3rd gen wanderlust build

G

ghostmoney

New member
Have a build for my 4runner on expeditionportal, but thought I would do one over since that place seems dead.

Sold my 3.4 swapped 89 4runner with blazeland long travel so I could purchase a 3rd gen 4runner instead. Got married in September and decided I will eventually want 4doors so instead of continuing to mod the 1st gen I sold it. I was able to sell it for the cost of upgrading to a 1996 4runner limted with rear elocker.

New 4runner


Planned Mods:
- 4xinnovations front bumper (installed)
- 4xinnovations rear bumper (installed)
- 265/75/16 bfg at ko2 (installed 10/14)
- Rock sliders
- Roof Rack (wanted Whitson but now thats out)
- ICON stage 5 (installed 1/26/16)
- RTT
- ARB cooler
- Onboard shower
- Hid retrofit (Installed fx-r)
- Super charger
- Bud built skids
- Possibly 5speed swap
 
Register to hide this ad
First thing I did was to upgrade the tires to 265.75/16 BFG AT Ko2. Tires are load range E, but I don't feel like they ride too much worse than the revo's I had on before. Definitely can tell they are a heavier tire though. This will be my first time not having actual mud tires on my rigs so will see how I like them. Figured I will be putting a lot of road miles on my this rig and with a winch having mud tires just seemed to be a waste.
 
Got my front and rear bumpers painted to match the silver trim of the limited flares. Build quality of the 4xinnovations bumpers is awesome, my only complaint is with the front bumper as their website states it mounts with 10 bolts. The earlier 3rd gen 4runners have a different mounting for the front bumper and this results in the front bumper only mounting with 6 bolts, but 4 of those bolts mount to the front body mount which I do not feel is strong enough. I am going to be doing the end cap mod to strengthen the mount to the frame, but am not sure just those two mounts is enough for winching with the other 4 mounts being on the flimsy body mounts.
Newer Frame end:

Older frame end:
 
Got the rear bumper installed, but after driving it found that the bumper was contacting the body on any bumps in the road on the driver side near the fender flare. Was also contacting the body seams on all four side bracing, so I hammered the seams flat. You can see below how much I trimmed the bumper to hopefully stop the bumper from contacting the body. The yellow paint is the outline of the fender flare and body to know how much I could trim.



 
I didn't like how the front bumper was only going to mount with a single bolt on the end of the frame end cap and the two bolts on the side of the body mount, which I do not believe is strong enough for any real winching. I was going to weld in a end cap to strengthen the frame mount, but only having two strong mounts didn't make me feel comfortable with using the winch. I cut two 1/4" plates and drilled three 1/2" holes to mount to the bumper mounts, these plates will be welded to the end of the frame and I will put a gusset on the top and bottom of frame to the plate.
 
Brackets welded on and guessts added after picture.

bumper mounted


Mounted winch, but need to figure out where I want to mount the control box as I do not want it mounted on top of the bumper. Going to look into fitting it behind the grill or extending wires to mount in the engine bay somewhere.
 
Got the control box mounted behind the grill by mouting it to the hood latch support column. Still need to paint the red W black so it does not stand out so much from behind the grill

Painted the grill black and will be painting the new headlights black also when I do the retrofit and only the shrouds will be chrome.

My box from ICON arrived, but sadly it was only the upper control arms and not the rest of the kit. No word of when that will be shipping, was told it would take about 3 weeks when I ordered a month ago so hopefully sometime soon. Not in a real big hurry as I am also waiting for sonoran steel to ship my adjustable panhard bar, extended brake line, diff drop kit, and rear body mounts. My projectors have been shipped so I have that to work on in the mean time.
 
Had a pretty good leak on the drivers side that I attributed to a leaking valve cover gasket. Pulled off the valve covers and was pleasantly surprised with how good it still looked for having 265,000 miles. After finding out the previous owner had rolled the odometer back I was already thinking about a replacement motor, but this one appears to have been taken care of and still runs great.
Passenger side:

Driver side:
 
Icon stage 5 get arrived
These things sure are big


Should be able to start working on the install tomorrow as I have everything now that I need
 
Finally got a chance to work on the suspension with the holidays and was able to get the passenger side all bolted up. Ran into a few issues with the install, the biggest being the ball joint adapter from Icon not seating into the spindle no matter what I tried. I ended up having to put the adapter in the freezer over night and then heated up the spindle and then dropped the frozen adapter right in without issue. The one adapter didn't work no matter what and ended up getting trashed from multiple attempts of trying to install it and then pull it out and is why I was unable to finish the drivers side. The other issue I ran into on the passenger side was that the mount for the reservoir had to be notched in order for it to fit in the holes in the frame the directions said it was supposed to mount to.

Here you can see how much I had to trip to get it to clear. I also had to drill the holes a little larger and I had to remove the washer fluid reservoir and trim the protective panel.


all finished up with new lower ball joint also.
 
Front is all finished and installed toyota lower ball joints, inner/outer Tre's, and 1" diff drop

I got the rear icon shocks installed along with OME 891 coils and sonoran steel adjustable track bar.


for the rear sway bar I used sway bar links from a 2nd gen 4runner which worked out perfectly and saved alot by not going with custom made ones
Old vs. new
 
Giving a go at my first retrofit with Fx-r 3.0
Housing cut out and after sanding

Alignment at 25' inside my shop. This is only with the passenger headlight, so much brighter than both factory headlights on.

Headlights are aligned and just waiting on jb weld to set. All that is left is to epoxy the shrouds on and reinstall the glass and ill be finished. Was not as difficult to do as I had always imagined and thinking I might do another set for a friend and for my truck.
projectors mounted with jb steel stick and then 4 bolts and left to harden before being taken out to ad jb weld around projector and bolts to really make sure it cant move from bouncing driving down dirt roads.

Cut off line as some purple and blue hues in it
 
All finished with the retrofit and I can definitely say it was worth every penny. Night and day difference between the old headlights and the new ones. I will have to get used to the blueish tint at the cutoff line as it is really noticeable on road signs and trees.

Stock output:

Fx-r output:
 
Whew, sorry about the overload of posts, but that brings us up to date on the build from September. Currently I am dealing with a high idle issue in park and neutral that started after the valve cover replacement.

Next on the list is to do timing belt and water pump, build some rock sliders, and build the rear swingout.
 
Looks like you are doing it right so far. Nice. I have really been considering retrofitting my headlights. Your photos might have pushed me to go ahead and do it.
 
wander

Nice looking start on your project. As more of an overlander than a rock crawler (hard to find any rocks larger than a basketball here in Florida) I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
 
michaelj said:
Looks like you are doing it right so far. Nice. I have really been considering retrofitting my headlights. Your photos might have pushed me to go ahead and do it.
Click to expand...

I would definitely recommend it, I was surprised with just how easy it really was to do. The difference is insane also, originally I was just going to get a 20" light bar to mount on bumper, but for less money I was able to get lights that are plenty bright and can be used for driving in town.
 
Very Nice! It's always a pleasure to see a proper retrofit , both for what you see behind the wheel and what others see driving in the opposite lane :thumbsup:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Members online

Total: 188 (members: 4, guests: 184)

Forum statistics

Threads
278,306
Messages
3,554,046
Members
248,016
Latest member
Advally Service

Share this page

Trending content

Back
Top