Another Budget 3rd Gen 4Runner build

[Renegade_Medic]

More fun stuff

Alright, this thing is starting to come together.
I ordered some tires from tires-easy.com I have never ordered from them before, but would be happy to order from them again. I got a set of Falken Wildpeak AT3w in 285/70R17. They were shipped to my door for $701. The shipping was pretty high, but overall still much less than buying locally. They also arrived about 22 hours after I ordered them. That's because they shipped from about an hour away. I really wished they would have seen that I was local and would have called and asked if I wanted to save about $140 and pick them up. That actually really irritated me, but oh well, it's too late now. I picked up some FJ wheels from CL for $120 after reading online they will fit the 285/70s without rubbing.

Quick trip to Discount for a mount/balance.

While the tires were at the shop. I decided it would be a good time to pull the Lower Ball Joints.

Pretty gnarly, but no play, they were tight. Had a pain getting the lower ball joint out of the lower control arm. Ok the second side I loosened the crown nut and then used a jack under it to lift the weight of the front end and it busted loose, making the second side take only about 30 minutes, vs 2 hours, and no heat from the torch.

Tires were done (busy Saturday, took 5 hours to mount them). So I get home and am excited to take the old stock off and throw on some new rubber and that's about where my day turned around. Remember why I picked the FJ wheels? Because they fit the 4runner with 285/70R17s without rubbing? Not my experience. I couldn't even put the tire on because it was pressed up against the UCA. Great. We'll, nothing a LITTLE grinding can't fix until I get some spacers. I'm sure it's probably not the best solution, but I've done it before and not had any issues. It clears at ride height with almost half an inch, but rubs, hard, at droop. It's possible it could be the more aggressive sidewall on the tires, it may not rub on smooth sidewalls. Just sharing my experience.

Then when putting the rear wheels on, I discovered my rear axle is still leaking, more. After pulling the axle shaft again, I see that I put the new seal way too far in. Pulled it and put a new seal in, much further out. I inspected the bearing a little closer this time and it will need to be replaced, it's got some play. Awesome.

Well, got them all done and back together. It looks great. I'm really pleased with the look, and I think the spacers will make it look even better.

Finally looking like a proper mall crawler.

I need to get some stuff from the junkyard. CV shafts, a headlight, and possibly a hood with scoop.

I do want to get it painted, or do it myself. I love the quicksand color and I think it will look good on here. I think the tan with a hood scoop and black wheels will look killer.

So next up will probably be CVs (lower mileage and full of grease) I will put some hose clamps on the outboard end of the inner boot to keep the grease in. After that, I guess the wheel bearing and all that. Damn, I really don't want spend that much on something "non-fun". Anyone have any recommendations on machine shops in central Texas? Don't mind driving to get it done by an experienced place.

 

[austintaco]

Looking good, man. I think the newer IFS wheels have less/more backspace/offset than the earlier IFS so they sit inside the wheel well more than your original wheels. I have those limited 3rd gen wheels on my Tacoma and my 84 4runner. On my 4runner, they sit in too much for my taste, but they have the same backspace/offset as the original Tacoma wheels, so o that truck they are perfect.
Are you a FF in Buda?

 

[Renegade_Medic]

Looking good, man. I think the newer IFS wheels have less/more backspace/offset than the earlier IFS so they sit inside the wheel well more than your original wheels. I have those limited 3rd gen wheels on my Tacoma and my 84 4runner. On my 4runner, they sit in too much for my taste, but they have the same backspace/offset as the original Tacoma wheels, so o that truck they are perfect.
Are you a FF in Buda?

The wheel offset makes sense. I wish that everyone would just use backspace instead of offset, it would be easier.
Yes, I'm a FF/Medic for Buda Fire. It's the ultimate "part-time" job isn't it?

 

[austintaco]

It's a great job for sure. One of the best decisions I have ever made besides buying my first Toyota and marrying my wife, LOL.

 

[Renegade_Medic]

You win some, you lose some

Well, the axle is still hemorrhaging oil. I'm pretty disappointed that it didn't just seal itself up, I haven't even been driving it.

