slowpoke99's super slow timeline/build thread

well guys, i've been dragging my feet long enough. my rig was pretty much done by the time i found this place so i thought i'd post more of a timeline thread. please bare with me! i'm a maintenance manager for a trucking company so i am by no means an expert at this computer stuff.

so here's the details/history of my rig. 1999 runner sr5 3.4. i originally bought it for my wife for her to drive in the winter time when the roads aren't too kind to her camry. most days she would wait for me to get home from work and take my tundra so we figured that purchasing something for her that was 4wd was justified. anyway, this is how she looked from the time we bought it to the time i started building it...

well, shortly after that, she got pregnant with our fourth kid! it was then that we figured we needed something with a third row seat. so i ended up picking up one of these for her...

that's when the lightbulb in my head turned on! i have been wheeling my '88 pickup for the last ten or so years. this is her...

now my kids love to go wheeling and hunting with me but unfortunately they can't all fit in the truck being a 2 seater. so after beating up my tundra up in the mountains for the last couple of hunting seasons with my kids, i actually convinced the wife to let me build the 4runner so i can take them all with me. and it worked!!!

now on to the destruction and ressurection of a perfectly good 4runner...



this was night #1 when she first rolled into my shop. i don't wanna post a bunch of pics showing us cutting and grinding cuz i'm sure you've all seen that part of an axle swap a thousand times before. but the parts pile was pretty impressive! it didn't look like there was that much shit under there!

 

after staring at 3rd gen swaps for hours, mainly downpour11's and addicted offroad's '96 to name a couple, i decided to go leafs since a link setup with coilvers wasn't exactly in the budget at the time (could have been but i'll get to that later). so i went and ordered tacoma kit "B" from trail gear. i've heard the good the bad and the ugly about them on every board from ttora to pirate but i must say, their kit was pretty complete compared to alot of others i've seen. ask the UPS guy!

now that i had the goods, it was time to get busy!

 

more goodies...

 

sorry about the duplicate pics! my laptop is being stupid!!!

 

time to gut the rear...

 

By this point the suspension and axles were pretty much done. The pics aren't exactly in the same order as the actual build went down but I'm sure you get the picture. Anyway, when I first started the build it was just suppose to be the suspension and axles. But as many of you know, these projects snowball and end up costing more than you planned from the beginning (go back to my first post when I said that a link setup wasn't in the budget). It was here that I decided that I needed bumpers and sliders. We'll because they weren't part of the original plan, I sold my old JD2 bender to a buddy to help fund my project thinking I could always borrow it whenever I needed it. Not the case. He didn't have it anymore. So after seeing reviews on pirate, I scored a new bender from rogue fab in Oregon. Awesome vertical type bender but I had to put it together before I could put it to work! This is it...

I ended up building a cart to set it on. Thing weighs a ton!!!

 

Also tossed out the POS harbor freight notcher...

To make room for this guy...

 

Now it was back to work on the rig. I started out by making a mount for my winch.

 

At this point, stocking up on tubing wasn't gonna happen anytime soon and I had to have it on the road before archery season. I had no money but what I did have was a bunch of 3'-4' chunks of 1.5"x.120wall DOM tubing so I stared at it for a day or two till I thought of a way to make it work. Here's what I came up with...

I would have preferred to use 1.75" but I guess it came out ok. I also used led's for signal lights but got the "hyper flash" so I ended up ordering a resistor kit from Diode Dynamics to resolve the issue.

 

Nice work. The bumper looks pretty damn good for using up what you had.

 

Now it was time to address the rear bumper. My original plan was to order Addicted's 3rd gen rear bumper but my bank account was pretty much tapped out so it was back to my scrap pile. What I did was try to clone their bumper since it seemed like the only way to build a wrap around style bumper and not interfere with the rear hatch on the runner. But first I needed to box off the rear of the frame.

The rogue fab bender worked great! The 60 degree bends I needed were on the money every time.

 

thanks man! it took me quite a while to figure out how i was gonna pull it off. i still have some gusseting to do but in my hurry to get it on the road i put it on hold. although i will finish it up before i wheel it.

 

Here's a couple more of the rear bumper where I tied it into the frame to reinforce it.

 

Now it was on to building some sliders. I trolled around every forum I could think of looking at a ton of different designs. Once again, ordering new ones wasn't an option so I built these using 1.75"DOM for the main rail with the last bit of 1.5"DOM I had left to finish it off.

 

Not much of an update to my build but the inchworm crawl box is pretty much ready to go in. It's actually been ready for almost two weeks now but I'm still waiting for my crossmember from front range. Driveshafts should be ready today and the tranny cooler is going in this weekend. I'll post more pics once I have everything and start the install.

 

You must be reading my mind on my dream build dude I swear.... The only thing is I'm trying to see if I can still keep my multi-mode transfer case and have AWD with my 99 Limited when I do this at some point. I was just on the phone with Inchworm and Marlin with this question yesterday. I'm still doing my home work on it all.

Great work man.

Blue

 

Thanks man! I myself did a ton of research before dumping the money on my inchworm setup last September and only now I'm installing it! I wanted to make sure I had all the info available on this install before tearing down my rig. I'm sure you'd be able to pull it off with yours. I ran duals in my "88 22re pickup and wheeling it was night and day compared to a single case. I can only imagine what it's gonna be like with my 3.4/auto. I'm getting close though. Good luck with yours!!! I'm sure it's gonna turn out badass!

 

My friend has a 1st gen taco 3.4/auto with a crawlbox, 4.56 gears on 35's. It is slower than my 4.7 duals with 5.29's/37's. It's pretty frickin wicked.

This build is awesome

 

Thanks man! Do you know which gear set he's running? I went with 2.28 in my box. I didn't wanna put too much stress on the stock chain case although I know that a lot of guys run the 4.7's without any issues. Plus I figure that double low with this setup would be plenty enough for where we wheel around here.

 

Just a little update. I got the duals installed. Hit a snag with the crossmember though.

The front range crossmember is right up against the factory crossmember that has the front mounting plate for the fuel tank.

Close up...

I gotta hack the stock crossmember off to clear enough room for the front range bracket to be welded to the frame. Then I'm gonna have to fab a new mount for the fuel tank. I have an idea of how I'm gonna do it but haven't had much time to get any real work done in my shop.

 

He put a 4.7 in his taco. It's stupid slow and badass. 2.28 will be very nice.

 

This is the Taco I speak of. He wants to SAS eventually, I need to show him this build...

 

Damn that's a nice taco!!!

I still have a 4.7 case out of my '88 on the shelf in case I decide to go ultra stupid low. We'll have to wait and see!

 

Man I am so jealous of all the custom built armor. Looks good.

 

Thanks! No need to be jealous though. I know you could pull it off. Now order up that bender and get busy!!!

 

Bender... Welder... Garage... Metal

LOL I only need a couple of things!

 

Had a little time to work on the runner yesterday. Finished up the crossmember, got the fuel tank back on and driveshafts installed.

Shifters need a little tweaking but all the major stuff underneath is done. All that's left is to extend all the wiring to the stock case, add fluids and put all the interior back together.