the street from me.

The young lady who owns it said she wants $5700 Canadian dollars.

it’s a SR5 model, but strangely, it had a manual transmission. Drives well.

frame seems decent, has some bad rust on the bumpers, and some rust on the body and doors.

I don’t know what to do, I don’t know if I should buy it, I don’t want a project car.

thanks.

What should I do?

 

Hard to give any real advise from just two pictures, but the frame doesn't look rusty at all for canadaland.
Those trucks are pretty bulletproof, but its still 20+ years old, so....

 

I'm with Ray. Impossible for us to say from here. But a late 90s vehicle is, almost by definition, a project vehicle. My 98 has been treated really, really well all it's life, but it's still starting to nickel & dime me.

 

Somewhat weird place for the fender to rust, based on what I see here in the salt belt. And that looks pretty minty underneath for what the salt here does to them.

I'd almost suspect some sort of repair on the fender?

I think the first place frame rust causes issues is on the lower rear control arm mounts. On the bottom of the frame just ahead of the rear wheels. The frame rusts from the inside out, and those eventually pop off the frame. Take a look there, but really, based on the one pic of the frame above, I'm not suspecting you'll see anything bad.

And of the two problem spots you should address when buying a 3rd gen, the manual trans skips one of them, the pink milkshake. But if you buy it, the lower ball joints should be a top priority, inspect them ASAP and depending on the miles and or how they look, replace them. They're not weak or fragile or under specced, they just have a catastrophic failure mode.