My 1998 4Runner thread

[gh25_]

Hi everyone, I decided that I would start a build thread for my 1998 SR5 4Runner.

Bought on Jan, 24th 2023 with ~196,000 miles

2WD SR5 1998, Evergreen pearl
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Exterior mods:

- Jason Burtman JDM Spoiler

- Clear side markers, turn signal lens, and tail lights w/ all LED's

- TRD style grill with RW&B badge

- 16'' 2nd Gen Tacoma snowflake wheels w/ Falken Wildpeak AT4W 265/75R16

- Bushwacker fender flares

- Borne-off road 1'' wheel spacers

Interior mods:

- Kenwood double DIN stereo

- SRQ Fabrications billet ashtray switch panel

- 1999+ center console swap

- 1999+ upper console swap w/ scangauge integrated door

- Toyota MR2 steering wheel w/ e-shift buttons & Rav4 airbag

- SRQ Fabrications billet mirror arm w/ gntx-455/461 mirror
Suspension:

- King 2.5 ext. OEM performance front coil overs

- King 2.5 OEM performance piggy rear shocks w/ adjuster

- Camburg 1.0 Uniball UCA

- Front primary durobumps, 3.5in rear durobumps

- OPT Offroad rear upper & lower control arms

- Overland customs adjustable sway bar links (rear)

Maintenance:

- yes

Engine mods:

- Airaid intake tube

- S&B drop in performance filter

- OEM TRD aluminum Oil cap

- LCE Lightweight 5vz crankshaft pulley

- 00+ Airbox & MAF / wiring swap

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Wanted upgrades:

- Tundra brake upgrade (199mm)

- cat-back exhaust

- TC LBJ uniball conversion

- Magnuson TVS1320 5vzfe supercharger

- Custom rear bumper with a 2'' receiver integrated

- E-locker swap

- new speakers & tweeters in front and convert rear speakers to 6.75in

- front window tint

- New stereo with steering wheel controls

- SR5 Sport seats

- Durobumps secondary front bump stops
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So, this journey started not too long after I got my first job. I was a late bloomer and didn't get my license until after I turned 18 (I am 20 at the time of writing this). So, I had learned how to drive and I was driving my family's 03' AWD Honda CRV. great car. It also isn't a truck. It was also not my car so a month or so after I started my job I decided I wanted to save up for my very own first vehicle! I was leaning towards maybe an old ford ranger. Then I changed my mind, I was thinking about an older ford explorer... nope.. still didn't really like that. Then I wanted a 2nd gen Nissan frontier since my buddy has a 1st gen and I was thinking we could be frontier buddies. But, still nope again. Then it caught my eye. 1st gen Tacomas. Man did I really want a Tacoma. I quickly saw the prices for those and was like nah I don't know about that haha. Then I saw the 3rd gen 4Runner. I always liked SUV's but I really liked how the 4runner was a perfect balance of body on frame & solid rear axle truck. but a full cabin. So. then the saving began! I literally saved every single dollar of my paychecks and slowly but surely they stacked up and I had a decent wad of cash and I could start actually looking at some for real.

This one was the second one that I went to looked at in person. A 1998 SR5 evergreen pearl with about 196,000 miles on it. By now I really wanted a green one. This guy had it up for 5,250 on offer up, had a simple description of just a few things that have been replaced. New A/C compressor, alternator, plugs & wires, and new front rotors and pads.

