Hey all, As a way to encourage myself to better document my projects, I'm going to post the build of my 1985 Toyota SR5 long bed. An added plus is this will hopefully make me keep a cleaner work space, with my pictures being on the world wide web and all I don't really have any progress to post (I've made tons of it, just not documented!) so I'll give you all some back story. (Well it turned into a small essay, but that's better than a small blurb °^°) I was about 16 years old running around in my first Toyota pickup, a bobbed 84 Xtra cab swap. A patron of a local bar saw me and said "Cool truck, I have one similar to that. My wife drove it and overheated it. One day I'll swap a 350 in it". I talked to him about it, but I was pretty broke so purchasing it wasn't on my mind. A few years go by, I run into him again. My truck is more built up, and I now know how hard it is to source parts for these trucks when something breaks. I ask him if he still has his truck, and if he'd like to sell it. He's pretty adamant that it's not for sale and he's going to swap a Chevy engine in it, but says he'd let it go for 1500 dollars. Although it's a good enough price, I'm still a broke kid and that's more than a bit out of my price range. So now it's several more years, and I see this guy again. He admits that he's never going to get around to this truck, and he doesn't really want it in his yard. I'm in full hoard mode with these trucks at this point. Any time I see a parts truck, I'm on it. So he shows me some pictures of it. It has some decent parts, being a mostly complete truck with aftermarket aluminum rims and some (trashed) Smittybilt tube bumpers. At this point he says 1000 and it's mine. I tell him I'll give him 400, he wants 800, well how about 600? Deal. After marauding my dad's truck, I rent a car transport from the U-Haul and start heading his way. Well it turns out he just works and drinks in my town, but lives 20 miles away in the next town over. That's not really ideal because in the pictures, the truck is pulled in. I'm not loading a pickup truck the wrong way on a trailer. Trailer sway can be pretty devastating with a car loaded the wrong way, now imagine a long bed pickup?? He says that's really not an issue, because the engine isn't locked up and can be starter crawled out and onto the trailer if I bring a new battery. After driving over there, he tells me his driveway is a goat trail and I shouldn't attempt to back the trailer all the way up, else I risk damaging his project cars parked on either side of the driveway. I was already sold on the truck, but a quick inspection saw the front two tires were flat and sunk into the ground. With the U-Haul style trailer, it's important that the front tires are properly inflated, or else there's no way to really hold the vehicle on there. Luckily I brought an air compressor, and really luckily they held air. Against his wishes, I did back the trailer about 20 yards farther than he would have liked. This still left 60 yards between the Toyota and the U-Haul trailer. After putting the battery in the truck, the engine is totally seized. This definitely isn't a deal breaker, because I knew the engine was overheated. It does mean that trying to crawl it with the starter isn't possible. He grabs a chain and hooks up his Subaru to the Toyota and gives it a good yank to point it at the trailer. Surprisingly, that worked and we push it down the hill and I ghost ride this truck 60 yards, with no brakes or power steering, up onto the trailer. After tying it down I hit the road to unload the truck and return the trailer. Now that the story is out of the way, here's what's currently up with the truck. Plans were simply at first, as stated earlier, this truck was supposed to be a parts truck. Luckily the only things I took off this truck were a door check strap and a few transfer case mount bolts. Due to unusual circumstances, I was able to do a favor for the #1 22RE builder on the planet. A customer (for good reason) had to back out of an engine order, and the builder was stuck with this engine. I took it off his hands and he gave me a good deal on it. My plan was to throw it in this truck for a quick and dirty work truck. For reasons explained below, it's turned into a total refresh in hopes of having a good reliable truck. As the truck sits now, the old blown engine is out and sitting in the dirt. I might try to scavenge parts off of it, but it will likely go to the dump. The transmission and transfer case are out, and have been resealed + cleaned. I don't know the condition of either, but the case is obviously a junkyard part. Not entirely a bad thing. The bed is off, gas tank is out, and the back half of the truck is on jack stands with the rear end getting a full service. It's still apart as I've been slacking with painting the frame. It's Arizona, so there's no real rust, but it's not still not aesthetically pleasing. The rear housing has been wire wheeled and painted. The differential (drop out 3rd member) is pretty much the reason I dove down this rabbit hole of taking the springs and axle off of the frame. There was excessive backlash at the pinion flange, and the pinion threads were actually counter sunk into the pinion nut. Something was definitely wrong, and as it turns out the wrong year of pinion was used with the wrong year of pinion bearing. As a result, the pattern was garbage and this gear set would have been fragile like glass. Unfortunately, the bad setup had already ruined the ring and pinion, but my gear guy had some good used