Hey everyone! I picked up my first Toyota about a month ago. It’s a 93 4Runner, 4x4 with the 5 speed manual. 3.slow of course. Only had 158k miles on it, by far the lowest mileage example I could find in my area for this vintage. Sadly, the truck doesn’t look like it’s got that low of mileage - originally an east coast vehicle, it’s being eaten alive by decades of untreated rust. I’m a professional sheet metal welder, so I’m confident I can fix that. But before then, there’s some issues to work out, which is mainly what I’m going to focus on in this thread.

Let’s start with some pictures!











I took these last month the day I bought it. So that’s our starting point - you can see it’s quite dirty and rusty! But she ran solidly. Engine sounds good, the timing belt had been done 10k miles before I bought it, transmission feels awesome and shifts smoothly. It’s got good bones as they say. I’ve been dailying it for the last month, and so far so good! No issues have come up.

I’ll keep adding more to this post to detail the work I’ve done/problems I’ve found so far, til I’m caught up to now.

 

For this “build,” I’m actually not planning on making a rock crawler or off road machine. This is my daily, so I want to keep it stock. Reliability and on-road drivability are my main concerns here. Definitely not as exciting or cool as many of the other builds here, but this poor truck has been neglected for so long, nearly every part is going to be touched in this “restoration” - if you can call it that! This will never be a showroom quality truck, but we’ll try to make it run good and look nice regardless.

So first thing’s first - the muffler needed replaced. I chopped out the old one and set it next to the no-name, off brand thing from the usual suspects. I don’t seem to have any pictures of after I welded everything together, but long story short, I cut the pipes off either end of the old muffler, welded them plus a little length of pipe to the new muffler, and fit it back in exactly where it originally went. Pretty minimal modifications overall, and the truck sounds immensely better.

 

Despite the fact that my engine is one of Toyota’s least desirable, it seems to be running strong. It starts right up every day, the oil looks healthy, it sounds good. Plus it had the timing belt done 10k miles before I got it, so that’s one of the scary service items out of the way. There appear to be numerous leaks under the car, there’s just wet black greasy stuff everywhere, so it’s hard to tell exactly where the source of these leaks are. I’m fairly confident that one of the leaks is from the power steering pump, but other than that, I just can’t tell where anything is coming from. So I’ve been aiming to do a bit of cleaning every time I’m working on something.

Here’s a few pictures of the belly of the beast so you can see what I’m up against.

Everything up top is coated in a fine layer of grime.

Underneath, around the transmission. Lots of oil

More oil

Can you tell which side I cleaned?

Here’s one particular spot I think is leaking

Another angle of that transmission leak


Besides the leaks, the only issue my engine seems to have is with the idle. Which seems to be a very common issue with the 3VZE, the idle surges or just sits too high. I have, or had, both issues. My idle was surging under braking, which suggests a vacuum leak somewhere around the brake booster. I wasn’t able to find anything when I wiggled those vacuum lines, it all seemed fine, but miraculously the surging idle issue went away after I messed with the vacuum lines. It’s been a couple weeks since I did that and it hasn’t returned, so hopefully it stays that way!

Unfortunately, it didn’t solve the high idle. WIth my idle screw turned all the way in, it mostly sits just above 1,000rpm. It’s inconsistent though, because sometimes it’ll idle around 500-900, which is closer to where I want to be. But like I said, very inconsistent, it basically idles somewhere different every time I start the truck, but most of the time it’s over 1k. I’m thinking it must be an issue with the throttle body, so one of these weekends I’m going to try pulling that off and giving it a good cleaning, see if that changes anything.

 

Next up, we’ve got lots of suspension issues! Basically every bushing is shot, every ball joint is split and leaking. The brackets that hold up the sway bar bushings are rusting through. The alignment was terrible and the truck really didn’t want to go straight.