So, me and my buddy go and meet this guy at his place and I am a little nervous on how this guy is gonna be, so far he seems nice from the texts. At this point I haven't even talked price my plan was to go check it out, see if I like it and if I do then we talk money. So, we meet the guy and turns out he's actually a really nice chill guy, also an off road guy but he goes to the desert. We saw his full on pre runner toyota pickup build out front. So I ask my questions, look over the truck, test drive (lol the guy just threw me the keys and said go ahead). Get back from the test drive. So far everything looks great. The body is in great condition, zero dents all the panels are straight, etc. Seems very mechanically sound. No strawberry milkshake or anything alarming. Only downside was that the paint wasn't doing so hot but I was like oh well it's bound to get scratches anyways. It was driven by his daughter who went off to college and now he doesn't need it anymore. He got it from his cousin for her. Long story short he's been trying to sell it since 2020 but since its a 2WD no one bought it since everyone wanted a 4WD at the time. So between January of 2023 and then he just drove it around sometimes so It didn't just sit and also to advertise. Now time for the negotiation. On his offer up he had it up for 5250 but on the sale sign on the truck said 5,000. So My first offer was 4 grand (bit of a lowball I know) But, right out the gate the truck had bald tires and the timing belt was done last at like 98k miles so it was also due for that soon. I would also want to address the leaky valve covers, lol. classic. So 4k was a little too low for him so he said 4750 my counter offer was 4500 and we shook hands on that. I gave him the cash and he gave me both keys and the clean title in my hand.

And there I was. On January 24th, 2023, A proud new owner of a evergreen pearl SR5 1998 Toyota 4Runner, I was psyched. The best part of this story was also that I didn't tell my parents. Suprise! They found out later and were actually proud. Thanks Mom and Dad.

 

[gh25_]

first pics!

Here's some pictures of her with me filling her with gas for the first time! Nothing compared to how I felt right now, with my own truck I bought with my own money! The truck had some 31.5x10.5x15in tires on them so it was higher than anything I had driven before. I felt so cool haha

 

[gh25_]

More pics!

Haha heres some more pics of my truck at my friends house after we had gotten back from rowland heights. I took all my friends for a ride that day, they were also stoked, and confused they didn't know I bought a 4Runner. My truck had the SR5 cloth moon mist interior, something I would come to really appreciate! Also something I didn't realize was also rare from what I heard? I know most pre 1999 4Runners had the brown tannish interior, which I didn't really like, I don't know what it is but I just don't like that tan color. The interior on my truck was actually not bad. There is only a couple tears in the drivers seat and the passenger is in excellent condition, and the rear bench seat looks almost new. All of the other things looked pretty good. It actually had some great rubber floormats in already that I still have in it and a really nice weather tech big mat in the back cargo area. Score!

 

[gh25_]

Had to leave

Shortly after that day I had to leave on vacation to Texas to go see family out there, I was happy but also sad I had to leave my 4Runner so soon lol. 2 weeks and I was back at home. First thing I did when I got home was... can you guess? Take those sinking running boards off of course :heh:
It looked so much better! At this point I only had about 800 bucks left so I couldn't really spend any money yet on stuff. Only free mods for now. One of those other free mods I did was spray painting my Toyotas center caps black. Now we're talking. Also, something I forgot to mention in the previous post about the interior was the stereo. Since the guy I bought it from spruced it up a little for his daughter he installed a Kenwood DPX503BT stereo for her. Of course it stayed in the truck, and I have a sweet stereo! Having that stereo was actually huge for me. In the Honda CRV it had a regular stereo, and I could only listen to AM because the FM channels always were static for some reason. It didn't have an aux and the only way to play your own music thru it was to get a aux to cassette tape doohickie. Lame. It was so nice now to be able to play my own music! I use the stereo everyday, love it.

 

[gh25_]

Ordering parts!

While I was in texas I bought some of the first maintinence parts for my truck since I have recovered more now with my paycheck. First things I bought were of course those infamous lower ball joints (and associated hardware), and a brand new Denso radiator along with new upper, lower hoses and hose clamps.
These items were on my must do very soon list as the radiator was all old brown and discolored, just waiting for strawberry milkshake to happen. I also wanted to do my LBJ's before I even touched dirt with it, just some piece of mind y'know. And don't worry, I watched and read plenty of fourms. OEM only for the LBJ's, I didn't cheap out. I didn't actually get to install those parts right away it was about a week or two before I Did it since I needed to use my buddies jack stands and jack and torque wrench. In between then I decided I wanted some ditch lights for when I go off roading at night if I do since my stock headlights suck balls.... lol I ordered some nice rago fab. brackets and some amazon special 36 dollar amber LED's. and got a harness from o'reillys. Lol the brackets costed more than the lights, but i guess that's how it goes.

