Sniv's Custom Long Travel Build

[snivilous]

Update on the beast. To start things off, Merry Christmas to everyone! I got a bunch of goodies from my secret santa :bravo:

And then as far as gifts go that are 4Runner related, my main gift from my parents was some synthetic winch line! My steel line has lots of kinks and is fraying in places so this was much needed, though not very high on the priority list so a great gift! It's 94' of 19,000+ breaking strength 3/8" line

Then I took some pictures as I was playing with the settings on my dad's Nikon D40 DSLR. Yesterday I saw Target has a T3i for $500 which seems reasonable, if I buy a camera it wouldn't be for awhile let alone through Target, though I want to buy something like a T3i soon.

And it snowed probably 12+ inches over the last few days, yesterday the power went out for awhile.

Onto the truck, I have been fairly lazy on working on it. It took me about a week to pull the tranny, which I finally did on Christmas. [MENTION=91423]Asaspades93[/MENTION] has come over a few times to help too which has sped the process up too. Today he came over and we got a lot of work done. I started off with touching up my A-arms and then priming them.

The lower A-arm is definitely not the sexiest thing ever, though the upper is nice. I couldn't/didn't want to spend the time making the inside of the LCA look good so oh well. I did add a sealing plate between the two mid lateral tubes since gunk could get inside and was hard to clean out. Moving on, with the transmission removed we yanked the flex plate--which I'm pretty sure is also the flywheel though it seemed oddly light--and were greeted to this sight of the engine side of the motor/tranny interface.

The brown ring around the crankshaft is the rear main seal. What turned out to be cool about our rigs is there is a rear seal retainer that bolts to the engine and just holds the seal, it makes it super easy to remove the seal as well as install a new one. Here the seal and retainer are removed, we used lots of paint thinner and then some acetone to clean up the inside.

What's kinda weird is the bell housing isn't actually sealed to the engine, there is no gasket or even sealer and there is a drainage port on the bottom of the bell housing even so fluid can easily enter where the starter, flyhweel, torque converter, and rear main seal are.

Between the tranny and engine there is a "sealing" plate, with two halves. Here the upper half is bolted on. I put a layer of silicone on the faces to help seal mud and dirt out even though it's not sealed like that from the factory, but hopefully it'll help keep the area more clean than how it was when we opened it up. The lower plate gets bolted on after the flywheel is bolted to the torque converter.

The tranny is now fully bolted up. Still some plugs and tabs to bolt in. The main issue right now is a bolt between the torque converter and flywheel seems to be stripped, so tomorrow I'm going to buy a tap and try to correct the threads. No idea how it happened, no bolts seemed to want to engage on the one thread. At a minimum I can get a bolt in tight, albeit not fully threaded in but since the bolts are only loaded in shear full thread engagement isn't crucial for a worst case scenario. I'm confident running a tap through will alleviate the problem though.

I'll continue to work on the truck and hopefully have it running in the next few days, though like I said I'm lazy since I'm spending time with the family and girlfriend and snivilous before school. But the tranny is back in and with a new seal! Happy (Early) New Years!

 

[Asaspades93]

I'm sad the like 4 pictures of mostly my hands didn't make it into the post:violin:

 

[snivilous]

Worked on the truck a bit yesterday. Slow progress since I don't feel like working on it. The tranny still has a few things to get done. I went to a hardware store and the bolt for the flex plate to torque converter seemed to be between a M8 and M10 with a 1.25 pitch and O'Reilly didn't have any matching bolts either, so I went to Toyota and it turned out it was an M9 (weird size). So I bought one and will modify it to tap into the torque converter and try to fix the messed up threads and then screw in the other bolt. I bolted on some more parts for the tranny, it's 95% of the way done. Mostly I spent yesterday working on the suspension, I cut some excess pieces off the frame, put some more coats of primer on the passenger A-arms, grinded the drivers UCA welds flush and sand blasted it, grinded the steering linkages and wire brushed them. The heim is still stuck in one of the steering linkages, I tried doing the wax trick mentioned earlier and also heated the joint up with our oxyacetylene and it wouldn't budge so I soaked it in PB blaster before leaving the garage and will continue to do so for a few days. Worse case scenario I will cut the joint out, luckily I have two spare heims with me.