So far, I’ve only replaced the tie rods. That made a significant difference! I adjusted them in and out til the steering wheel pointed straight, then did a test drive and adjusted them some more. Then rinse and repeat that about five times. And now, it’s tracking straight and is much more stable while driving! Still work to do though, I’ve got a couple of kits of bushings coming in the mail. Once I finish replacing everything, I’ll have it professionally aligned. Anyone know a good alignment shop in Colorado? I’ve been to several chain places with past vehicles, and I’ve never once gotten a straight steering wheel from them.

Now, here’s the bad part. The rust has attacked the rear of the car pretty significantly. There’s a little bit of frame rust in the rear, just on the surface. Thankfully it hasn’t gone through anywhere yet. But the rear suspension is gone. The bump stops that sit inside the springs in the rear are completely rusted out. Here’s a couple pictures:




Now, I haven’t taken the rear apart yet so it’s hard to tell how bad this is. This is also my first truck, so I’m not familiar with this type of suspension. I’m not sure if those bump stops are easily replaceable or if I’m going to have to do some cutting and fabrication. Anyone know how bad this actually is?

 

first, welcome to the world of toyotas and Yotatech.
second, welcome to the world of leaky trucks. my dad calls my 4runner the ExxonValdez.
third, ignore the haters, the 3vz is a good motor if you treat it right. i wouldnt recommend reving it much past 3500 on a daily basis. i WOULD recommend getting a set of headers for it(either Doug Thorley or ebay stainless will work) to get rid of the head gasket and valve killing crossover pipe and free up a little power.
fourth, that oil leak looks like a combination of leaks all coalescing into the spot at the bottom of the transmission. the ONLY leak that could be happening back there would be the rear main on the motor and with the amount of leaks up high that it has, id fix them first before thinking about rear main. personally, id use some gunk engine degreaser and clean as much as possible. then go to your local autoparts store and get a UV dye for your oil. comes in a little 4 or 6 0z bottle. dump that in and get a UV flashlight off amazon. after a few days, in the dark, go crawl all around and under your truck. should see where the leaks are originating. Also, itll make you feel like youre at a rave which is pretty cool in and of itself.
fifth, youre gonna need to cut and weld new bump stops into there. the stock springs are known to sag badly. only way to fix that is with new springs rom a company like Old Man Emu, but then youre gonna want to lift the front a bit to match. and thats a whole ordeal.

 

Looking forward to following your build! I don't really agree with the 3.0 haters either. The long tube headers do help it out some, as they help out pretty much every car. The biggest thing that helped mine out was cleaning the crud out of the intake runners. They tend to collect carbon over time from the PCV.

 

Hey guys, thanks for the advice!

First off it’s good to know that the leaks aren’t super concerning. I’m used to the world of Subaru where leaks are bad news. But on bad news, I’m pretty sure my head gaskets are on their way out. Over the weekend I did my spark plugs and wires, and there’s a significant amount of oil all around the heads. Like, a lot. Also, can I just say, spark plugs on this engine absolutely suck. I couldn’t believe how awful the #5 and #2 plugs were to get to, and #2 pulled all the threads out with it. So that took an entire afternoon to repair, but everything seems to be running okay now.

I also went ahead and pulled off my throttle body to mess around with, since my throttle sticks when it’s cold and my idle is inconsistent. Tried tightening down the IAC valve and could barely get it to turn two threads. But it seemed to help a little bit, idle is a little bit more stable, Now instead of going between 500 and 1250, seems to stay between 750 and 1,000 pretty consistently. So we’re making progress!

Now I’m going to be testing the sensors and making sure everything is in spec. If it all checks out then I’m going to hopefully pass emissions! Hopefully won’t need to replace the cat yet, but we’ll see how the test goes.

 

Good job. Welcome too.
I note your front lower A arm Camber adjustments are in the middle on either side. I'd take that as a win.

Yep. Looks like she's got "the cancer" around those wheel wells. I mighta taken pics last summer when I replaced the all-bondo R rear wheel arch, but short of it is, down in that lower part was really rusty. But it looked really ugly inside and great on outside. OCD almost makes me want to go chop of the Left. Probably not gona happen.