 

[gh25_]

pictures

Heres some pictures of when I got the lights finally installed and working. That was my first ever project I did and it took way longer than it should have. But I was learning. For some context, I have never worked on cars or anything before this so me and working on this truck is all learning experiences! But its all fun to me and I been loving it. I have a background in MTB's and wrenching on them for a couple years prior so I have good mechanical skills which transferred & helped with me working on the truck.

 

[gh25_]

Switch

The reason why it took so long to get together was actually the wiring for the switch lol. I didn't like the ugly switch that the harness came with so I had to do a little custom work to get the setup I wanted. On my left side of my dash by where the fuse panel plate is there is a lot of blanks and so I got curious and popped on out and I had an idea. I found the fog light switch that comes in the I believe 1999-2002 4Runner and I bought one from my local Toyota dealer. Since the switch on the wiring harness that goes to the relay is 3 wires and the toyota switch is a 3-prong switch I just cut off the harness switch and made a spade connection with the 3 wires and voilah! it works! Best part is that it looks OEM too, also cool that it has a little light in it. Easy to see at night when I need it offroading. Lol I got the polarity wrong on the switch and when I first finished it I was upset that they didn't work, flipped around the wires, still didn't work. Got back home since I was doing the job at my buddies house was going to bed and then watched a video on 3 prong switches on youtube and then went back out to the garage and re-arranged them and at last! they worked.

 

[gh25_]

More cool lights

The day after I finished with the lights was when some more lights came in. lol. I ordered full clear lenses and LED's for the front. Amber leds for the blinkers and the running light. This definitley transformed the look for me. I love the clear lenses. The old faded orange for sure made the truck not look as good, the clear lenses was like a refreshing cup of water.

 

[gh25_]

Maintence time!

Now the day after those clears and LEDs was when I did the radiator and lowerball joint replacement. First time that I actually did some real stuff on my truck. Good starter jobs. Also replaced the coolant fully with some fresh green stuff. First we did the LBJ so we didn't have to do it during night but unfortunately that didn't go to plan. Of course. Everything was going smoothly until it got time to take off the tie rods. Both of the pitman pullers I bought weren't working on the tie rod so we resorted to the hammer method. Before performing the task I watched a video by phorunner those of you who watch yt will know who I am talking about. His videos are great but in this particular instance his suggestion to get the tie rods off ended up making me have to get two new tie rods. :nono:. In his video he says that if you don't have a pitman puller than you can just turn the castle nut upside down thread it on the tie rod and then hammer away until they drop out. After this job I learned that if your going to use the hammer method the way to get it out is to hammer the SIDE of the joint you want to come out. What ended up happening is that I got one side out and then the other wouldn't come out and we had to gride the old BJ off. By that time I realised that by using the castle nut to hammer on top of the tie rod shaft I severely mushroomed the threads :nono:. So then I had to make a rush run to o'reillys to get two new tierods. The local oreillys only had one of the tie rods I needed, I didn't want to go cheap on them either so I bought the second most expensive ones at about 50 bucks a pop. Then had to get the other one shipped and thankfully it arrived an hour later. Then popped the new tie rods in and boom good to go. I didn't plan on having to do that but honestly glad I did, now I had new LBJ's and tie rods. Sweet!

 

[gh25_]

More clears!

All that stuff I did happened earlier in the year February and March. Now its April and I bought some taillights online and they came in. I put them in along with my LED lights as well. I put some red, orange, and white LEDs for the tails. Brake, blinker, and reverse. I was very happy with how the clear tail lights looked. I was all clear now! Well except for the 3rd brake light, but whatever lol. My truck looked so good now with the leds. The leds are so sharp and crisp compared to the halogens. Loved the led look. Also around this time I hit a little milestone. 198,000 miles! Lol ignore the abs light on the dash. When you use a led 3rd brake light the abs doesn't like it and gives you a abs light on the dash, stupid haha.

