Well, I'm new, but not new.

This old girl is my first, 1st Gen 4Runner, and I'm pretty excited. Who knows how this will progress, I don't. But it should be fun for me to at least see what I have done to this thing, and if y'all people get something out of it then that's good too.

The story goes something like this. I had a 1996 3rz 5speed, I loved it. It was red. I drove it every day. Then I decided I needed a truck bed. About that same time my little brother exploded his Reg Cab 1st gen Taco, so we made a trade. I got the exploded Taco plus monies, and he got my baby. As a disclaimer, yes my wifey hated this idea, but she went along with it.

...Now for the fun part...

Literally, and not when people just say that figuratively, actually literally, the day after I got home from towing the broken Taco back from Arizona, my buddy texts me this ad for a Red 87 4Runner. The guy wanted $500, it was just a body and frame. I asked wifey what she thought and she must have just been tired and worn down because she was just like "okay, do it," she probably figured that I had more sense than I actually do. Well, I asked if he would take $300, and he said "come get it!" So I did.

Don't worry there'll be more.

Excellent start. Howd the Q do towing? Dont see car trailers behind them too often. lol.

Haha, the Q is my buddy's lady's ride, which we borrowed in a pinch, and actually it towed like a boss.

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Not to side track,,lol but thats awesome. My wife has a 16 Q5 thats been awesome so far! No trailer hitch though..guess it needs one now.

definitely starting from stratch!
bet that was fun to get up on and off the trailer with out axles.
Done that a couple of times...

Yep, it was a little precarious. We lifted the ass end with an engine hoist and then balanced the front with a floor jack and then slowly, carefully, drove the trailer under/ out from under it.

It is starting from scratch, but that is going to be a lot of the fun for me. This rig has stuff coming from a few different projects. My brother wrecked his 3rd gen Runner, and I got an engine, harness, trans, 1 locker and a complete rear axle to rebuild for it. I found a parts donor for some interior bits and a steering box. A buddy donated a transfer case to the cause, and I had another one for duals. And I had been building a pile of front axle parts for a while. It will be all Toyota, but spread over several decades, haha.

I have always wheeled my daily up to this point, so I am really excited to finally have a dedicated trail rig. One of the most attractive parts of this thing for me was the fact that it has some body damage, and a little rust. Its perfect to get beat on and cut up. And I wont have to worry about keeping it too pretty.

Now, on to the ugly. This poor truck has had probably 3 or maybe 4 different suspensions on it. So I had to remove some of the previous attempts. I decided to go with the tried and true Chevy 63's, Ruffstuff frenched hangers and some orbital shackle eyes.



Also cut a bunch of stuff off of a rear axle, then welded some other stuff back on, its the circle of wheeling...

Somewhere along the way I found a $25 top. I want to run a canvas topper, but it was hard to say no.

...Then I bought a house. Wow, what a time to be alive! It was crazy. Also I had to move this thing, so I got my front axle under way. Its kinda temporary, because there are problems in this front end which will end up being remedied later. But for now its gotta hold itself up and roll onto a trailer.

Gave the knuckles the old 5th stud treatment.


Had the knuckles Zinc plated at work for blings, and made them into an axle. Tacoma brakes. Longfield 30 splines. And an E-locker. Also.


Looks good under the truck, but dang this thing was set up to be tall before. The PO had 14 inch coil-overs in those shock towers, and Im pretty sure his ride height was close to 12 inches over stock, very tall. Those are 14 inch shocks, and they are only showing an inch or so of shaft.


She's tall, for now.

One possibly questionable thing that came to me on this truck is the front suspension setup. I found when I went to get it that it had a Trail Gear 3 link front setup installed. I was a little disappointed honestly, but not enough to stop.

It came with the links and joints, and the frame side mounts all set. They appear to be of a much higher quality than pretty much all of the other fab work on the truck. I hope that indicates a professional, or at least competent installation. The real problem is, I just don't know. Hence my comment about the exceedingly tall previous suspension.

Then just to make it worse, my buddy bought the front axle from the same guy, with the other side of the mounts attached. He took the parts he wanted and sold the leftovers to me for a song.

I'm gonna try to make the most of what's already there. It's not ideal, I would have liked to set up my own front end. But it seems pretty good, especially for what i have into this beast.

Then I put it in my tiny new garage.




And then after about a month of moving shenanigans I turned it around so I can get down to business on this thing. And that should get me pretty close to up to the minute, with more exciting things going on every time I have a spare minute to do something to it.

Lookin good! Good to see a new 1st gen build on here. Keep it coming!

It took me a bit of puzzling to figure out what I wanted to do with the front end. The more I looked at it the more work I saw. The frame was tweaked, the passenger side of the bumper was about 3/4 of an inch lower than the driver. the bumper had been tied into the shock towers, but one side was just hard welded and the other side had a tube flange, Wierd!? and there were a ton of tube joints that were only half welded, with open backsides. it looked like way more repair work than I wanted to do.

So I cut it all off.



Then I made some new rails from box tubing, 2x3 3/16 wall and I plated the outside.



Made some fish plates to strengthen the tie in point. But didn't have the right size stock on hand to plate the open ends, ill hafta get to that. Placed my new frame side panhard mount, and steering box.



And set about figuring out how much possible up travel I will be able to use. Unfortunately the steering hits everything first. The tie rod hits the passenger frame rail before the panhard does. It might not be a problem because I may have to place my bump-stops a little lower to keep the panhard out of the oil pan, etc. I wont know for sure until I hang the drivetrain and cycle everything. But for now it all looks really promising. I'm Thinking my 14 inch shocks will be about perfect for the amount of travel I'm seeing.

I have also been able to achieve a significantly lower ride height, and I may even be able to get it another inch or so lower. It's about 23 inches to the frame currently. I was shooting for 21, and I still might be able to get it a little closer to that. We will see how it shakes out.