[zacattack20]

Installed the CS-144 alternator yesterday. It is a pretty simple install if you get the connector although that adds about $40 to the cost. One end plugs into the alternator, the other end into the factory connector. Its $29.95 + $8.20 for shipping.

Part # W1232 Alternator Wiring Harness Adapter. converts CS130 or CS144 4 pin Plug to Toyotal Oval Style Alternator Plug





I tried putting the alternator in and couldn't get it to fit with it hitting the upper control arm and the lower alternator mount. It just wont fit that way. You have the loosen the lower alternator mount. The bolt is hard to see but just follow the bracket until you can see it. In the picture you have to go between the lower coolant hose and the crankshaft pulley and you are going to need a small extension to get to it. You just need to loosen it enough so that the bracket drops like it is in the picture.





Since the connectors and terminal are in different spots than the oem alternator, connect those first before bolting in the alternator because they are hard to reach in the back. I didn't have a problem fitting the terminal because I had already replaced all my wires and had a big enough ring terminal on the end to fit the new alternator.

You are going to need washers for the top bolt, I ended up being able to fit 4 between the mount and the alternator.

I'm thinking I might remove it and paint it black, I wanted to do it before installing but I wanted to be sure it worked first before painting it.





Since the alternator has a 6 groove pulley, I am considering changing it out for a 4 groove pulley like the stock one. I am thinking this one would work because I believe I need a 17mm bore, but I'll contact them before and if I decide to do it.

2482258 4-Groove Alternator Pulley For Denso 90-120A Alternators Used On (2001-85) Acura, Chrysler, Dodge, Honda, Plymouth

[t4r4life]

Nice! have you tested the Amp/s underload yet? my stock one is short of being dead underload so im gonna do this mod for sure

[zacattack20]

Originally Posted by t4r4life

Nice! have you tested the Amp/s underload yet? my stock one is short of being dead underload so im gonna do this mod for sure

I haven't tested the amps yet. The only thing I checked was to make sure it was charging my battery.

[t4r4life]

Originally Posted by zacattack20

I haven't tested the amps yet. The only thing I checked was to make sure it was charging my battery.

if i can score a cs alt for cheap im so doing this.

[Brian757]

A tech savvy, friggin' awesome thread man. Holy cow. Just finished the entire read, and wow, I'm impressed. I like all of your mods, and how you thought them through. Nothing was tacky or half-a$$ed. Looks good for sure.
Sub'd.

[zacattack20]

Originally Posted by t4r4life

if i can score a cs alt for cheap im so doing this.

Yeah it's a little expensive getting a new one but I have a lifetime warranty and I have no plans of getting rid of the truck so I shouldn't ever have to buy another alternator.

Originally Posted by Brian757

A tech savvy, friggin' awesome thread man. Holy cow. Just finished the entire read, and wow, I'm impressed. I like all of your mods, and how you thought them through. Nothing was tacky or half-a$$ed. Looks good for sure.
Sub'd.

Thank you. I can be pretty OCD sometimes and it unless it looks perfect I would be annoyed by it every time I saw it. I don't like doing things twice so I'm going to make sure it looks good the first time and try not to cheap out on something.

[zacattack20]

Now that my truck is running I could get our Christmas tree.

[zacattack20]

Haven't done anything in awhile because I have been lazy. I have a few things sitting around and haven't gotten to yet. I figured I would start with working towards my projector retrofit.

I've been waiting since around Thanksgiving when I ordered a retrofit kit from The Retrofit Source, for one thing that was back ordered. It finally came in last week. I will hopefully start on the headlights this week, and am just waiting for some Hilux Surf clear corners to come in from Japan so I can start on what I want to do with those.

I plan on blacking out the front including the sport skid which I want to powder coat but was quoted $75 for that, so that's going to wait a little longer. I started today with blacking out my turn signals.

I don't want to tint any of the lenses because I want them all to look the same and am not going to tint the headlights so I opened up the turn signals and used Dupli-Color Shadow Chrome Blackout Coating. It was like $18 bucks from Autozone but I got it for free due the rewards I have earned.





I used a heat gun and went around the edges and got the lenses separated.








The clear bulb cover is just kept on with one screw so I removed those.

After one coat.





After three coats.





The kit comes with two cans. The black out chrome and then a clear coat. So I did three coats of each.

