Peevedkitten
New member
Warning, long story before build info. Feel free to skip down to the next post for the actual build guidelines.
I've been lurking and doing research for months on 96-02 T4R's. Thursday (7/24) afternoon my wife texts me a craigslist posting for a '96 4runner for $1k. The catch is, it's 500 miles away. I call the guy and he still has it and I convince him that I will buy it and to pull the ad.
He tells me it's got a bad fan clutch bearing and it needs a battery. I figure it's no big deal and picked up a replacement fan clutch and a battery from the parts house. I figure at $1k if I don't hurry he might sell it before I get there. I left work an hour early to hit the parts house on the way home. So, my wife and I load a bunch of tools in the car along with our 2 dogs and hit the road. The plan was to just turn and burn, get up there swap the fan clutch and get home.
The plan went horribly awry!
What was supposed to be about a 5 1/2 hour trip each way turned into a brutal 9 hour one way death march. The dogs were extremely unruly, the wife had to pee every 5 minutes and we hit a ton off construction and traffic. We left home by 5pm and arrived at 2 am. Luckily the seller had plans to be up and awake extremely late so he was fine with us coming in so late. Unfortunately for me by the time we got there I was so tired I wasn't thinking clearly.
When we got there things went from bad to worse. It wasn't the fan clutch (I may have misunderstood the seller) It was the fan pulley bracket and it was bad. The fan was wobbling probably an inch off center back and forth. There was no way I was driving it home without fixing it first. I should have waited and come back the next day before deciding to purchase it, but I was so exhausted I just wanted to get it done. I put the money down, he signed over the title and I agreed to come back the next day to get it.
We drove to the nearest town and found a hotel, I'm pretty sure as we were checking in somebody got shot across the street. It was pretty damn sketchy but by this time it was 4 am and I had just shut off mentally. The dogs did not do well being in a hotel and I got maybe 45 minutes worth of sleep. I got up at 8 and started calling shops and parts places. By 10am I knew I was in deep trouble, nobody had the part and I had no way to get the runner home.
I called my buddy back home and told him what was going on. He is eternally my hero, he dropped what he was doing and agreed to drive 400+ miles right then and tow it home for me. We just had to rent a tow dolly and wait for him to show up. Since we had several hours to kill it seemed like a good idea to take care of what we could before picking it up. So we decided to go to the DMV and take care of the title transfer...
When I started filling out the pink slip I realized I had screwed up. It wasn't a '96 as advertised, it was a '95. If I hadn't been so tired and had some light to check it out I would have noticed. It was to late for that, I own it now. I get into the DMV and find out the registration is past due and it cost me double was I was expecting to transfer the title.
My buddy shows up around 4pm and we rent the dolly, which was a horrible experience by itself. The U-haul site had no issues giving us the dolly but the system at the rental place showed we couldn't tow it with my buddy's truck (V8 F150 with a 10k hitch). We had to call corporate and get them to approve it so the dealer would rent us the dolly, that took almost an hour and a half. We get to the guys place, load the runner on the dolly and start heading home around 6:30 pm. Traffic and construction are horrid, the dogs and wife are exhausted, whiny and I'm awake only through the sheer power of caffeine. About 150 miles from home my buddy calls me and says he's to tired to keep going and is only 45 minutes from home. He says he'll head home and bring the runner to my place tomorrow.
He heads home and about half an hour later I have a blowout on my Driver side rear tire. It's 12:30am and we're 120 miles from home in the middle of nowhere. Roadside couldn't get anyone that had the capacity to carry both of us, the dogs and the car. The tire is (luckily) a run-flat, so we limp it to a truck stop 5 miles down the road and call my brother in law who came and took us home.
We took my truck over there today and ended up having 2 new rear tires put on the car. My buddy had to work and said he'll bring the runner over tomorrow (7/26). So now, I'm the extremely tired owner of a pretty beat to hell '95 4runner. All of my research over the past couple of months has been pointless since I was only considering 3rd gens and haven't read into 2nd gens at all.
I apologize in advance for the plethora of questions I'll be asking. I promise I will try and search out all the info I can before I ask about things. Let me start out with this though;
Does anyone have the part # or a link to the damned Fan pulley bracket? I need to fix that so I can get this thing smogged.