So I went by the dealer, inquired about the cost for labor only on the axle bearing and misc. I know they will jack the prices up on parts, so I just wanted labor. I was "quoted" unofficially "about $750" for labor alone, allegedly its a 7 hour job. I'm doubtful. Suddenly this budget build isn't so budget. Maybe I could just find an axle shaft with a good bearing on the cheap?

Trip to the junk yard.
I went by a couple pick-a-part yards. I was looking for CV shafts, rear axle shaft, a headlight, and maybe an emblem for the rear lift gate.
The first 4Runner I arrived at looked promising, a 99 with 126k written on it. Hell, if my bearing made it 250k, one at half the mileage should be good right? I spent all of 30 minutes (maybe longer, longer than I'd like to admit) getting the Brake drum off. The parking brake wasn't on, I even disconnected the cable, it just wouldn't come off. The drum was drier than a nun's...... Uh it didn't have any oil on, in, or anywhere around it.

Then I pulled the ABS sensor, it was full of oil. Full. Damn.

The trend more or less continued, I did learn to pull the ABS Sensor first.

This one looked good at first.

Nope

I pulled eight (8) axles and found every single one to have oil past the inner seal and in the ABS area. Out of curiosity, I started pulling some of the axles, just to check the bearing play. Maybe the inner seal doesn't really keep the oil out of the ABS sensor area. Just a thought. All of the bearing had some wobbling in them. Also every 4Runner had the emblem taken off the rear lift gate. So I did manage to find one off of a 2nd gen, it's smaller, but it looks cool. I also got a couple of the lift struts for the rear gate. So, not a complete loss. Did some looking around and saw a pretty cool LC. Identified by a friend (and LC freak) as an FJ55.

Then I saw this.

I know I'm a yota guy now, but really c'mon. This 2wd Taco didn't recover anything, let alone any Jeep. Sorry.

So here's the loot. Pretty disappointed. I was also on the lookout for a hoodscooped hood, they are very prevalent in my area, but apparently not in the yards.

So on the way home I called a couple mechanics shop, not a lot of luck finding one to do this. I called a machine shop locally and they said they can do it, but don't like toyota axles, apparent;y the way they are pressed or spacin gor something. He recommended another shop. I called them, the guy told me he does about 2 or 3 toyota axle shafts a week. He seemed pretty confident and I was floored when he told me the price. $70US. He said it would take about an hour and I could probably just wait on it. I thought I had read on one of the various threads about this that the machine shops generally charge somewhere around 400-500 for this. So, feeling like an idiot, I went to my local dealer, picked everything up that I would need. $163. So all said and done, roughly $240 for this. Wow. I would have spent the day at the machine shop, not at the junk yard in the heat and relentless sun. I didn't find any CVs at the junk yard that I would trust, so I bought reman ones from NAPA and a socket. They have a lifetime warranty so when the boots rip, I'll bring them in. Seems like an easy enough job.

Lesson Learned: explore all known options before deciding on one.

 

[austintaco]

Man, which pick and pull are you going to? I need to hit that place up. Near. Buda?

 

[Trophycummins]

Auto parts store cv's don't have the ability to move to the same angle as the Toyota oem ones, they're known to go bad sooner when the rig is used off road.

Most guys running Toyota ifs have Toyota oem or high angle units from rcv


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Renegade_Medic]

Man, which pick and pull are you going to? I need to hit that place up. Near. Buda?

No, the main one I go to is wrench a part in Del Valle, also Fidel's Auto salvage, just next door. I think there may be a big yard down in New Braunfels, but it looks like older stuff from the highway.

 

[Renegade_Medic]

Noted on keeping the OEM ones, I'm giving some crappy junk yard ones as my core and going to regrease and reboot mine as spares. Maybe I'll just keep one of the NAPA ones as a spare instead and get mine rebuilt. I'm not going to be doing anything real crazy with it, so I don't think think I'll need the high dollar shafts. If I wanted a rock crawler, I'd swap to a solid axle for sure. Thanks for the input.

 

[owyheerat]

@Renegade_Medic,

Nice 4runner. I read your post in 3rd gen registry. I really like the new paint. Can you please give some details?

