Chasing Beer in the Wilderness. 1999 4Runner Camping Rig Build

Hit by a car? That sucks! Glad to hear your healing.... At least the dash isn't all that hard to get apart on those.

Yeah, I am not recommending it to people, only upside is that since I basically ate nothing for 3 days, my appetite went way down, and I lost 12 lbs. So I only need 3 more accidents before I am ready for beach season.

I'm back to posting about the truck!

So since April, I had to move, and my accident recovery is still ongoing, but I finally did some things.

First, I moved out of my old place to a new house (renting), but with a glorious long driveway, and a detached garage/workshop in the backyard. No more driving 25 miles to be able to work on my truck!

I didn't take any pictures, but this past weekend I got two things done. First was I washed the truck for the first time since getting it. Usually Seattle rain has been helping in the dirt department, but summer has finally come, and it needed some love.

Also, got a floor jack from a buddy, and I was able to get under the car and actually replace the rear shocks. The ones that came off were Toyota, but seem worn out and may have been original. Tough to say. But I replaced them with some KYB shocks, and the rear of the truck seems happier. I still have the fronts to go, but need to get a spring compressor to take care of that. It may be a project for this next weekend.

I also still seem to be having an oil leak, and I am betting that part of that is from the second valve cover gasket/plugs that I haven't taken care of, but hey, with a garage, I can get that done as well!

Looking forward to proving more updates soon.

Sunday I had a friend come over and help me change out the front struts. Liberal use of a crowbar and a rented spring compressor resulted in getting everything done in about 4 hours total. The second side always goes faster than the first. Honestly wrenching down the spring compressors took up the most time.

I think the shocks that were in there might have been original, and they were most definitely toast. Once I pulled one out, compared to the new KYB, there was no rebound, and the KYBs were about 3 inches longer on the piston side (not the housing).

I wouldn't say that it rides like a caddy now, but man is the ride improved.

I also picked up replacement spark plugs, and examination of my sway bar bushings show me that they are super shredded, so those will go on the list for replacement. Next task is going to be getting the front skid plate off, degreasing the underside, and find out where I have a leak coming from. My hope is that it's the other valve cover gasket that I still never got to, since I have all the bits for that already. It could also be something like the steering rack, but not sure until I take things apart.

The 4 Runner might not be the smoothest riding truck on the planet but my God they're some of the toughest son's of bitches out there haha. Too bad the used market pricing for them is so damned high...

Bill, agreed. I got this one for decently cheap, but an equivalent Cherokee would have probably been half as much. Up here in Seattle both are in high demand.

I keep forgetting you live way up north. It's still high down in the East Coast too but surprisingly Cherokees are stupid cheap. Hell I've seen a few 4Runner's cheaper than I expected.

Back to work on the 4runner this past weekend.

Managed to finally tear the top end enough to replace the second valve cover gasket, do all the spark plugs, camshaft seals and get things a bit more cleaned up.

One snag ( because there always seems to be one?), I fired up the truck to check for codes, and to take a test drive.  I know a bit of coolant had spilled out on the exhaust manifold (coolant routes through the throttle body) so I was expecting a bit of smoke, but there was more than expected.  Ran it for about 30 seconds, it got worse so shut off the truck. Walked around to the passenger side and was greeted with a nice pool of coolant flowing from under the truck.  I poked around, found my culprit. 

I had no idea what the piece was, but the broken part on the right, that should be about a 1.5" long piece of plastic that the hose clamps onto.  It basically had soften and disintegrated.  Pretty glad it didn't fail while driving around, it would have just been a matter of time.  I basically had to take needle nose pliers to get the rest of the plastic out of the hose portion.  Couldn't figure out what the part was that night (I had spent about 6 hours working on the truck on Sunday), so called it a night.  Next day, went and actually removed the part out of the truck, and found it said Denso and a number.  Turns out that it is the heater control valve, hence the coolant flowing through there.  Off to amazon, and 27 bucks later a replacement should be arriving today, so about 15 minutes and I should have it back up and running tonight.

Only thing I am not sure of is if this has introduced air into my cooling system, so I am going to look up how to make sure any air pockets are gone, but should get that done pretty easily.

Got the replacement part in and replaced it last night.  Had a code get thrown, and I can't seem to find that OBD II reader I bought, so off to the parts store.  The truck runs much much better now after the spark plug replacement.  The one's that were in there seemed fine, but my idle is much smoother, and I hope this fixes a bucking issue I was having at part throttle under load (usually up hills).  Auto parts store was able to read the code and clear it, was for a throttle position sensor, so I unplugged it and plugged it back in, hasn't come back yet, so may have just not gotten it on enough.

On a side note, I discovered which parts store NOT to go to, as I stopped in to get a code read, and the 'gentleman' behind the counter said they were too backed up and to come back in an hour (I had already waited 10 minutes, they just kept helping people walking in the door, I had been waiting the longest).  So went to the other place about 1/4 mile down the road, got it read in 5 minutes and went on my merry way.