stevo-mt
Member
With a few major life changes I was going to be forced get a new daily driver. I had been using my M1010 truck that I have been building up for the last 3 years pretty much everytime I needed to drive anywhere. I worked in Alaska for 6 months on and 6 off so it worked great. Any time I needed to go anywhere I just made a trip out of it. Well after getting married and my wife starting grad school we were in need of a vehicle that could actually drive in the city. We had a few different options. Toyota 4runner, Isuzu Trooper, and Mitsubishi Montero were the different options. Last year I built my friend a pretty awesome 2002 4runner expo vehicle. The thing turned out fantastic, but he paid through the roof for a clean 4runner with 135k miles. Since we would be needing two vehicles 4runners were pretty much ruled out. There is no such thing as a good deal on a used 4runner. http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/139088-Project-4FunR This is the one I worked on for my friend.
I ended up finding and buying 4 troopers total. I wasn't planning on doing that but it seems to working out so far. Plus I have plenty of room to store stuff. There are few quirks with these but overall they are a great rig. 4L30E tranny is a little less reliable, but if you check your ATF level you will much less likely have issues. Plus mine has a limited slip diff already installed. That makes a world of difference offroad. The axles on these are the size of a 1/2 ton truck. The bearings in the front are almost the same size as my 3/4 ton ford had!
The plan is to make my wife a great aggressive looking daily driver and to build myself the camping rig since the M1010 will be parked for most of the time the next two years while Jess goes to grad school. The third trooper will be a "spare" and the fourth is a parts rig. The since everything needed a little work the cost was very affordable. I'll have two very capable troopers setup for the same cost as one high mileage 4runner.
I found a 1998 trooper that needed an engine. It was super clean and had leather so my wife called dibbs. It is black, loaded and with 148k miles on it . One of the pins on the camshaft slipped so it lost compression on one side of the motor. Unfortunately the dealer I bought it from lost the camshaft so I was forced to do more serious surgery. We ended up finding a parts trooper that the person had ran the transmission low on ATF an also had some front end damage. But the engine ran great. So I picked that up. In december I swapped motors and got the black trooper up and running. It needed some of the basic maintenance like a cv boot and some more technical stuff. On the transfer case it needed two of the Torque on Demand sensors replaced to get the 4wd to work. The parts trooper was again to the rescue.
I put a Surco roof rack on Jess's rig and a set of 265/75/16 cooper AT3 load range E tires.
The Troopy that will be my daily driver was an enigma. It is a 2001 with 72,000 miles. The thing is very clean and was sold not running. I bought it sight unseen. I first fixed the timing. Whoever had tried to set the timing had it wrong. But that didn't fix it. The computer that was in the car looked like it had come from a junkyard so I found one and got it programmed for the VIN and all that good stuff but that didn't fix the problem. The engine was a brand new rebuild. I didn't know that when I had bought it. I finally figured out the signal coming from the crankshaft position sensor was not what it should have been. I did some research into that and found out that the pulse ring on the crankshaft could be the incorrect one. 1997ish years had a 6 7/8" ring and the 1998 and up wer 7 1/4" I found out on a forum. I borrowed my dad's bore scope and verified that this was indeed the issue. The engine re-builder had messed up. This car had been through several mechanics and another owner that couldn't figure out the problem.
I ended pulling the motor last week and will be picking up a core block from a junkyard tomorrow. I will get the pulse ring off the core engine and hopefully the head is good to put on the motor I pulled out of Jess's trooper, giving me a 148K mile spare.
The trooper as it sat in Boise, ID where I bought it.
Since this is the best rig, lowest miles and will have the new rebuilt motor this will be the vehicle that I'm going to build in to a supplementary expo rig. My M1010 is the setup for really going into the wild but my wife and I will be in Saskatoon SK for the next two years in the city. I figured it would be easier to just park it in my shop and maybe take it out for a week or two when we can. http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/93775-M1010-expo-build-The-Mountain-Turtle I would like to be able to take my wife camping and go have some fun on the weekends. This rig will get the standard expo equipment as time goes on. Winch, tires, lift, roof rack, storage system, etc. And of course a very simple but awesome electrical system. That has turned out to be my specialty
. A second battery and of course LED Lighting.
I found a sweet grill guard at the scrap yard that is almost an exact fit too!