Thanks

Durwin

 

[Renegade_Medic]

Sure. I really need to update this thread, but honestly I just got tired of doing it and didn't feel like it was really an Expo portal build, more of just a "regular" build so to speak.
Stand by and I'll post up some details.
Thanks

 

[wrenchMonkey_]

I have a bad habit of not commenting on threads after I read them. Trying to get better Keep it up.

 

[Renegade_Medic]

New CVs and stuff

Didn't end up keeping any factory CV shafts. couldn't find any worth saving at the yard and mine were pretty trashed. I got reman units from NAPA, they are factory rebuilds that have the "tulip design" and can operate at higher angles than other aftermarket shafts. They want their cores back too, the core charge was like 3 times the cost of the shaft.
Also put the spacers on. I'll be honest. Not a fan of spacers, but they serve a purpose. They are a pain in the ***. You have to take them off to do anything.

Went to the store for some stuff and saw this gem. Got me thinking I may be approaching travel all wrong.

Someone really spent a lot of time painting this thing.

Next up was to fix the bleeding rear seal.
I grabbed all the stuff from a dealer and headed out to the machine shop.

Definitely the best way to transport your axle shaft.

Everything all pressed in and good to go. Austin Machine Shop did a great job, about an hour turn around time. Never been inside a legit machine shop before, but that place is a gear heads wet dream. There were so many motors and go-fast parts everywhere. It was awesome.

Now that everything should be good to go mechanically, the truck needs to look better.

 

[Renegade_Medic]

PAINT JOB!

I've been trying to decide how I wanted to go about getting the paint done. I considered taking it to a paint shop and getting a $500 paint job, doing something like Monstaliner (I've done this before and was happy with the results), and just doing a spray paint job. I weighed the options and decided on spray paint. I plan on using this as primarily an offroad vehicle and camping, although the more I drive it, the more I may start daily driving it. So I really don't care if the paint gets messed up, especially if I can just hit it with some more paint for easy touch up. So I started off by sanding what clear coat was left, then masked up the glass and went to town.

So the first color I started with looked better on the sample cards I made. It was called Sand. It was very yellow compared to the Khaki color. Sand is on the door, Khaki is on the front quarter.

I ended up using Rustoleum Camo rattle can in Khaki. I wanted to do the fenders and bumpers in black so I left them alone, but when I masked them to paint them black it started pulling the paint off, as it wasn't fully cured yet.

First couple coats on. The key is to use long continuous strokes for even coverage.

Clear coat going on. Decided on Semi-gloss. Gloss would be harder to pass off on a rattle can job and would show my lack of significant body work before paint. Not perfect, but not many have really noticed. I've had nothing but compliments yet on.

Just painted everything tan for now, will do black when the paint cures. Well, it's been about a month and a half and the weather just hasn't cooperated yet for me to do it.

Compared to Toyota Quicksand, it's almost a perfect match. Here's a crappy picture.

So I ended up using 14 cans of Khaki and 12 cans of Rustoleum Semi-gloss clear coat. I'm pretty happy with it. It has held up well. It was pretty soft for the first week or so. If I could do it again, I wouldn't use Rustoleum camo paint. It has a reputation for being soft. Although I'm not sure what other paint would be better in that color.

 

[Renegade_Medic]

First off road test

We had decent weather one day, so the wife and I decided to get out try some trails. We went to Hidden Falls adventure park.

The 4Runner did awesome. It actually did some trails with ease that were a little more difficult for my CJ5 to do. Probably mainly due to fuel injection and automatic transmission. Had no issues at all, or so I thought. It turns out when flushed my power steering system, I replaced the fluid with power steering fluid and Lucas steering fix at that. Well the power steering system calls for ATF. So the power steering pump was locking up by the time we got home. Flushed it and cleaned the screen in the reservoir, all is well again. Also, played in some water/mud and seems that now I may have a wheel bearing going out. It sounds like I'm dragging a chain under the front end and I have a vibration in the steering wheel over 50 (been doing that for a while). So I guess that's next.

I replaced all the interior lights with LEDs and I'm amazed at how many bulbs were burned out. Now I'll need to go get a new dash bezel from the junkyard, mine shattered as I took it off.

Next thing, after front wheel bearings, is a Rooftop tent and I'll be making my own platform/rack for the tent.