NYC/Upstate NY 1996 4Runner 180k miles, 3" Lift, Annoyingly Tough Piece of Shit $4500
I'll try to keep this short. It won't be.
After getting shitcanned last December, I needed a project truck to keep me from going insane. (I was younger then, and so naive!) I bought this '96 4Runner SR5 in Florida from a kid who swore up and down it had been a treasured family car. It so treasured, apparently, he couldn't come to terms with telling me about the two times it had been in a "little fender bender" until I arrived to pick it up. I bought it anyway, because trucks, and immediately drove it around 3,000 miles back to NYC, via Missouri.
I started with the basics: a too-long attempt to troll Craigslist and T4R to find used suspension parts, when I should have just ordered a kit from Sonoran Steel. I ended up getting yy/yb coils used with about 30k miles on them in Indiana, bought Toytec springs for the rear, and a pan hard bracket all for maybe $200 less than I could have bought everything new from SS. Let me attempt at thrift be your guide: just buy the dang kit.
I did save money in one place, though, by buying a cheap Chinese steering parts kit from eBay. $100 for sway bar links, lower control arms, etc. What a bargain! For the two days I drove the truck around NYC from parking spot to parking spot, I was the baddest boy in Ft. Greene. Then I took off to drive cross-country for a gig in California when this happened in Pennsylvania:
That was fun! Fortunately the just-installed Chinese pot metal lower ball joint exploded as I was coming onto the highway instead of at 75MPH, so I got to experience what it is like to have a wheel come off on the highway, rip out the CVs, and skidder down the road underneath the truck, all without a pesky death incident. I loved when the State Trooper asked me if I could pull over next to the snow bank on the side of the road to get onto the shoulder anymore and I had to explain to him that I didn't have enough torque to push a truck sitting flat on one tire another two feet.
I had the truck towed to a local dealership, where the service tech came back after a couple of hours and said, "We're sorry, but you're going to have to total it. Do you want us to help you call the insurance company?" Joke's on them; I only had liability! But I wasn't about to let basic financial practicality stop me. No! This truck was going to live again. Incredibly, they accepted my offer to repair the 4Runner if I bought a used Tacoma off their lot for their asking price. I could see the look of pity in their eyes as I got off with a great deal: a 2012 Tacoma for the price of a 2015 Tacoma, plus a 20-year-old, barely functional 4Runner. Good thing I live in Brooklyn, where it's easy and inexpensive to park vehicles, simply by paying $60 a day in tickets.
To their credit, the dealership's main tech came out to talk to me, looked me in the eyes, and said, "I get it." No joke, this guy was fantastic. A month later, the truck was back in action with all new OEM parts installed by the tech himself. It even had all four wheels perpendicular to the ground!
Unfortunately, I was still in CA, so my girlfriend took a bus to PA, picked up the 4R, and drove it back to Brooklyn, where she dutifully moved it every day underneath the BQE. She took it on one road trip for a half-marathon up near Bear Mountain so she could use the sleeping platform I'd built in the back. Instead, she got to experience a great new feature of the truck: it causes NY State Patrolmen to threaten to throw you in jail for not having the truck registered properly. She was super happy with me about that, even as I explained that it was a problem with my insurance company, and she gets the cutest look on her face when I bring up that story and try to laugh about it. "Ha ha!" I'll say, and she'll leave the room because she thinks it's so hilarious.
Once I got back, having two trucks wasn't going to work. But I didn't want to sell it, since I'd already kept this thing running far longer than I should have. Flushed all the fluids, put on new valve cover gaskets. I even upgrade the brakes to the 199mm Tacoma rotors and threw in some LED interior lights. So I talked to my buddies at Jalopnik and made them a deal: if you keep this thing away from me for a while, you can do whatever you want with it. Drive it to Canada! Drive it off a cliff! Learn that trucks are just brown station wagons that can drive over rocks! Instead, they mostly used it as a camera car when shooting a bunch of their videos this year, the Jalop equivalent of a Top Gear Land Rover. (The rear roll-down window does make it a pretty good camera car, to be honest.)
But now Truck Year's Andrew Collins is moving to CA with his girlfriend, so the truck's back in my hands. I'd be lying if I said I hate to let it go. By god, please, someone take this truck from me. When I touch it, something breaks. When I leave with Jalopnik it runs perfectly all summer, hums along on trails and 500+ mile camping weekends. We took the 4R and the Taco out to NJ the other day to do a shoot, and I didn't even want to get in the 4R to move it out of the way, because I know it still resents the time I tried to cheap out on parts and is just waiting for my ass to get into the seat to explode itself.
