Echo_Spartan’s Stellar Blue ‘99 Build Thread

[Echo_Spartan]

Hey guys, I’ve been lurking the forum for a little while now and with some convincing from my buddies (99 sr5 highlander and ‘Merica1776) I’ve officially joined the 4runner community!

I picked up this beauty last Thursday for $2133 (weird number, but the owner paid for title registration). Some girl owned it for it’s entire life and sold it three months ago to the guy I bought it from, he only used it a handful of times before needing to sell it because he needed some cash and had too many other projects. So I dragged 99 sr5 highlander with me to check out the vehicle (since he is much more mechanically experienced than me) and we decided it was worth the purchase.

No real issues but two:

1. The fact that the original owner was a heavy smoker and had literally never cleaned the interior of the vehicle before, so it smells like cigarettes and over the years there have been quite a few burns in the interior.
2. The original owner also hit some sort of pole and messed up the front passenger fender. Strangely, the hood wasn’t touched and no frame damage so it should be a easy fix (just pop in a new painted fender, corner light and headlight).

The interior used to look a lot worse, at this point I had already gone through and wiped stuff down once and vacuumed it out.

This was covered by a moldy doorstep mat…

You guys don’t want to see what’s underneath the seat covers

I immediately ordered replacement parts and various initial upgrades/mods that I could start working on.

You gotta start with some stickers!

Nice angle shot

I’m really excited to be on this 4runner journey and I really owe a big thanks to 99 sr5 highlander and ‘Merica1776 (which will be very evident to how much they help me out in the next couple posts), they got me turned onto 4runner’s and continue to help me everyday work on my truck and keep me excited about the future.

 

[Echo_Spartan]

Made my first junk yard run the other day with 99 sr5 highlander and ‘Merica1776 (going to refer to them as “The Crew” from now on to save my typing fingers). I had a pretty lengthy list of items I was looking for, which I honestly had hoped to only be able to find some of them.

Wanted to find (in no particular order):

• Taco Whip Mod
• Carpet (both front and back areas, trying to reduce smoker smell)
• Roof rack end caps
• Right kicker panel
• Sunvisors
• Windshield wiper reservoir
• Headliner
• 96-98 grill (for dat sweet satoshi)
• Center console plastic trim
• Replacement 4x4 shifter leather
• Center wheel caps for front wheels (one was cracked, one was missing)

I got everything except:

• Front carpet portion (which I’m going back for on Saturday)
• Driver sunvisor (same as front carpet)
• Grill (which 99 sr5 is hooking me up with one already, but at the time didn’t find it)
• Headliner (which I’m not actually going to get, just going to steam clean it)

I also stumbled upon a sport hood scoop insert for my future sport hood (some day soon hopefully)

Action shot! (totally not staged)

Initial haul

My right side kicker panel had this gross slime on it that I couldn’t get off, so I just replaced it. Before:

After:

New passenger sunvisor installed and I’m holding the old, gross one

The plastic had been all marred by my shifter and the leather for the 4x4 shifter had been burned through

When I removed them to replace it, it was a lot worse than I thought it was. So since I had to suffer cleaning it, you have to suffer looking at it. (I found pasta, cigarette butts, change, and even a cracker!)

After installing new coverings, much better

Installed new wheel caps

99 sr5 highlander was gracious enough to give me an extra ‘98 bumper he had since mine was dangling at the corner from the damage and I think the fat lip doesn’t look pleasant

‘Merica1776 gave me a new bulb for my turn signal and I immediately dropped it, doh!

This is everything I removed that night from my truck that went straight into the trash (not pictured is my running boards I removed later when it got dark)

Finish up this post with a sweet picture of 5(!) 4runner’s, 2 built 3rd gen’s, my humble 3rd gen, a 4th gen, and 99 sr5’s 1st gen he’s restoring in the back

 

[Echo_Spartan]

Smaller post for this one, and actually catching up to the present. I received some clear corner lights two nights ago and installed them (no pictures) and last night the first four of my 12 packages arrived. In them contained:

• Headlight
• Velcro (for patches)
• Goo gone
• Brake pads
• Duplicolor paint for when the fender comes

I’m still waiting on patches, the fender itself, rotors, T4R.org decal (shoutout to momo75), instrument cluster LEDs, chipped glass fixer, and jack stands. Those should all be arriving within the next few days.

