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Project Need More Doors gets a new engine, aka 4.3runner

Time for another update.

I got the exhaust all welded out, O2 bungs in and O2s wired up. I had to extend the wires for the post cat O2 as its now on the other side of the truck. No biggie.

Started in on getting the new crossmember subframe setup installed. Had to add the upper link mount on the pass side before it gets welded into the truck. Its pretty nerve racking doing all this work and hoping it all fits well.


The CNC plasma seems to work well and this all went together well.


It took a bit of work to get these installed. I had to use a jack to hold the one side in position while I checked to see if it was square to the frame rail on that side and also level. I had to lightly massage the drivers side to fit well. Got one side tacked in, then the other, then I was really able to look at the fit. No pics of this process as I was too busy trying to figure things out. Once the two sides were in I could cut the crossmembers that go between them and start bolting things together into one unit. However, you can't predict everything in solidworks and I wound up having to cut a large chunk out of the forward crossmember to get the front d-shaft to clear it. I added material inside the tube and did my best to beef it up. I definately learned some things if I ever go this route again!

Some pics of it mostly done.


T-case crossmember. I even added a spot to drain the doubler.


Something I didn't think about, but its kinda cool from a sliding perspective, is that the t-case skid is not about as low as the gas tank. I know it seems low, but the t-cases can't go much higher without body and frame mods, and the crossmember sit about 3/8" lower than the drain on the t-case front output. So I can't really make it higher without a ton of work. It has about 19.5" clearance currently on 35s.


Link geometry looks good.


Its all welded out now and ready for paint. I actually took it for a drive around the block and everything seems good. It seems smoother and quieter than before so thats good. I didn't get to go far as it was already 10pm and I still don't have my tags from the DMV. Where are my tags Ca DMV?! I guess I get to go to the DMV to find out.:mad3:

Kevin
 
Well that didn't take long at all! Maybe 15-20minutes to get everything over here.

Hope you enjoy! I'll post some updated pics soon. I have another project going that I should post a thread about soon.

Kevin
 
Looks awesome. Kinda refreshing to be able to read years of work in 30 posts.:laughing:
 
Chkn said:
Looks awesome. Kinda refreshing to be able to read years of work in 30 posts.:laughing:
Click to expand...

shhhh let people like me read it, forget that whole time thing, and feel bad for taking forever with my projects :flipoff2:
 
I know this isn't really a hardcore offroad build, but hopefully someone gets an idea or motivated by this thread.

Let's see if I can post a pic again.
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Kevin
 
Ghetto Fab. said:
I know this isn't really a hardcore offroad build, but hopefully someone gets an idea or motivated by this thread.


Kevin
Click to expand...

It makes me wish I could have kept my 90 4runner that seized a cam in the 3.slow. I really wanted to do a 4.3 swap in it. I bet it scoots along pretty well with that power plant in it :grinpimp:



Keep up with the updates! It is a sweet rig :smokin:
 
Wulf said:
It makes me wish I could have kept my 90 4runner that seized a cam in the 3.slow. I really wanted to do a 4.3 swap in it. I bet it scoots along pretty well with that power plant in it :grinpimp:



Keep up with the updates! It is a sweet rig :smokin:
Click to expand...

Its better than it was, but I wouldn't say it was fast by any means. The 4.3 makes good torque down low, but needs more hp for the highway. On top of that the 4l60 has a steep overdrive gear. It'll do 70 on the flat highway no problem cruising along at 2400rpm, but you hit any sizeable hill and it kicks down to third. In town though its much better, still no racecar, but better. I'd like to try a cam at some point to see if I can get it to flow a bit better at higher rpm and hopefully increase the horsepower output a bit. Thats a ways off though.

Kevin
 
Ok, so at this point I still didn't have my tags and I was about 5 weeks away from leaving for a Moab trip, or so I thought.