If I haven't scared you away yet, here's everything that's terrible about this truck:
* The paint is bad. No rust except a little weathering on the top since the Florida sun ate through the clear coat, but the frame and body panels are in good shape. But it's been wrecked and poorly repaired a few times over its life. It's a good thing it's brown-grey, because it photographs well.
* The electric system is a bodge job. Andrew couldn't keep it from eating through batteries until he spliced in a kill switch at the terminals, which I'm sure is because he kept leaving the A/C blower on, because I'm pretty sure the blower needs to be replaced so it doesn't just run with the key out of the ignition. The truck used to have an alarm until the owners decided they didn't like it, so they just...cut the alarm out. I have a new fuse box that you could install, but I wouldn't bother unless you splice in a new harness.
* It doesn't have a rear locker, but the 4x4 works fine. Can you believe it? Something works on this truck.
* The front leather seats are pretty ate up. I put seat covers on them with a Baja pattern, so that I could have something to remind me of never being able to drive this thing to desert while I was sitting on the side of the road in the snow.
* There was certainly some sort of murder committed in the bed, judging from the stains on the carpet. I cannot confirm it was a human murder, though, so don't buy this truck presuming there is a ghost in it. It is definitely haunted, but it could simply be haunted by a spectral possum.
I'm asking $4500 because that's what I have into it (in parts only, since lord knows what I've paid in hours), but I'll be frank: I kind of just want this thing gone. It's licensed and legal in NYS and is currently Andrew's daily driver, but I also don't think it's a gem. It's just a stubborn old Toyota that hates me. I'd be open to pretty much any offer that is reasonable, especially if it's going to someone who will appreciate how dumb I am. I guess I'm saying if you make an insulting low offer, but remind me how this is all my fault, I'll probably accept it?
I'm also open to other off-road, camping, and hunting stuff for trade: ARB-style fridges, sliders or camper shells for Taco. Hell, I'd be open to a .22 and the rights to plink rabbits on your upstate land this fall. If it doesn't sell, I'm taking it down to Maryland to a parts manufacturer who is looking to make gear for third-gens, so if it comes to it, it at least has another home than being pushed off the Verrazano bridge, which was my previous plan (as well as attempting to convince the IRS to write it off as a synthetic oyster habitat).
I'll be lurking around the thread if you have questions!
Oh, and for fun, here's a picture of it today being driven by Andrew and his girlfriend to their secret spot where they definitely don't do weird sex stuff in or on the truck.
See? It's an awesome truck...if you aren't me.
I'll try to keep this short. It won't be.
After getting shitcanned last December, I needed a project truck to keep me from going insane. (I was younger then, and so naive!) I bought this '96 4Runner SR5 in Florida from a kid who swore up and down it had been a treasured family car. It so treasured, apparently, he couldn't come to terms with telling me about the two times it had been in a "little fender bender" until I arrived to pick it up. I bought it anyway, because trucks, and immediately drove it around 3,000 miles back to NYC, via Missouri.
I started with the basics: a too-long attempt to troll Craigslist and T4R to find used suspension parts, when I should have just ordered a kit from Sonoran Steel. I ended up getting yy/yb coils used with about 30k miles on them in Indiana, bought Toytec springs for the rear, and a pan hard bracket all for maybe $200 less than I could have bought everything new from SS. Let me attempt at thrift be your guide: just buy the dang kit.
I did save money in one place, though, by buying a cheap Chinese steering parts kit from eBay. $100 for sway bar links, lower control arms, etc. What a bargain! For the two days I drove the truck around NYC from parking spot to parking spot, I was the baddest boy in Ft. Greene. Then I took off to drive cross-country for a gig in California when this happened in Pennsylvania:
That was fun! Fortunately the just-installed Chinese pot metal lower ball joint exploded as I was coming onto the highway instead of at 75MPH, so I got to experience what it is like to have a wheel come off on the highway, rip out the CVs, and skidder down the road underneath the truck, all without a pesky death incident. I loved when the State Trooper asked me if I could pull over next to the snow bank on the side of the road to get onto the shoulder anymore and I had to explain to him that I didn't have enough torque to push a truck sitting flat on one tire another two feet.
I had the truck towed to a local dealership, where the service tech came back after a couple of hours and said, "We're sorry, but you're going to have to total it. Do you want us to help you call the insurance company?" Joke's on them; I only had liability! But I wasn't about to let basic financial practicality stop me. No! This truck was going to live again. Incredibly, they accepted my offer to repair the 4Runner if I bought a used Tacoma off their lot for their asking price. I could see the look of pity in their eyes as I got off with a great deal: a 2012 Tacoma for the price of a 2015 Tacoma, plus a 20-year-old, barely functional 4Runner. Good thing I live in Brooklyn, where it's easy and inexpensive to park vehicles, simply by paying $60 a day in tickets.
