It’s not that the individual parts are the unreliable feature, it’s that making everything one off special (color, parts, etc.) degrades quality. You now how everything special built which means more opportunities for mistakes. It’s just the way the world of MFG operates, and Toyota has clearly drawn the line where they have and they don’t care if you want ten engines with one hundred transmission etc. options. It’s not personal, it just is what it is. When you go to a fast food place and order a custom burger, some places are good with getting customization just right, and others really suck at it.


I’m not sure what the concern is about water and the ignition key. Is it that the key/fob itself is getting wet, or that the truck electrical is getting wet. The FOB does have a physical key I believe. Either way, it’s probably easier to retrofit fob back to keyed than the other way around. I believe the body control unit manages those electronics, and again if trying to go factory you would have to replace that (not cheap). Maybe a new steering column cover and dash trim along with the ignition switch, but no idea on how much electrical would carry over. There are a few threads on trying to upgrade SR5s to FOB, but I’m not sure any of them were 100% successful.

The ‘smarts’ for the 4x4 system are in a four wheel drive control module. It’s located behind the glove box area.

Crawl control is a gimmick for me, but MTS is advantageous. MTS is tuneable A-Trac, and can run ‘sand’ mode in 4H (where you hear people complaining about A-trac cutting power in mud etc. and they are forced into 4L).

If you’re serious about these retrofits either way, I’d recommend looking through one of the 4Runner Repair Manuals and dissecting each system to understand the failure modes each has and what sensors etc. each one will require.

Interior should be fairly easy to swap or put on covers for your desired look… I don’t think anyone is going to confuse a 4Runner interior for a BMW, and I’m sure a local upholster could do you up with whatever layout you want.

Harrop makes good products so you don't have to mess with airlines.

Hardly no one or actually no one does that.

You're just limiting your options.

Even if the part caused the failure, your warranty isn't just gone. The dealer simply refuses to cover the work.

Correct which is why I went Runner. I like the Explorer more but they were still a transverse drivetrain layout. Also they're not true 4wd. The Bronco wasn't out yet and I will never buy first or even second year of a new model.

When I was shopping I was considering a F150 because I wanted tow/hauling capacity but it wouldn't fit my current living situation.

You can always go TRD non premium. There would be a regular key with that.

Wait, so this guy actually wants the lever actuator instead of the dial actuator? Dude, just get a TRDOR. TRDORP if you're fancy. TRD Pro if you're a big baller. What you're describing is the Off Road trim. Then find a hood swap. Hit up some junkyards. I don't know. I can't believe this guy got a whole chapter of a book's worth of reply content for being epically anal.

Quit it with the homophobic crap. It's so guy that's a pain in the butt about being granular about his potential SUV that he's probably not old enough to buy anyway if he's calling fake hood scoops ghey.

Ford is doing the same with the Bronco...not all options are individual.
You can have the manual transmission only with the 4 cylinder engine. If you want the 6 cylinder - no manual for you.

You Can't Always Get What You Want - YouTube

When I got my '19 TRDOR, I was looking at the SR5 as well. I don't care about the stuff on the premium. I wanted the locker but, don't NEEEEED a locker. My '04 SR5 with A-trac did everything I needed.

While looking at them, my wife liked the one with the "snout" (hood scoop) so, it was easy to say OK I'll get it for you.

Many people have found others that wanted the hood scoop and just swapped hoods. To me that's easier than swapping in the locker and shifter.

I don't know about the '21s buy '19 has a key, not a fob with push button.

Minus the hood scoop this is closer to what the OP is looking for from the sounds of it. Probably more than the SR5. I am guessing he could come up on a sr5 hood for much cheaper.
As for his problem with not being able to customize. It is part of the lean manufacturing that Toyota employs and that they are known for. Better efficiency if they don’t do “custom” options to levels like Jeep or Ford. Sure you can select the package and color and some port add-ons. That’s about it.


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I would buy the Bronco over the 4Runner.

1 more year of payments on my 4Runner then we are buying a Bronco.

I think you should just buy an off-road AND an SR5, take the 2 parts you want off the OR and swap them over, throw the OR and it's ghey hood away, and then post pics for all these haters.

These threads get more absurd by the day. Welcome to the real world where adults deal with how things are, not how you wish them to be. I wanted full time 4WD and the feature of a Limited AND the off road abilities of the Trail. Instead of crying and complaining I bought a Limited and made it how I wanted it.

The warranty is also a non-issue because added mods do not void anything for unrelated parts. My two added Air Lockers didn’t void my engine or tranny warranties which are the only two main ones that really matter.

And to bounce the rubble, I actually have both a 4R and a F250. They are not even in the same universe to seriously compare against each other. Oh, there were also things about the F250 I wanted differently so I changed them.

I don't get it. These are two non-comperable vehicles. Just buy a TRDOR (Non-premium) and deal with the allegedly "ghey" hood scoop.

Buy a TRD-OR (non-premium). I don't think those have the keyless fob. Should also come with cloth seats so you can have them redone in katzkin leather in any color you want. Hood scoop well you'll just have to either buy one or see if you can swap one. That's still a lot cheaper and easier to do than buying an SR5 and then trying to swap in the e-locker and manual lever transfer case.

I have both as well. Get the Ford. That 7.3 has potential to be an absolute monster.

