Gatorgrl's Grand Gen2 4Runner makeover

Your not safe, even if your parked in your own garage. Ask me how i know.

 

Hahaha....ain’t that the truth ! And I hope you don’t mind me saying Welcome Home Sir, Thank You.

 

Well I repainted the roof rack and re-installed it along with the wipers and rear wing. Can't wait to get it out of that damned shop and start enjoying her again.

 

Drove my baby home tonight. She is back in the stable and looks like a million bucks!
I was sure hoping to use my idiot horn on the way home but the situation, thankfully, never presented itself.
She has been at the shop since March 16th, when we got blasted into.
Now I need to focus on her sound system...which is currently original.
I need better speakers, cd and satellite radio.

 

May I recommend a 5 channel amplifier that is the cheapest one you can find on Crutchfield. It is the Soundstream Picasso Nano PN5.640D. Hubby will need to build a subwoofer enclosure and a 12 inch polypropylene sub-woofer driver can be had at Parts Express for $25. It is the MDF that is expensive in building a 1.5 cu.ft. enclosure. I am feeding this amp from an older Kenwood head unit which came with the 4Runner and it has a CD. The bias and gain adjustments on the Picasso 5 channel amp allows the OEM speaker locations to be dialed in and I am greatly pleased with the accoustic result of this addition to the 4Runner. The Picasso lives under the passenger side front seat. The front dash OEM driver locations are only good for mid range and treble reproduction and the load space side speakers can be coaxed to do the same but at 5-1/4 they will never produce the dynamic range needed for solid bass reproduction. With the Kenwood cranked to 25 or 27 on the volume display the wing mirrors do tend to shake the glass a bit. I have the sub-woofer pointed into the back of the rear seats with a ratchet strap over it to keep it from flying about when off roading (see picture). I also have a bluetooth adapter feeding into the aux jack but the dynamic range is not as good as it is when I run a CD in the head unit.

Cheerio,
Andrew

 

Congrats, bet it feels great !

 

Wow, you are very lucky. Mine has been in 2. The first one a Ford F350 slammed into the back of me at 35 mph. Caused almost $10K in damage back in 1996. Another time a guy came out of a parking spot at ramming speed and caused a few thousand damage to my front end.

 

Thanks Parker. Where did you mount that sub? Behind the back seats?

 

Here’s a pic of my new Kenwood deck and kappa speakers, I love this setup, the Kenwood sounds really good and has plenty of power to handle the kappas.

 

Been thinking of mounting one of my 31's on the roof as a spare since it won't fit underneath. What racks do you guys like?

 

The problem with a hitch carrier is it will interfere with my tailgate and my bike rack.

 

I had the same problem with my Range Rover when I put 265/75-R16's on the OEM rims. The load space under the lift up panel would not allow me to stash the spare in there so I fabricated a spare tire carrier that is very akin to the OEM Toyota 4Runner design. The only difference was that I spanned the entire tail gate with hinge plates on the DS and a cam-over toggle clamp at the rest seat on the PS to secure the thing when I closed it. I removed this carrier from the rover when I sent it to scrap yard. However the hinge plates were J&B welded and pop riveted to the sheetmetal on the RR. The exterior panels are aluminum on the P38A Range Rovers. I ran this tire carrier for over a decade and had plenty of off-road trips without any fatigue issues. Unfortunately the plates went with the rover to the scrap yard. I used 3/8" heim-joints as the hinges so any misalignment would be accommodated when I finally had set the plates onto the body. This also allows you to adjust the gate so that it lines up on the other side at the rest with a tire on the thing posing added deflection due to the weight of the tire and wheel. By double nutting the heim into a hole plate that is welded into the tubes ends you have infinite adjustment to dial in the alignment.

Sourcing a Toyota OEM tire carrier would be the better solution if you can find one? I would think the body work is likely to have the blind nuts in the bodies inner reinforcement structure so all you would need to do is open up the outer skin to access them with a center punch and a drill bit once you know were they are. With the hinge from the OEM carrier in hand this would seem relatively easy to do perhaps?...

As for the 1.5 cu-ft sub-woofer box it is free to roam about behind the rear seats. Thus the need for a ratchet strap for securing it to the carpet.

 

Have you searched salvage yards for a 4R that came with 31’s? Mine came with 31’s and the spare tire mount is larger and easily fits a 31”, it looks like a 33” would fit. It also looks like it just bolts in? An easy way to tell is the crank goes in at an angle to the driver side to a 90 degree gearbox and a shaft to the center of the spare to the the down mechanism.

 

I was able to put the 31 into the spare spot if I held it at an angle while it went up. The issue was it would then interfere in the travel of the panhard bar as it stood out just a bit on the other side of the bar.

 

Well my hubby guilted me into taking our baby out for a bit of tomorrow in the Yucca Pen park. I was nervous with her being freshly painted and all but he said he was just going to get a me a sticker that said "POSER" then. Pride stepped in and vanity had to take a seat. Wish us luck!

Happy 4th everyone!!!!!!!

 

!!!!!! HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY !!!!!!


Btw: the 4runners is across the street, out of the picture.

 

Happy Independence Day !

 

Had an awesome time out with the boys doing a lil overlanding.

