TheeMikeB Build Thread

[TheeMikeB]

i can't have down time either, that's why im waiting for summer break to do mine, don't have gears yet but gonna get nitro 4.88s for sure.

If you order from ECGS they give you two or 3 weeks to send back your core before charging you. So you could order from them, install in a weekend and then ship your old ones back. They even give you return shipping label at their cost. You pay for it but I think it was discounted. They stock and use Nitro gears. I'll even help you if you need.

the truck looks badass mike!

Thanks Josh, my next entries will cover the 3rd I picked up from you.

 

[t4r4life]

If you order from ECGS they give you two or 3 weeks to send back your core before charging you. So you could order from them, install in a weekend and then ship your old ones back. They even give you return shipping label at their cost. You pay for it but I think it was discounted. They stock and use Nitro gears. I'll even help you if you need.

Right on brother! i already started saving so by this summer i should have the funds, i'll let you know for sure.

 

[TheeMikeB]

One day I happened to be trolling classifieds and found a member (The_Josh) selling a complete 3rd w/arb in a 4.88. So we worked out a deal and I came home with this:

So I took it home and cleaned her up:

Now I needed to find a place to put this:

 

[TheeMikeB]

This is where I went a little sideways and kinda f-d up a bit.

I was searching for the best place to put my onboard air and thought it was easiest to locate it under the hood but there is limited space to mount. Best spot I found was on the passenger side fender well. Except this was kinda in the way:

But since I already disabled my ABS and ATRAC I didn't need these things. So I pulled the relays out and went for a test drive.

Drove down my street and back up ( my street is very short) and all seemed fine. Brakes worked so I thought awesome, I don't need this stuff. So I cut it out. Umm we will return to this part later....

I taped and capped off all the wire tips and wound it up tightly and tucked and ziptied the bundle up under well. Then proceeded to install my compressor.

Mounted it here:

Switches:

Install went pretty well or so I thought.... ummm remember the fuses I cut out... uhhh turns out those were actually needed. Next day I went to drive the truck and had no brakes. Seems I didn't test drive far enough, luckily I made a wiring diagram of what I cut out. Turns out the ABS MTR and TRC MTR are needed for the braking system even if you have the ABS/ATRAC disabled.

Soooooooo I didn't want to move the compressor since it was all done, and decided to just wire the relays up directly and not use the pretty little factory box. Then I just used heat shrink tube along the connections and then taped the ever loving hell out of the wire bundle into a nice tight bundle.

You can see it here in this pic, look to the left of the compressor and you can see the green tip of one of the relays. This pic is from later in the build when I was plumbing the lockers up. It is tucked away better that what you see here but you can get the idea.

Next to come is gear installs and front end steering rebuild.....

 

[TheeMikeB]

Started the rear diff install and found my axle seals to be bad... wow big surprise right?

Drum coated with gear oil:

Shaft Removed:

Inner view:

Time for the 3rd removal... diff drained and drive shaft removed:

3rd removed... kind of a pain in the ass by yourself but I got it:

I decided to go with the LubeLocker and ditch the RTV as it's a friggin mess.

Housing all cleaned up and gasket in place:

Side by side comparison... Left is ARB w Sierra 4.88 right is stock 4.10:

Mounted in place:

Note this double drilled flange... it didn't mount up to my shaft and I ended up having to pull it back out and swap flanges with my stock one. I didn't get any pics of the swap as it was pretty straight forward. Although I did do a bit of homework on the PPL and thanks to some emails to [MENTION=70113]ZUK[/MENTION] and his website I was able to get it done. I was going to bring it to a shop but I got it figured out. And got a new parktool TW-1 torque wrench to put in my box too.

 

[TheeMikeB]

Sent my shafts out to a local machine shop and had new wheel bearings, retainer rings, and oil seal installed. Then installed new axle seals in the axle housing.

New axle seal installed using the HF bearing/seal driver kit.

Here is the shaft ready to go.

Installed:

And since I did my homework on here, I did the 'grease test' to make sure the retainer was making enough contact with the seal. As you can see there is enough contact to make a good seal and I felt good about this.

