1986 4Runner Refresh

[GeoRoss]

Well, I couldn't get the Land Cruiser running well enough for a week long snow vacation. I ran out of time to chase down a misfire

Sooooo, the 4Runner is pressed into service. I only have street tires on 3rd Gen wheels. Cube Dweller included a set of 15" American Racing Wheels when I bought it from him. They weren't my first choice, but they are what I have on hand. Threw on some cheap Goodyear Wranglers and we should be good to go.

Welcome to 1980's goodness.

 

[GeoRoss]

Well, I've run the medium duty OME rear springs for almost a year. I've carried weight, articulated the suspension, etc. They really haven't relaxed much so I'm going to pull a leaf. I thought about doing this when I did the initial install.

My question is, will I end up destroying the center pin when I do this? I seem to recall it is riveted in. I just want to have some replacements on hand when I do this if needed.

 

[KLF]

No it's a bolt, well actually a bolt with a round head where it drops into the perch. What you want to do is get a hefty clamp, pinch the pack together right next to the bolt, carefully loosen and remove the bolt (use Vice-grips on the round head), then slowly loosen the clamp. It helps if you have someone there to steady things, especially when putting the pack back together.

 

[txlonghorn]

KLF got it right. I do it the same way. It can be a pain in the ass to do by yourself, but you can manage. I have taken apart my OME spring packs more times than I can count, because like you said, they're made for Aussie outback weight trucks. Are you trying to lower the spring rate or simply drop the height? I would recommend removing overloads for height, as opposed to messing with the spring rate by removing a long leaf. There are only four long leafs to work with. The spring rate of the main leaves is pretty spot on for these springs (217 lbft/in, all pro's soft rears are 200 lbft/in for comparison). The issue is that under normal weight, you're already getting into the overloads (the spring rate jumps to 388 lbft/in). I removed the longer overload and flipped the shorter overload upside down so the slight arc of the spring is facing the ground. This lets you cycle the leaf pack a much greater distance before getting into the remaining overload.

 

[GeoRoss]

Thanks for the reassurance. I have new u-bolts enroute.

When I talked to ARB they said:

Standard practice with OME leafs state that you can remove the third leaf down from the main leaf to reduce height approx. .5" and the rate approx.. 10%. If a spring clip is riveted to that third leaf, then remove the fourth.

I'm trying to reduce the rake without cranking the stock torsion bars. I'll think about removing one of the overloads.

Thanks!

 

[txlonghorn]

The only difference between the heavy and medium pack is that the heavy has an extra full-length leaf 3rd from the top. This bumps the initial spring rate up to 285 lbft/in, which is significantly more than 10%. If your info is coming from the ARB USA guys, well I have spoken with them on the phone many times, and they were not very knowledgeable on these spring packs. All they did was read the materials given to them by the guys in Australia. If you remove the third leaf down on your medium pack (both the 3rd and 4th leafs have spring clips, which makes me think this person emailing you assumed you had the heavy spring pack with five leafs, 3rd leaf down has no rivet) then you'll be left with a three leaf pack that digs even more into the overloads. If height is all you want to lose, I'd recommend removing the overloads like I mentioned above. I've rebuilt my OME leafs more times than I can count, and I'm finally ditching them for an AllPro pack.

 

[GeoRoss]

This 4Runner is the first IFS vehicle I've ever worked on. When I greased the upper and lower joints before a road trip in December I discovered they were plugs, not zircs. Sort of a PITA, especially the lower joint. It was such a PITA and because I was in a rush, I didn't grease the lower one. Today I switched over to my set of street tires and decided to add zircs.

Why am I posting such a mundane thing? Well it is to point out that I am not the smartest mechanic. I spent over an hour trying to get the lower zirc threaded. Then I realized that if I just turn the wheels to full stop it was accessible.

I am a moron at times. Even though the lower joint felt empty, it was hard pumping grease in. I'm thinking it is all dried grease in there. The sway bar bushings are really rotted so I'm thinking it is due for a full rebuild.

 

[GeoRoss]

One step forward, one step back. It is 112° today so the AC as been on high a lot. I've always had a terrible rattle when doing that. Today I found it, the defroster vents rattle. Some green felt and all is good.

While dropping the kids off it hit a bump, heard a thump and then a shatter. In the rear view mirror I saw stars sprinkling on the road. The PS mirror fell out of the housing. These are electric mirrors off a 1989 I found at a junkyard. I love these style of mirrors and I'm not hopeful I'll be able to find someone to cut a replacement mirror. Time for some eBay I guess.

 

[PhrogsPhorever]

You still running R12 or has your truck been upgraded to R134?

 

[GeoRoss]

One step forward, one step back. It is 112° today so the AC as been on high a lot. I've always had a terrible rattle when doing that. Today I found it, the defroster vents rattle. Some green felt and all is good.

While dropping the kids off it hit a bump, heard a thump and then a shatter. In the rear view mirror I saw stars sprinkling on the road. The PS mirror fell out of the housing. These are electric mirrors off a 1989 I found at a junkyard. I love these style of mirrors and I'm not hopeful I'll be able to find someone to cut a replacement mirror. Time for some eBay I guess.

You still running R12 or has your truck been upgraded to R134?