I leave to go back to Utah a week from today. I need to finish painting the suspension, finish welding sealing plates into the part of the frame I cut into, do a lot of grinding and some final welding on the mounts for the LCA and do some grinding on some ugly parts of the bumper where I just cut pieces off with the torch in the past but didn't have time to sexy them up. And then of course I need to finish putting the shifters back together and other miscellaneous tranny/transfer case stuff as well as fill everything with new fluids (both diffs, tranny, engine, transfer case). I also got a new CV from O'Reilly but need to find my receipts to replace the second one, one of the O'Reillys I go to in Utah is retarded and doesn't enter anything online so no where else can ever bring up the purchases from it.

Anyways, Happy almost New Years! Here's a picture from when I first inherited the truck to now.

 

[4Running Daily]

I kind of like the skinnies hahaha

 

[t-man]

It's funny, I was just thinking how much I don't like the skinnies! :-D

 

[snivilous]

I kind of like the skinnies hahaha

It's funny, I was just thinking how much I don't like the skinnies! :-D

The skinnies grew on me, initially they looked retarded but I don't honk they look too bad now. Regardless I'm gonna run wider tires when I get new ones.

 

[snivilous]

Multiple posts! First, here are some pictures from the girlfriend and I finishing up the transmission and some work on the suspension. This is a short and to the point post to get to the main news.

We finished wiring and bolting up all the parts of the tranny.

And then started working exclusively on the suspension. I did two coats of primer and two coats of paint. In retrospect white for the suspension may of looked better and matched the truck.

I also filled in the center of the LCA since it was hard to wash shit out of there.

I did silver paint on everything.

I also tried using the wax trick on the jammed steering heim and no luck, tried soaking it in PB blaster for 4 days and no luck, heated the threaded end until it was glowing and used a 3 foot breaker bar, and even tried heating it up and then dunking just the heim in the snow to shrink it while the threaded piece was glowing. Wouldn't budge.

The heim ultimately had the lubricating pieces melt off, I have spare heims though so didn't really care. This was just a result of conducted heat from the linkage.

So finally I just took the oxyacetylene and just cut the welds off and welded a new threaded end piece in I had from one of the spare heims.

And then I threw on some quick coats of paint on the spindle and frame after cleaning it a bit. It'll last for the rest of the semester, I'll probably make the frame and spindle sexier in the future. I sand blasted/wire brushed and primed and painted the LCAs, UCAs, steering linkages, and steering knuckles. I also filled in some of the frame gaps that were showing and cut and grinded parts of the frame. I also replaced both CVs that had torn boots, and just in general rebuilt everything and prettied it up and put a lot of anti seize on parts.

Now for the more exciting news!

 

[snivilous]

So the exciting story is I finished the truck today, fired up and ran great! My girlfriend and I drove into town, we pulled over a few times to align the front since after cleaning the steering linkages the marks I had left were gone (should of just used a tape measure to know how long each needed to be). Grabbed food and went to the lake to eat.

The suspension looks absolutely gorgeous I think with it properly painted and not just matte black. I didn't want to leave the garage in fear of getting it dirty for once :loco:

Afterwards we decided to try to find some cool pictures since we had my dad's camera. We decided to go do our typical national forest loop behind my property, it's a 3-4 miles loop and nothing difficult, we just wanted some cool photos. Today it's been gusting to 80mph and drifting pretty well, but on the trail it wasn't that bad.

On the last hill though, we were going up it in 4Lo (only section that requires low range) and just started crawling up it. There are three dips to control water flow, and the trail goes in an S shape up the hill, it's not very long but that's why it's steep. We went up past the first dip with no issues, and started going up the second section. As we neared the top of the second section and about to get to the next dip I lost traction in 4WD though due to the packed snow and ice. I punched the brake, but due to a nick on my passenger front stainless steel line the line broke and I lost my brakes. We started rolling backwards, and the engine immediately stalled so I now had no brakes and no power and was sliding backwards down this steep hill and there was a corner about 10 yards behind us.

My reaction was to look in the rear view mirror and try to aim towards a tree or something to stop us without sliding sideways and risking rolling. Out of the side of my vision I saw a tree go shooting by and slam into my mirror, at that instant I figured my fiberglass fender on the drivers side had just disintegrated. Because of the long travel stance my wheel hit the tree and bounced the front end over to the right which pushed the front into the side of the trail and kicked the back to the other side which stopped us.

