Honest advice to new 4Runner buyers who go offroad

the problem is that you bought the wrong vehicle for hardcore rock crawling

 

Once I have steel all around me, I won't mind lifting a wheel or two, I don't care. I will keep jeeping lol.

 

I had two wheels in the air, and A-trac pulled me out, it's a kick-ass feature. I have faith in it, it can deal with three wheels in the air as well.

 

I find it ironic that someone who whines this much about angles killed his by putting a hitch mount carrier on the back that looks like it sticks out almost a foot. I'm surprised you ripped your bumper off considering how you buried the hitch - that should have tipped you off something was going wrong

 

The hitch can take that much, not worried about that.

 

No shame in failing and turning back when it is too much. Snow wheeling on on narrow trail is a bad idea

 

Whether or not the manual lever actually is better, it’s one less electro-mechanical actuator to fail or start leaking transfer oil when it gets to be 15years old.

The leaks that come from the actuators require splitting of the case in order to fix properly. That’s an expensive job. It woukd be easier to buy a salvage TC, but you would need one with the actuators, which would probably be inoperative from sitting in a junkyard for who knows how long. Justifying repairing something like this when the vehicle gets old is pretty hard.

 

G Wagon? Lol - yeah, the mall.

 

I really do like the idea of having one less actuator or electronic thing on my vehicle, but the real reason I love the lever is that it's so goddamn satisfying to use, haha.

I've had this going on 5 years and have never actually needed the locker, but working that 4WD lover puts a smile on my face every time.

 

There is a fine line here. Spending 5k on front and rear bumpers will drop your ride height an inch, at the very least. It will just make it easier for you to get high centered. So that means new suspension to regain the ride height. And if you’re doing stuff that needs high clearance bumpers, you’re gonna want armor. The money adds up super quick! And it puts you far away from the engineering Toyota has done for reliability and durability.

This is why it makes more sense to trim the bumper covers, and repair plastic as needed. When repairing gets expensive, then picking lines carefully and setting limits becomes the reality.

 

Looking at my mods, tell me how much screwed I am.

 

You are fine, You do you and everything will be good.

All of your adventures look good so far, Your Runner is holding its own with each change you make.

What additional do you look to accomplish as you look fairly capable in your current form?

 

Light rear bumper

 

Copy that, still wanna retain the rear tire carrier in its current configuration?

On a side note, once ditching the under body spare tire, rear factory bumper cover and moving to an aftermarket bumper, How much clearance are you set to gain? I am not trolling and am serious in asking as you are getting sweet angles by your pics and current armor. I wanna be able to apply the numbers to a current 4Runner, Yotaholic.

 

Keeping the carrier. This bumper does give significant clearance, and I want mud flaps gone

 

Dude

 

That is nice, Rear mount exhaust next to balance out?

 

What do you suggest for the exhaust?

 

No suggestions, but after looking at that sweet rear shot with new bumper, Makes me think that a split exhaust would "fill it out" but this is strictly off my view. Knee jerk reply.

Ignore the hate, I caught hell for years for racing a Plymouth, Not a Chevrolet.

 

True, but I wanted a jack of all trades. Wrangler is not a jack of all trades, and also Jeep are greedy scumbags. I'm surprised they're still giving the steering wheel standard.
And Bronco is an overpriced pile of crap. So I bought my first Yota, got a sweet deal on a fully loaded one. It even has heated steering wheel. Great truck, just needs a little more steel.

 

We’ve talked about this before but you should’ve done what I’ve done. Old cheap TJ to play hard and 4R to go visit trails out of state and long distance off roading/overlanding

best of both worlds

 

TJ won't take me cross country

 

Ford is giving $1,000 discount to Jeep owners if they buy a Bronco lol. Ford, get a life !

 

Yea thats the point of the 4R. You’re not going to travel comfortably cross country with a solid axle and loud heavy mud tires either

 

But I can with some steel in my rear-end

 

I guess it depends on your expectations for your 4runner. When the modding bug hits you, it really helps to be completely honest with yourself about the real purpose your 4runner has, for you. That’s the only way to stay sane and not end up overdoing it and ending up with a turd of a truck you end up regretting.

For example, mine needs to be my daily driver first. It’s also my travel vehicle. For off road purposes, my idea had been to dial it in for reliable travel on dirt roads and trails. Then I got into camping. Then our local crew threw chum in the water and introduced me to an off-road park. Then climbing on rocks came up a little in my priorities. Now I’m coming back around to job number 1, which is that it needs to be my daily for work and home duty. So far, that’s keeping me from going off the deep end.

But if I end up in slightly deeper water, I’d go to 34s, but I would really want to get a regear to keep the transmission in it’s sweet spot. That would be important to me because I’m want to go at least another 10 years without transmission issues. But then again, a reagear is not much different cost to a rebuilt transmission….hmm. So if I skip the regear, i’ll asjust my expectations and I won’t moan if I get early transmission problems.

In the end, everyone has different needs, and want different things from their 4runner. If you absolutely want the reliability, longevity, and durability of toyota, then you have to carefully consider the long-term impact of added weight, bigger tires, offset, etc etc. And also adjust how hard it’s used to avoid early failures. But that’s not always quite as fun, so it can definitely be a hard balance to strike lol.

 

For driving on dirt roads and to camp sites, there are better vehicles out there. For me this truck needs to do some Jeep stuff when required. When a truck has A-Trac and a locker, it is basically telling us it wants to lift a wheel or two, and that's not possible on dirt roads. But that doesn't mean I will go full on rock crawling. This lightweight rear bumper is probably the last weight I am adding to this truck.

 

James of TFL convinced me that I should get a 4Runner. Note that his 4Runner is heavily modified to keep up with that Wrangler. It is keeping up with that Jeep, not doing things as elegantly as the Jeep but it is keeping up.


https://youtu.be/cnAAXa2HyvE?si=iY1wGNBu5dITmhEt

 

Lol. Where the hek far and deep are you trying to escape / venture to on a “non-artificial” trail that would require said bumpers, and armors and such? You do realize that none of us is going anywhere into any real escapade with these things. All of it is artificial, and every conversation is with that premise in mind.

Everyone comes back home at the end of the day, fills up gas with the rest of society like a good boy, and gets home for dinner with the tail between the legs after scraping our bumpers.

 

My buddy and I go camping 4 hours from home. He hates driving his Jeep to the site. He’s even been taking alternate two lane roads and longer routes because of it. The 4runner is as comfortable as can be to drive to drive the long distance.

So unless you *need* whatever extra capability the jeep can provide… the 4runner is hard to beat.