 

I do have to say she did very well and yes I was nervous about her new paint job. We tried to stay out of the ruts in the puddles as I didn't want to get high centered. She floated effortlessly thru the mud and sand. The bigger heavier guys in our group had to work a little harder than we did. I did decide she needs some wheel arch flares to keep the mud down. The underside was as clean as a whistle, but the sides were covered.

 

Turned out beautifully!!!

 

Took her out to Picayune Strand State Forest today for a lil fun. She did great!

 

My poor hubby has jokes. He looks up from his computer and says we should sell the 4Runner and buy a beater so I won't care so much about abusing it. Silly silly boy. It's what I do....I obsess over my rides and make them perfect, or at least I try. I can't have a shitbox and leave it as a shitbox....not gonna happen.
He is soo funny....NOT!

 

I'd say you should beat him, but him being a cop probably precludes you being able to do so

 

Um dear we are both retired LE. It would be a fair fight. Lol. Was tempted to throw my shoe at him though.....

 

Here in Canuckistan, that would get you charged with assault with a prohibited weapon LOLOL

 

Well i went to my favorite junk yard today and harvested some more roof rack parts so I can extend my roof rack to cover the whole roof, not just the back 1/3 of it.
Then I went to cleaning them all up and decided to get creative with my drying rack.


Worked out great!

 

With regard to thread #535 (wheel arch flares) might I suggest: https://www.junglefenderflares.com/

They have a very nice looking solution for the 2nd Gen 4Runners. These seem to be the best one yet that I have looked into.
Aside from replacing the front quarter panels as another option this company claims they have the line on the molds for the Toyota 4Runner Hilux Surf were the Japanese domestic market (JDM) had these as an option.
The flares seem to me to be a nice compromise and look a lot better than the ABS Bushwackers!

Once I get my Blazeland long travel kit sorted out this will probably be the choice I make in getting my fenders legal again.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

And the Runner rears her bitch streak again. Drove to the shop and she wouldn't crank when we went to put her on the lift. She went wheeling this past weekend and had some grass in her undercarriage, which is why she was going on the lift originally. The new starter didn't engage. Looked and the ground appeared to be shitty so we changed it and added a few more. She then cranked right up!

Fast forward thru the day, drove from the shop to the grocery store and when we got out of the store, she again wouldn't start. Plenty of voltage and the grounds are good. We suspect the new starter is heat soaked. Thankfully we lived about a mile from this store and had to walk home with our groceries in this lovely SWFL heat. Now I am heat soaked.

Will head back to the store after dinner with tow attachment and bring her home.

 

I’m kinda sad to read this. Especially after all the work you’ve done.

It reminds me of a Dodge Magnum I bought maybe 5 years ago, OMG what a nightmare.....it hurts just typing this. I invested $7000 into that fracking car, one thing after another. After replacing the transmission ($1700) a few days later I came out to head to work, no lights. All fuses good. I completely lost it. Sold it In less than 10 minutes, $50 bucks on Craigslist.

I believe my total loss was $11,000. I remember coming home in a cab, wife says where’s the dodge ?

You did what ????? !!!!!!!!!!

I completely lost it, never had a car so possessed like that one.

Just sucks to read your Toyota leaves you stranded after all the work.

 

Gatorgrl's Yotas,
Was the the starter a new unit? I can not recall if it was one of the many parts that you have replaced. I know mine is the original OEM unit and is now pushing 247,000 miles and 29 years. But we are talking about a 4Runner in Florida not California!...

However, aside from climate differences, this is sounding very much like the solenoid on the starter motor is going south or was never quite right if it is a "new" part. I had a geared reduction starter from British Starters that I had thought was new (eBay) for my Jensen Healey. The Lucas OEM unit was really beat to hell because some idiot had put the ring gear backwards on the flywheel. So the pinion gear was smashing its way into engagement without any lead chamfers. In any case this "new" British Starter was never turing over the 2.0 L 907 the way I though to should and then I had to hot wire jump it to get it to start after a training session that was a good 2 hour drive to get home. At first I thought it was the ignition switch to blame but I had recently replaced that and I knew I had to drive the Jensen to this LA location for day two's training and was not confident of the starter doing what it should. So off it came and apart it went and sure enough the main lead for the path across the contactor was burned up and the crimped connection was a ring lug terminal that was nutted to a copper stud but it had like 3 strands left as the rest were broken, blackened and melted. As it had been getting very hot when the battery was asked to start the engine it was burning up. So once I replaced this wire with some fine stranded welding cable and crimped it correctly with all strands accounted for inside the connector the engine snaps to life with a flick of the key like it should have all along. The killer with heat soaking is that the power losses are attributed to current squared times the resistance (I²R) so that even with the right amount of voltage the power lost with the square of the current drawn very quickly reaches a non operational level of conditioning. This is also compounded be the fact that as all of this gets hot the conductors (wires) go into an elevated level of oxidation and oxides tend not to conduct electric current so resistance increases and a melt down becomes eminent. The more one tries to demand the starter do what it is intended for, the worse this gets once the oxides and localized heating are starting to happen!

The other thing to look at is the clutch safety interlock switch for the 5 speed manuals. There is an override dash mounted switch or there is the switch fixed to the clutch pedal. If either of these fails to close the circuit the starter will not operate. I know you know that, but newbies may not...

Cheers,
Andrew