Ford engineers (on my 2007 F250) decided ALL of the following made sense;

First they decided to cast a diesel engine block and not clean out all of the sand. Then they decided that they should use a water:oil heat exchanger that mounts in the valley of a V8 that is very hard to access. And then they decided to make that cooler a stacked plate design with passages smaller than the casting sand. So... as you can surmise - the casting sand left in the block clogs the oil cooler. Don't worry - it's only a $300 part (plus $2,700 in labor).

Okay - then they also decided to run an EGR system with a big cooler that also lives in the valley of the engine. And they chose to use a coolant path that would take the output coolant from the oil cooler to then cool the exhaust gasses. And - to take this one step further, they also made the EGR cooler very thing gauge metal, so if it gets hot, it will rupture. Yes - a system designed to cool 1300 degree gas is also so fragile that if it heats the water beyond boiling - it'll rupture. No - they didn't think it might be important to have an expansion chamber or thicker wall tubing. Ford engineer: "this will get at least 90% of them to the warranty period end - go with it!"

And, on the same engine, the same group of engineers also decided that they didn't need to use 6 studs per cylinder to hold the heads on like everyone else does. No - they only needed 4 studs per chamber. And even better, they only needed to use torque to yield bolts that were small diameter. Just barely adequate - (or in many cases not). So any spike in cyl pressure would lift the head and blow the gaskets. But repair is easy - or even preventative replacement of the bolts with high quality bolts. You just need to pull the cab off! Oh - wait, you'd think that they'd make that easy? Nope. They chose not to make the AC system tilt or remove with the cab. So you have to have an HVAC system to empty the A/C system and then recharge it every time. Along with the other 10 hours of labor to lift it and put it back. GM figured this out. Nissan figured this out. Toyota figured this out. Ford? Nope. Didn't figure it out.

And on the same engine, the same group of engineers - they also decided that they should take dirty engine oil - and use that oil through two pumps to bring it up to 1300psi and then run it in a series of pipes up through the engine to the heads. And on top of each head - above the lifters - they would plumb in cast steel tubes that would be very hard to seal using a set of o-ring fittings, and in two cases shafts with double o-rings that have to seal on both sides of the tube going through sideways, and then on top of this genious, the entire cast assembly has 4 nipples that have to precisely seal into the top rubber o-ring of the 4 fuel injectors. All of that has to work and seal perfectly to work. A total - just to get the oil pressure to the injectors of ~10 rubber o-rings per side. At 1300psi with hot dirty engine oil. But they used very high quality o-rings in the best type of orientation... oh wait - no, no they didn't.

^ but wait - this gets better. Once you get the oil to the injectors, it then goes inside the top of each injector through a spool valve - a floating cylinder inside of a horizontal shaft that is pulled back and forth with magnets at very high speed and must be perfectly precise in motion to meter fuel properly. And it uses very tight tolerances so any wear will cause it to bind and quit functioning. These normally last around 150k miles in normal use. Sometimes much shorter.

And with this wonderful system of high pressure oil - you might need to measure the pressure. So what did they do - they put a hole in the valve cover. Yep - just a hole. And the sensor sits on the oil tube and has a little o-ring seal to the hole in the valve cover. Want dirt, water, etc in your valves? Sure! let's put a hole there with a little o-ring and no fasteners and just kind of hope it mostly seals.

It still gets worse on this one. Ford also used the cheapest possible electronics to try to run the magnets, so they used crappy capacitors in an effort to produce the 50 or so volts necessary to function. And so it very commonly fails. They couldn't even get a circuit board right - very simple solid state electronics. And they did it so poorly that they changed it multiple times during the 5 year production run of the engine, but never figured it out.

All of that needs to work just to make the injectors fire and send in fuel. And all of it breaks all the time. But - it still gets worse. The injectors have no fail-safe on them if the fuel doesn't refill in the bottom half of each injector. If anything causes air in the fuel, or water, the lower side is still triggered by that high pressure engine oil and the piston slams down without any cushion into the injector tip and blows it apart. If you're lucky it only cracks. If you're not - it fractures a chunk off and destroys the cylinder wall. Knowing that this was a high risk issue - of course Ford would have made sure to run plenty of fuel pressure to ensure that the fuel was always keeping up with demand (yeah, even in stock engines with stock tuning) - nope. Ford used the wrong spring pressure, so the engines often didn't have enough fuel pressure to keep the injectors fed. And instead of a recall - ford just offered a kit for $60 to replace a $1 spring with a longer one in the pressure regulator.

And - these injectors - each one - requires 5 internal o-rings to all remain perfectly sealed under 1300psi on the top end and 28,000 psi on the bottom end. Oh - and also there's a cheap copper crush washer that seals the injector tip to the cylinder. That can also ruin an engine if it leaks. Or if you're lucky just take out a $300 injector.

And then on the same engine, those engineers signed off on using a variable vain turbo. But one with an unnecessary sliding ring between the hot and cold side that varies the vein angles - and any dirt or imperfections cause it to seize. If you're luck it's somewhere in the middle - if not you either get low rpm boost or high rpm boost, but not both.

And the same engineers, on this same engine, also chose to make their own special design air filter that not only costs $70 to replace, but requires unclipping and removing the MAF sensor and its housing plus removing two other housing parts just to get the air filter out.


This is one engine. One one truck. Made in 2007. This is why you want a Toyota. Even if you can't order up every feature or option you want. You can't order a Ford without the shitty engineering. While you're worried about features and options - don't miss the forest fire staring at the trees.

That is one of the best lengthy explanations I've read in a long time thank you, nicely done