Before replacing headlight:

After replacement:

While replacing everything, I found some of the brackets that the damaged fender was attached to got bent out of shape from the damage. Still no actual frame damage, I just know it’ll be a pain when I go to install the new fender once it arrives and I paint it.

Also went to check my coolant and was startled by crusty coolant on the tube in the cap. After a frantic call to The Crew, my nerves were calmed, especially since the fluid itself isn’t strawberry milkshake material. Need to get all fluids changed soon though, that’ll probably happen next week.

 

[Echo_Spartan]

Reserving this post for future things!

 

[Beaumont67]

Used car dealers & professional detailer's use this stuff, to remove cig. smell & water mold odor, from flood damaged vehicles.
- even works excellent, on basement sewer backup damage / freshens up a house, if sprayed on furnace filters

 

[Echo_Spartan]

Used car dealers & professional detailer's use this stuff, to remove cig. smell & water mold odor, from flood damaged vehicles.
- even works excellent, on basement sewer backup damage / freshens up a house, if sprayed on furnace filters

Awesome! Thanks man, I'm definitely going to have to check that out. I'm in contact with someone on the forum about getting new seats this Saturday, which will help eliminate some of the smell, but anything I'm not replacing (like the headliner), I'm going to have to use this stuff on!

 

[99 sr5 highlander]

Nice! I wish I was this detailed in my build thread...

 

[Echo_Spartan]

Ok guys, it’s been about a month and a half since my last post and I have a lot of updating to do. So much so that I’ll have to break up some of these posts to fit all that I’ve done.

So in my last post I talked about meeting up with someone from the T4R community to get replacement seats since I wanted to help eliminate some of the smoke smell. Unfortunately, after my 2 hour drive, they were a no show and started to screen my calls and never responded back to me again. I don’t want to call them out specifically, they know what they’ve done.

Nevertheless, I started off my modding journey by installing the Tacoma antenna mechanism I recovered from the scrap yard (no pictures of that ). Then went on to install Blue LEDs in the dash because I want a nice blue/black theme with my build.

Trust me, the LEDs look even better in person. The keyring is blue too.

Promptly after the LED upgrade, I received my replacement fender from Ebay that I had to paint. I got the Dupli Color matching paint and got to work.

After five coats of blue and three coats of clear coat it looked...not quite right. I’m very new to painting auto parts, so with the help/guidance of 99 sr5 highlander, we removed the orange peel and polished it up to shape. I also took the opportunity to finish installing the clear corner markers with amber LEDs

I did work too...I just had to take pictures...I swear.

Final product is below, in pictures you can’t even tell it isn’t stock. I was honestly blown away how close it is. When it gets dirty or you really look at it, you can see the imperfections and differences. The shine isn’t quite the same, even when it’s clean. But it looks loads better than the crumpled junk from before.

That’ll be it for this post, I was really happy with the progress I made thus far. This was all done about three days after my last post (like I said, I’ve been slacking and have ALOT of updating to do).

Bonus picture! Got my T4R sticker in the mail around this time too!

 

[MattJakobs]

The paint job looks pretty damn good if you ask me. I just had a flare professionally done and I wish I had gone this route.

I always wondered how close that paint was to Stellar Blue, this makes me want to do my flares with it now.

Looks good and well done on keeping it alive

 

[Echo_Spartan]

Alright everybody, welcome back! In this rather short update I went on my first trip off-roading. While it was by no means “intense” or attempted any rock crawling, I still had a blast as I’ve never had a vehicle that has 4x4. It was so awesome just ripping around the gravel corners with relative ease, even without AT tires.