I finnally went into the dmv with my smog and registration receipt. Found out another retarded CADMV thing. Normally they send you a registration renewal by mail, you pay that online, get your smog and they automatically send your tags to you. That's what I was waiting for, I had already paid and gotten a smog so I figured my tags were in the mail. Nope, if you come in to pay for whatever reason you have to go back in to get your tags, they don't automatically send those out.🙄

Long story short, I got my tags finally!
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And started driving it to work legally for once!
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Kevin
 
So after that I finished up a bunch of stuff to get it ready for the trip, all the while China was under lockdown from the wuhan.

Skidplate painted and installed.
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Put my steering box brace back on.
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Flexed it out to make sure the driveshafts all worked well. Its never ramped well. I need to work on this part of it.
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I did some other small things like get the map lights above the rear view mirror fixed and working right. I also got all the bumper lights installed and wired up to the relay box.

And then the corona virus hit and our trip to moab was cancelled. Well at least I'd have more time to work the bugs out of the 4runner.

I started working from home and watching our two kids while my wife continued working full time.

We did take a local trip to the top of Cuesta grade with the kids. It was dirt, has some great views of SLO and Morro Bay, but its not hard, just a dirt road.
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After that it pretty much just sat. I'd drive it if I was headed to work or picking up food, but once it started getting hot I'd rather drive my big truck with AC.

Kevin
 
Finally last weekend I was able to get out on a trail with this thing. We have a few local trails. None of them that hard really, but still good for a day trip when you have nothing else to do. It can get very hot out here and there is little shade. Luckily we had some weather coming later that day and that helped to cool things off. It was really a nice day out there! I brought my two 6yro boys with me to give mom a break at home. I didn't get any good pics though, having to watch the kiddos and leading the run kinda kept me busy. Everyone was more than happy to socialize so it made it hard to keep the group moving along.

Lunch stop near the top of Pine Mt.
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Looking towards the Machesna wilderness area. It was surprisingly green for this time of year.
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Looking north over the mountains.
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We went a bit further, but my kids were pretty much done at this point so I found a turnaround spot.
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Of course everytime we stopped everybody got out to chat.
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A good run for something local and a good group, 7 toyotas and one Jeep. We're all getting excited for the trails in the Sierras to open. Everyone is tired of being home.

That brings this thread up to date for now. Hopefully the next update will be some real wheeling somewhere! I still have some projects to work on for this conversion. I want to get the AC system working which will make driving this in the summer more appealing. I still need to get a permanent winch for it also. I still need to make a fan shroud and I want to change up the positive battery cable/charging cable setup. I've also started a truck camper build that I'll have to document at some point too. There is always something!

Kevin
 
I've been waiting to take the 4runner out and things finally lined up to make that possible. We scheduled a trip to go up to coyote lake on the 18th of june and luckily the trail opened on the 15th. This was a fairly significant trip. Not only was it my first time wheeling with the new drivetrain, it was also the first time I had to pack all of us with our camping gear in the 4runner. Stuffing everything for a family of four for four days and three nights into the back of a 4runner is no small task! We made it though.

Of course I didn't have the chance to pack everything till we offloaded from the trailer. Its stuffed!
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And sagging. To be honest it was sagging before it even got packed, but now it only has an inch of uptravel.
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We wheeled in anyways. I did not get any pics of wheeling, because........family. With the family its hard to get out and get pics.

Campsite at coyote lake. Even had the solar panel to help power the fridge!
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Kids got to try fishing, but sadly we didn't see a fish all weekend.
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We did some hiking and got up on the ridge behind the lake to get this shot looking down. Notice the peaks off in the distance.
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Overall the 4runner did pretty good. The new drivetrain worked flawlessly the whole time. It actually has decent power up at 8000ft elevation on the paved roads. Its crawlability was good with good control, but I'm surprised first gear low low didn't seem lower than it was. What it really needs is more ground clearance. We got hung up a few times on the low gas tank skid and slammed the rear bumper multiple times. With the amount of weight we were hauling I should also probably upgrade the front birfs. I'm still wheeling on stock birfs, although I had a full set of spares with me.