Then one day this was on my doorstep:

And inside was this beauty:

Front clamshell with 4.88 Nitro gears with an ARB

Time to start tearing down the front:

THIS MOTHER F-R took me FOREVER to get out by myself. Its quite a tight fit but I finally got it... and only 2,509,090,387 curse words later.

And the side by side:

 

[BrianSD_42]

Hey Mike .... it is Mike right?

Your thread is awesome. I should have stopped by sooner. I even have the same jack stands ... expensive but made in USA!

I'm glad to see another black 4runner and the paint restoration looked great. I told [MENTION=83885]Dirtyfingers[/MENTION] he could fix a lot of his scratches himself.

Also the stereo install looks sick. I have an Alpine amp and Kappas. You have a Kappa amp and JL components, go figure. I'd like to know what you think of those JL components and what the exact model is if that's OK. I plan to do my DD's stereo next year and I am leaning towards a JL-audio 5 channel amp.

Thanks!

 

[Hepar]

Just went through the whole build. Looks great. I especially like the way the paint restoration went. I know you said it's a wheeler, but that black looks so good shiny!

 

[TheeMikeB]

Hey Mike .... it is Mike right?

Your thread is awesome. I should have stopped by sooner. I even have the same jack stands ... expensive but made in USA!

I'm glad to see another black 4runner and the paint restoration looked great. I told [MENTION=83885]Dirtyfingers[/MENTION] he could fix a lot of his scratches himself.

Also the stereo install looks sick. I have an Alpine amp and Kappas. You have a Kappa amp and JL components, go figure. I'd like to know what you think of those JL components and what the exact model is if that's OK. I plan to do my DD's stereo next year and I am leaning towards a JL-audio 5 channel amp.

Thanks!

Hey Brian... yeah it's Mike, scratches are not too hard to take care of with the right tools. It looked good for a few months but it's pretty scratched up again.

The front speakers I used are JL C2 6.50 CW and the rears are TR525-CXi. I got them both on a scratch and dent sale direct from JL. The sound quality is pretty good although the tweets are pretty bright. In fact I've since moved my tweets lower in the door just above the mid. It sounds much better there but they are still bright. I read somewhere another person who had the Kappa Five said the amp made his tweets really bright too.

I actually had some bad luck with the Kappa 5 amp and I'm on my 3rd one and it died last week. The first one I had was making a buzzing sound out of one channel so I returned it to where I bought it. The second one actually burned up after 5 minutes, and I had to go through Infinity direct to get it replaced. They made good and sent me another and that lasted about 2 years. Last week I got in the truck and all of a sudden i heard a fizzle and smelled something burning... amp dead.

I've decided to ditch the Kappa and i'm going for the JBL GTO-5EZ, it's about the same size but a bit more powerful on the sub channel which will be nice. I think the Kappa was lacking a tad on the sub end.

I think the JL amp for you will work well, JL makes some quality stuff but it's just a bit out of my price range for a wheeler. For a DD it totally makes sense.

Just went through the whole build. Looks great. I especially like the way the paint restoration went. I know you said it's a wheeler, but that black looks so good shiny!

thanks Hepar... it's still shiny but the scratches are back.... some of those trails get narrow.

 

[BrianSD_42]

I can seriously vouch for Alpine amps. I've never had a problem. Very good products. I'm running two of their amps right now.

 

[TheeMikeB]

I can seriously vouch for Alpine amps. I've never had a problem. Very good products. I'm running two of their amps right now.

Alpine is good stuff too, I almost went with an Alpine MRX-V70 5 channel but chose the JBL because the sub output was more... Ill post my findings when I get it installed.

 

[TheeMikeB]

Next step was to swap over the ADD tube shaft and the stub shaft onto the new diff.

The stub shaft was a little tricky to remove but eventually it popped out, I actually stuck a screwdriver in from the opposite and knocked it with a hammer to pop it out.

All swapped over:

And finally muscled back into place:

Ran my airline down and also added in a connection for an airhose to fill up on the trail.

Then for shits and giggles I popped open my old clamshell just to take a peek inside. Since I had to send it back to ECGS for a core I didn't care.

Since I had the entire front pulled apart, I decided to install all new upper/lower ball joints, inner/outer tie rods.

