Hey everyone and welcome to what I hope to be my diary for my 1999 Limited 4Runner nicknamed Frank.

I want to use this more for myself to capture all the ups and downs of owning a 22 year old vehicle with almost a quarter of a million miles on it. But I also want to share my experience with everyone who might have the issues I have or need some inspiration. I try to do everything myself and if I can do it, anyone can!

I picked up Frank in Feb of 2022 with 229k miles and a laundry list of things to do. From CEL's, to soft brakes, to fading paint and more, I have plenty of work and not enough Coors.

First was P0141, or a faulty O2 sensor. I went ahead and replaced them with OEM Denso units (DENSO 2344162). While it got rid of P0141, P0172 then came to bite me in the ass. Still getting good mpgs but the CEL and smell of gas drive me insane. New Denso MAF arrives tomorrow..hopefully that fixes it..

Next issue, most important, is my soft brakes. Since I bought the car, the pedal has about a foot of travel and only brakes in the last 3/4 of it. I live on a dirt road so I can audibly hear the front lock and the rears do nothing, unless I pump of course. I replaced the rear wheel cylinders, new master cylinder, about 3 brake flushes and nothing. Found an article that said I might have air trapped in my ABS pump and to activate ABS on a soft terrain road. ABS does not prime when the key is turned to on nor does it activate when I "slam" on the brakes when driving. Replaced the pump and ABS ECU with no change. Going to bite the bullet on this one and take it to a mechanic

I know that was a lot of text and I'm sorry for those that read it since it isn't the most exciting. But I wanted to give a solid intro to my vehicle. I am going to try and upload some pictures tonight and start breaking down my updates to less wordy no one cares paragraphs

Welcome to the addiction lol

Best of luck to you. We have had ours for about 5 years, 60k miles, and camped, 4wheeled, and explored about 10 states. Great vehicles.

Welcome i like the nickname Frank. I enjoy the build threads updates .

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Hello and welcome!

We are all in the same boat with 20+ year old rigs, shit will happen.

That being said, the search function will become your best friend, use it early and often. Most all of what you are dealing with, and will deal with, has already been done. Don't suffer a death of a million posts.

That being said, see the All Questions thread, it's a great place to spitball without starting new threads for every little thing. Especially if searching gets you too much or too little.

Lastly, we need pictures... c'mon man, wtf?
Let's see Frank and the transformation to Frank the Tank

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Sorry for the hiatus, second post and I’m already dragging ass!

Easter weekend came and went with a small update, put in my interior LED lights! I went with some cool whites from SuperBrightLEDs. They look great and I’m very happy with them. What I’m not happy with is I shattered my wood grain radio bezel I tried to be gentle but once it went, it went!

Also installed the new Denso MAF with hopes of getting rid of P0172. Damn thing is still around and giving me equal values on my scanner. Going to have to dive into the injectors I guess

Below is a link to those pictures I owed you guys. This is my first time on a forum in awhile so excuse my formatting if it’s shiet

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Silver one... super bright leds seem to work well. I used them in one of my rigs. The stop light and reverse lights.

If I remember I will send you a photo of the lights we used for dome replacements. So you can see what you think of them.

Glad to see some photos of the rig.

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I bought a set of interior LEDs from Amazon for $19 - all the overhead lights (domes, map lights), glove box, vanity mirror license plate, key ring and a few spares. So far so good. The map lights are not too bright, the domes are perfect.

We will see how they last but for my dash and console lights I only use SBL

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Just a FYI: 1997 V-6 with 222K miles just had #6 cylinder head gasket fail. Have fun with your new toy.

Well no major update for this week. Family got Covid so we spent the week dodging that so I can still go in to work.

Did get in the deckplate mod, LED reverse lights (found out 01-02 have different sizes than 96-00)

Also cut my losses and took Frank in to the stealership to get the brakes looked at. After countless hours spent bleeding and tracing a soft brake pedal I had to have professionals look at it. It sucks, but when it comes to safety it shouldn't be half assed.

This weekend I am wanting to do a handful of chores on Frank so stay tuned!

Well this weekend I went and picked up Frank from the dealership. Had them try and diagnose my soft brake peddle as well as my non functioning ABS system. Unfortunetly no fixes on either as they wanted to charge me $1700 for a fix that may or may not work.

Brought Frank home and installed my deckplate mod and my LED reverse lights! Now my lighting in 99% done, all I lack is brighter headlights with a white light.

Decided to go fully through the FSM steps of diagnosing a soft brake peddle. I started at the brake peddle adjustment and noticed I was almost 1.5" off what the manual calls out. I tried adjusting it but the pushrod was almost completely threaded out of the peddle so I decided to put that on pause. That plus the brake switch was now being pressed pretty firmly so I wasnt comfortable continuing until I had more time.

I am looking at just deleting the ABS system as a whole and installing a Wilwood proportioning valve. I am expecting it to be a pretty big project so I am just doing all of my research before I buy anything.

Also put my mechanical engineering degree to use and CAD designed a Sherpa styled roof rack. Going to use my pops cnc plasma cutter to get that started!

Hey everyone, another weekend another chance to work on Frank the Tank! Finally got a new OBD2 reader. Trying to figure out my P0172 code. I replaced the o2’s as I was getting a P0141 code before now am getting P0172. Any ideas?




Gotta get Frank in hopefully this week and get him aligned. Think I’m going to order up some wheel spacers and fix his stance a bit. Waiting for a call back on my steel so I can get working on my roof rack. Hopefully lift coming late summer before we go on too many camping trips. Either way, keep on keepin on and don’t forget to thank your mother!


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Longshot, but a friend had a P0172 and it turned out to be an ancient black intake air filter.

Replaced the filter Thursday. Old one wasn’t horrible but after 20 so miles nothing has changed


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All that pic shows is that your emissions tests are not complete. You need to perform a complete drive cycle (city/highway drive, then 8-hour rest, then city/highway) after resetting the ECU or clearing codes.
Make sure your fuel tank is half full (30-70%) for the evap test to complete.

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