Inheritance Build

[djc1977]

great build...sorry for your loss...I'll be subbing this thread to keep up with the build. Looks great so far!

 

[wslytoy]

About 5 months ago, I bought some 3rd gen specific A-pillar "ditch" light brackets. They attached to the A-pillar via self-tapping screws. The longer it took to get them installed, the more I disliked the thought of putting holes in my A-pillars. So instead I ponied up the $ for some CBI ditch light brackets.
These are very well made, so I was pleased w/ the purchase & I'd highly recommend them if you don't already have them.

I wasn't looking forward to the install, but after looking over the online directions, it really was a simple install. CBI really puts together some good directions.

I went w/ some el-cheapo Amazon special LED's for right now. I mainly wanted these brackets b/c I live out in the county & the stock headlights on these trucks absolutely blow something fierce. Projector retro fits are on the list... I think these lights will certainly help on some of the dark roads headed home.

Since I'm lazy & I hate making a wiring harness, I decided to order 1 along w/ the lights.

There's plenty of wiring... I'll have to trim some of this out when I've got more time to clean things up.

I'm not a real fan of the switch. But it'll do for now.

Stock headlights on low beam

Stock headlights on high beam

High beams w/ LED's on is definitely an improvement.

It's still pretty obvious that my headlights need upgrading in a real bad way.

 

[wslytoy]

Decided to swap out some old bulbs for some LED's. They look really good in pics, but I'll be honest, they aren't really any brighter. I'll be adding some auxiliary lighting to truly help.

Interior wise, they lighting is cleaner... but not really any brighter.

These were purchased from SuperbrightLEDs.com & I bought some interior bulbs for my 06' 4Runner, which are the supposedly the same as 3rd gen dome light bulbs. However, the lights for the 06' weren't long enough. I emailed them & never got a a reply. So I don't know if quality control or customer service matters to them, but I'm less than impressed. I've bought from them before for dash lighting in older Tacoma's & had good results. But whatev's. Just my most recent experience for anyone who was looking to "upgrade".

 

[Road Bull]

Bought a 1 of the cheap stub antenna's off eBay, & I haven't had a single reception issue.

I had to laugh because I just attempted this last week and DID tie a string to the new plug. However. I should have tied something more robust to guide it through, but nooooooooooo... Now I get to figure out how to get it through without. But thank you for taking good pics and highlighting. All the other DIY pics and guides seemed a bit vague to me. I will try again soon.

 

[wslytoy]

Finally got a chance to clean up the wiring to my lights inside the cab. I decided to go w/ a touch sensitive switch. I thought it was snazzy & cool...
Red is off

Blue is on

Finally got fed up w/ the headlights & forked out the cash for some projectors. Since this has already been discussed, I won't go through the process of doing a write up & a bunch of pics. But here are the goods that I went w/.

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I'm essentially copying trd4x4's thread, & you can find all the parts in his thread.
http://www.toyota-4runner.org/3rd-gen-t4rs/213100-budget-build-retrofits.html

I don't know that I'm going to replace my headlights, as mine are fairly clear.
I'll post after pics. Hopefully I'll get to tackle this tomorrow.

 

[Hardizzy]

Finally got a chance to clean up the wiring to my lights inside the cab. I decided to go w/ a touch sensitive switch. I thought it was snazzy & cool...
Red is off

Blue is on

Woah, this is cool. Love the fit too! How do I get these?

 

[wslytoy]

Woah, this is cool. Love the fit too! How do I get these?

I bought this switch about 4 years ago @ Advance Auto Parts simply b/c I thought it was a really cool concept. I've never seen another 1. If I see 1 again, I'm gonna buy it just b/c I love the way it functions & fits.

 

[thunderrunner02]

You may have said this and i just missed it, but what size tires are on it now?


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[wslytoy]

You may have said this and i just missed it, but what size tires are on it now?


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265's for now... I am shooting for 285's on SCS F5's in the near future.

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[thunderrunner02]

265's for now... I am shooting for 285's on SCS F5's in the near future.

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Oh those are the 16" rims?


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[wslytoy]

Oh those are the 16" rims?


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Yeah I'm running stock 16's.

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[thunderrunner02]

Yeah I'm running stock 16's.

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Im running the 15" version of them with 31s and was trying to figure out if it would look good with a 3" lift. The SCSs will look good. I may go with some of those


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[wslytoy]

Im running the 15" version of them with 31s and was trying to figure out if it would look good with a 3" lift. The SCSs will look good. I may go with some of those


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Mine has the largest brakes & came stock w/ 16's, so I'll be staying w/ that size rim. If you plan on upgrading your brakes, may as well go w/ 16's to start w/. The only problem w/ 16+ is the lack of diversity in tire size like there is w/ 15's.

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[ZionXIX]

Just read through your build thread for the first time. I understand your pain and your bond with that 4runner. My younger brother killed himself several years ago and some of my fondest memories are of us driving around town like idiots in my first car. 1996 Volvo 850 wagon turbo. I will never sell that car as long as I live. Too many good memories. Tornado took a good whack at her last year but I plan to rebuild her when time frees up a bit. For now Im just trying to keep my island 4runner on the road.

Anyways Im likin the build, keep it up :car:

 

[thunderrunner02]

Mine has the largest brakes & came stock w/ 16's, so I'll be staying w/ that size rim. If you plan on upgrading your brakes, may as well go w/ 16's to start w/. The only problem w/ 16+ is the lack of diversity in tire size like there is w/ 15's.

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Yea. Id like to upgrade to 16" rims and 285 intercos but idk if its a good idea to do that considering my dad may be giving me his tundra in a couple years when he gets rid of it


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[wslytoy]

Just read through your build thread for the first time. I understand your pain and your bond with that 4runner. My younger brother killed himself several years ago and some of my fondest memories are of us driving around town like idiots in my first car. 1996 Volvo 850 wagon turbo. I will never sell that car as long as I live. Too many good memories. Tornado took a good whack at her last year but I plan to rebuild her when time frees up a bit. For now Im just trying to keep my island 4runner on the road.