I need to work on packing for these trips and organization. I basically packed by putting all the heavy hard stuff on the bottom and the looser lighter stuff on top. This meant though that if you stopped somewhere to make lunch, you had to unpack half the truck to get to the bread. I'd like to make some overlanderish shelf in the back to pack all the clothes and what not on top and still have access to the fridge and dryfood. I'm also trying to figure out a fold down table attached to the tire swing out for cooking. I'm debating building a roof rack up top. It would be nice to get some of the stuff up and out of the back, although I think we can condense and not need it also. Eventually I'd like to get a kayak or two to put on the roof so a rack would help with that.

More projects,
Kevin
 
Oh, I forgot to add that all my bolts fell out.

On the way out I kept hearing a popping sound and it seemed like it might be the frontend wrapping up and unloading so I didn't think much of it. Towards the end of the trail it was getting substantially worse and I realized it was most likely the front d-shaft hitting the t-case crossmember. Not much I can do about that at this point so we kept going and got out. Of course in 2wd it all went away and we made our way down to pavement and the tow rig.

When we got home and I started looking over the truck it was pretty obvious that the front d-shaft was hitting the crossmember, but the trans mount looked great and I couldn't figure out why it was hitting so much on the way out, but not the way in.

Then I noticed this:
20200622-205408.jpg

All the bolts were missing in the drivers side motor mount! The bolts worked there way loose and fell out on trail. The pass side motor mount bolts were there, but loose also. I put new bolts in and everything got lockwashers and loctite. Hopefully thats it for that issue, but I'll keep an eye on it just in case.

Kevin
 
Damn. Good thing you were able to find it. That would have been one hell of a way to disable the truck on its maiden voyage.
 
I was able to go wheeling again and get this thing out. This time without the family, which was good as we had a pesky fire issue to deal with.
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Kevin
 
I guess I should continue the story....

We drove up on friday before labor day to go run the Dusy-Ershim trail. One of my favorites that I haven't been able to get to in a few years. We spent the night in a sno-park parking lot where we had planned to leave the tow rigs for the weekend. I woke up to the sound of sirens on the highway and the smell of campfire, which really isn't that odd, but the white fluffy smoke clouds indicated a bigger issue. We talked to some fire personnel and decided to relocate our tow rigs to another spot off of Dinky Creek road so the rigs would be out of the way if the firefighters needed the parking lot for equipment. That was probably our smartest move all weekend.

We hit the trail thinking if things got worse we'd back track. Going up voyager rock we were greeted with this mushroom cloud.
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So far the 4runner was working great! On the granite.
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We made our way all the way up Thompson Hill and ran into a group with some of my co-workers. Thompson was more chewed up than I've ever seen it before. I had to winch near the top. Things were good! I don't have many pics because I was too busy wheeling and having a good time.

From what I've heard, they stopped allowing traffic up the hill on saturday and started to evacuate Shaver Lake as the Creek Fire was growing.

Kevin
 
We woke up on sunday with a bit of smoke in the courtrite lake valley, but otherwise a seemingly nice day, so we decided to make our way down the trail towards ershim lake. I guess at this point they started evacuating everyone from the area. We didn't know.

One of the meadow crossings up there. Pretty, but awfully dry.
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Looking out into the meadow.
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We stopped for lunch at east lake and it was actually clearer there than it had been at Thompson. We continued to Ershim and thats where things got weird. It is 4pm in this pic and its orange out. It was raining ash.
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There was another group of toyotas there and they were on the way out, so we had ershim to ourselves. It was erie with the smoke and ash falling. We were supposed to meet up with another group and when we got there and they were not there it was fairly obvious they had left over concerns of the fire. Of course they had no idea where it was as they had gone in a day earlier. We didn't feel in any danger as we at least knew where it was, for the most part. We decided to see how things looked in the morning. If it was nice we'd stay, if not we'd bail.