 

[Bandit Runner]

Looks good. Don't know how you managed to remove and install the front diff by yourself. My buddy and I had a heck of a time doing it.

And good job on remembering to swap the stub shaft into the new diff. I know some idiot (me) that forgot to do it, and then couldn't figure out why his 4wd didn't work. Ooops!

 

[TheeMikeB]

Looks good. Don't know how you managed to remove and install the front diff by yourself. My buddy and I had a heck of a time doing it.

And good job on remembering to swap the stub shaft into the new diff. I know some idiot (me) that forgot to do it, and then couldn't figure out why his 4wd didn't work. Ooops!

You get creative and flexible when you work alone and you know you have to get the job done. It was a serious pain in the ass, but I used my floor jack to get it most of the way up there and some brute force for the rest.

That must have SUCKED to realize you forgot the stub shaft. Luckily you figured it out. :bash:

 

[JWaldz]

Yea, I don't see how you muscled your way with the front diff by yourself either. I had someone helping me, and it was still a pita! Lovin the work. 4Runner looks great.

 

[TheeMikeB]

Started the steering components replacement by checking my ITREs, disconnected the OTRE and checked the resistance... they just flailed around and I knew my inners were toast.

Pulled the boot to expose the ITRE.

Stock ITRE removed, I used a pipe wrench and it worked great.

Shot of the rack with ITRE removed:

The IRTEs are the ONLY part that I didn't buy OEM, I just didn't have the budget and I figured these were the least likely to fail as they are less exposed to rocks.

Side by side... OEM Top, NAPA on bottom:

Installed:

Now time for OTRE: Both OEM, old on top, new on bottom.

Looks like the old one had a little more thread adjustment:

LBJs: Top new/Old bottom

Coming up... UBJs

 

[TheeMikeB]

Removed castle nut:

Knuckle removed:

Old UBJ removed, these were a pain in the ass, I did this a year ago and was trying to remember how I actually removed them. I just remember them being very difficult to remove. I had the HF BJ service kit and it still wasn't easy. With the knuckle off the truck it was impossible to get the leverage on the BJ removal tool, I tried putting it into a vice and that was didn't pan out either. Eventually I ended up putting some wood under the knuckle and putting my tire and wheel on top, standing on the tire and using an impact to tighten the removal tool. That finally did the trick. I'm sure there is another way but it gets tight trying to do it on the truck and working inside the wheel well.

I didn't get many more pics of the BJ install as I was having such a tough time I forgot to take pictures. But eventually got it all back together. The first side took for ever but once I figured out the method, the second side went much quicker... but isn't that always the case? Learn one side... perfect it on the other.

Here is the old BJ and new one side by side. The new ones require a bit of 'assembly' which added to the install time. You need to pack the boots with the supplied grease and use the wire seen on the right side to hold the boot onto the BJ.

Again... limited pics as I was by myself and with all the grease I wasn't about the touch my camera.

Since I had the entire front end apart I decided to do my brakes while I was here. I ended up with a set of these evolution pads for free, a buddy had a big box of them and it just happened that there was a set that fit my rig so he gave them to me.

You can see my old ones weren't that bad but I was already here so I did them.

I took the time to clean up my caliper pins as well, they were pretty nasty with dried mud and what not so I cleaned and lubed them and the brakes open and close much better now.

All reassembled and ready to go.

Installed my Spidertrax.....

On the rear too:

Next up... my CBI bumper install.

 

[t4r4life]

i used a HF press, and a big socket, and it was pretty fast getting the UBJ in n out. getting it to unseat from the spindle is another story.

 

[99 sr5 highlander]

Dang dude, that's a lot of work. Looks good!

 

[TheeMikeB]

i used a HF press, and a big socket, and it was pretty fast getting the UBJ in n out. getting it to unseat from the spindle is another story.

Yeah once that f-r was moving it was easy... like you said getting it to unseat was a *****.

Dang dude, that's a lot of work. Looks good!

Yeah it was/is... but it's one of those things... while you are there you might as well do it.

Besides I actually did all this work last April/May when I was home on paternity leave. We had a baby in Dec 2012 and when my wife went back to work I took 6 weeks off. My daughter was on a 2 hours awake... 2 hours napping schedule at the time so guess what I was doing during nap time?