Hi everyone. I've been a member of this forum for awhile and have read up about all the extensive builds that people have done, so i decided to write up what all i have done to my 2002 4runner sr5 model.

Here it is day one when i got the car from my dad about a month or so after i turned 16. It was his car for a long time before he handed it off to me.


the first mod i did, was the usual running board removal to make it look less like a family car and more like the rugged suv its supposed to be


then after a while i ordered the trd decals that most people put on their quarter panels


after that i had decided that the wheels needed some sort of focal point so i was bored and i painted the center caps black. i liked it for awhile


after reading up on a bunch of threads and online research i discovered plastidip and i blacked out almost every piece of chrome that i could find including my wheels. I also picked up a bull bar for about 90 bucks and threw on some autozone lights to give a tougher look to the front end.






As i read COB's build thread i saw how good a color matched grill looked on this paint code or any 4runner for that matter, and after long searching i decided to just make it myself with my own touch. I took off the grille and cut out the fin inserts with a hack saw. Then i sanded it down really good and scuffed up the chrome coating. After that i hit it with primer, wet sanding, duplicolor perfect match jade mica, gloss black and clear to seal it all up. I'm pretty satisfied with the results
( this is how it looked after i tried painting it with walmart paint. terrible.... i had to do something about it)

4runner missing something lol

and the result


I kept thinking about how all the plastic looked grey, not the black its supposed to be. Mothers back to black just wasn't cutting it for me so i scuffed up the plastics and gave it a few coats of rustoleum flat black and i really like the results. I still have to repaint the front wipers and that plastic piece under the wipers. Around this time i also tinted my bumper lenses and corner lights orange to give it that "JDM" car look. Sort of like an R32 skyline. Ive always digged it and so i wanted to try it out.
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final result with painted bumper plastic, tinted lights and ebay fog lights that i bought for about 80 bucks.