First Foray into 4Runners - My 1st Gen Build

[Summit Cruisers Jr]

I know I’ve been slacking on updates. I’ve been busy with work, moving into my new house, and a few weekend trips. About 3 or 4 weeks back, I was on my way back from Bentonville (went down to wheel my cruiser down around rendezvous in the ozarks but wasn’t at Byrd’s for more than 20 minutes total) and on an uphill on-ramp the clutch began slipping big time. To the point where it wouldn’t hold in several gears. After 20 seconds I got lucky and held it in 4th driving like there was a wine glass under my gas pedal for 150 miles back to KC. Not having any tools or a place to work on it, I dropped it off at Adventure Motors along with a new Aisin clutch, Toyota starter, and new Sachs flywheel for them to install.

With a good clutch I’ve been back to driving it all over. I just went down to Arkansas last week and biking got rained out so I ended up driving NE until I found some cool roads and ended up doing a 100 mile loop in southern Missouri where the 4runner was truly in its element blasting backroads.




Just before going out to hit the backroads, I stopped at the monthly rigs and coffee meeting in Bentonville and Blk Elk photography snapped a few sweet pics of it as well which are below.





The only thing negative other than the clutch that’s happened is the parking brake cable snapped out of the pull handle on the dash when trying to get the t case brake to hold on a 1° slope. I haven’t had a chance to dive into that yet, but that’s on the short list along with a new Aisin fan clutch and fan. I’m also itching to put a set fzj80 front brakes on along with a matching booster and master cylinder and an eBay turbo to run a couple psi of boost.

 

[djschlo]

Looking good! Happy to see it out of the garage on off pavement. I hope you aren't too nervous about scratching your fresh paint

 

[Summit Cruisers Jr]

Looking good! Happy to see it out of the garage on off pavement. I hope you aren't too nervous about scratching your fresh paint

Yeah it’s too fun not to use. I’m not driving it on tight tree trails though. Saving the cruiser for that since I have no desire to buff this truck again. Rock chips though...LT width stuff definitely flings crap all over

 

[Summit Cruisers Jr]

Well driving down to NWA was almost a disaster. I had the rear main Seal replaced with a brand new OEM seal while the clutch was being replaced. It had 220k on the original and not a single drip, but I figured this would just guarantee it would be good for another 200k miles.

I pull into NWA and my buddy says what’s all that oil from and I thought he was just messing with me. I looked under and yeah oil everywhere. I checked the oil and it was roughly 1.5-2 quarts low.

The next morning I fired it up to move it into the garage and within a couple minutes of running, I had a softball sized pool of oil. Luckily my parents were there and we slapped it on a uhaul trailer and they towed it back up to adventure motors.
Luckily I had my cruiser down there so I was still able to meet up with friends and wheel/drive back home.


It makes no sense that a rear main would be bone dry until failing/blowing out after maybe 700 miles so we’re all perplexed. They’ll be tearing back into it sometime next week so time to play the waiting game...

Anyone ever seen this happen before?

 

[tennesseewj]

That's a bummer. Not to distract, but are there any details on that first gen Tundra? That's a good looking setup and looks to be handling the U-Haul better than I would have expected

Sent from my Pixel 4 using Tapatalk

 

[Smileyshaun]

200k on the old one could have wore a groove so when installing the new one oil is allowed to move past it and leak out , usually easily solved by spacing the seal out a few thousands , it use to happen on harmonic balances a lot and they would sell a kit with a sleeve and a different seal to fix the problem.

 

[Summit Cruisers Jr]

That's a bummer. Not to distract, but are there any details on that first gen Tundra? That's a good looking setup and looks to be handling the U-Haul better than I would have expected

Sent from my Pixel 4 using Tapatalk

That’s my dad’s truck. It’s an ‘05 4wd limited. Mild lift in the front and airbags in the rear with 285/70/17 Cooper AT3 XLT. He said it pulled it no problem 70+ the whole way to KC. Only issue was that the u haul straps were too short to go around the tires so I went and bought 2” straps. He actually put some air in the bags after I took this pic and it was sitting nearly level.

200k on the old one could have wore a groove so when installing the new one oil is allowed to move past it and leak out , usually easily solved by spacing the seal out a few thousands , it use to happen on harmonic balances a lot and they would sell a kit with a sleeve and a different seal to fix the problem.