I've been lurking and doing research for months on 96-02 T4R's. Thursday (7/24) afternoon my wife texts me a craigslist posting for a '96 4runner for $1k. The catch is, it's 500 miles away. I call the guy and he still has it and I convince him that I will buy it and to pull the ad.
He tells me it's got a bad fan clutch bearing and it needs a battery. I figure it's no big deal and picked up a replacement fan clutch and a battery from the parts house. I figure at $1k if I don't hurry he might sell it before I get there. I left work an hour early to hit the parts house on the way home. So, my wife and I load a bunch of tools in the car along with our 2 dogs and hit the road. The plan was to just turn and burn, get up there swap the fan clutch and get home.
The plan went horribly awry!
What was supposed to be about a 5 1/2 hour trip each way turned into a brutal 9 hour one way death march. The dogs were extremely unruly, the wife had to pee every 5 minutes and we hit a ton off construction and traffic. We left home by 5pm and arrived at 2 am. Luckily the seller had plans to be up and awake extremely late so he was fine with us coming in so late. Unfortunately for me by the time we got there I was so tired I wasn't thinking clearly.
When we got there things went from bad to worse. It wasn't the fan clutch (I may have misunderstood the seller) It was the fan pulley bracket and it was bad. The fan was wobbling probably an inch off center back and forth. There was no way I was driving it home without fixing it first. I should have waited and come back the next day before deciding to purchase it, but I was so exhausted I just wanted to get it done. I put the money down, he signed over the title and I agreed to come back the next day to get it.
We drove to the nearest town and found a hotel, I'm pretty sure as we were checking in somebody got shot across the street. It was pretty damn sketchy but by this time it was 4 am and I had just shut off mentally. The dogs did not do well being in a hotel and I got maybe 45 minutes worth of sleep. I got up at 8 and started calling shops and parts places. By 10am I knew I was in deep trouble, nobody had the part and I had no way to get the runner home.
I called my buddy back home and told him what was going on. He is eternally my hero, he dropped what he was doing and agreed to drive 400+ miles right then and tow it home for me. We just had to rent a tow dolly and wait for him to show up. Since we had several hours to kill it seemed like a good idea to take care of what we could before picking it up. So we decided to go to the DMV and take care of the title transfer...
When I started filling out the pink slip I realized I had screwed up. It wasn't a '96 as advertised, it was a '95. If I hadn't been so tired and had some light to check it out I would have noticed. It was to late for that, I own it now. I get into the DMV and find out the registration is past due and it cost me double was I was expecting to transfer the title.
My buddy shows up around 4pm and we rent the dolly, which was a horrible experience by itself. The U-haul site had no issues giving us the dolly but the system at the rental place showed we couldn't tow it with my buddy's truck (V8 F150 with a 10k hitch). We had to call corporate and get them to approve it so the dealer would rent us the dolly, that took almost an hour and a half. We get to the guys place, load the runner on the dolly and start heading home around 6:30 pm. Traffic and construction are horrid, the dogs and wife are exhausted, whiny and I'm awake only through the sheer power of caffeine. About 150 miles from home my buddy calls me and says he's to tired to keep going and is only 45 minutes from home. He says he'll head home and bring the runner to my place tomorrow.
He heads home and about half an hour later I have a blowout on my Driver side rear tire. It's 12:30am and we're 120 miles from home in the middle of nowhere. Roadside couldn't get anyone that had the capacity to carry both of us, the dogs and the car. The tire is (luckily) a run-flat, so we limp it to a truck stop 5 miles down the road and call my brother in law who came and took us home.
We took my truck over there today and ended up having 2 new rear tires put on the car. My buddy had to work and said he'll bring the runner over tomorrow (7/26). So now, I'm the extremely tired owner of a pretty beat to hell '95 4runner. All of my research over the past couple of months has been pointless since I was only considering 3rd gens and haven't read into 2nd gens at all.
I apologize in advance for the plethora of questions I'll be asking. I promise I will try and search out all the info I can before I ask about things. Let me start out with this though;
Does anyone have the part # or a link to the damned Fan pulley bracket? I need to fix that so I can get this thing smogged.
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