Kevin
 
The next morning things looked pretty decent and we decided to stay. The ash had quit falling sometime in the previous evening. The sun was out and it looked like it was going to be a nice day other than some haze.
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So we decided to stay. This was our rest day anyway. It was nice until about noon, then the breeze stopped, it got dark and turned orange again and ash started raining once more. We started contemplating our options. It was 20miles back to courtright, or about 10 more miles out the top. We were concerned about getting down the highway but hoped the fire hadn't gone that far. At this point no one wanted to drive back to courtright. We decided to head out in the morning and potential head all the way out.

That meant sitting through an afternoon of ashfall. At this point the ash had just been your basic light white ash flakes, but then I noticed we were also getting singed pine needles falling on us at times. I looked over and noticed a large chunk of something drifting down from the sky so I went over to investigate. It turned out to be the page out of a book. You can still read some of the writing. It was saddening to think that came from someones house or cabin.
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Kevin
 
Fires have been bad here in CO as well. Even fairly out in the foot hills we seem to have a near constant sprinkling of ash covering our cars, houses, etc.
 
Things got weirder monday night. All was good, we actually went to bed being able to see some stars in the sky which was a good sign the smoke was clearing up a bit. I woke up at 3am though to the sound of a helicopter flying around which started to concern me, although he never seemed to fly over us. It kept sounding like they were over at coyote lake. I couldn't figure out what they were doing as I knew the fire wasn't over there. My guess, knowing what I do now, is that they were pulling hikers out of Edison at this point. It went away and then came back an hour later. We got up early and it was gorgeous outside! You'd never even think there was a fire anywhere.

We got up, made breakfast, packed up and hit the road early. We had planned to spend another night on the trail, but were pretty concerned with the fire at this point and knew the closer we got to huntington end of the trail the closer we would be camping to the fire. For now it was a beautiful day! Here is one of the creek meadow crossings on the way to Lakecamp lake.
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We made it down to Lakecamp about 11:30 and ate lunch. I hit a log on the side of the trail with rear quarter panel unfortunately. Oh well.
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I've always enjoyed the view at Lakecamp. As the sun sets here the rockfaces change color with the sunset.
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Kevin
 
After lunch at Lakecamp lake we started making our way up to the top of the world and the end of the trail on Kaiser pass. The skys were still clear and it wasn't until we got up most of the way that we could see smoke to southwest. Here is a view of Lakecamp lake while climbing out up the hill. On a clear day you can see all the way to Thompson hill. We did notice another fire had started over by courtright.
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Seeing how close we were to the smoke we decided to not camp another night and just try to get out, if we could. We eventually made it all the way up to the top and stopped for a few minutes to check out the view, the smoke, and to see if we could get any cell phone reception for fire updates.
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From up here you look down on Florence and Edison lakes to the east, and Huntington to the southwest, that is if there isn't a forest fire surrounding the lake.
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I think at this point we hoped the fire was north of Huntington lake, but pretty much knew it wasn't. We thought that surely there would be someone down there to tell us if the road is open or not. So we got down the switch backs, off the trail finally and out to the pavement going over Kaiser pass where we aired up at the bathrooms. It was still beautiful out. It was amazing how nice it was on the pass and how that would change in the next hour.

Kevin
 
Awesome build! I looked through your old thread on Pirate as well. I have a few questions if you don’t mind. I have an SASed 91 4runner as well. It’s currently on a Marlin 5 inch kit with 37s and all that. I want to lower it a bit, put it on 35s, and like you just want it to be able to take our two young sons to experience the woods and off-roading. What springs do you have front and rear, and would you use them again to keep that ride height? And if you don’t mind, about how much start to finish would you say you put into the motor swap? I had been considering buying and building an FJ60 with a Vortec, but like you, already have the rig and could make it how I need for less money. Would you do a 4.3 again? Thanks!
 