Yeah I unfortunately don’t know it was set it since I didn’t do it but that’s one way that makes sense for a leak. What’s weird is that I didn’t have any leak beforehand so there might not really be a groove to worry about. And this doesn’t look like a slow seeping leak that you’d typically see from a rear main seal leak. Up until the drive the other day, it’s been 100% bone dry so this happened all of a sudden after 500 or so miles which seems more like some complete failure of the seal. I stopped by the shop yesterday and dropped off a new OEM rear main and clutch tool and they’ll be getting into it in a week or so and will be videoing/photographing all the stuff as it comes apart.

 

[Jsabowabo]

Sorry about the rear main. That sucks. Love your 1st Gen and the build. Any more plans for the 1UZ?

 

[dubk_trd]

Adventure motors aren't they just a shop that specialized in adding overland equipment's and selling hard to find Toyotas. Im surprise you didn't take it to an engine shop.

 

[Summit Cruisers Jr]

Sorry about the rear main. That sucks. Love your 1st Gen and the build. Any more plans for the 1UZ?

Oh well. It is what it is. I knew I should have done it myself while I had everything torn down but I was already pressed on time. I still intend to do a 1uz swap but I have to run electrical and finish out my garage before I can do any sort of work in it. A good friend of mine is getting his LS400 donor car running and tuned up with the intent to swap it into his so I’m looking forward to lending and hand with that. I know we both have similar goals making the swap as clean as it can be and without a body lift so once he paces the way, I’ll hopefully be about ready to tear into mine.

Adventure motors aren't they just a shop that specialized in adding overland equipment's and selling hard to find Toyotas. Im surprise you didn't take it to an engine shop.

They have a service department and I trust them with the truck versus some random engine shop that would probably leave the truck outside in an insecure lot. I’m still not entirely convinced on their explanation of the leak because there was a large amount of motor oil underneath the truck. They pointed to the transmission input shaft seal as being the culprit, but they installed the new OEM rear main I dropped off anyways. There was gear oil found around in the bell housing. It was very weird because from everything that we could see, there was nothing leaking motor oil when I went over to the shop.

I don’t know why I didn’t think have that seal done at the same time. I just recently bought all of that stuff to do my cruiser as well. Anyways, wrestling out the trans certainly led to its demise being a brittle 30 yr old seal. At the end of the day, I was out a little bit more money but not bad in the grand scheme of things and they were great to work with. I’ve got about 250 miles on it now and will be putting on probably 700 or so in the next 10 days so fingers crossed it stays leak free.

When I’m back in Oklahoma for Christmas, I’m going to dive into mounting my 8” Rockville powered sub and do some more work for the stereo system. I’m trying to find some door pockets with built in speaker covers like what you can get in Australia for the 79 series trucks. Anyone ever found any from another vehicle that are a close match?

 

[dubk_trd]

Any updates? Hopefully no leaks?

 

[Summit Cruisers Jr]

Any updates? Hopefully no leaks?

Thankfully, everything seems to be good! It didn’t skip a beat driving down to OKC and then out to NWA and back to KC. I even hauled my old rear axle on a cargo carrier back up and sold that for a crisp benjamin which was nice.

Other than that, I haven’t really had a chance to drive it. Home ownership has had me busy with tons of little projects/repairs ranging from clothes drier shutting down to sewage line backing up into basement shower, but mostly on finishing out the garage. I just put up 1/4 of the lights up tonight, and I’ll be painting the rest of the ceiling tomorrow/installing the rest of the lights. Then I can move onto electrical for welder/plasma, air compressor and walls. Can’t wait to be able to get back to building stuff.

Fingers crossed, weather will work out and I’ll take a trip out to the Little Sahara sand dunes at the end of the month and really get to put it through the ringer

 

[dubk_trd]

Nice congrats on the home purchase. Don't forget to bring and mount flap whip at the sand dunes.

 

[GTI-88]

Just got up to speed on your thread and you definitely pulled this truck from the weeds and it looks amazing! I appreciate the DD style of the build, or maybe oem plus would be a good term? Either way, awesome work!

 

[Summit Cruisers Jr]

Just got up to speed on your thread and you definitely pulled this truck from the weeds and it looks amazing! I appreciate the DD style of the build, or maybe oem plus would be a good term? Either way, awesome work!

I appreciate it! That was kind of my intention. An icon-esque 1st gen build to update aspects of it and make it a lot more fun and comfortable. It’s still got a ways to go, but for now I’m just enjoying it as is. It also helped scratch the “I want the new bronco” itch when ford unveiled it