2001 Black Runner Build Thread

4x4runner01

New member
What's up guys! I'm new to the forum and I wanted to make a build thread to show y'all what I have done to my rig over the years. Like I said I'm new, so this thread may not be the best but I'm going to try! Enjoy!

Year: 2001
Make: Toyota
Model: 4Runner Limited
Color: Black (Black/Silver previously)
Engine: 3.4L V6

Front Suspension:
2.5" Coil Spacer
Bilstein 5100 Adjustable
New sway bar
New cv axles & boots

Rear Suspension:
Moog springs
Grabriel Hi-Jacker Air Shocks
New Sway bar
2.5" Coil Spacer

Tires/Rims:
Wheels: 17x9 Fuel Hostages
Tires: 285/70r17 Federal Couragias

Performance
Deckplate mod & ISR Mod
Thrush Welded Muffler

Accessories
32" LED Light bar on front bumper
2x LED cubes on rear bumper
Amber LED Raptor grill lights
Stock headlights with black housings
Black LED tail lights
Black corner lights
Alpine UTE-52B Head Unit
Sound Ordnance 80w Bandpass subwoofer
Color changing interior ambient lighting
Kurt Roof Rack
Hi-Lift jack with custom mount to roof rack

Most recent picture:
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In 8th grade (2014), my dad bought a 1991 f150 for $2500. No problems or anything. We planned to strip the paint down and repaint it a metallic blue. It was going to be my first car. We got to the priming part of the process then it started having problems and we were having to work on it every weekend; so we sold it.
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The hunt for a new car began!

I noticed that i really liked the way the 3rd 4Runners looked after seeing one in someone's Snapchat story.
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I kept looking around to see if there were any other cars I found interest in, but my heart was set on a 3rd gen.

August 14, 2015 — The day I bought my Runner!!
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Bought it for $5500. It's a 2001 Limited and it had 178,000 miles at the time (it now has just over 200k)

I had in mind what I wanted to do to it before I even got it. I know that I wanted to lift it (didn't know how high but a reasonable height) and I knew I wanted bigger tires eventually and black plasti dipped wheels.

Of course the first modification I made was the plasti dip on the wheels. Cheap and easy to do.
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The next thing I did was get a lift. I went with a 2.5" coil spacer lift. Again, because it was cheap.

Before the lift
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After the lift
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Shortly after I got my license, my friends and I found a place to go "mudding". I say it like that because all it really was was an open field with a small puddle of mud we would drive through to get dirty.
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Eventually I took the plasti dip off of my wheels because I didn't do it properly and it was starting to peel and look trashy.

Next on the list of modifications was tires. I didn't get bigger tires like I ultimately planned to do eventually but wanted better tires than the stock ones. I also wanted AT's.

I got a set of 265/75r16 Kumho AT51's
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Next up, it was Christmas time! For Christmas I got a Kurt roof rack and Hi-Lift jack

I also got an Alpine UTE-52B head unit. The difference it made in sound quality was amazing. (In this pic you can also see the $15 color changing ambient lighting system I bought. Nice touch IMO.
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To add to sound quality, I also got an 80w Sound Ordnance band pass box subwoofer. 80w isn't much but it's plenty for my rig!
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Shortly after Christmas, I bought a 32" lightbar that was then mounted on my front bumper. It was only $68-80 off of Amazon but it hasn't had any condensation to this day and it is still as bright as it was the day I bought it.

Over winter break last year, my dad and I decided to take a day trip to Harrisonburg, VA. We spent the day riding around on simple trails through the mountains and rivers. Good day.
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This whole time I had the hi-lift jack and I was storing it in the back of my rig. My dad and I had the idea of fabricating a custom mount for the jack that would be attached to the roof rack.
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After a while of having the new tires I realized that the wheels definitely needed to go back to black. So I redid the plasti dip and I did it the right way; taking time prepping and applying.
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My friends and I found another better mudding spot at an abandoned pool. I decided to have some fun.
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Sometime last spring my 4WD broke. It was just a sensor that needed replacing. Every time I clicked into 4WD the light would just flash and it wouldn't engage. Unfortunately, I had to find out I had the problem when I was stuck and needed 4WD to crawl out.

