So here goes. I've already done some work so I will try to catch up to the present. First of all I guess I need to post some "BEFORE" shots. I'm doing mostly interior work right now.







The dash and interior were in pretty rough shape, especially the dash cap. Two cracks, one of them filled unsuccessfully by the previous owner.

The good news was mechanics. The engine was running well, the transmission was is great shape, the tires were fairly new and the air conditioning will freeze your face off. Very important here in Memphis where the heat and humidity will literally kill you dead.

I have lots of plans, which start with interior mods and upgrades. This is going to be a truck, and it's going to be built to work, but I also want it to look good and be comfortable, since it's my only vehicle and I like road trips ^_^

 

What colors the outside of the truck

 

It's burgandy mostly. The clear coat has come off the top and hood so it's oxidized like crazy. Gonna have to live with it for now. Paint job is the last thing on my list on purpose. That'll be my victory lap ^_^

 

A pic of the truck as it is now with no body work done. I installed the CB antenna as part of my first round of mods.

 

With all the possible mounts for a cb antennae out there you chose to mount it to a large flat section of sheetmetal... Good luck with that, all of them I've seen mounted in such a manner have ripped the sheetmetal apart.

 

What specifically caused them to rip the sheet metal apart?

 

Fatigue. The movement of the antennae will weaken the fender and pull the hardware through.

 

Won't happen with that mount. There is a steel backer plate on the inside of the fender that's larger than the mount, and the safety spring takes most of the energy from the antenna moving.

 

Nice..like the antenna

 

Thanks, jaybee. Gotta love Firestik.

 

Okay, so I guess I should post things in the order that they happened. When I got the truck, it had 221,248 miles on it, and the engine had about 33,000 miles on a rebuild. It ran okay but needed a little tuning, and had an issue with a bouncy idle during warmup (which it's still doing a little bit). Almost all of the problems it had were minor cosmetic things.

The first thing I did was replace the plugs and wires with NGK parts. I had noticed that the wires were laying on the heat shield for the exhaust manifold, so I decided to do something about that. I got a nifty wire loom rail set from Oreilly, and since they came in pairs and I only needed one, I sold the other one to a guy that works there who also has a yota.



The other thing I did at that point was install a Spectre filter panel. I've always liked the oil charged filters, and the Spectre was half the price of a K&N.



The sticker makes it work better

The only other mechanical problem was a failing fan clutch, so I replaced that. My sympathies if you ever have to do one yourself. Working in that tight space is a pain in the rear.

 

The truck has sliding rear windows, which I love. The problem is they aren't terribly secure. So I came up with a solution. I made a couple of bracing bars to drop into each end of the window track which keep them from opening when in place, but are not hard to remove from the inside.



Each end is chamfered to knock off the sharp edge, and I drilled and tapped one end and installed a cap screw to act as a lifting handle.



Here it is in place. It sits up a little because of the weatherstrip/slide material in the track. I plan to grind flats on the side to make them narrower so they will drop down into the track all the way, but they work anyway.

 

lol some redneck ingenuity right there! git r dun! lol i bet that truck will go another 300k miles with that engine. i like the CB, i was thinkin of putting one in my yota. i do have a amplified radio antenna thats made of that soft rubber. its awesome. only 20 bucks at walmart. i can pickup radio stations everywhere. yes i still listen to radio. haha

 

The CB is a lot of fun, and really useful on roadtrips, since the truckers know the road conditions better than anyone, and how to detour around problems.

I listen to the radio about a third of the time myself

 

i really want a CB with a loudspeaker so i can scare the **** out of people. maybe a spotlight too. hahaha i think im getting carried away with my gadget ideas. to the batmobile! nanananananananaa batman!

 

LOL. I used to have one on my old Sierra. I'd yell at people in traffic on it. Probably best I dont have one now. People are more trigger happy than they used to be ^_^

 

No such thing

 

i'll post pics of my interior soon. its not real pretty but its highly functional. lol

 

Speaking of interiors, Mine was a mess. The problems when I got the truck were:

The heater bypass valve cable didnt work
The right turn signal indicator didnt work
There was a crack in the climate control trim plate around the blank where the clock would go
The vent next to the drivers door was broken and flopping around in the hole
The triangle windows were stiff as hell
The dash cap/cover/whatever had a few cracks in it from dry rot
The little storage tray above the radio was sitting loose in the space and flopping around
Not having a tach and guages was annoying
I didnt like the interior color

Luckily, I had already started poking aaround on the internet looking at forums, and discovered the 4runner clusters would work, so I decided to replace that. I found one on ebay, and also found a vent replacement for the one near the drivers door and bought both. At that point I thought "while I'm doing this I might as well replace all the bulbs with LEDs", so I ordered replacements for everything in the cab from superbrightleds. I even got one for the glove box lamp, even though the truck didnt have one. More on that later.

I started by pulling the entire dash face out of the truck, keeping track of all the screws I removed (although there were a few already out when I got it that I had to make guesses about).

 

After I got into the dash, I discovered that the keeper for the end of the heater bypass valve cable was broken, which was why it wasnt closing the valve. Ebay to the rescue again. Got one from a newer runner, which also had the benefit of still having all the clicky notches that had worn out on mine ^_^ Bought that and started cleaning dash parts while I waited for it to get there. In the meantime, the new instrument cluster had arrived, so I pulled it apart, rolled to odometer over to just over where mine was, and adjusted the tach. I had read a lot of posts about people having to run new wires for the tach, but I discovered that the harness already has them in it, so when I plugged it in it worked fine. I had to replace the oil pressure sender as well of course.

It took several rounds of install/check/remove to get all the LEDs turned the right way and the gauges verified, and then once it was done I had to wait a little bit for the mileage to get close. When it was, I drove around until it matched perfectly, then swapped the clusters out. I hit it dead on, so now the odometer reads the exact mileage of the truck. The LEDs look crispy in the dark: