My 2001 ABS removal
 

A little backstory on the vehicle. I bought it 5 years ago from a friend who was leaving island and only had it for a few months. Paid 7k The good - 2001 sport. Came from Florida, no rust and low milage (125k). The bad - spotty maintanence, it was missing the skid plate, grinding noise and vibration in low range and after i had it a few months the ABS light came on. I think this was the reason it was sold in Florida. The ABS is essential to the 2001-2002 4runner. It runs the ABS, speedometer and traction control. You cant just pull the fuse like the earlier models and it cost 3k$ to replace. Two years ago the speedometer failed and three months ago the transfer case blew up, but allowed me to slowly drive it back home. This last year the ABS has been getting worse, pulsing erratically and locking up the front left tire. I pulled out the transfer case and put in the j-shift transfer case from my 97 that I had laying around after doing the manual transmission swap. Rear driveshaft from the 97 and front driveshaft from the 98 parts car. Pretty cut and dried except for having to spin the transfer case lever 180 degrees. I bought a speed sensor for a tacoma hooked it up to the j-shift and ran three wires up to the gauge cluster. Working speedometer! Thanks Doc. Now came the fun part, I unplugged the ABS and threw it away. I bought a master cylinder for a non ABS 4runner, pulled the brake booster off the parts car and bolted it on. everything fits fine and lines up. The 2001-2002 4 runners have two brake lines that run to the rear for the traction control so you have to put a splitter up near the master cylinder. I used the same splitter that is found on the rear axle housing. I have a LSD off of a Lexus in the rear so I wont be needing the factory traction control. Bled the master cylinder and then bled and flushed the brake fluid. I did the tundra brake upgrade while doing this .
The most annoying thing is when you disconnect all the plugs from the ABS an alarm sounds. Toyota must have put a good amount of R+D into making the most irritating sound possible. Its also difficult to find, I finally located it behind the fuse box After bedding the brakes they work great. If you really get on them the front left will chirp but not lock up on dry pavement So I am very happy with how it came out. Two things I have not dealt with are the brake light and the 4wd light always on. I pulled the bulbs for the abs and traction control plus two of the three bulbs for the 4wd light, but am leaving the brake light on for now. Thankfully the check engine light is working properly now that the speedo is working without a p500 code

Cool thread, thanks for writing that up. Those of us with 01-02s are going to start having to figure stuff like this out as parts dry up or get prohibitively expensive.

nice. one of the reasons I got rid of my 2001 was that master cylinder

The ABS units have actually gone down in price recently. Looks like they are around 1200 bucks last time I looked. Its not TERRIBLE when you consider how long the original lasted.

An OEM Master Cylinder/Resevoir and Brake Booster is close to 1200 retail...

@St Runner Happy Holidays. Good topic.

Knew my time would come, new was simple my wallet recovered. :)
I dug into it before hand couple things I questioned the outcome shyed away.
Do you notice any difference in rear braking ability/performance?

@shadow247 My luck a year later it was a $1k cheaper. That sucked

I figured $2300 for next 200k mi call that a good return.

96RedRunner Thanks, I have not driven enough to make that call on the rears but when I bedded the front brakes the rear drums were pretty hot when i got under to check things. It was really poor before and it seemed like all the braking force was on the left front. Between that and the new tundra upgrade it is tons better. I figured since it was designed for a 4runner the braking proportion would be correct. I will update this after I put some miles on it

Parts are 4Runner but, there's differences and reason I ask you notice anything.
01 & pre-01 wheel cylinders are different bore size. Saw that as it may or not change rear bias.
3 chanel MC with 4 chanel size wheel cylinders. Doing a pre-01 wheel to wheel locker axle swap
you run into 4 chan M/C with 3 chan size wheel cylinders, opted for using 01 W/C's on pre-01 housing.
Your drums getting hot during bedding you consider that normal or out of the norm.
I may be over thinking it, interested as you put miles on.

Wheel cylinders for 15" wheel and 16" wheel trucks are different (drums and other hardware the same), to match the differences in the front brakes that fit under the smaller wheels. I wasn't aware of another difference in the rear wheel cylinders for 01/02. I don't have one, so I never checked...

-Charlie

@phattyduck
Axle I swapped in had 4.30's 16" drums larger cylinders, 01 16" wheels smaller cylinders rebuild kit proved this.
This led to me to think Toyota sized cylinders to the dedicated fluid line characteristics of 4 chan sys.
Keeping same size calipers.
I don't know, sometimes think I should have tried mix n match to answer my own question :)

The backing plates and hardware are different 01 has adjuster slot behind axle tube, pre in front of tube.
Leftover new shoes for 96Red got put to use, had to order hardware.
I was not aware of these differences either had me scratching my head almost my azz.

There were some minor axle/bearing/seal differences through the years too, so watch out for that.

I bet the electric booster system can send higher pressures to the rear so they used the smaller cylinder. Split vs. single line to the rear doesn't matter (other than to control 4-channel instead of 3-channel ABS), just the area of the piston at each brake.

Anyway - interesting info.

-Charlie

Watching out, 96Red leftovers were different part # seals from 01, bearing same.
My thinking, accumulator pressure makes it similar to a pressurized system loose thinking.
With a dedicated line your not splitting the fluid force, speed of force application changes.
Reasoning of smaller cylinder. Maybe.
It ties into the speed that VSC/Trac can operate at switching channels. Likely I'm full a chit :toilet:
There's not a great deal of info on this, it's getting sticky status more time goes by.