I don't have a picture of how they looked when I first put them back together but you could the gray around the edges which isn't noticeable when they are chrome. I guess you can kind of see half of one in the picture of the can of Nite-Shades and the picture with the tape on it. I decided to tape off the inside black part and use VHT Nite-Shades on the outer edges so you couldn't see the gray parts anymore.








After quite a few coats of the nite-shade.





And the finished product.








With the lights on.








And the blinker.

[t4r4life]

Hey zac




















projector retrofit...... that is all

[zacattack20]

Originally Posted by t4r4life

Hey zac




















projector retrofit...... that is all

yes. soon hopefully. damn back ordered parts. For what I am wanting to do, I want to have my headlights and the corner lights installed at the same time so I have been waiting.

[abrosk927]

Originally Posted by zacattack20

This is the third car that I have owned. My first car was a 1989 BMW 735i that I bought in 2003 for $2,500 when I was 16.




There were numerous issues with that car that needed to be fixed but it was totaled in a car accident after 6 months of driving. After that I drove my moms 1991 Jeep Cherokee around for a few months until I bought a 1993 Saturn SC2 from my dad's co-worker's parents for $1,100.




It was cheap and I needed a car right before my senior year of high school started. That was the car that I learned how to drive a manual transmisson on. It was a great little car that got good gas mileage, never had any issues with it besides at one point the drivers side door wouldnt open and had to get in from the passengers side.

In 2006, after my first year of college, my dad took a job in Hawaii and I went there for the summer intending to move there. I was there for a month and a half and hated living there and moved back. Its beautiful and great to vacation there, but living there is a whole different thing. While I was there my dad purchased a red 1998 2WD 4Runner Sr5 that was traded in at his dealership. It had one owner and had around 88,000 miles. I dont know how much he paid and he doesnt remember. It was the truck I drove around Hawaii before I moved back.





About 6 months later, in early 2007, my dad had enough of Hawaii too and decided to move back and he brought back the 4Runner. Around this time I had gotten my girlfriend(now my wife) pregnant. So for my birthday that year my parents gifted me the 4Runner because the Saturn wasnt really big enough, and with me paying them the $1,300 that I sold the Saturn for.

The only money I put into the 4Runner until 2009 was just oil changes, a $30 exhaust tip, and less than $20 bucks for an antenna from autozone when the antenna motor went out. That was my first mod and it's still on there today. Its just a simple black short antenna and it does the job.




I didnt take many pictures of my truck at first because there wasnt really anything to take a picture of. Here are a couple with it in the background of my Jetta.





I didnt know anything about cars when I started with my truck. The only thing I had ever done was changed the oil on my saturn once. I have learned everything as I go. I would ocassionally lurk around here and other sites but didnt start doing anything to the truck until I was let go at my job and had plenty of free time to mess around. That has turned into an uncontrollable downhill spiral of spending.

The next thing I did was to replace all dash lights with blue LED's from autolumination. I also installed reverse glow gauges from eBay for like $15. After a couple months, autolumination's LED's would start flickering and were going out. I would not ever buy from them again after spending like $40 on LEDs and they go out in a couple months.

Also my truck had an aftermarket alarm system installed but my dad didnt get any remotes with it when he purchased it. So I was just using the key in the door to unlock and lock the doors. I decided to purchase a cheap lock remote. I didnt care about an alarm, I just wanted to unlock and lock the doors with a remote. I bought a cheap Bulldog security system off eBay for like $25. The reverse glow gauges and the lock remote was the first time I had done anything with wiring and was helped by my dad when I couldnt figure it out. I ended up just piggy backing the remote locks off the other alarm system in there and it worked for locking and unlocking the doors so I was happy with it.

The top of the steering wheel was tore up due to the heat so I had been driving around with a steering wheel cover the whole time and hated the feeling of it. So for Christmas 2009 I got my parents to pay for half to re-upholster the steering wheel with new leather. I went to a couple junk yards to just get a newer steering wheel but all those were trashy and dirty and they still wanted like $90-100 for them. I looked online and found good ones going for $125-150. I was just going to buy one online but the steering wheel coming from a ten year old car, although looking good, was prone to or soon going to crack and peel like mine had so I figured I would look around about re-upholstering. I called maybe 6-8 places to get an estimate and only 2 would actually do steering wheels. One place wanted like $250 and the other wanted $150 so I obvioulsy went with $150. The place is called California Auto Upholstery and its located in Garden Grove, CA. When I went in there, I told the guy that I could only find one other place that would do a steering wheel and he was like yeah that guy actually sends his stuff to me to do, and that he was one of the few in southern California that would do steering wheels. They did great work, you cant tell that it was redone, it looks OEM.




