December 2004 4ROTM - Luxury

[Luxury]

Trance, glad to help you spend some $$$. I am so happy with how it looks.....which I've got to be honest, is the main reason I got it. One thing I am a tiny bit concerned with is the hole for the threads in the shackle isn't exactly centered. I'm going to measure how much it is offset and maybe contact WARN. I don't want to even try and deal with Pepboys. I put a placeholder pic for now, and later I'll update this post to include a pic of what I am talking about. Update: I included the pic below and measured that side A is approximately 1/8" wider than side B.

Thanks everyone for a great month as 4ROTM. It motivated me to try and get a lot of mods done despite a hectic holiday month. There is lots more in-store for next month......and the next.....and the next! Thanks again for everyone's input.

 

[LuvaYota]

I am so used to checking on all of your latest mods and the pics/ research behind them (reminds me of me WAY too much) that I think we should have a regular Luxury Mod thread. It won't be as fun having to search around to find them as they are completed.

BTW I have been anticipating seeing the new SE hood on you rig. Have you decided on paint color of the scoop yet? JMHO but I hope you go with black.

You've had a heck of a month, good job

 

[LeeRunner]

The rear aluminum piece looks very high quality! Luxury is it a strong piece of trim if you maybe rub furniture or a heavy box will it dent or scratch?

 

[MSU4Runner]

Mesh

Finally got my mesh insert installed yesterday. It didn't take very long, just some patience cutting the material accurately.
Only one small problem slowed the process: the 3rd gen. front logo has the middle vertical oval raised. This kept me from using one solid oval piece. Instead, I had to cut a clearance hole in the big piece of mesh, then cut a smaller oval to fit over the raised part. The small oval also had a screw hole that holds the logo on the grille. I am very pleased with the results. Thanks to Luxury for hooking me up with a free piece of mesh.

This picture isn't the best (it was taken last night in the garage) but you get the idea:

 

[Luxury]

I am so used to checking on all of your latest mods and the pics/ research behind them (reminds me of me WAY too much) that I think we should have a regular Luxury Mod thread. It won't be as fun having to search around to find them as they are completed.

BTW I have been anticipating seeing the new SE hood on you rig. Have you decided on paint color of the scoop yet? JMHO but I hope you go with black.

You've had a heck of a month, good job

Thanks a lot. I really enjoyed having my thread on the homepage. It was so easy to access and it was also cool to be able to see who was viewing my thread. Not to mention, the thread got a lot more feedback. Don't worry, I'll continue to update this thread. Hopefully, I'll still get some input from all of you.

I am leaning towards the black hood scoop now. I'm going to see how much it would be to include it in the paint-job, so it will match. But if it is much at all I will order a pre-painted scoop from Toyota and sell this grey one to someone on the forum. It just doesn't feel right to put it on my truck that doesn't have any grey on the exterior.......but I think it would look good with someone's grey cladding.

The rear aluminum piece looks very high quality! Luxury is it a strong piece of trim if you maybe rub furniture or a heavy box will it dent or scratch?

I don't think it will dent very easily because it is a pretty thick piece of aluminum. But aluminum can be pretty ductile, so I imagine it might scratch. If it scratches too much, I'll just purposely scratch it more to create my own brushed aluminum pattern and not worry about it.

Finally got my mesh insert installed yesterday............. Thanks to Luxury for hooking me up with a free piece of mesh.

Your welcome. Glad to see it worked with your 3rd gen as well. It looks great.

 

[Luxury]

I'm contemplating doing this. Click Here to go to the website where I found this pic. Or maybe I'll try and put some of my debadges back on in this location. I like the clean look of no badges though, so we'll see.

 

[Luxury]

Sorry I didn't get back to you all sooner, I was in Mammoth. I mainly shoveled snow, but did manage to get in a tiny bit of boarding. Didn't take my 4runner, but there was a brand new '05 SR5 4wd that lived there. I was going to take a photo, but besides being sick-as-a-dog and shoveling like mad, the photo would have been solid white. You couldn't even see the outline of the 4runner, all the cars were more than completely buried. This amount of snow was such a pain-in-the-ass.