I got out and checked out the truck, luckily nothing had been damaged. My drivers side mirror had been flipped forward but that mirror has been broken for awhile (since I rolled onto the side last year). All I can figure is the tree hit the edge of the mirror and just missed the fenders but hit the tire since it sticks out so far and is about level with the mirror.

The drivers steering had been disabled, the bolt connecting the steering heim to the knuckle had sheared. Again, luckily (and in a cool way) the bolt had sheared where the threaded section stopped and went smooth (stress concentration here, I explained this to my girlfriend ). Because I have a spacer on the heim to correct for my bump steer, I have a long bolt which after the threaded section sheared off I was able to use the remaining top of the bolt to hold the steering knuckle and linkage together. I figured because the bolt is (for all practical purposes) stressed in pure shear, as long as the bolt didn't fall out I could have steering if I was slow and careful. I used some duct tape to hold the bolt from falling out, and then used a ratchet strap to my upper A arm to further secure the bolt from falling out (down).

I also saw the CV's outer boot looked kinda funky, which was weird but figured the boot had just got caught somehow like how it bunches up sometimes when installing the boots.

At this point is when I also found that the brake line on the passenger side was where I was losing pressure. We tried to call my parents but couldn't contact them, so I started to limp the truck home. Since I didn't have brakes, I would have to rely on low range 1st gear and my emergency brake. I slowly worked my way down the hill, and once at the bottom started going up the previous hill to get home. At this point I realized my CV was blown since I could hear the axle shaft just spinning inside the joint housing. I was 2 miles from home with 2WD and no brakes. I started airing down the rear tires, I took them down to 15psi and didn't lower the front tires since I didn't want the rigged steering having to work more than it needed and since it wasn't driving it wouldn't help much anyways.

My girlfriend got a hold of my parents, and they came over in our 4th gen to tow us home.

It was hard making headway in some spots, though after we switched from the tow strap to my snatch strap it helped since the 4th gen could maintain speed without worrying about jerking us too much. Regardless, the snow was drifting fast so a few deep spots took a lot of work to get through, especially since all I had was RWD and would get bogged down easily if the 4th gen lost momentum.

The previous photos were from the only section we had real trouble with and when we switched to the snatch strap. After getting out from there we had an easy time getting back.

When we got to the parking area next to the highway we found this dude with an old Corolla or something and had to move him so we could get by. My dad and mom went back once I was on the main road to help him though.

When we got home my girlfriend and I pulled the CV before going inside just to see what it looked like. I felt pretty proud that we pulled the CV in 4 minutes (she timed us ), course that's with our shop and her removing the wheel as I was grabbing the tools to unbolt the UCA from the spindle.

I'm not entirely sure what happened to the CV, my guess is that as we were rolling backwards the tire got caught by the tree and the impulse torque from the differential spinning and the tire stopping broke the joint.

The outer part of the joint looks okay, and I didn't really look closely on the inside section. But three of the roller balls were jammed at the end of the housing and three more were laying inside of the LCA.

Cool thing is too, this is one of my CVs I got warrantied and I picked it up yesterday haha. Literally the first trip out and I destroyed it, also my first CV to actually fail and not just have the boots get shredded like normally happens! Anyways, all things considering this was extremely lucky. I had a CV fail which is an easy fix and they have a lifetime warranty (and I had messed up the boot on this CV installing it too!), the steering linkage is just buying another bolt, and then I'll just buy another brake line. I'll have to talk to the guy on tacoma world I got my stainless lines from and just run a stock line in the mean time. But figure all that, maybe a half hours worth of work, no body damage, and I found out my brake line was flawed when I was barely crawling instead of on the interstate driving back to Utah or going down to the flat land where the road is a 10% grade for like two miles and the canyons are super narrow. Also, my girlfriend pointed out that my check engine light comes on when the heater is engaged which should help diagnose that issue. Otherwise, last I knew the rear main seal had fixed my oil leak! Little more work but the truck did okay today and had a fun story :thumb:

 

[snivilous]

So I made it to Utah, turns out the previous issues were just the start of my problems. It sucks... the 4Runner felt so solid and good, then I decided to fix the rear main seal and then everything decides to break.