Anyways Im likin the build, keep it up :car:

Thanks bud & sorry for your loss as well. It's a very difficult situation to go through, but this certainly helps me cope. Now if I could just find a $$$$ tree.

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[wslytoy]

I'm not going to go into great detail about my projector upgrade, b/c there's a slew of write ups on this upgrade. However, for my specific kit, I am going to let you know the order of parts installation & the correct method to wire things up. I'm not a wiring expert, but I was able to figure this out. Now, after I got everything put back together I figured out why in the hell the headlights were never aimed properly to begin w/. The driver side headlight adjuster screws are fine pitched & the passenger side screws are coarse pitch (deck screw-esque). The passenger headlight is shaky in the mounting bracket, whereas the driver side is firm & solidly mounted on its bracket. So basically to avoid a whole lot of redneck engineering, I just ordered some new headlights on eBay so I could get matching brackets. That's a whole other can of worms. I love ordering something from eBay & the seller claims the item is shipping from Florida, but it ends up shipping from California. :mad2::mad2::mad2::mad2: X2 the shipping time, yay.
Basically this is what I started w/.

A round in the oven, & separation achieved!

Now that things are apart, I can show you how the projectors go in.
Start w/ the large grommet on the back of the projector housing itself.

I drilled & filed out a hole for the projector wiring (bright/dim actuator wiring) so that it wouldn't get pinched by the projector housing.

Next you're going to want to feed the projector into the headlight housing, the 3 tab ring & smaller rubber grommet are next up. The 3 tab ring has a "key" that goes into the groove of the projector housing. It's fairly obvious how it should be fed onto it.

After that, the 1 tabbed ring goes on. Again, it's keyed to go into the grove of the projector housing.

Next, you've got a very unique aluminum nut to thread onto the projector housing the keep it all together.

When tightening said nut, it's best to get the nut on snug & then press the projector in to make the grommets compress so that you can get the nut tighter.

She's in there snug, & it's time to go back into the oven.

Just a snag I ran into... On the passenger side housing bracket, the bolt on the underside of the bracket was completely stripped. It required cutting the bracket & then grinding the head off. The bolts holding the headlights on are those self tapping fine pitched thread bolts & the strip stupid easy. Same style that holds our skid plates in place :mad2::redbrick:

Thank God for a tap & die kits...

Yes these projectors are cheap, but completely forgetting to put a screw in them is pretty silly.

 

[wslytoy]

On to the wiring... I'm no electrician & I thought this would be all relatively straight forward. Some was, some wasn't straight forward at all. The wiring harness has 1 connector that ties into your stock headlight harness & several wires that come off the H1 bulbs themselves. I was a little bit overwhelmed initially, but it wasn't too terribly bad.
This connector plugs into the stock headlight plug. Problem is, there's only 1 so only 1 headlight gets power initially.

This connector is totally unused w/ this kit. Just zip tie it outta the way. However, there is a connector on the wiring harness that would plug into it. BUT, the ballast uses the same connector to plug into the conversion harness.

Since I couldn't figure out how in the hell to get power to the other headlight, I just spliced into the conversion harness at the plug connector & ran some wire to the low & high beam connectors like so...

Got 1 working...

Matching set!

After blowing fuse after fuse after fuse for the high's, I decided to try this...
See this 2 connectors off the bulbs?

Run them like this instead:

So basically, if you plug into the driver side HL plug, splice a wire into the wire that leads to the low beam & run it to the passenger connector(top). Then take the hot(red) spade connector that runs off the HID H1 bulb & plug it into the
high beam(lefts side of the plug if you're facing the front of the truck), & plug the ground(black) spade connector into the ground on the ground connection(right side of the plug).

I tried to clean things up & make it look as "stock" as possible. I drilled a few pilot holes & mounted everything up w/ self tapping sheet metal screws.
Here's the relay set up & drivers side ballast.

And the passenger side ballast.

The brights are ***INTENSE***!!! Hopefully the new housings & brackets will be in next week. I desperately need to get this project buttoned up so I can drive the truck again.
I'm not sure what I'll be doing next... Sliders are REALLY needed, but I would like to fix my driver side fender. My SCS F5 envelope is just about ready to be deposited into my bank account so I can order those. That's the Dave Ramsey in me. Once I get everything buttoned back up, I'll take some point of view pics to so y'all can get an idea of what I see from the drivers seat.

 

[shoota]

My SCS F5 envelope is just about ready to be deposited into my bank account so I can order those. That's the Dave Ramsey in me.

So that's why this build has taken all year lol I totally get it and kudos to you. I brought up lifting my 4Runner last night to the wife and she just looked at me and said "We're not that kind of people". (Meaning we don't spend money we don't have to) Ugh, I hate it when she's right. Loving your build thread, keep up the good work.

 

[wslytoy]

So that's why this build has taken all year lol I totally get it and kudos to you. I brought up lifting my 4Runner last night to the wife and she just looked at me and said "We're not that kind of people". (Meaning we don't spend money we don't have to) Ugh, I hate it when she's right. Loving your build thread, keep up the good work.

Haaaaaaa! The good thing for me is that my wife knew going into our relationship that I'm obsessed w/ college football & I've had a passion for Toyota 4WD's since very early in my childhood. The 1st vehicle I remember my dad having was an 85' blue xtra cab 4WD. I doubt I'll ever have anything too extreme while my girls are still on our payroll. She thought it was unnecessary to put different rims on my 06', but after explaining how necessary it really was... I've got new rims ha!

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