My 1997 Ford Exploder died about 2 weeks ago with a bad trasmission at 115 k miles. My mechanic said it would be $2600 to fix so I said goodbye to the old beast selling it for $1000.
I've been looking at 4runners for years and finally decided to bite the bullet. After 2 weeks of looking I found a 99 4runner Sport but wanted to talk to my lady about it. We agreed and went back to the dealer but it had been sold. He showed me a 4runner Limited he had that was lower mileage but also a higher pricetag. After showing me a carfax that had pages of maintenance on it, I asked him his lowest price. Knowing I had wanted that Sport pretty bad he offered the limited the asking price of the Sport, over $2500 off of blue book with 30,000 less miles then the Sport.
I was(and am) estactic!
Leather, Wood Grain trim, power everything, 4wd with a center differential lock. I would like to add a rear diff lock in the future.
Stock at the dealer
1st thing I did when I got it home was remove the running Boards, remove the cracked pen striping, full detail interior and exterior. and installed my Thule roof rack. I added front soft mud flaps after our a weekend 4x4ing day when I found the tires were kicking up some small rocks onto the lower front door.
The next day I took my little girls up to the Jones Pass area near Empire, Colorado for some light 4x4ing and fishing.
Lake Urad
Plans for the future include an Old Man Emu 2.5 inch lift, differential drop, two size bigger tires. Possibly a deckplate Mod and removing the silencer.