I should of known better but when I saw an 07 4Runner Sport for sale a few years ago (with excellent maintenance records) it was a match! And it looked and drove great from Chicago back to Washington State. After a falling in love with the ride and gas mileage, the honeymoon maybe over--she is beginning to show her age and her upbringing--from the dreaded "rust belt"!
The first hint of problems actually occurred on my way back from Chicago when the gas door hinge pin broke in half from rust and the gas door would not close-easy pin replacement. Next I noticed a little rust on the inside of the sunroof and discovered the entire glass metal frame heavily deteriorating--easy $50 junkyard fix.
One good thing about the rust was it caused the radiator and the X-REAS suspension to be replaced early according to the maintenance reports. Radiator issues and overheating can be an early death to aluminum block engines. So the maintenance records gave me some confidence along with a rust proofing window decal.
But the frame and components are unsightly. I live on a washboard road and it has been responsible for finishing off and dropping my rusted muffler and has been the ruin of the fancy X-REAS struts and shocks. True love I guess because she has a new Magna Flow muffler and 5100 Billstein struts, shocks and OME springs. But now there goes my gas mileage!
The one little bit of body rust occurs on the tailgate. Small bubbles of rust are breaking out around the tailgate handle/license plate area. And there was an accidental bump in its history which left two circular dents in the tailgate area. The CarFax report showed a rear-end parking lot accident but my guess is the previous owner pocketed the insurance money.
So this last week I decided to take the tailgate handle off and install a new rear tailgate switch, which had turned to a gummy mess to operate. The YouTube videos showed this to be an easy quick fix for $50. Ha, I have learned it is never that easy especially when dealing with 14 years of bolt and nut rust.
Rusted screws holding license plate light and nuts/bolts holding tailgate handle to the vehicle were rusted and corroded to the point the only way to get them off caused the tailgate plastic brackets to twist and break. At some point you need to plow ahead and minimize the breakage but remove the handle.
While I had it all apart I noticed how badly the handle was scratched and I my front Toyota emblem had broken off--so I decide to "rattle can" both and epoxy it all back together (I used MEK to rebuild plastic ABS to hold bolts and reattach brackets from the handle that had broken off-new tailgate handles are $126 plus nuts and bolts so I made the old one look new--improvised and picked up supplies at Ace Hardware). While I was at it I decided to do the LED interior upgrade which included the license plate lights. So everything finally all put back together after much wire brushing, painting and cleaning. I "rattle canned" the front emblem with black Rust-Oleum High Heat Enamel with a clear coat. The back tailgate handle I used Rust-Oleum leakSeal Flexible Rubber Coating in a rattle can. This is a picture of new LED license lights and new rubber gate switch installed. I used gutter screws until I make another run to Ace for 4 stainless screws.
Here are the final front and back pictures. As long as I had things apart I wire brushed the rust spots on the back tailgate, used primer and touchup body paint/clearcoat and covered a couple bad dents with a Magna Flow sticker.