Radiant Red 99 SR5, 5-Speed E-Locker & M416 Military Trailer Build Thread
 

Hey everyone, I've been around for a little over four years of this post. I bought my first 4Runner 4 years and a week ago and had it for about a year and a half and loved it. It was a black 1997 sr5 5 speed, no elocker on 285s. I ended up totaling it and wasn't able to fix the damage done at my house.

I drove around in a commuter car until I could afford another 4runner and found a 1999 sr5 5 speed, with a factory e-locker with 218k miles on the dash. I checked it out, and bought it right after the test drive! Here's the build thread.

Bought around March 2017

The first thing done was putting my platform back in.I had previously build a platform for my old 4runner to sleep in and no one who was willing to pay for it was close enough to pick it up so it just sat in my fathers garage for a year until I got a new one. Was very nice to have back in. Felt like home.

NOTE: I will also use this to help show my m416 military trailer build. This will be my offroad camping trailer. If I could edit the title to add that I would, but I can't Lol.

Here's the maintenance that I've done since I've owned it. I now trust it to drive across the country.

MOD LIST:

Tacoma Whip Mod
Blue Wire Mod
Aftermarket Sony Deck
10" CT Sound Sub
Custom Built Sleeping Platform

First thing I did was replace the wheels and tires, they were pretty shot. I got some 5th gen wheels with no tires and found some 265/70r17 nitto terra grappler g2, brand new for $400! The stickers were still on them. That was a score, the dude said he had dozens of people calling after I called.

You can see in the first picture that the sag on the 4runner was pretty bad. Instead of opting for a lift or stock replacement I decided to add a 1.5" daystar spacer until I decide to lift it.

Also, here's a few pictures of the dust underneath this thing. The front diff fluid looked brand new, I don't know if they ever put it in 4wd, looked like a highway princess. I replaced all of the drive fluids with synthetic valvoline, besides the transmission which was mt90.

I also replaced the shifter bushing with the marlin crawler one because I was having a slight issue shifting it into gear.

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This is where the story gets fun. After the new tires, I was scrolling online and found some old military trailers and fell in love. It took about a month but I found one in good enough shape with ZERO rust. It was used by the Forrest service department for Washington state. Some guy bought it at an auction, and I bought it from him. I'm the first registered owner for it and I even confused the workers at the DMV when I came in with a government title for an old trailer!

I had big plans for the trailer, and still do. I'll let the pictures do the talking for a little bit.

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I apologize for the sideways pictures but I'm not going to fix them.

This is where I get my trailer sandblasted. I filled the holes with a body filler and then grinded off the extra, worked great. there were a bunch of holes because of the ugly wood that was on top as well as since it was a forest service, I believe it was used to haul hoses around so they drilled a ton of holes in the bottom. I filled all of them.

I also replaced the factory shocks on the frame as well as welded some 1x1 angle iron on the lip of the tub. I did this so It would be easier to build a lid so it can seal better to keep the water out.

The welder I bought was a cheap $150 flux core welder. I didn't spend much because this was the FIRST time I EVER welded was with this welder, and wasn't sure if I would like it. Well I do!

Next was paint, I let my girlfriend help with the spray paint even though she sucks at it. She doesn't understand the straight lines, and does circles. Oh well, it turned out fine. More projects to come.

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I painted it a poop brown because they didn't have the color I wanted and I'm impatient. Here is where I learned to weld some more, I welded the lid with some 3x1 steel tube and i believe 14ga sheet metal on top, that was tricky! I also built crossbars so that I can mount a roof top tent to it.

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My girlfriend and I took the trailer camping and it towed like there was nothing there! I had already done the tundra brake upgrade (no pics) with the 231 rotors and it sure made the difference.

This is about how far i've gotten on my trailer. I've got it painted, bedlined on the inside with monstaliner, I picked up matching 4runner wheels and need to get a 6 lug axle. I also found some jerry can mounts in a friends garage and he gave me a good deal on them. They'll be mounted within a week.

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Some obligatory maintenance pictures. I've done a lot more, these are just the recent ones that I've done. I'll add my excel file sheet up top so everyone can keep up with the maintenance that I've done. Also bedlined the grill and painted with the Napa paint match of my radiant red, I really like it.

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ALRIGHT HOLD ON TIGHT, HERE COMES THE SHIT SHOW.

The previous owners wanted a sunroof. apparently my 4runner didn't come with it. It's an SR5 model with an elocker and manual transmission but no sunroof? Weird. So the previous owners installed a sunroof.... FROM A 1999 CADILLAC SLS??? The glass broke and they PO installed some plexi glass and did a rough job. My buddy and I yanked the sunroof (before we knew it was a Cadillac sunroof) and noticed the motor was on the back, not the front. Well we kept pulling it out and found it that it wasn't factory. It was even shorter than the oem toyota one that we had.

My options were to cut the hole bigger, or to weld the hold shut. I decided to weld it shut because the plug itself didn't match with the toyota plug on the sunroof and I'd need a new wiring harness, at that point I decided to weld it shut. We're going to do that tomorrow. Sunroof delete mod anybody? I'll update you all when its done.

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Alright everyone, the introduction is done. What do you all think? I'm hoping to get some ARB goodies here soon and some sliders.
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Got the roof welded in and primered. Also put some body filler around the welds to make sure it doesn't leak. Still have a little ways to go with the body work but happy it's welded in!https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...4d13a58a9d.jpg
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Sent from my LG-LS997 using Tapatalk

If that is the case, you should not expect many comments/replies to your thread. Having to scroll way over to the right to see everything makes it virtually unreadable. You seem to have spent some time writing up the build, but unfortunately, the poor formatting makes the content immaterial for most.

All you need to do is enter a hard return after each image code, rather than allowing them to stack end to end like the words in a run on sentence.

What platform are you reading this on? Only one of the pictures are actually side by side (My last post regarding the sunroof) and on PC (for me) it's still very readable. The pictures may be large but they aren't coming up side by side by side making the page itself very wide.

I think we may be talking about different things. I meant that a few of the pictures were being posted at a 90 degree angle and one was upside down. The only way I know to fix this is to go into paint and rotate it, and for the amount of pictures I uploaded I felt it was unnecessary for the 6 that were sideways.

I can send them to you tonight rotated straight. Easy on Faststone image viewer, free download, highly recommend.

Windows 7 and IE 11, and all the pictures show up side by side, making the page wide. But, I didn't think of a browser issue until you mentioned it. Gave Chrome a try and you're right, looks great.

Also, I misunderstood. I thought you were saying that you were aware of the pics showing side by side. I hadn't scrolled over to see the pics that were not rotated.

Figured I'd say something, because you've got two cool projects in one thread, and I wanted to make sure people could pick up what you were putting down.