 

[RodrickHeffley]

I guess that I'll be the first to say welcome.

Looks like you're off to a good start here, nice to see the basic maintenance being done before anything super major.

If you're looking for a good "starting mod", I'd suggest checking out the 99+ cupholder swap, it gives you a taller center console as well as some better cupholders than the ones in the dash.

 

[gh25_]

Wheels and tires!

By now I needed to address the tire situation on my truck since the rears were egregiously bald. It also didn't help that since I didn't care about the tires I would do dounts and burnouts any chance I got hahaha. At that time it was during our crazy rain season of early 2023 and I was drifting every turn and corner when I had the opportunity. Also spun out a few times :laugh:. The fronts were okay but the tires in general were crappy so I wanted new tires anyways. I started saving for some new tires at this point. I knew what tire I wanted. The General Grabber AT/x. My dad has a 2021 ford ranger tremor and those are the tires it comes with and so far the experience has been excellent with them, crazy tread depth, good ride, long lasting. In the few years he has had the truck we have gone across the country multiple times with them. Lots of road trips. I saw they also had a white letting on them which I also wanted! First I needed wheels though. I wanted to get a good deal on some wheels and I searched for a little at first I wanted to get the 5 spoke limited 16in wheels but I wanted something a little different so I decided on something else.

I went with some of the 2nd gen tacoma snowflake wheels! Most of the limited 4runner wheels I could find were in rough shape so I opted for some tacoma wheels instead. I got a pretty good deal if I say so too. scoured offer up for a couple weeks and found a good listing. All four of those wheels with the center caps for 150 bucks. I think thats pretty good. They were overall in really good condition. There was a couple chips on the rims but they are barely noticeable unless your studying the rims lol. I spent 2 hours cleaning them up and got them sparkly clean. Waiting for new tires! Since I'm bumping up to a 16in rim size I decided that I am going to go with a 265/75R16 tire size. I also read that was the biggest tire you could go on a stock lift without any rubbing issues. Now, I needed to keep saving for those tires. I am able to get a deal on the tires since my family is good friends with a local car shop. It was still going to be about a grand for the tires though, so I saved away.

 

[gh25_]

Bits of maintence.

Lol I forgot to mention I also did a oil change first thing when I got it. OEM filter from toyota, and some Valvoline 5w-30 full synthetic. She purrs like a kitten!
After I bought the wheels I also did a rear diff oil change. Lol I didn't have a 24mm socket at home and I needed a 6-point socket since the oil drain and fill plugs aren't super tall bolts so a 12-point was slipping. No hardware stores or auto parts stores had it by me. Not even home depot or anything. I had to go to a lowe's in Irvine to get the socket. Oh well. Now I have one! I also ordered a transmission mount from toyota since I happened to catch a glimpse of it when I was underneath doing the oil change a while before and I could tell it looked like it could use replacing, and it was easy to do! Got a big fat piece of wood and used the hyd, jack jacked it up a bit from the pan got the bolts loose and put the new one in. Ez!

 

[gh25_]

I guess that I'll be the first to say welcome.

Looks like you're off to a good start here, nice to see the basic maintenance being done before anything super major.

If you're looking for a good "starting mod", I'd suggest checking out the 99+ cupholder swap, it gives you a taller center console as well as some better cupholders than the ones in the dash.

Hey there. Thank you for the welcome! And yes! That's what I was focused on before I started doing other things. Wanted to address a lot of the mechanical parts and wear items of the truck before doing "performance mods" haha. Preventative maintenance first! I have done quite a bit of work now at this point of time but I'll be adding a lot more of that to this thread if you follow along & see. Now I can get into the sick stuff like the shocks Ill be getting soon :happy:
Cheers
- GH

 

[gh25_]

New tires! Finally!

