Sinking Creek 4WD Association

Well, Im pretty bored right now and thought it was about time to do my first "build thread" on that lumpy green piece of shit I call my "rig" or other more ignant people would call my "jeep."

This is gonna be more of a narrative of how the Shitrunner came to be with shit that I've done to it of course. Once we get closer to its present state, it'll be more like a normal build thread. Still trying to compile all my pics through the years into my photobucket, so just bare with me on the pics.

Anyways, guess we'll start with a quick background. I bought in the summer of 2012 in San Diego, California after selling my old YJ(yeah I was a Jeeper, a darker part of my life ). It was a beautiful green 2001 4runner with 101,000 miles zero rust, pretty much perfect except no e-locker. Drove it thoughout the rest of high school in Vegas, and took it with me to Tech and still my only daily driver.

Humble beginnings (Dont really have pics of when I first got it. Oh well, who cares.)
pretty much stock







Summer 2013
Twas the summer before college and my asian ass was stirring around like a mouse trying to get all my shit packed and get my rig ready to make the cannonball drive to Blacksburg from Vegas.
Got some used Downey/bilstein COs for $20 off craigslist, Land Cruiser 7 wrap coils and shocks for $25 from a local pick n pull( mind you, im still running this half assed bargain basement bullshit suspension set up and seems to work for the most part) 5 used 90% tread 33 KOs for $300 and rebuilt some used junkyard Tundra calipers along with new Tundra pads and rotors. Basically the basic bitch 4runner package, poverty edition. Less than $500 later...




















"Thats all I have to say about that." -Forrest Gump

And the tale of the shitbox goes on.

Made it Tech August 2013

VT police knocked on my dorm door the morning after that pic was taken and told me to wash my car due all the profanity and penis drawings written....

And the first of many broken CVs


Ran with that setup for a little while and didnt really do much till summer 2014. Did a few small things during my freshman year like removed both sway bars, some interior lighting bullshit, plastidipped and chalk board painted my hatch, and all that other JF nonsense that gets mall crawlin Jeepers a hard-on.

Keep it coming

Over winter break 2013 picked up a cheap chinabar, some pretty much bald ~35 (315/75/16) duratracs for $100 just to see if it would be worth running, and also tubbed the firewall to fit the 35s. The lightbar I bought was a complete piece of shit that ended up being more of a fucking lighted fish tank more than anything, but guess thats what I get for shitty ebay quality light bars. So that ended up in the trash can after about 3 months. Unmounted and mounted the duratracs in the cage with my hi-lift, a soap bottle and a couple pry bars(that process sucked fat ass) and used bbs to balance them.

Used this as reference to tub my fenders
http://www.trailslesstraveled.com/viewarticle.php?id=63

First outing on the 315s (no lockers, 4.10s)



Back in the ol' flat biller days(yeah, I know I was a tool)


Kevin's and Disco Matt's rigs from that same trip

FJCcrawler wrote:Back in the ol' flat biller days(yeah, I know I am a tool)

FIFY

Look how Kevin's Tacoma looks on those itty bitty tires.

Haha, I think that Elliot's (mudding) trip is where I fell on my face!

BadAssEddie wrote:Look how Kevin's Tacoma looks on those itty bitty tires.

hahaha skipped leg day for awhile

wheelertaco wrote:

FJCcrawler wrote:Back in the ol' flat biller days(yeah, I know I am a tool)

FIFY

Mr.WJ wrote:Haha, I think that Elliot's (mudding) trip is where I fell on my face!

Ate massive shit in like a 3 ft hole.

wheelertaco wrote:

BadAssEddie wrote:Look how Kevin's Tacoma looks on those itty bitty tires.

hahaha skipped leg day for awhile

Just a wittle guy!

Summer 2014
Got a set of used 90% tread 315/75/16 KM1s for $350, and went up to 4.56s to help a little on the highway. Still no lockers though. Also had to hack a fuck ton out of my front fenders to get the km1s to fit at full bump.




Drove with this set up back home to Vegas and took it to Pismo Beach, CA. The only thing I would change about this set up is running a little lower set of gears especially with an automatic tranny.












Pismo was definitely one of the best trips I made in my shitbox. Pismo was great to blast around the dunes, then hangout by the water and getting hammered around a fire. That last jump ripped off the remaining fener flares I had.

Fall 2014
Almost nothing happened due to being in the corps and the 4runner pretty much just sat in the foxridge parking lot till winter break. If anyone wonders, it sucks being a freshman cadet, especially a sophomore as a freshman cadet. Wasnt allowed to do any extracurricular activities including wheeling and drinking or really any normal human interaction, so that sucked fat fucking dick.
Did a quick mtn lake run with Josh and Kevin before the start of the semester.