To their credit, the dealership's main tech came out to talk to me, looked me in the eyes, and said, "I get it." No joke, this guy was fantastic. A month later, the truck was back in action with all new OEM parts installed by the tech himself. It even had all four wheels perpendicular to the ground!
Unfortunately, I was still in CA, so my girlfriend took a bus to PA, picked up the 4R, and drove it back to Brooklyn, where she dutifully moved it every day underneath the BQE. She took it on one road trip for a half-marathon up near Bear Mountain so she could use the sleeping platform I'd built in the back. Instead, she got to experience a great new feature of the truck: it causes NY State Patrolmen to threaten to throw you in jail for not having the truck registered properly. She was super happy with me about that, even as I explained that it was a problem with my insurance company, and she gets the cutest look on her face when I bring up that story and try to laugh about it. "Ha ha!" I'll say, and she'll leave the room because she thinks it's so hilarious.
Once I got back, having two trucks wasn't going to work. But I didn't want to sell it, since I'd already kept this thing running far longer than I should have. Flushed all the fluids, put on new valve cover gaskets. I even upgrade the brakes to the 199mm Tacoma rotors and threw in some LED interior lights. So I talked to my buddies at Jalopnik and made them a deal: if you keep this thing away from me for a while, you can do whatever you want with it. Drive it to Canada! Drive it off a cliff! Learn that trucks are just brown station wagons that can drive over rocks! Instead, they mostly used it as a camera car when shooting a bunch of their videos this year, the Jalop equivalent of a Top Gear Land Rover. (The rear roll-down window does make it a pretty good camera car, to be honest.)
But now Truck Year's Andrew Collins is moving to CA with his girlfriend, so the truck's back in my hands. I'd be lying if I said I hate to let it go. By god, please, someone take this truck from me. When I touch it, something breaks. When I leave with Jalopnik it runs perfectly all summer, hums along on trails and 500+ mile camping weekends. We took the 4R and the Taco out to NJ the other day to do a shoot, and I didn't even want to get in the 4R to move it out of the way, because I know it still resents the time I tried to cheap out on parts and is just waiting for my ass to get into the seat to explode itself.
If I haven't scared you away yet, here's everything that's terrible about this truck:
* The paint is bad. No rust except a little weathering on the top since the Florida sun ate through the clear coat, but the frame and body panels are in good shape. But it's been wrecked and poorly repaired a few times over its life. It's a good thing it's brown-grey, because it photographs well.
* The electric system is a bodge job. Andrew couldn't keep it from eating through batteries until he spliced in a kill switch at the terminals, which I'm sure is because he kept leaving the A/C blower on, because I'm pretty sure the blower needs to be replaced so it doesn't just run with the key out of the ignition. The truck used to have an alarm until the owners decided they didn't like it, so they just...cut the alarm out. I have a new fuse box that you could install, but I wouldn't bother unless you splice in a new harness.
* It doesn't have a rear locker, but the 4x4 works fine. Can you believe it? Something works on this truck.
* The front leather seats are pretty ate up. I put seat covers on them with a Baja pattern, so that I could have something to remind me of never being able to drive this thing to desert while I was sitting on the side of the road in the snow.
* There was certainly some sort of murder committed in the bed, judging from the stains on the carpet. I cannot confirm it was a human murder, though, so don't buy this truck presuming there is a ghost in it. It is definitely haunted, but it could simply be haunted by a spectral possum.
I'm asking $4500 because that's what I have into it (in parts only, since lord knows what I've paid in hours), but I'll be frank: I kind of just want this thing gone. It's licensed and legal in NYS and is currently Andrew's daily driver, but I also don't think it's a gem. It's just a stubborn old Toyota that hates me. I'd be open to pretty much any offer that is reasonable, especially if it's going to someone who will appreciate how dumb I am. I guess I'm saying if you make an insulting low offer, but remind me how this is all my fault, I'll probably accept it?
I'm also open to other off-road, camping, and hunting stuff for trade: ARB-style fridges, sliders or camper shells for Taco. Hell, I'd be open to a .22 and the rights to plink rabbits on your upstate land this fall. If it doesn't sell, I'm taking it down to Maryland to a parts manufacturer who is looking to make gear for third-gens, so if it comes to it, it at least has another home than being pushed off the Verrazano bridge, which was my previous plan (as well as attempting to convince the IRS to write it off as a synthetic oyster habitat).
I'll be lurking around the thread if you have questions!
Oh, and for fun, here's a picture of it today being driven by Andrew and his girlfriend to their secret spot where they definitely don't do weird sex stuff in or on the truck.
See? It's an awesome truck...if you aren't me.
