intrepidagent
New member
:wink2:Ive been "lurking" here for a while but just recently started posting. With all the great build threads here I thought I'd start one of my own.
Picked up a Toyota Certified '08 SR5 4WD V6 in January 2010 with 34K on the odometer. It was a prior lease vehicle. I'd always admired 4Runners and have previously owned numerous 4WD or AWD SUV's. Here's a few pics I snapped a few weeks ago in anticipation of putting on a few mods last month. Bone stock except the addition of a Yakima Mega Warrior (with the center extension) that we had on a prior vehicle:
Deciding I was going to keep the 4R for some time I decided to make a few mods in order to give it the character I wanted. The truck is for the most part my daily driver. I never bought it with the intent of doing any serious rock crushing although it has and will see some off roading. Just wanted to give it a tougher or more aggressive appearance. I have always liked the more performance oriented SUV's like the GMC Typhoon, Chevy Blazer SS and Range Rover Sport. I would have liked Toyota to put out a Sport Edition with more "Sport". But since they havent I decided to make my own. With that in mind the mods went like this:
Wheels:
I picked up some BBS FJ Cruiser RG wheels 17x8 off ebay from a Toyota Dealer in Florida. A brief scuff up of the centers with 600 grit, 2-3 coats of Krylon "Rust Tough" Semi-Flat Black enamel and they go from this (apologies for poor cell phone pics):
To this:
Tires:
Since I don't do any hard core off roading I wasn't looking for an aggressive all terrain tire. Although I was looking to give my 4R a more performance oriebted look I didn't want to go with a high performance "street" tire either.
I had been pricing BFG Rugged Terrain TA's online, at Sams, Costco and local in a few tire chain stores. The reviews on this site have been great in terms of on and light off road performance as well as road noise. Ended up negotiating a warehouse club price with a tire chain store that offered a low price guarantee. I was undecided about keeping the stock 265/65/17 size or moving to a larger 265/70/17. I know the FJ wheels have a slightly "wider" offset. I couldn't get any feedback or find an posts on the site as to whether the larger 265/70/17's would result in interference / rubbing issues with the FJ wheels so I went with the stock size 265/65's:
Exhaust + De-Badging and Re-Badging:
I looked (and listened to quite a few YouTube vids) as well as reviews on a few boards about a throatier exhaust. Was thinking Borla but wanted to do additional mods and save some coin. I ended up getting a TRD cat back and I'm pretty happy with the result.
I also couldn't understand why the factory ever went with the "Western Style" font for the 4th gen badges (maybe the design team had a memorable week in Vegas at the SEMA Convention) :beer::
In keeping with what I was trying to accomplish I bought two TRD grille badges from eBay and two gen 5 "SR5" emblems. bead blasted the plastic chrome "SR5" badges until they were a matte silver and the TRD (not the colored enamel) portion of the back hatch and grille emblems. Bead blasted the back hatch Toyota Logo and body color painted the chrome hatch surround:
Front End:
Reading threads here and on the Tacoma boards made me want to put a Satoshi style grille on the truck. There are plenty of threads on how to do one so I won't put much emphasis on the details other than mention "Fiberglass, sanding, bondo lots more sanding and then more sanding and paint". I put one of the TRD emblems in the mesh,moved the horns and the temp sensor below the grille area and hit it with satin black BBQ grille paint. The body color needs another coat on the grille surround but that might have to wait a few weeks.