This past summer, I bought some led cubes and mounted then to my rear bumper. Purpose? To see at night when backing etc. but mostly to keep people from riding my a** on the road and shining their hi-beams in my mirrors.
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At that time I was also itching for stance! So I decided to by cheap wheel spacers off of eBay. Wasn't even worth it, just made it look dumb IMO.
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DONT DO THIS!! I bought non hubcentric spacers and little did I know that they would make my car shake at speeds over 40mph. Not fun. Took them off and sold them.

Here's a pic of how my rig sat all cleaned up over the summer.
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A few months ago I got new shocks but I cheaped out once again. What happens when you buy cheap? They break. Front shocks went out and were completely shot. I was literally riding on just my springs. To fix this, I bought some Bilstein 5100's
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At this point I knew that I wanted new tires since the Kumhos were already wearing out and I wanted new wheels because I thought that all of that would just complete the look of my rig. I knew that I wouldn't be able to actually get the wheels and tires until winter.

Anyways, I decided on 17x9 Fuel Hostages and 285/70r17 Federal Couragias (cheap tires again, I know, but I liked the look and was on a budget).
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While I was waiting for my wheels and tires to come in, I decided to take on a big project. I wanted my car to be all black. Sadly, I can't find any pictures from the process of when I did this but I started by plasti dipping the front and rear bumpers. Then I moved to the sides. It took a few days. A couple hours after school each day. The final product looked surprisingly good and I was pleased.
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This is a pic from the day that I got my new wheels and tires mounted! Good day, good day. Ahh
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Pic my friend took of me cruising on Broad Street
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Pic of my friend and I in the blizzard that happened in VA this winter.
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Exploring in the snow
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One day I came out of school and went to my car and one of the bolts for my lightbar mysteriously disappeared so I took it off with plans of re-installing it at a later time.

Decided to get new headlights and tail lights! I got the same headlights but with black housings and black corners. One day I'd like to have a set of retrofits.
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The tail lights were black leds.
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I didn't like the way that the chrome looked ok the brake light, so I picked up a can of red night shade and gave it a makeover. Turned out great IMO
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The red niteshade must've gotten to my head because after that I started going all out. I decided to paint my emblem red. Shortly after, I painted my skid plate red.
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I started seeing more and more runners with the raptor style lights in the grill, so I decided to buy some. Loved the way they turned out, especially with the amber led corners.
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Finally found a good mud hole. My friends and I found a "playground" next to a railroad track!
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But as you all know... a good day of mudding comes with a long day of cleaning.
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Installed a deckplate mod after seeing it on the forum. Didn't change much but I noticed a slight change in my mpg. Anything for the extra mile!
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I recently purchased some Gabriel Hi-jacker air shocks. In the past I purchased some Moog springs to get rid of the dreaded sagging of the rear end. Sadly, It didn't work... bought these and it raised the back and even added a little bit of rake which I like. The ride quality only improved and it feels great. Keep in mind; the air shocks replaced the cheap shocks which had also been shot recently.
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That's all for now. I will continue to post to my build thread as I add on to my build. Eventually (hopefully over the summer), I want to bag the coil spacers and purchase some OME springs for the front and rear. I'm sure there will be plenty of other things I decide to add on. Hope y'all like my build so far!

Coleman
 
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Over Spring Break I had a lot of free time to do things to my car so I took advantage and did a few things.

The first thing I did was take off the back fender flare where it meets the rear bumper. I took it off, then plasti dipped the silver (original color). I did this just because it makes my rig look a little bit more aggressive from the back.
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The next thing I did was purchase a ScanGauge II. My main reason for this was because of a speeding ticket I received about a month ago because of my speedometer being off. I recommend getting ScanGauge because it tells you your real speed and many other useful diagnostic information.
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On the same day I rotated my tires. Worst mistake. I rotated them myself and it was not easy having to lift and mount up a wheel/tire combo that weighs almost 100 pounds.