91advrunner said:
Awesome build! I looked through your old thread on Pirate as well. I have a few questions if you don’t mind. I have an SASed 91 4runner as well. It’s currently on a Marlin 5 inch kit with 37s and all that. I want to lower it a bit, put it on 35s, and like you just want it to be able to take our two young sons to experience the woods and off-roading. What springs do you have front and rear, and would you use them again to keep that ride height? And if you don’t mind, about how much start to finish would you say you put into the motor swap? I had been considering buying and building an FJ60 with a Vortec, but like you, already have the rig and could make it how I need for less money. Would you do a 4.3 again? Thanks!
Click to expand...

Thanks!

It seems that anything that says toyota, and especially landcruiser is a lot of $$$$ these days!

Its hard for me to really say what I have into the 4.3 swap. I'm fairly crafty and do all my own work, other things like rebuilding the motor didn't really have to happen in the end and the final trans rebuild was due to a mistake on my part with the first build. Plus you have all the bits and pieces and nuts and bolts that go into it. The trans adapter is $800 alone, and then you have to find a running vehicle. I had to deal with smog legalities that caused some issues that you won't have depending on where you live. I'd probably budget about $3k to do it again.

Is it worth it? Hard to say. It's definitely not a V8. I would have rather had a V8 I think. I think the main issue I have with this swap is that if you put all this energy and effort into a swap you really are expecting it to "blow your socks off" when you drive it, and this just doesn't do that. It drives about as well as a 97ish chevy blazer with a 4.3 drives, weird. I do like it though, don't get me wrong, its still better than the 22re it had. I still have my pickup cab and bed, and a frame and I keep thinking about building something out of it and might just do another 4.3 again. I'm considering it enough I might sell off the 22re stuff I have just to get it out of here. I do think the more chances I get to use the 4.3 the more I like it.

I have all-pro leafs on the truck front and back. I think I have 3" front springs and 4" rears. They are both pretty old and sagged out. Keep in mind, mine is a pickup frame originally. The height is good for 35s. I'm debating going for 37s. I have 5" rear leafs on order to help level the truck and get the rearend up a bit when I have the whole family on board. I still want to link the front to help with bumpsteer and ride quality. I really need to look at getting more uptravel out of the front though, at least another inch if possible.

I don't know if that helps at all. While there are always those things in a project I want to change to make it better, I'm actually really happy with it after the dusy trip.

Kevin
 
Ghetto Fab. said:
Thanks!

It seems that anything that says toyota, and especially landcruiser is a lot of $$$$ these days!

Its hard for me to really say what I have into the 4.3 swap. I'm fairly crafty and do all my own work, other things like rebuilding the motor didn't really have to happen in the end and the final trans rebuild was due to a mistake on my part with the first build. Plus you have all the bits and pieces and nuts and bolts that go into it. The trans adapter is $800 alone, and then you have to find a running vehicle. I had to deal with smog legalities that caused some issues that you won't have depending on where you live. I'd probably budget about $3k to do it again.

Is it worth it? Hard to say. It's definitely not a V8. I would have rather had a V8 I think. I think the main issue I have with this swap is that if you put all this energy and effort into a swap you really are expecting it to "blow your socks off" when you drive it, and this just doesn't do that. It drives about as well as a 97ish chevy blazer with a 4.3 drives, weird. I do like it though, don't get me wrong, its still better than the 22re it had. I still have my pickup cab and bed, and a frame and I keep thinking about building something out of it and might just do another 4.3 again. I'm considering it enough I might sell off the 22re stuff I have just to get it out of here. I do think the more chances I get to use the 4.3 the more I like it.

I have all-pro leafs on the truck front and back. I think I have 3" front springs and 4" rears. They are both pretty old and sagged out. Keep in mind, mine is a pickup frame originally. The height is good for 35s. I'm debating going for 37s. I have 5" rear leafs on order to help level the truck and get the rearend up a bit when I have the whole family on board. I still want to link the front to help with bumpsteer and ride quality. I really need to look at getting more uptravel out of the front though, at least another inch if possible.

I don't know if that helps at all. While there are always those things in a project I want to change to make it better, I'm actually really happy with it after the dusy trip.

Kevin
Click to expand...

