Bought 4Runner V6: Maintenance Item Recommendations?

[luke87gt]

Since you are two wheel drive then you only have the rear differential to change and fill. As far as the grease zerks are concerned you now only have 3. Two u joint zerks and one slip yoke zerk that extends the drive shaft

According to the link below, 2WD does not have any Zerks. Multiple people mentioned it here:

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/maintenance-detailing/28414-07-v8-4x4-zerk-fitting-pics.html

I'll have to climb under the truck and look tonight.

 

[Morphyne]

The manual calls for lithium at the u-joints and moly for the slip yoke. There's a constant debate on the forum here as to whether two different greases are necessary. I chose to use the two separate greases at the different grease points, for whatever that's worth.

I use green grease, but for a terrible reason. Because I have it on hand. Once I use it up I will be switching top mobil 1 only because everything else has mobil 1 in it.

 

[Okie4runner]

Thanks, DR!

 

[luke87gt]

This weekend I went ahead and changed the oil, replaced the spark plugs, and cleaned the MAF in my 2006 4Runner V6. A couple thoughts:

I didn't notice that the oil filter adapter plate drain hole drains to the floor, lol, doh! I should have seen that but wasn’t paying attention to it. I lost 10min cleaning up the garage floor but I know for next time to put a catch can under that drain hole when unscrewing the oil filter.

For the spark plugs, I was suspicious that the previous owner had never changed them. Sure enough, when I removed all six I quickly noticed that three were Denso and three were NGK. After 120K miles, the copper plugs (which have a 30K recommended service life) were pretty beat up and I measured the gap at about 0.065" which is quite a bit larger than the recommended 0.044". Surprisingly the car still ran great. I used the Denso stock replacement plugs for the job. The swap was mostly a breeze.

I can tell a difference in how smoothly the truck idles. However in my opinion, the manufacturer’s 30K spark plug replacement recommendation is probably too conservative. My plan is to replace these plugs after 50-60K in the future given that those plugs still worked well at 120K.

Thanks for all the helpful advice everyone.

Luke

 

[Bluesky 07]

Yes, there's a great write-up on oil changes in the forum and the trick I picked up from it was to use an empty quart-sized oil bottle down there to catch the oil from the filter. You can then just dump it in with your waste oil before you recycle it and have the bottle empty for next time (if it's not empty, it's easy to spill oil if you drop it or it gets sideways somehow).

Many Walmarts now accept used oil filters as well as oil for recycling so there may be no need to throw used oil filters into the trash anymore.

Great writeup and pics about the plugs, thanks. I'm getting ready to do mine, or at least take a look. The dealer I bought the truck from a year ago said they changed the plugs. We'll see.

 

[luke87gt]

Thanks for the link, I'll use the old oil bottle trick next time.

It is nice having the oil filter threaded in upside down from the top. This is the first car I've ever owned with this feature.

Also, this is the first time I've ever changed the oil without jacking up the car, lol. Very nice!