D Farms' Build thread: "Goldilocks"

[D Farms]

Figured Id might as well start a build thread, to document all the things ive done to my truck. ive got 235k on it, it was my dads and then he gave it to me last year, ive put about 24k on it since last august.



Interior:
DIY LED dome, map and trunk lights.
retrofitted scion xb bucket seats.

Lighting:
Retrofitted fx-r 3.0s with 5000k five5 55watt hids
Turned and machined my own aluminum shrouds
2x55 watt hid spotlights
4x rigid d2s
Custom 200 watt 10" LED light bar, work in progress
40" 400w Led bar with 1080p camera, work in progress

Exterior:
Dorado gold paint.
Blacked out taillights, corner markers.
Satoshi tercel grill
sr5(amp industries/skinny black) fender flares
Steel rear bumper
Front bumper also in progress.
Cut fenders and moved flares up 40mm and back 60mm.
Tubbed firewalls to clear up to 37s before body lift.

Suspension and Tires:
315/75r16 KO2s on 5 stars
Tapered body lift 3" up front 0" in the back
Tundra 5100 shocks on 5th perch with stock springs
Lx 450 springs
Lengthened rear bumps
shortened front bumps
welded steering slip joint
stainless rear brake lines
no front sway bar
2nd gen rear sway links
Regeared to 4.30 from 3.90 and rear Elocker
Made my own elocker harness and circuit

Engine:
ISR mod and 6" deckplate mod
silicone vacuum tubes.
stupid but small exhaust

Current problems with my truck:
Leaking power steering rack, its leaking from the part where the steering wheel connects in.


When I got it:

Recently:

 

[JoeDirt4runner]

Nice, hopefully i'll start building my 4runner by January.

 

[mattman]

what is the landcruiser trans cooler?

 

[D Farms]

Its the transmission cooler from a landcruiser.

 

[D Farms]

So im going to start in order of the mods I did, the first thing I did was I took the roof rack off and the running boards off.

 

[D Farms]

Then I started working on my led offroad lighting. I also plastidipped my grille and badges.

 

[hour]

That's one wild ass LED thing. Tuning in for more updates

 

[D Farms]

After that I decided to put in some hids in the stock reflectors. I got the cutoff to be really clean actually, there was less glare than the stock halogens, but the beam width was always really bad. so then I put in some real projectors hids and they are amazing. I also picked up these bmw led fog lights, they were only 60 bucks, but I never got them mounted, i still have that stupid hole in my bumper. Im thinking about either making some custom corner markers and sticking them in there or mounting them in the grille sort of like a mustang. they arent much of fog lights, but they are super wide so they would just add a huge amount of width to the headlights.
Then I tried to color match my grille, but it was just slightly off, looks really close in the picture though.

 

[D Farms]

So until this point I only gone on one very short offroad trip for about 10 minutes with my truck. I actually made a thread here i think around spring break earlier this year, i met up with a guy from the forum who also had a 4runner and we did this trail called new river/table mesa. it was a blast, also look at that flexage on our 4runners! we both had stock suspension, although his was the 99 tall.

 

[D Farms]

Unfortunately in all the excitement of the trip my lights came unmounted off the front and pretty much got destroyed. So i decided to rebuild them. Im a member of a hackerspace in mesa az called heatsync labs, its free to the public and weve got an entire machine shop, electronics station, laser cutter, and 3d printer, and much more, ive actually got my own 3d printer too, which i like to run out of the back of my truck. anyways i headed down to the lab after the trip and decided to completely redesign the lights into these more box like things.

Basically my lights are double row 5050 led strips in 5000k white, then I used some thick double sided tape to attach them in an array into the boxes i made on the brake. then I lasercut 2d lens profiles to go in front of the leds. since they are 2d the lenses only compress the beam vertically, so i get a nice width but not too much height, and also brighter. I ended up with 3 box lights eventually two 50 watt and 75 watt, all together 175 watts and probably something like 12000 lumens, but spread super wide. then I mounted them all in this frame that I welded and folded out of aluminum, which i then mounted on my front bumper. everyone at the lab told it me it looked like a bull bar and that it needed a winch. the only problem with that idea was that it was mounted to the hood latch support with one screw and two bolts through where the front license plate might go. also i made some covers for the lenses that light up amber if you have the lights on, i think they look badass.

 

[D Farms]

Then I got some of the sr5 black flares, which for one line up perfectly flush with my tires, and two look awesome with the gold paint. i painted the 5 stars graphite, and eventually got around to opening the projectors up and blacking them out too. i also figured out a way to align the projectors to the bore of the headlight perfectly, so its centered in the headlamp the same way as the mini d2s's. i blacked out the tail lights too. also you can see the lights mounted on my bumper in the picture below, i eventually moved them to the roof with my tire and a highlift after the whole gila river thing. oh and i took the tow hitch off as well for more clearance in the rear, and also boosted the back end up about an inch, it was sagging hardcore after 100k miles worth of towing a trailer across the country. I couldnt have made it to the coke ovens with that thing on haha.