April 15th was the last day I had with my old wheels and tires. I finished them out good by doing lots of drifting and dounuts in the dirt while I was in Temecula on a little camping trip with my MTB team.

and..... voila!

 

[gh25_]

WOW that really transformed the look. I went from those crappy old tires to some brand new ones with that aggressive looking tread and sidewall. I think tires has got to be like #1 top things that change the look of your truck. When I saw it being backed out from the shop when they were done I was smiling so hard because of how good it looked. The 2nd gen tacoma wheels and the new tires man. I loved the white lettering look too, they look cool when they are spinning! and it lets everyone know what tires I have hahaha. So Stoked!!

Lol unfortunately for some odd reason my vacuum break booster started going bad literally the day I got the tires on. Not even joking it's like when I got the tires on it started going out. I had driven it 150 miles from Temecula back home that previous weekend fine. The tech. at our friends shop noticed the faulty brake when he was backing it out of the bay and he told me that he thinks the brake booster or the master cylinder is bad. I drove it home and it was scary because It was intermittent. I would be going fine and then I would use my brake and the pedal would be rock hard and not do anything. It ended up just being the brake booster and I went back a couple days later and 200 dollars later they put in a new one for me. Phew.

So... now we know what's next. Time to go off-roading!

 

[gh25_]

off roading...

First time ever off-roading. Nothing crazy just hit up maple springs up to the top of Santiago peak 5,000 feet of elevation at the top. There is lots of little side lines you can hit. I wasn't expecting to make it up a whole lot, especially stock, but I was suprised! She did really good. Flexed hard on some of those side to side whoop lines. I even jumped er' a couple of times off the water bars coming down :bounce: haha. Surprisingly smooth!

 

[gh25_]

Cleaning that dirt off

Lol I gave it a very thorough clean the day after, even cleaned out the engine bay so it was sparkly clean. A few days after I also gave the interior a very good cleaning too. Took the seats and center console out scrubbed the carpet & seats. I used simple green on the whole interior. Can't beat it, I think it's my favorite thing to clean with. It's strong, smells great, and isn't harmful to you, or the stuff your cleaning. I actually have a good friend who said supposedly he used it as mouthwash one time haha. Even after the simple green fully dries it leaves the fabric on the seats and carpet still smelling good. My friends always ask how my car smells so good. Every time I open one of my doors it just smells good inside. It's pretty subtle too so your nose gets used to it after a little but when you first step in it's nice!

 

[gh25_]

Airaid intake tube!

After wandering youtube a video popped up on my recommended feed and it was the ISR and deckplate mod. The video explained what both of those were. I was more interested in the ISR mod since it was explained how you could really hear the intake sound more when you did it, and I wanted that! The video I watched the guy just used some aluminum tube and kinda did a garage mechanic job well call it. It functioned like it should but didn't look great. I forgot that I actually knew about the airaid intake tube but I forgot about it. A guy I met at a truck meet had it on his supercharged 3.4 mini Tacoma and I asked again what it was and then bought one. Took about 15 minutes to get it on lol. Easy install. Then I went on a drive after that and lets just say my mpg was probably like 5 lol. It sounded so good! I was and still am extremely happy with it. It frees up so much space on that side of the engine. Also makes getting those coilpacks out super easy! My OEM intake tube was all cracked so it was 2 for 1!

 

[gh25_]

Fast forward to early June now. I started going to the junkyard to see if I could find a OEM bottlejack and the spinny guy that works for getting the jack up as well ass get your spare down. That was one of the things my truck didn't have and I know the OEM bottle jack isn't the best but I figured a jack is better than no jack, and toyota designed clever space for it under the rear seats so why not. Scoured the local junkyard one day and found one in pristine condition with the spinny guy! I was curious how much it was going to cost though I was hoping it wouldn't be like 40 bucks or something crazy. Nope. 12 bucks for the jack and the spinner. Sweet!