Around February 2010 my brakes started to make a loud squeeling noise so instead of just replacing the pads, I figured I would do the tundra brake upgrade. And if im going to do it, I am gonna do it right and not regret it later so I went with the larger 13wl 231mm calipers. I got the calipers from rockauto.com for around $200 and cross drilled/slotted rotors from ebay that came with free brake pads for around $100. I painted the calipers red and put TRD stickers on them and then put a clear enamel over it. I had read differing things about whether my stock rims would fit over the calipers or not, and of course they didn't.

Since I needed new tires soon as well, I decided to get some 17" Tundra/Sequoia Rims. I paid WAY WAY too much for them but I was in a hurry to get my truck back together. I was looking around on craigslist and couldnt find any so I just ended up purchasing them off eBay for like $500. I then got them powder coated semi gloss black at Primo Powder Coating in Huntington Beach, CA for $65 a wheel and they came out great and have held up great. I then went to get tires and I had no idea which ones to get so I just got the same brand that was on the truck before, Bridgestone Duelers in 265-65-17. They are decent enough and havent had any issues for my purposes. I also spray painted my lug nuts black which obviously havent held up that well, and havent replaced them yet. Also at the same time decided to spray paint my grille black too, and removed the tiny chrome strips above the wheels.




In May 2010 I decided to finally do some real maintenance on the 4Runner. At around 125,000 miles I replaced the spark plugs, plug wires, fuel filter, air filter, oil and oil filter, seafoamed it, and replaced the battery with an Optima Yellow-Top. So I just spent quite a few bucks. The very next day, I left work early to drive my girlfriend(now wife) to the doctor because she was feeling dizzy and didnt want to drive herself. It was like 1pm in the afternoon on the 405 south in Long Beach which there shouldnt be any traffic at that time, but all of a sudden I had to slam on my brakes and I stopped just in time to not hit the guy in front of me but the lady behind me didnt and slammed into me and hit me into the car in front of me and her car was pinned under the back of my truck lifting it up in the air.

















I didnt get any information from either party due to the CHP saying that I didnt have to because they were taking all the information and putting it in their report and I should be able to get the report in a couple weeks. Yeah that took a couple months for them to finally file the report. Once that happened my insurance called me saying that she didnt have enough coverage with her insurance to cover all the damages to the cars and that I had to file with them. But whatever, it didnt end up affecting my rates. I had the damage appraisal done, and they mailed it to me with over $3000 on the appraisal. I took it to a body shop guy I knew and he looked at the damage to my truck and said that he gave me a really good appraisal. So instead of having it fixed, I took the over $3000 check.

The only damage to the truck was the front and rear bumpers. There was no actual body damage. So with that money I went nuts. I purchased the rear bumper, bumper ends, plastic piece of top of bumper, front fat lip bumper, front lower bumper valance, front bumper retainer, front and rear bumper brackets, crappy smoked altezza tail lights(I didnt want LED's due to not wanting to be pissed if an LED went out like the crappy autolumination LED's I had), LED third brake light, 99 style clear headlights, clear corners, clear blinkers, hood with the hood scoop, 01-02 grille. And I still had close to $1,000 left over. I installed everything except the hood which I had sitting
around in the backyard until I finally got my truck painted.

I had the same thing happen to me man, my trailer hitch totaled the car behind

[zacattack20]

Originally Posted by abrosk927

I had the same thing happen to me man, my trailer hitch totaled the car behind

Yeah these trucks are pretty tough. If I had a hitch I don't think I would have seen too much damage to my rear bumper because she went completely underneath me. The only things that got messed up were my bumpers and got a $3k check.

[99 sr5 highlander]

That's funny, I did the exact same thing to my turn signals today, I haven't seen anybody else do it and I think it looks sweet!

[zacattack20]

Originally Posted by 99 sr5 highlander

That's funny, I did the exact same thing to my turn signals today, I haven't seen anybody else do it and I think it looks sweet!

Yeah most people just tint the lenses but I didn't want to block any light output.

[Madizmz]

What are you guys using to reattach the lens to the housing?