Red October II

[Red October]

Well, I'm new, but not new. :baby:

This old girl is my first, 1st Gen 4Runner, and I'm pretty excited. Who knows how this will progress, I don't. But it should be fun for me to at least see what I have done to this thing, and if y'all people get something out of it then that's good too.

The story goes something like this. I had a 1996 3rz 5speed, I loved it. It was red. I drove it every day. Then I decided I needed a truck bed. About that same time my little brother exploded his Reg Cab 1st gen Taco, so we made a trade. I got the exploded Taco plus monies, and he got my baby. As a disclaimer, yes my wifey hated this idea, but she went along with it.

...Now for the fun part...

Literally, and not when people just say that figuratively, actually literally, the day after I got home from towing the broken Taco back from Arizona, my buddy texts me this ad for a Red 87 4Runner. The guy wanted $500, it was just a body and frame. I asked wifey what she thought and she must have just been tired and worn down because she was just like "okay, do it," she probably figured that I had more sense than I actually do. Well, I asked if he would take $300, and he said "come get it!" So I did.

 

[Red October]

Don't worry there'll be more.

 

[Hyde802]

Excellent start. Howd the Q do towing? Dont see car trailers behind them too often. lol. :rockon:

 

[Red October]

Haha, the Q is my buddy's lady's ride, which we borrowed in a pinch, and actually it towed like a boss.

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

 

[Hyde802]

Haha, the Q is my buddy's lady's ride, which we borrowed in a pinch, and actually it towed like a boss.

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

Not to side track,,lol but thats awesome. My wife has a 16 Q5 thats been awesome so far! No trailer hitch though..guess it needs one now.

 

[Dropzone]

definitely starting from stratch!
bet that was fun to get up on and off the trailer with out axles.
Done that a couple of times...

 

[Red October]

definitely starting from stratch!
bet that was fun to get up on and off the trailer with out axles.
Done that a couple of times...

Yep, it was a little precarious. We lifted the ass end with an engine hoist and then balanced the front with a floor jack and then slowly, carefully, drove the trailer under/ out from under it.

It is starting from scratch, but that is going to be a lot of the fun for me. This rig has stuff coming from a few different projects. My brother wrecked his 3rd gen Runner, and I got an engine, harness, trans, 1 locker and a complete rear axle to rebuild for it. I found a parts donor for some interior bits and a steering box. A buddy donated a transfer case to the cause, and I had another one for duals. And I had been building a pile of front axle parts for a while. It will be all Toyota, but spread over several decades, haha.

 

[Red October]

I have always wheeled my daily up to this point, so I am really excited to finally have a dedicated trail rig. One of the most attractive parts of this thing for me was the fact that it has some body damage, and a little rust. Its perfect to get beat on and cut up. And I wont have to worry about keeping it too pretty.

Now, on to the ugly. This poor truck has had probably 3 or maybe 4 different suspensions on it. So I had to remove some of the previous attempts. I decided to go with the tried and true Chevy 63's, Ruffstuff frenched hangers and some orbital shackle eyes.

Also cut a bunch of stuff off of a rear axle, then welded some other stuff back on, its the circle of wheeling...

 

[Red October]

Somewhere along the way I found a $25 top. I want to run a canvas topper, but it was hard to say no.

 

[Red October]

...Then I bought a house. Wow, what a time to be alive! It was crazy. Also I had to move this thing, so I got my front axle under way. Its kinda temporary, because there are problems in this front end which will end up being remedied later. But for now its gotta hold itself up and roll onto a trailer.

Gave the knuckles the old 5th stud treatment.

Had the knuckles Zinc plated at work for blings, and made them into an axle. Tacoma brakes. Longfield 30 splines. And an E-locker. Also.

Looks good under the truck, but dang this thing was set up to be tall before. The PO had 14 inch coil-overs in those shock towers, and Im pretty sure his ride height was close to 12 inches over stock, very tall. Those are 14 inch shocks, and they are only showing an inch or so of shaft. :wow:

She's tall, for now.

 

[Red October]

One possibly questionable thing that came to me on this truck is the front suspension setup. I found when I went to get it that it had a Trail Gear 3 link front setup installed. I was a little disappointed honestly, but not enough to stop.

It came with the links and joints, and the frame side mounts all set. They appear to be of a much higher quality than pretty much all of the other fab work on the truck. I hope that indicates a professional, or at least competent installation. The real problem is, I just don't know. Hence my comment about the exceedingly tall previous suspension.

Then just to make it worse, my buddy bought the front axle from the same guy, with the other side of the mounts attached. He took the parts he wanted and sold the leftovers to me for a song.

I'm gonna try to make the most of what's already there. It's not ideal, I would have liked to set up my own front end. But it seems pretty good, especially for what i have into this beast.