Got some sweet rock lights wired in during winter break, sadly, that was prolly the extent of my mods for that year.


Spring 2015
Luckily, the corps allowed a slight sliver of freedom the next semester so I was able to get some wheeling in, but didnt really do much to the 4runner.

Windrock in the snow was pretty miserable. Everything was icy, and couldnt get traction worth a shit. Not having any lockers didnt help either. Pretty much had to floor it up every hill due to all the ice and snow. Took us pretty much a whole day to do 3 or 4 trails. The u-joint on my driveshaft also decided to shit itself on the journey back home, luckily I was still able to drive on it, just wasnt able to go past 65mph without some serious driveline vibrations. Also, broke my second set of tail lights on a tree...
























Some communist haters on hokie snaps...

Summer 2015

Got a bunch of shit done over the summer. Along with my internship, I also worked part time at a shop, so I figured it would be a good time to get shit done on the 4runner while I still had acess to a lift, 20T press and any other tool I might need.

When I broke my first cv, the splines actually broke off in the diff itself, and I didnt want to go through the trouble of taking the diff apart to get the piece out at the time. I also just got a whole front third when I got 4.56s so my old diff was just sitting in my shed at home. I wanted to get geared down to 5.29s and locked so I decided it was time to tear down the old to see what happened.
Got everything split and was surprised to see what happened.






Ended up blowing up my spider gears somehow and I guess locked something up snapping the cv. Also chipped the pinion teeth.




The housing itself seemed to be okay, so I knocked out all the races, got everyting degreased and cleaned and put a pretty coat of paint on it.



Got the diff and pinion to work to get the pinino and carrier bearings off and to get the ring gear off the diff. Also utilized the sweet parts washer at work.




Pretty much got everything disassembled till I had enough money to get a new ring and pininon and rebuild kit.

Good job on the tech and wrenching pics. Like the detail. I didn't know you did some of that.

FJCcrawler wrote:

Mr.WJ wrote:Haha, I think that Elliot's (mudding) trip is where I fell on my face!

Ate massive shit in like a 3 ft hole.

Came out of nowhere.

But, pretty nice seeing all this again. Lot of good, and bad, history haha

Had all my parts ordered for my front and rear diffs about a week after I tore everything down. So in the mean time, I had other shit that needed to get done.

I wanted factory Aisin locking hubs, but Toyota never offered them for the 4runner, however, they did have them on base model Tacomas which had pretty much the same front suspension design as the 4runner. So, took the 2hr drive up to Bloomington, IN picked up two locking hub spindles and cvs off a recked 96 taco. The main reason for running locking hubs is so I can run a welded front and also when i break cvs, all I have to do is unlock the hub and replace the cv at my convenience, whereas if you had the factory drive hubs, then youre kinda fucked with having to replace the cv where you broke it. Its also a nice thing, because with locking hub, the cv doesnt actually hold the hub assembly together, in essence being able to run the hub assembly without a cv at all, whereas with the factory, you have to have a cv to hold everything together.

A minor detail I had to take care of was the ABS system. Locking hub tacos did not have ABS, thus did not have ABS spindles, tone rings or a provision for the sensor. At the time, I really wanted to keep my ABS, not knowing 6 months later would prove to be useless, but we'll get to that later.

Anyways, had extra ABS spindles in my parts shed, so got those on the press and pressed out the drive hubs and bearings.



What it looks like all spread out from left to right(Drive hub, top:tone ring, outer wheel seal, bearing snap ring, bottom: inner wheel seal, spacer, hub bearing, far right is the spindle.)


Had to press the locking hub spindles off and got them cleaned up in the parts washer.




Got some fresh Koyo bearings to press in as well as wheel seals. Dont have any pics but basically, press the wheel bearing in, insert outer snap ring inside the spindle to hold bearing in, then before you press the hub in, hammer on the outer wheel seal then proceed to press the hub onto the bearing. The tone ring and spacer goes on the backside of the spindle followed by the retaining nut and lastly, the inner wheel seal. You do need a special tool to tighten the retaining nut or you can make your own, but basically, thats what holds the whole hub assembly together which needs to be torqued down to 209ft-lbs. I also used red threadlock, but is not necessary. Thats pretty much the run down. This would also be a very good time to get your upper and lower ball joints replaced if you think they are loose, something I did not do at the time, and would regret it in about 3 months after I got my hubs pressed in.