Love your 4runner man! Epic work!!

I also miss Ludington so much!! I was in the Coast Guard there for six years! love that place!

@sleepydad Did you ever come up with a parking brake solution?

yes

I have been working on it on my other build. it's 2x driver side cables from a mustang then I joined them together up above the drive shaft. once I get totally done with it here in Nov I will do a vid/write up. I have the lift scheduled on Oct 12 and will be doing a frame/body swap.

make no mistake about it... getting a custom e-brake solution to work is a royal pain in the behind. it requires custom fabrication, welding and a lot of mother forking shirt balls talk.

for the life of me I was not able to get the stock cable to do it. I'm sure there is somebody who is more clever than me and maybe you could use the stock cable but I could not figure out a way to use it.

Thanks for the update and I look forward to the video and how to!

This looks great @sleepydad ! When you dipped the rear bumper/gate how did you handle the pivots and all that? I'm looking right now at 4xI bumpers and sliders and would also like to dip them.

I dipped the front and rear bumpers.

I powder coated the swing out. the dipper guys said it would not work because the galvanizing would build up on the barrel where the bearings press in and I would have to re-bore it for the bearings/races to fit again.

it has been fine for me this way. the swing out takes less abuse from road salt. the good thing is on the rear bumper where the pin wears is galvanized so it shows wear but no rust has formed at all.

just make sure you drill holes in the tubes. you can't have sealed up area's when you dip. it can warp or even burst the closed areas because of the heat. the galvanizing dip must be able to flow in and out easily.

to be honest as the galvanizing has aged it looks better and better.

I'm not sure about doing sliders because welding galvanized surfaces can be dangerous and give off toxic fumes.

3 years later I'm still very happy with the results and would do it again.

Awesome thanks! That's great info. I'll ask the local welder about the sliders. Cheers!

One more question (I think) @sleepydad if you have a minute, though it may be a big ask. Any chance you have the brand/color of the powder for the swing out? Though I am sure in person the difference from the galvanizing is clear, I can't hardly see any diff in the photos.

4xI says they can coat it (or of course I can get it done locally). Did you use their coating shop or get it done locally?

Would be great if I could get my sliders dipped too, but the local welder isn't interested in welding it after galvanizing, which I get (may make a few more calls though). Probably end up going rattle can on that with the Rustoleum cold galvanize paint.

Color is Thunder Cloud Gray ('01 code 1D2), so I'm thinking the galvanized might look pretty good on it. Once I hit 15 posts (soon!) I'll tell the story on the new member thread.

Thanks again for the info and the awesome build thread.

I had my stock bumper off while I was doing all this so... I just took a piece of it with me to the powder coate guy and matched the color the best I could off the metal samples plates.

I did blast all my parts before I dipped them and before powder coat. surface prep is everything when it comes to adhesion. just make sure everything is as clean as you can get it before you do anything. huge pain but it's worth it.

Cool. I'll double check the prep the shops do, or do it myself. Thanks again!

Yo Sleepy Dad, would you say the Tom Woods DS is near OEM quality/strength?

dude! you got to give me an @sleepydad otherwise I don't know about the post...

100% happy had no issues with my tom woods, nice shaft. I have beat on it quite a bit and it still functions just fine. no play and it's still tight.

@sleepydad

testing... testing..


How many miles on it? I'm about to grease my oem stocker.

about 10K since I replaced it.

I have a 97 with 230K on it and the shaft on that trucks is still fine. The reason I replaced my OEM shaft was because when I lifted the back end 4" I would get a clunk into gear really bad. after replacing the shaft that went away. I think the slip yoke wears and when you lift the back end it makes it a bit worse. if your not going to lift your truck and the OEM shaft is solid, no reason to replace it.

@thezentree also went with Toms shafts... he had a different story but I think he ended up liking it?

Ive lifted 2" up front and 2.5" in the back. Mild, will pick up TW when I need to replace it

Thanks again