To start with, I'm pretty sure my torque converter is screwed. After awhile of driving the truck started acting weird, in 4th gear it would pulsate when it shifted into it and the engine would act like it got unloaded from the tranny and then bog down a bit. This was furthered when I stopped, for some reason the tranny fluid was low so I filled it up (it was at the right spot before I started driving and nothing was leaking). And then when I would go to start the truck would act like it bogged down hardcore, once I got to school once the truck even stalled after I put it into drive (not moving, just stopped in gear). I didn't do anything to the tranny besides unbolt it, and everything is fine if I'm not in gear and it shifts fine which leads me to think it's the torque converter. Additionally, mostly at low speeds or stopped in gear I get a grinding like noise which has me worried but not much I can do in the meantime.

Then today when we got lunch my buddy noticed that my drivers side front LCA mount was bent and the shock shaft was bent too...

I'm figuring the side of the tire got hit and bent the mount which bent the shock because the shock didn't want to compress due to the shock angle and resulted in the shaft bending... That's the only reasonable explanation I can come up with since it's a 7/8" shaft.

So that sucked finding that, not a hard fix since I can just buy another shaft and rebuild the shock and then bend and reinforce the frame and mounts. After that I dropped my buddy off and [MENTION=89531]Cartzo[/MENTION] and I started heading back to his place to eat lunch. A quarter mile away while still on campus the front passenger side suspension collapsed for no apparent reason, we were only going about 25mph and I was able to slow the truck down and pull over.

What we found was the steering knuckle was disconnected from the spindle. At first I thought the two inner bolts had rattled loose (weird considering I had torqued and used lock tite on all the bolts) and then Cartzo looked under the spindle and saw all the holes had remains of the bolts left and all four bolts had sheared off.

I talked to my dad and he said they failed because of cyclic loading on the bolts probably. The truck has 160k on it, which isn't a lot compared to some people but since I push the truck hard and with the LT gets pushed even harder it lead to enough residual stresses until all the bolts and alignment pieces failed at once in shear. I'm not sure how to remove the remaining bolt pieces from the outer holes since I can't grab anything and they're grade 8 bolts so will be really hard to drill through.

The CV's inner joint got pulled out of the housing, I haven't looked at it but obviously the boot is totally destroyed at a minimum.

My fiberglass fender also got wrecked and ripped up from the bottom and door mounts. It shouldn't be a big issue to fix it from my fiberglass experience on the jet ski, still sucks since they were $500 fenders.

Cartzo's step dad came up and got us a tow truck.

In conclusion, the new year has sucked ass so far and the 4Runner has been having continuous issues. Though I'm getting the best of the bad luck I guess. On the plus side nothing we've designed and fabricated has actually failed! Unless I get confident about the runner my dad will probably come and tow it home and I'll take the FJ40 back to school during spring break. I don't have enough time this semester to work on it or the resources.

 

[TCMach]

Saw this on FB man. Sucks to hear about the issues. Hope you get them figured out.

Looks like we both have shocks to rebuild

 

[Jmartins]

Sniv on a positive side of things with 2015 starting so bad it means the year can only get better right.
Hope for the best.

 

[4Running Daily]

That's shitty man. Save your coin and search the web in your free time. You could easily find a deal on some Kings.

 

[NoHair]

That sucks!!
I almost said something that you may want to check before.....
So looking at you lower control arm, it looked thick in the LBJ area, and when at full compression the lower arm may be hitting the rotor.
Now seeing the pictures of your rotor, it looks to me like it may have in fact hit the lower arm on the rotor when at full compression, causing the LBJ bolt to fail.
My LCA is much thinner and I know at full compression it is VERY close.

 

[JBurt]

On the bright side if the lbj was going to fail at least it failed at 25mph instead of 75mph

 

[snivilous]

Sniv on a positive side of things with 2015 starting so bad it means the year can only get better right.
Hope for the best.

You have a good point! I'm trying to stay positive. Just sucks that I was gonna focus on school and not modify or work on the truck this semester and then everything starts going wrong.