The pic below is of my girlfriend and I, posing for a pic, while we were digging a path to our condo. To give you an idea how bad it was, there is actually an '05 4runner buried in the background and an FX45. And this picture is before it dumped a few more feet and before the roof unloaded onto our cars and walkway. My dad's Explorer with 4wd and chains kicked some ass in these conditions. The girl with the new 4runner had 4wd & Michelins said she hated them in snow/ice compared to the "large tires" she has on her '95 4runner. Personally, this experience only solidified my view that I will never buy another truck or suv without 4wd. I helped out tons of cars without it and it was a total PITA.

 

[sharp4runr]

gawd, if I didn't see a side mirror in the pic I'd think you two were on top of Everest!

 

[Luxury]

Yeah, it was coming down consistently hard. But, I feel kinda dumb bitching about how the weather ruined my trip, after driving by the mudslide in La Conchita. Because of the same storm those poor people lost their houses and their family members.

 

[Luxury]

A couple posts back, I posted a pic of a Hilux Surf that put a TRD badge on his roof-racks. It got me thinking........and I realized that I have 2 T's and 2 D's from my LIMITED badges that I previously took off. With the addition of the 2 R's from the 4RUNNER badge, I was able to create two TRD badges. I tried them on in a bunch of locations and decided to leave them off for now. I'm just too happy with the clean debadged appearance. My favorite was placement A. What do you think?

 

[TranceKrayz]

well it's about time you did something new!

I like C!

 

[Jason B]

Not bad. I'd say C if anything. Maybe move the letters a little closer together as well.

 

[Luxury]

well it's about time you did something new!

I like C!

.......that's due to lack of funds because I quit my job :eek2: :rocker: I'm going to try and get some mods done that don't require much $$$. I may even end up trying to sell my Sport hood.

C was pretty cool too but it did remind me of the SR5 badge (because they are the same length).

 

[tkr128]

I like C too...!

 

[Noloc]

C definitely looks much better than the rest.

 

[4RunningGuy]

C definitely looks the best. And thanks to you and your thread, I ordered a few stuff from Carson Toyota. They actually gave me the best price for the cig/ashtray combo! My local stealer wanted $95, the best internet price I could find was $65, and Carson Toyota gave it to me for $60. :bigok: Anyways, thanks again. This tread was very useful!

 

[Luxury]

While we are on the topic of badges and emblems, I'm still thinking about the painting my remaining emblems black. Sac State came through with some great pics of his Black Pearl badges that were discussed earlier in this thread. He wasn't able to post the pics from the computer he was at, so he emailed them to me and I am posting them for him. Sorry it ended up being a day later. CLICK HERE to go to a thread that was just recently started asking about the Black Pearls. Here are the pics of Sac State's sweet 4runner. Isn't it amazing how different two 03 Black 4runner's can look? I am purposely posting the pics as large as I can so that you can see the badges as good as possible:

 

[Luxury]

......and here are Sac State's other two pics of the front and sides:

 

[toybox]

Hard to tell how they will look on other colors. They blend in on black and they may have a different effect on other colors, especially the lighter colors.

 

[Luxury]

Hard to tell how they will look on other colors. They blend in on black and they may have a different effect on other colors, especially the lighter colors.

Definitely. We originally discussed the black pearl's on PAGE 8 (assuming 15 posts/page). There is a link there to 4route's thread where the black badges stand out a lot more on her blue 4runner. The pics don't seem to be up there anymore though. I think every color and lighting situation is going to be drastically different. Especially with the pearlessense (<-- how do you spell that word?) in the paint. Sac State and I discussed the effect of the color via email yesterday.

Luxury: .....The rear badge pics look great because of how the emblems almost look grey just like your cladding. It's probably just the lighting and photo, but I especially like that aspect. Kinda hard to see the side badge, but I guess that is sorta the point of having black ones. It's crazy, the back badges look grey, the side badges look black, and the front badges look silver. It looks like the rear round symbol is still chrome......or is that just the lighting?

Sac State: .....yes, the black is deceivingly shiny. When held against a silver background the emblem takes a greyish black appearance. Both Toyota emblems are that way as they have a silver background............ I have since removed the back 'Toyota' lettering and replaced with a black 'i-forceV8'.