After a little bit of time, I finally bit the bullet and spent money to rent a steam/carpet cleaner to clean the new carpet I pulled from a junker awhile back and put it in to eliminate the cigarette smell once and for all.

I was under the impression this would only take an hour or two, ended up taking me six hours. But that included taking out the old carpet and seats then steam cleaning the new carpet and seats, putting it back in, and steam cleaning the headliner. It was still quite the undertaking and it ended up being dark by the time I was finished.

I thought I had cleaned out the truck of gross stuff when I first got it...I guess not…

I couldn’t remove the headliner, so I took the opportunity to clean it with the old carpet and seats out of the truck. Below is a picture I took with one side of the headliner cleaned and the other half I hadn’t gotten to yet just to show a comparison.

And while it may not look like a total improvement, this is with the new carpet in. It smells SO much better in the truck and when I get WeatherTechs, the stains I couldn’t get out will be covered up no problem. I also think the stains look more apparent since the carpet was still a smidge damp when I took the photo

That’s it for now, I’m really excited for my next post, I have quite a few goodies I installed that I’m ready to show off.

 

[99 sr5 highlander]

Looks good! I still can't believe how nasty that interior was.

 

[meeceboy78]

great start! cant wait to see more. welcome to the 4RUnner world.

 

[taxed760]

Nice build, looks like you have your hands full and doing a great job with it.

 

[Silver Supra]

Nice work so far. I was going to recommend you just replace the carpet. Mine wasn't quite as bad as yours was, but it was pretty close due to years of dogs riding in it.

Using a carpet cleaner was a great idea!

 

[BeardedUnicorn]

Wow that's looking good. Good luck with the rest of your build and look forward to seeing more!

 

[Echo_Spartan]

So it’s been a long time since my last post, so I will try and bring everyone up to speed since this tale has a rather sad ending.

In September 2017 I bought myself a birthday present in the form of Duratracs, they were marvelous.

Note the T4R sticker

But I couldn’t stop there and did a lift kit install, OME + Bilstein’s (of course) and Land Cruiser shocks up front.

I went out on a couple more makeshift camping trips that school year, which was my last in University. Upon graduation, I had an awesome job lined up in Las Vegas working for a pro sports team (Go Knights Go). So I loaded everything up in my 4runner and didn’t take what I couldn’t fit.

When I got to Vegas, I came to find out that the only parking on the strip (where I needed to go quite often for work) is in parking garages not meant for lifted vehicles with roof racks. So I slowly figured out which parking structures accommodate my rig, even then, it was close.

It’s not an off-road monster, but I’d love to have it as my own one day

Unfortunately, this is kind of where the fun ends. Due to work being extremely time consuming, I didn’t have the opportunity to further build out my rig like I had wanted too nor have the ability to go on as many trips with it. Plus there was the obvious fact that my 4runner didn’t quite start off in the most pristine condition, with all the damage and gross, cigarette-ness; so I felt like there was an inherent ceiling I had in terms of making it nicer.

So when I got a job offer in SLC, Utah; I decided to cut my losses and sell my 4runner. I really loved it, it was a workhorse and gave me the chance to bond with my friends. The 4runner was the exact thing I needed in my life and it’s what sparked my interest in off-roading and cars.

That being said...it also sparked my love of Toyota’s so much that I decided to buy a totally babied 100 series Land Cruiser from my best friend! So when I moved to SLC I flew back to Oregon to get the LC and drove it back. You can follow my LC build over on ih8mud (sorry T4R, I still rep your patch on my headliner proudly).

Here is a final picture of my 4runner the day I sold it. I actually posted it for sale at 8am and it was sold at 5pm, same day. The gentleman I sold it too was the nicest guy from Hawaii, he told me my 4runner was just like the one he had when he was younger on the island and he was a total Toyota freak (in the best possible way). I’m so happy it went to the right place. That’s all for now, thanks for everything guys!