JSwain's ongoing build/wrenching thread

[JSwain]

Hey guys, finally got around to doing something with the sagging suspension and cancer AKA major rust underneath the ole 4runner. It has spent its life up until the past year in PEI, Canada which is as bad as it gets, so it has needed much love and still much more.

Updated with some photos of when I bought the runner...at this point the only thing done was I put some 31" bfg at's on her, and some front/rear springs out of my brothers 96 ltd because I had a broken coil in the rear and the fronts were pretty low.







And here is a picture of said brothers 4runner on the left and mine on the right. He had the OME HD in the back and med. in the front with an ARB bumper and some hankook MT's



Next up I scored a homemade bumper off a local in PEI that was off a 2nd? gen 4runner. He swore it would bolt up but of course it didn't which I wasn't concerned with, so I fab'd up some new mounts and made it my own.



Here is a better shot with a fresh coat of paint & I decided to do the wheels in duplicator gun metal(can't remember the exact paint colour)



After emailing with Steve at SonoranSteel I decided on the SS1.2 with Bilsteins in the rear, but of course with the national backorder on the front struts we came to the agreement on the Radflo 2.0 coil overs. Steve was totally cool and stayed in contact with me the whole time so it wasn't a huge deal and I ended up happy on going with the coil overs anyhow.

First day when the lift arrived and I was like a kid in a candy store, it was packaged extremely well and everything was mint!


Before I got to the fun job of installing the lift I had to take care of the much less fun job of cleaning up my frame, and pretty much chopping everything off the rear axle/fabbing two new coil mounts, 2 UCA mounts, and the pan hard mount due to rust. It took a good 4 days of chopping/grinding down the axle, and then cutting out new metal out of some 3/16 plate to weld up the new mounts. Note that I just have the old pan hard bar temp. mounted so I could line up the new mounting tabs. I didn't take any pics before cutting out the PH/DS coil mount but imagine them pretty much rusted away to nothing, and both UCA mounts were already ghetto patched up from a previous owner.























That is all I have for right now, my laptop is about to die and it's 1AM, I'll post some more pictures tomorrow! Thanks, and before anyone throws it out there I wish I could have just found a new diff locally in good shape and usually I could but in my time frame it just wasn't happening of course, so I had to repair mine.

 

[JSwain]

Next up I had to extend my bumpstops which would have been SUPER easy with the SS bracket to extend them and the bumpstops that he included. Of course though my bumpstop mount was nearly gone on the passenger side and the driver side was not much better, it did however work good for mounting the bracket/bumpstop and getting some measurements so I could fab up a new bumpstop mounts.







After that was all done I finished up the rest of the frame and installed the rear lift along with some new rear lower control arms because my bushings were pretty much done.





Just a side note here I used the measurements Steve from SS gave me for the adjustable pan hard and to the naked eye it looks like the axle is perfectly centred. Thanks Steve!

 

[JSwain]

Next up comes the front, here is what I have to work with



Awesome eh, surprisingly everything came apart reasonably easily, by reasonable I mean using a 1/2" IR impact and a pickle fork on an air hammer lol....seemed reasonable? The only thing that really gave me a bit of a fight was the PS LBJ castle nut was on there like a hot dog on a bun. Impact wouldn't touch it and I broke my oldest ratchet from my first ever socket set on it(of course had 2ft of snipe on er) because I was absolutely filthy and didn't want to run into the house for my breaker bar...which I ended up having to do anyways!

More pics!





Here's how you deal with the rusty bolts that are threaded into something that you don't want to snap, surprisingly I got all 8 out without having to drill/tap which I was extremely happy with, considering there was already one with the head snapped off from a P/O. I basically put the torch on full and set it heating around the base of the bolt until it was hot enough to sear the fluid film/wd40(whichever was closer) when I sprayed(maybe 10 minutes each). It twisted off the heads of two or three bolts but I have a set of the bolt extractors and when heated up/used with my impact it worked awesome and removed the shanks very easily. This was the one part I was really not looking forward to but it ended up working out fine and well worth taking your time here.



I don't have any pictures of pressing out/in the new upper balljoints but I have an Astro Pnuematic ball joint master set which was very difficult to get lined up by myself(pretty sure 6 hands would have made it easier) but once lined up right it worked without a hitch.

Everything got either a knotted wire wheel on an angle grinder, a flap disc, or a grinding disc(and some parts a combo of all 3) before a good coat of primer & two coats of black.









I apologize about the photo's as well, they were all cellphone(I wasn't about to take the Nikon out as the garage was a mess and so was I) and the garage was very dusty from all the grinding. Here is the front all back together, I have some high temp paint for the brakes as well just was in a crunch to get the truck back together.





After it was all said and done I took it for a few spins around the block, rechecked the torque on everything, then booked an appointment with the Toyota dealership for an alignment. They got it all aligned almost perfectly, and it drives absolutely great on the highway...night and day difference. It went from being scary with anything more then a driver in it(even 100lbs and it was brutal) to being absolutely amazing on the highway with upwards of 800lbs in it(had 600lbs of cement bags plus me in it the other day setting up some fence posts)

I will review everything when I get my new tires(33x10.5x15 BFG's) but so far I love the drive on the highway, around town it is a bit stiff but I dropped a few psi in the tires and it made it a lot better, very nice and responsive still at faster speeds.

And of course, here are the finished pictures of the lift:

 

[DizzyDoyle]

Nice job. Can't wait to see some pictures of the 4runner.

 

[JSwain]

Updated with the full timeline up until current. I still have to clean up the skids with some fresh paint and put the front one back on, in the very near future will be some homemade 3/16" plates front to back anyways so I'm not toooo concerned with them.

As soon as I get a gas bottle for my lincoln I am going to do all the bodywork to fix the rust which I already have sheet metal for, and then making some sliders/rear bumper. The build will be a little slow but I promise to keep it updated.

I will say that with the Rad Flo's/LC lift from SS I am very impressed with how it drives for being lifted ~4 inches in the back and just shy of 3 inches in the front. I don't have a rear sway bar on currently but I might play with putting the rear on/taking the front off to see if that will loosen up the front/stiffen the rear, but as is with only the front it still drives amazing. Of course is has all brand new balljoints/tie rods etc. so that helps too...night and day, back to loving the truck.

I will also say that Steve @ SonoranSteel was awesome to deal with, he kept me in the loop no BS and he is obviously a very knowledgable source when it comes to these trucks. The instructions/packaging was to a T, and if you were simply unbolting/bolting in a new lift it would have been VERY easy to do with his kit...mine was a little more to it but it still helped having everything come in one box. Thanks again Steve!

 

[JMunn55]

Looks awesome. I have the same, 2.7 5-speed. My frame was pretty bad and my rear axle housing had actually rotted through. It's all fixed up now though. Still got stock suspension, pretty worn out though.
I'm from Riverview NB, but my grandmother is from the east end of PEI and I spend a couple weeks every summer there. I'm also going to Holland College at the Prince of Wales campus in Charlottetown next year. Where are you from?