I popped the fog light bezels off and hit them with body color paint as well. The end result is a quite different looking 4th gen from the stock pics:
The day after I took these pics I had the front door glass and back hatch glass tinted to match the side glass factory tint (a 20% film was really really close). There was a mid 20 year old kid who cashed me out and said "nice truck, you don't see many of those TRD Editions". All I could do was smile. :jump:
Planned Mods:
-Hella 4000 Compacts on free floating "through the bumper" type mounts
-Replace lower grille with honeycomb mesh matching the upper grille screen
-1' Front Lift
-Yota factory skid plate
-Remove chrome door handles and paint body color or bead blasted to match the badging (don't ever buy a blasting
cabinet, you'll think everything looks better blasted)
TO BE CONTINUED
Picked up a Toyota Certified '08 SR5 4WD V6 in January 2010 with 34K on the odometer. It was a prior lease vehicle. I'd always admired 4Runners and have previously owned numerous 4WD or AWD SUV's. Here's a few pics I snapped a few weeks ago in anticipation of putting on a few mods last month. Bone stock except the addition of a Yakima Mega Warrior (with the center extension) that we had on a prior vehicle:
Deciding I was going to keep the 4R for some time I decided to make a few mods in order to give it the character I wanted. The truck is for the most part my daily driver. I never bought it with the intent of doing any serious rock crushing although it has and will see some off roading. Just wanted to give it a tougher or more aggressive appearance. I have always liked the more performance oriented SUV's like the GMC Typhoon, Chevy Blazer SS and Range Rover Sport. I would have liked Toyota to put out a Sport Edition with more "Sport". But since they havent I decided to make my own. With that in mind the mods went like this:
Wheels:
I picked up some BBS FJ Cruiser RG wheels 17x8 off ebay from a Toyota Dealer in Florida. A brief scuff up of the centers with 600 grit, 2-3 coats of Krylon "Rust Tough" Semi-Flat Black enamel and they go from this (apologies for poor cell phone pics):
To this:
Tires:
Since I don't do any hard core off roading I wasn't looking for an aggressive all terrain tire. Although I was looking to give my 4R a more performance oriebted look I didn't want to go with a high performance "street" tire either.
I had been pricing BFG Rugged Terrain TA's online, at Sams, Costco and local in a few tire chain stores. The reviews on this site have been great in terms of on and light off road performance as well as road noise. Ended up negotiating a warehouse club price with a tire chain store that offered a low price guarantee. I was undecided about keeping the stock 265/65/17 size or moving to a larger 265/70/17. I know the FJ wheels have a slightly "wider" offset. I couldn't get any feedback or find an posts on the site as to whether the larger 265/70/17's would result in interference / rubbing issues with the FJ wheels so I went with the stock size 265/65's:
Exhaust + De-Badging and Re-Badging:
I looked (and listened to quite a few YouTube vids) as well as reviews on a few boards about a throatier exhaust. Was thinking Borla but wanted to do additional mods and save some coin. I ended up getting a TRD cat back and I'm pretty happy with the result.
I also couldn't understand why the factory ever went with the "Western Style" font for the 4th gen badges (maybe the design team had a memorable week in Vegas at the SEMA Convention) :beer::
In keeping with what I was trying to accomplish I bought two TRD grille badges from eBay and two gen 5 "SR5" emblems. bead blasted the plastic chrome "SR5" badges until they were a matte silver and the TRD (not the colored enamel) portion of the back hatch and grille emblems. Bead blasted the back hatch Toyota Logo and body color painted the chrome hatch surround:
Front End:
Reading threads here and on the Tacoma boards made me want to put a Satoshi style grille on the truck. There are plenty of threads on how to do one so I won't put much emphasis on the details other than mention "Fiberglass, sanding, bondo lots more sanding and then more sanding and paint". I put one of the TRD emblems in the mesh,moved the horns and the temp sensor below the grille area and hit it with satin black BBQ grille paint. The body color needs another coat on the grille surround but that might have to wait a few weeks.
I popped the fog light bezels off and hit them with body color paint as well. The end result is a quite different looking 4th gen from the stock pics:
The day after I took these pics I had the front door glass and back hatch glass tinted to match the side glass factory tint (a 20% film was really really close). There was a mid 20 year old kid who cashed me out and said "nice truck, you don't see many of those TRD Editions". All I could do was smile. :jump:
Planned Mods:
-Hella 4000 Compacts on free floating "through the bumper" type mounts
-Replace lower grille with honeycomb mesh matching the upper grille screen
-1' Front Lift
-Yota factory skid plate
-Remove chrome door handles and paint body color or bead blasted to match the badging (don't ever buy a blasting
cabinet, you'll think everything looks better blasted)
TO BE CONTINUED
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