The next thing I did was an ISR mod. I read on the forum that it increases power/torque but I didn't believe it. I did it anyway to see because it couldn't hurt to do it, right? When I did it, I actually did notice a significant difference in the power of my rig and it even changed the sound a little bit which is always a good thing.
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A couple weeks ago I started hearing a horrible scraping noise and from what I could tell, I thought it was coming from the rear right wheel. I took off the wheel and noticed that the heat shield was bent and looked as if it was rubbing on the shoe. I didn't fix the problem sadly...

I found out that the noise was actually coming from the front right wheel so i looked at it and this is what I found...

This is the front left rotor... perfectly fine.
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This was the front right rotor. Horrible.
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What I think happened is that my brake pads had gotten so low that the metal from the brake pad was scraping the metal on the rotor so it roughed it up.

I ordered some new slotted rotors and brake pads to fix this problem, so once I find time to replace them, I should be set.
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So... yesterday I had time to replace the rotors and pads!

Took off the wheel and caliper and this is what the brake pad looked like [emoji51]
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Anyways I got the rotors and brakes done and. Is there is no more scraping and the breaks work fantastic!

Today I decided to install my diff drop kit that I ordered from Fat Bob's garage. Really easy task and the product had great directions. Unfortunately I always forget to take pictures when I'm working on a project. I also forgot to take a before picture. My before pic is. It actually my rig, it's a pic that I found that is about the same as mine was.

Before
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After
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You probably can't see much of a change because of the before picture picture that isn't really my rig haha. But I noticed that it looks a lot better and looks under much less stress. Tomorrow I am going to finish it up by reinstalling my skid plate with the new modified bolts.

Next modification on the list is most likely going to be boots for the CV axles or just new CV axels all together. They have just gotten in such bad shape over the last two years riding with a lift.

I got my skid plate back on finally after dropping the diff! I like the way that it looks being that the back sticks down a little bit more and makes it more visible. Can't decide if I want to keep the red or paint it black. Let me know what y'all think!
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Welcome! The rig looks great. One word of advise. Don't go cheap because you're gonna end up doing it over the right way eventually so you're not saving any money. Do it right the first time even if it means you have to save up & wait on the mod.
 
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Do you remember how many cans of plastidip you had to use to cover all the darado gold? I am looking to do this as well since I am not a fan of the gold two tone.
 
Welcome! The rig looks great. One word of advise. Don't go cheap because you're gonna end up doing it over the right way eventually so you're not saving any money. Do it right the first time even if it means you have to save up wait on the mod.



Thank you for the advice! The reasoning for going cheap is because my dad was paying for pretty much everything when I first got the car. Now that I'm working and can afford to do things, I've been saving
 
Do you remember how many cans of plastidip you had to use to cover all the darado gold? I am looking to do this as well since I am not a fan of the gold two tone.



I do not remember exactly. I'm pretty sure it took about one for the front bumper and one for the back. My guess would be 6? Also depends on how many coats you want to do. I'm pretty sure I did 6-8. I'd recommend doing it cause it's not very hard as long as you mask it off well
 
Haha man, I was just telling my wife yesterday how much I love the black and Thunder Cloud two-tone 3rd gens! But like they say- different strokes for different folks!
You have a nice rig man, keep it nice [emoji1360]
 
I recently purchased some Gabriel Hi-jacker air shocks. In the past I purchased some Moog springs to get rid of the dreaded sagging of the rear end. Sadly, It didn't work... bought these and it raised the back and even added a little bit of rake which I like. The ride quality only improved and it feels great. Keep in mind; the air shocks replaced the cheap shocks which had also been shot recently.
0d78d12b0d28797f13fb2f42e5f0ee97.jpg

how do you like the air shocks? what sort of flex are you able to get with them?
 

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