The fourth trooper I bought, or the "spare" was another craigslist find. A dealer had it in Billings and was asking $1700 for it. It was at the lot for 6 months and no one would buy it it at $4k so he had it priced to sell. I offered $1500 cash and drove home. It needs brakes and rotors on the front, cv boots on both sides, and a few body trim peices. New fluids all around too. For the price I paid for the rig I can have it sit at my shop and if Jess or I have issues with our troopers we can just take a trip home and get it.
I'll get a bit better write up going. All the fun details about the rig.
I ended up finding and buying 4 troopers total. I wasn't planning on doing that but it seems to working out so far. Plus I have plenty of room to store stuff. There are few quirks with these but overall they are a great rig. 4L30E tranny is a little less reliable, but if you check your ATF level you will much less likely have issues. Plus mine has a limited slip diff already installed. That makes a world of difference offroad. The axles on these are the size of a 1/2 ton truck. The bearings in the front are almost the same size as my 3/4 ton ford had!
The plan is to make my wife a great aggressive looking daily driver and to build myself the camping rig since the M1010 will be parked for most of the time the next two years while Jess goes to grad school. The third trooper will be a "spare" and the fourth is a parts rig. The since everything needed a little work the cost was very affordable. I'll have two very capable troopers setup for the same cost as one high mileage 4runner.
I found a 1998 trooper that needed an engine. It was super clean and had leather so my wife called dibbs. It is black, loaded and with 148k miles on it . One of the pins on the camshaft slipped so it lost compression on one side of the motor. Unfortunately the dealer I bought it from lost the camshaft so I was forced to do more serious surgery. We ended up finding a parts trooper that the person had ran the transmission low on ATF an also had some front end damage. But the engine ran great. So I picked that up. In december I swapped motors and got the black trooper up and running. It needed some of the basic maintenance like a cv boot and some more technical stuff. On the transfer case it needed two of the Torque on Demand sensors replaced to get the 4wd to work. The parts trooper was again to the rescue.
I put a Surco roof rack on Jess's rig and a set of 265/75/16 cooper AT3 load range E tires.
The Troopy that will be my daily driver was an enigma. It is a 2001 with 72,000 miles. The thing is very clean and was sold not running. I bought it sight unseen. I first fixed the timing. Whoever had tried to set the timing had it wrong. But that didn't fix it. The computer that was in the car looked like it had come from a junkyard so I found one and got it programmed for the VIN and all that good stuff but that didn't fix the problem. The engine was a brand new rebuild. I didn't know that when I had bought it. I finally figured out the signal coming from the crankshaft position sensor was not what it should have been. I did some research into that and found out that the pulse ring on the crankshaft could be the incorrect one. 1997ish years had a 6 7/8" ring and the 1998 and up wer 7 1/4" I found out on a forum. I borrowed my dad's bore scope and verified that this was indeed the issue. The engine re-builder had messed up. This car had been through several mechanics and another owner that couldn't figure out the problem.
I ended pulling the motor last week and will be picking up a core block from a junkyard tomorrow. I will get the pulse ring off the core engine and hopefully the head is good to put on the motor I pulled out of Jess's trooper, giving me a 148K mile spare.
The trooper as it sat in Boise, ID where I bought it.
Since this is the best rig, lowest miles and will have the new rebuilt motor this will be the vehicle that I'm going to build in to a supplementary expo rig. My M1010 is the setup for really going into the wild but my wife and I will be in Saskatoon SK for the next two years in the city. I figured it would be easier to just park it in my shop and maybe take it out for a week or two when we can. http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/93775-M1010-expo-build-The-Mountain-Turtle I would like to be able to take my wife camping and go have some fun on the weekends. This rig will get the standard expo equipment as time goes on. Winch, tires, lift, roof rack, storage system, etc. And of course a very simple but awesome electrical system. That has turned out to be my specialty
. A second battery and of course LED Lighting.I found a sweet grill guard at the scrap yard that is almost an exact fit too!
The fourth trooper I bought, or the "spare" was another craigslist find. A dealer had it in Billings and was asking $1700 for it. It was at the lot for 6 months and no one would buy it it at $4k so he had it priced to sell. I offered $1500 cash and drove home. It needs brakes and rotors on the front, cv boots on both sides, and a few body trim peices. New fluids all around too. For the price I paid for the rig I can have it sit at my shop and if Jess or I have issues with our troopers we can just take a trip home and get it.
I'll get a bit better write up going. All the fun details about the rig.
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