That sucks!!
I almost said something that you may want to check before.....
So looking at you lower control arm, it looked thick in the LBJ area, and when at full compression the lower arm may be hitting the rotor.
Now seeing the pictures of your rotor, it looks to me like it may have in fact hit the lower arm on the rotor when at full compression, causing the LBJ bolt to fail.
My LCA is much thinner and I know at full compression it is VERY close.

Yea I want to recheck my clearances with the coilover removed. I removed the dust boots because they were rubbing the rotor from the uniball and then I ground on the uniball cup a bit and I thought I had enough clearance though I plan to recheck, and stuff could of moved since I put a few thousand miles on it. You have a good point.

On the bright side if the lbj was going to fail at least it failed at 25mph instead of 75mph

Very true! Despite having bad luck I'm getting lucky, no one has been injured and nothing has been truly catastrophic, knock on wood!

 

[shootmymime]

Very true! Despite having bad luck I'm getting lucky, no one has been injured and nothing has been truly catastrophic, knock on wood!

i think you've knocked on enough wood with that tree last week.

 

[shouldbeasy]

I'll admit my ignorance just to get it out of the way - I haven't read the thread front to back.

Have you considered limit straps?? I am curious how far your suspension cycles vs the shock length - with my extended travel fox shocks a 10" limit strap keeps them in check.

Very shitty deal - I've been fighting the 4Runner bugs for 2 years or so and just now have them sorted to a point where I feel comfortable with the rig. I wish you luck getting your issues sorted. When it's a labour of love you never want these things to happen.

 

[snivilous]

Have you considered limit straps?? I am curious how far your suspension cycles vs the shock length - with my extended travel fox shocks a 10" limit strap keeps them in check.

Yea it's on my list of things to get though other work on the truck has been higher priority so far. I need to get 14" straps last I checked. The suspension is pulling 14" of travel with a 10" shock, though if I modify my UCAs so the uniball doesn't bind I should be able to pull more up travel which I'll probably do in the summer.

 

[snivilous]

My parents came over the weekend to trailer the Runner home, it was plagued by too many issues (pictures courtesy of my mom). I think the point has come where I need either a dedicated daily driver or a dedicated trail rig, and the 4Runner is too nice to be a dedicated trail rig. I plan to fix the issues and reinforce what needs it, and then maybe throw some good shocks in the back and call it good for awhile. The overlaying issue is I push the truck too hard, and it's ultimately not built for that. I modify and fix it more and more every time something breaks, but it's a stock truck that's modified so there will always be a stock part that can break. I built a long travel setup, and used it and pushed the truck hard where a stock A-arm suspension would of gotten wrecked--and then I pushed it even more and started snapping the stock spindle grade 8 bolts, I blew 2 brand new CVs within a week, the steering is getting wrecked, etc. There will always be something that can't keep up with my mods, and I don't want to keep fixing those issues and pouring money in and spending all my time when I have bigger priorities.

I have proven to myself I can design and fabricate strong enough components. I think the time has come to retire the 4Runner as a light-trail rig that is ultimately my daily driver, and start building something from the ground/frame up. I saw a Tacoma for sale in CO for $1000 that was the frame, front/rear suspension, engine, tranny, transfer case, steering, drive shafts, etc. Which would be perfect, I need to find something like that in the future. Nothing is set in stone, just my current train of thought. I like to go fast, regardless of the terrain, and I need a vehicle capable of doing that and that if it comes to it I can leave behind and have it not affect my life and go back for it later.

We were able to just strap the spindle to the LCA so the truck could drive onto the trailer. It'll be easy to fix and reinforce the front, the main reason for taking it home is that the torque converter is almost dead and I don't want to fix that at school.

My parents towed the FJ40 out so I still have a vehicle. Today I took it out during lunch to get some photos and see how it flexes, I'm not gonna take it offroading since it's a restoration project.

Top speed is about 55mph, and the engine red lines around 3000rpm with a 4-speed manual.

So this thread won't have any activity until May probably until I'm back to the 4Runner. And then it'll be a matter of juggling my jet ski addiction, getting the 4Runner to a comfortable point, and maybe start fabricating a truggy. We'll see

 

[aeroneer1]

Unfortunately it's the path a lot of people with sweet rigs have taken. It's tough to have a nice truck and be breakin stuff all the time, then it doesn't run for when you just want to go drive, camp, around town, etc. Two cars is the best way to go.

FJ is an awesome loaner though.