 

[Red October]

Then I put it in my tiny new garage.

And then after about a month of moving shenanigans I turned it around so I can get down to business on this thing. And that should get me pretty close to up to the minute, with more exciting things going on every time I have a spare minute to do something to it.

 

[OzSurf]

Lookin good! Good to see a new 1st gen build on here. Keep it coming!

 

[Red October]

It took me a bit of puzzling to figure out what I wanted to do with the front end. The more I looked at it the more work I saw. The frame was tweaked, the passenger side of the bumper was about 3/4 of an inch lower than the driver. the bumper had been tied into the shock towers, but one side was just hard welded and the other side had a tube flange, Wierd!? and there were a ton of tube joints that were only half welded, with open backsides. it looked like way more repair work than I wanted to do.

So I cut it all off.

Then I made some new rails from box tubing, 2x3 3/16 wall and I plated the outside.

Made some fish plates to strengthen the tie in point. But didn't have the right size stock on hand to plate the open ends, ill hafta get to that. Placed my new frame side panhard mount, and steering box.

And set about figuring out how much possible up travel I will be able to use. Unfortunately the steering hits everything first. The tie rod hits the passenger frame rail before the panhard does. It might not be a problem because I may have to place my bump-stops a little lower to keep the panhard out of the oil pan, etc. I wont know for sure until I hang the drivetrain and cycle everything. But for now it all looks really promising. I'm Thinking my 14 inch shocks will be about perfect for the amount of travel I'm seeing.

 

[Red October]

I have also been able to achieve a significantly lower ride height, and I may even be able to get it another inch or so lower. It's about 23 inches to the frame currently. I was shooting for 21, and I still might be able to get it a little closer to that. We will see how it shakes out.

 

[Dropzone]

Looks much better with out the skyscraper height it was
Nice job getting it a bit lower

 

[Red October]

If you cant tell this build is a slow process. I work on it when I have a few spare minutes, and/or dollars for parts.

So I have been doing more things, slowly.

Got me a drivetrain, wooo! My brother wrecked his 3rd gen a while ago, and I ended up buying a bunch of stuff from the wrecked truck, including another e-locker, and a complete drivetrain and wiring harness for a 3.4 swap.

Found a swap oil pan on the cheap, gotta love craigslist.

Also I decided to remove the destroyed inner fenders. They weren't even really attached to the core support anymore, everything was just kinda hanging on, barely. it does make it a ton easier to stab the engine trans in there as a unit tho!

I tore down and cleaned up a pair of cases. Upgraded inputs and outputs, and put them together. And hung them up behind the transmission. Now I've gotta start building some drivetrain mounts.

Cycled the suspension endlessly to get everything to clear at my new low ride height. Dang things are tight in there. But it fits! finally placed shock hoops, and have the engine in the frame where it will live, so I can build new mounts for everything. It is as close to the hood as it can be, so that there is as much up-travel as possible, it is tight!

I am liking the way it sits on 35s at the moment. End goal is to run a larger tire, but Im taking this in steps. Ill get it running and driving/ wheeling and then think about making the right gearing and tire moves.

 

[Dropzone]

What engine and transmission are you running. Obviously an automatic.
Curious as to what kit you are using for the duals behind the auto. Hopefully you to run into some of the issues I have if it’s an a340.

 

[Red October]

What engine and transmission are you running. Obviously an automatic.
Curious as to what kit you are using for the duals behind the auto. Hopefully you to run into some of the issues I have if it’s an a340.

Its a 3.4 from a 99 4Runner, with the matching automatic trans.

I'm using a Marlin MC31 adapter. There is definitely a dearth of information available from Marlin as far as instructions, their site pretty much just says "bolt 'er on up." Don't get me wrong, its a dang nice piece, but this is my first time messing with duals and I had/ have no idea what I'm doing, lol.

In order to install I had to convert at least the crawl box to a 23 spline input to match the trans (I went 23 splines all the way thru). I then had to remove the transmission tail-housing and remove both the rear support bearing and seal, then install the sleeve and seal that come in the marlin kit.

Also of note, the trans/ t-case coupler (internal splines) is a very tight fit. I had to heat it to get it to slide over the transmission output. And the coupler has to be installed with the trans tail-housing off.

Curious what issues you're having?

Edit: just wanted to post this info in case some other poor soul can't find it, like I couldn't.

 

[Red October]

Some more slow progress.

Motor mounts...

Transfer case crossmember/ skid plate. I need to remove the horse-collar style mount plate, it just wasn't going to work. With the way the link mounts are attached to the frame it was really tough to find a place to put this crossmember that wouldn't get in the way of something. And even now there are some things that will need to be moved and adjusted to work.