OEM gears on the shelf. I also opted for an aftermarket solid pinion spacer to take place of the crush type pinion spacer. I took the rear axle shafts and hubs to a drive line shop for new OEM wheel bearings. The driveshaft was taken to FleetPride for a new OEM carrier bearing, OEM u-joints, and a balance. I have a bunch of new parts, including OEM brake shoes (I want to see if they're better than aftermarket) and OEM wheel cylinders (miles better than any aftermarket brand). I've gone for new poly bushings all the way around (including body mounts, because OEM rubber ones are too expensive and aftermarket rubber ones are trash) and even grabbed some cheapo NAPA monotubes. Once I get the rear end back on, I'll start on the engine. I need to swap the heater core and then drop the engine in. The engine harness is junk, but I have a spare one to refresh. I have a bunch of misc stuff like P/S pump rebuild and reseal A/C system. The interior is currently stripped past the dash, and I even got a good deal on a used 89 bench seat. I won't go into detail with everything that needs to be done, but there's a substantial amount of work between where the truck is and where I want it. Once the truck is actually running and driving, I still need to rebuild the front axle. The inner axle seals leak and the differential shows the same issues as the rear did. From this point on I'll try to keep text to an appreciable minimum. I just want to lay out the history and my plans for the truck. I'd like to take as many pictures as possible, but I don't like having my phone in my pocket (broke too many screens like that!) and/or touching it with dirty hands. Here's some pictures of the truck on the trailer and the truck in my back yard.
Cool project, I will be following along. My dad used to have an '87. Originally gray, then he later painted it red. It was lifted up with 38" tires.
Well I haven't driven it yet. But I have experience with these exact front leafs and shocks (it's the cheapy Rancho kit that we all had in high school). The 1985 4Runner has high quality All-Pro leaf springs and Bilstein shocks. You practically can't even feel speed bumps below 25MPH. My first truck with those Ranchos made it feel like I just got into a front end collision haha. I'm not planning on keeping them for that reason, instead I'll grab some Old Man Emu springs. Thanks, sounds like a sweet rig. I'll be kinda busy today, but I'll try to do something this afternoon. Mainly start putting the rear end together.
Ok, I'm back. Monday night had good steam until a bunch of "minor" problems culminated into one issue. When I pulled the rear end out of the truck, I noticed the driver's side u-bolts weren't tightened. As a result, there was some egging of the spring perch from the movement of the axle. I also noticed that the leaves in the center (eye to eye) weren't all touching, which meant the center bolt in the pack was either loose or deformed. (deformed spring perch) Now, I was about to do the wrong thing the right way, which was wire wheel the rust off of all accessible areas of the leaves. Then paint. Passenger's side de-rusting went fine, driver's side was going good until I went to finish it off by tightening the center bolt and it snapped. Obviously the rust towards the center of the bolt means it had been half broken for a long time. (cross section of broken center bolt) So, Monday afternoon I had some parts ordered from the local Toyota dealership. They told me it was special order, only 8 left in the country, blah blah blah two day wait. I also ordered some spring insulators, which keep the leaf springs from making too much noise. They were 10 dollars a pop and I needed 8 of them (they're just plastic!). I will keep the old ones as they're still fine, but look quite crummy. Now it's Wednesday and my parts are there, but rookie mistake (!!!), I didn't bring the old one to compare. The ones I took home are much too short for these spring packs, they must be for a 2WD truck (which is strange cause I ordered them over the phone by VIN). It's a bit of a set back because I'll have lost the weekend to work on the spring packs. Even if I did bring the old part, I'd have only saved a day. (picture of new next to old, note hardware store bolt from passenger's side) Some of you from the East US or Europe may wonder why I'm bothering with rusty leaf springs from 35 years ago. Well, the rust here is virtually nothing. If you figure these have probably been rusting like this at least since it was parked in the 2000s, they'd be goners in coastal regions. Here, there's hardly any pitting. So that plus the fact they still have plenty of arch means I will be cleaning and reusing these. (before and after) Oh, and despite this being prefixed "Yota's Garage", I don't have a garage, shed, or even car port. I meant that I have multiple vehicles and I'll try to post them here . I DID build this bench today, which has made life 100x easier. It was about 50 dollars out the door. I didn't have any plans, and actually was in Home Depot for something totally different. I made some calculations in my head based on what table tops would be available (I wanted 3/4 inch MDF, which only came in 2x4 feet). I grabbed two 4x4 posts and three 2x4 posts in 8 feet length. I had the Home Depot guy cut them based off my head calculations and it all came out perfect. I have some extra wood, which I'll be using to stick under the vice for mounting. Currently it has a single really long lag bolt down the center of the 4x4 leg post. Thanks for reading, Yota