Heres a video of the lights at night, through a creepy ass tree tunnel right next to the gila river https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/...lbums/6039798272659397425/6039798272575270210

 

[D Farms]

I decided that i wanted to do a seat swap, the seats had gotten to the point that when i sat down, i could feel the frame poking me. I had remembered seeing some tacoma guys had swapped in the seats from a scion xb, so i went and bought a couple of bucket seats and then, after i had bought the seats, looked more closely at the instructions. they said you could take the roller bearings out and slide the 4runner tracks right on to the seat rails of the scion. THIS WAS A LIE, the track is a lot taller on the scion seats and they were totally incompatible, so after dicking around with that for a while i decided to just cut the feet off the 4runner tracks, went throught about 4 drills before i realized i needed some sort of special bit to get through the steel rivets and spot welds. the next day i went to the store and bought a cobalt drill, i went back home and remembered i had a cobalt unibit sitting in my toolbox! I drilled them out and drilled the feet off the scion tracks and then eventually got them bolted on. I did this all on the passenger seat because i knew there would be complications. I bolted it all in, and tried to sit in the seat, I then imediately hit my head on the roof of the truck, I was crammed like a sardine. I looked back at the thread again, a few posts after the main one he mentions that he is 5'1". so for a while all of my tall friends had to ride in the back, or be crammed in the tall throne installed into the passengers side of my truck. I decided that i could take the drivers seat and mount the tracks right to the body pan, and it worked although some of the bolts were really tough to get to, and it was still 3 inches or so too high, but 2 inches lower than the passenger seats.

a couple days ago i decided to take the passenger seat out and do the same thing, when I noticed that all four corners of the seat were mounted to the rails using these 5 inch long plates! I discared the plates, having to drill through two of the bolts that used a t45 head, wtf!, then I drilled a hole into the rail for the rear mount and made a plate for the front with a slot in it. the slot allowed me to angle the bottom cushion up a bit, which i really dig. and that was that, the seat was slammed, the only thing on a 4runner that should ever be lowered. I havent gotten to the drivers seat yet as I never cut the feet from the original seat off, but ill get to it pretty soon here. I did however take the slightly less worn out passenger seat and make it into a nice office chair. I always wanted to put the front buckets in the rear, it be a 4person runner then.

sorry for the crappy picture for some reason the ones with the flash deleted them selves.

 

[D Farms]

As i mentioned before im always working on the grille, my latest mod is to get rid of the oval toyota symbol, and continue the profile of the grille all the way across, and then of course color match it. if it looks good i might even stick the old block letter style toyota emblem on it. I 3d printed the piece that covers up the old oval and continues the contour of the grill. I think it will probably look best without the toyota block letters but we will see.

Thats an old picture of me 3d printing the back of my truck, man the wiring was mess on that thing haha, look at the amazing water cooling system that uses a nalgene bottle. I designed it from scratch, and yeah its way better than a makerbot, F*** that company.

 

[mattman]

That's some cool stuff you've done there. Nice LED panels!

You gave me and idea to look up a new trans cooler for a Landcruiser from Cameback ... $401 ... too bad so new is not an option - I bet it's a really nice one!

 

[D Farms]

my friend paid 20 bucks for it at a junkyard. the problem is it was too hard to mount, and he ended up selling his 4runner anyways so he gave it to me. but yeah haha 400 is a rip. also its about half the size of the engine radiator so its going to be hard to mount, but ive got a bunch of scrap angle aluminum and access to a mill so it shouldnt be too hard.

 

[DirtyDanno]

Hey D!

Great mods. I got the same color only mine is a 2wd. May have to get together and go for a ride as long as 4wd isn't necessary.

Slowly working my mods.
Got my wheels, need some $$$ for tires.
Got my bilsteins and OME coils, so my "lift" is done.

What would you charge for a plug/emblem to fit in the grill?

 

[zcrew]

Also in AZ, once I get a good start on mine I hope to meet the members in the area. Looking good, I like the creativity.

 

[D Farms]

Hey D!

Great mods. I got the same color only mine is a 2wd. May have to get together and go for a ride as long as 4wd isn't necessary.

Slowly working my mods.
Got my wheels, need some $$$ for tires.
Got my bilsteins and OME coils, so my "lift" is done.

What would you charge for a plug/emblem to fit in the grill?

well it didnt turn out the exact way i wanted, i ended up messing up the chrome and it bubbled up, but I was able to fill it and get the same contour with the piece that I plugged the old hole with. ideally I would just use a non chromed grille and then just bondo the piece in, but it is what it is. I just painted it black for now as i dont have any paint that is close enough to dorado gold.

and yeah we should meet up, infact i was thinking about doing something this weekend if you or anyone else is interested.

im still waiting to save up for my struts and shocks, I got this stupid photo radar ticket, the light turned just when i was a foot away from the intersection and i wasnt paying attention, because the guy in front of me didnt even know that the light had turned green and finally went at the last second after i beeped him. so yeah thats where my 300 dollars for the rest of the lift went.

 

[D Farms]

btw mine is stock with the exception of larger tires, but they are the stock size if you have a 16" rim. and you would be amazed at what this truck can do stock, ive never even taken the sway bar links off and this thing can still articulate like a mofo.

 

[DirtyDanno]

Oh okay. What are you thinking ? What day and where?