Thanks for the detailed reply! I should have added that I too am in CA. The 4runner has a recently fixed HG 3.0. As of now its on 37s with 5.71 gears and with he auto, drives pretty well actually. It has the normal uphill problems etc but its not awful. From the sounds of it I may as well stick with it until it really causes me issues given the smog and CARB stuff you went through.

Ive been debating a bunch about how to set up the suspension moving forward. A buddy that runs an off-road shop suggested some stock Toyota rears in the front with one of the leaves from my 5 inch front springs to give it a bit more support, and I’ll probably replace the bump stops that came with the SAS kit with some Daystar stinger bumps, and in the rear I currently have the 5 inch springs with 2 inch blocks to level it, so may just remove the blocks and go from there. Thanks again for the info!
 
So I guess I should finish this trip up. The bad part is I have no pics so this is kinda anti-climatic. Driving through the burn area I had bigger things on my mind than taking pics. I really wish I had put my go pro on the rig and recorded the drive though! Sorry for the wall of text.

We aired up at the top of kaiser pass and then drove down to Huntington lake and the ominous smoke plume. It was beautiful all the way down until we got to hwy168 where we turned left. We still hadn't seen any fire fighting crews, police, rangers, anyone at this point, so we just kept on going. We had heard some radio chatter that the china peak ski resort was being used as a fuel depot for water trucks so we were still hopeful of not having to drive through the fire. Shortly past china peak we realized that was simply not the case as we saw first hand all the devastation from the previous 2 days of forest fire expansion. It was pretty scary driving into this mess and seeing logs and tree trunks on fire on both sides of the road, but after seeing a few fire crews(finally) casually driving the other way up the highway we realized the worst part of the fire was over in this area. This was really the aftermath and while things were still burning, it wasn't explosive like it had been previous. It was mostly random tree trunks or logs here and there still on fire. Occasionally you'd come around a bend in a section that hadn't burned and there would be bushes right next to the road on fire.

The smoke was bad. My biggest fear at this point was the vehicles breaking down for whatever reason and having to leave them there or getting stuck. I was hoping the air filters wouldn't get clogged by all the smoke. The road however was clear. Every once in a while we'd pass a water truck going the other direction. We passed the sno-park where we spent friday night and almost didn't recognize it. All the trees are now charcoal sticks and there is quite the view out over the valley of the destruction. The smartest decision we made was to move our tow rigs. But would we even be allowed to get to our tow rigs at this point? My phone finally got reception and started beeping away from all the messages since friday. I was too busy driving to answer though.

We made it down to the town of Shaver and luckily it was still standing. Here we were able to make the left onto dinky creek road to get out to our tow rigs that were located a ways down towards bald mtn. Everything looked good over here and there were plenty of fire crews and forestry people clearing land for fire breaks. The further we went down dinky creek road the better conditions got and it was clear that there was no fire this direction and the tow rigs would be ok. We breathed a sigh of relief when we got to the tow rigs and proceeded to load up as quick as possible. I briefly answered a few text messages asking if we were out yet, with "working on it".

At this point we knew we had to drive back to shaver, but we thought we were out of the worst of it. We thought the fire was all up the hill from shaver lake and to the north. Boy were we wrong! We started driving the rest of the way down 168 from shaver and at first it seemed normal, and then you'd notice more and more burned areas. Once again you'd come around a turn and there were bushes right off the side of the road just burnin away! Now were towing through this thing! Luckily no one seemed to care about us. We just kept going. Time to get out of this shit. The devestation just kept coming all the way down to the 4lanes. We couldn't believe that the gas station at cressmans had burned! We hit the top of the 4lanes and were finally out. I was finally able to relax a bit and call my wife who was overjoyed to hear my voice and learn that I wasn't in need of rescuing.

We drove down the hill to prather and stopped to get fuel at the shell station there where we got crossed off a search and rescue list. It was very cool to see the local offroad community come together to support people they have never even met.

My wife tells me I can't go anywhere that's going to catch on fire again.:rolleyes:

Kevin
 
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