R12. Working fine in this miserable heat wave.

I need to rejuvenate the fan clutch with some fresh oil. No engine cooling issues, but the AC doesn't do as well at idle. The condenser could do with a cleaning as well I'm sure.

 

[GeoRoss]

I removed the lower/smallest overload spring. It didn't do much on the height, but it took most of the harshness out of the ride.

 

[GeoRoss]

Well the 4Runner is still just dandy. I found out what my off-throttle transmission whine was. I replaced the shifter bushing (from Marlin) and no more deceleration noise.

I've had a little bit of intermittent high idle. I tracked that down to a sticky dashpot. I'll keep lubing it until it completely stops. It is mostly gone.

I did develop a hard cold start only when temps are below 60˚F. I do need to track that down, but I guess I have until late October to fix that. I think it is either fuel pressure or my ICV. I don't have a start-up high idle, but that predates the cold-start problem. Seat-of-the-pants HP feel makes me think it is better if I leave the key in the ON position for 30 seconds or so before starting. It runs fine now and I'll sort that out later.

It does need body work and paint. My original plan was to do the exterior and then the interior from a logistics point of view. Sadly, my slush fund/mad money for fun stuff keeps getting depleted by the real world, new roof, new HVAC, and a few other things. Plus, I've been thinking that this might be something I want to tackle myself. I'm somewhat handy, what the hell.

Sooooo, to keep some semblance of forward progress I moved to the interior. My 4Runner is a DLX model with the 3/4 door cards. They are in good shape, but the asshat PO put some sort of weird outdoor carpet additions that were tek screwed on. Plus the DS door is a replacement from a full door card SR5 that had a speaker cut out. Door cards on eBay are made of gold and bitcoin so I decided to make my own.

 

[GeoRoss]

Just after I bought my 4Runner I found a fresh 88 1st gen at a local junkyard. Sadly it was a red interior, but I was able to harvest things like an altimeter, front bumper, rear seat frames, roll bar pad and other stuff. It also had full door cards. They were in sad shape, but I bought them for $20 for a template.

The SR5 is a two piece door card. The upper part is metal and the lower part is fiber board. Luckily for me the donor had vent windows like I have. I've been sitting on these for at least a couple of years and finally decided to take the plunge. My youngest daughter was pulling for paint first, but she just doesn't have a full appreciation for a classic auto with a patina.

One thing I've seen on DIY door cards is that that folks either just glue on some vinyl creating a plain plane or go hog wild with sewing machines. I definitely wanted to try to recreate the reliefs the the original DLX cards had. There is one YouTuber who really helped drive my decisions. Cechaflo

I watched way too many videos and most were crap ricers and the like. I decided to go with some sort of padding and cut out reliefs from the padding then add the vinyl. I went to some local fabric stores and picked out some nice vinyl and a couple of different paddings. I spent way too much time on experiments testing different padding, glues and the like. I later found out I should have done it a bit different, but that is for later.

Felt like I found a good padding a glue. The spray 3M didn't seem to work well, but the hard core liquid contact cement worked better. I also liked how the open cell 1/8" padding looked relative to the much thinner felt backed padding. I did learn that the thicker open cell padding created a couple of problems though, but could have been easily avoided if I had thought about it a bit more. Spoiler alter, door lock bezel and vent window obstructions.

The next step was prepping the metal upper door card piece. It needed a little hammer-n-dolly work. Removed all the surface rust and primed it. I then used 3M high temp spray contact cement to glue the padding on. I glued the open cell foam side to the metal leaving the backing to face the vinyl.

The next step was to trim. I trimmed it all the way to outside edge so the vinyl would contact the metal when wrapped.

 

[GeoRoss]

The next step was to add the vinyl. I did a rough cut leaving over 2" of over. I glued the easiest edge (lower) with the liquid high temp contact cement. I used a brazzilion Harbor Freight claps and let it cure over night.

I then carefully folded the vinyl over tightly and marked the midline. I used the liquid contact cement here as well. The spray contact cement is really imprecise. I then weighed it down and let it set.

The basics of the fiber board portion of the door card are basic woodworking. I made a poster board template from the cruddy door cards, cut it out with a jig saw. Used a drill and files to open the holes and adjust. I did do this before working on the upper section.

 

[GeoRoss]

Time for final fitment.

Time to cut with angry pixies

Final fitment. I used a sharpie to mark areas that needed to be adjusted. I always opted for leaving more when doing the original cuts.

 

[GeoRoss]

Back to the upper metal section. I have one edge fully glued and it held down in the middle. Time to glue the other long axis.

I used the liquid cement for this as well. I bought both the spray 3M and liquid contact cement from Home Depot and used inexpensive brushes from harbor freight.

Time to cut out the door handle. I left as much excess vinyl as I felt I could with out bunching. I used the liquid contact cement here as well. I did use a heat gun to help stretch the vinyl. The Harbor Freight clamps work great and since they are cheap, you can buy a bunch. I did use tongue depressors to even the load and avoid leaving impressions.

Now time to glue the short axises. I used the liquid contact cement and lots of clamps with tongue depressors.

Time to see how it looks.

A little lumpy, but I was able to massage many of these away. The reason for the "lumps" is my stretching technique. I should have worked harder to pull more evenly. The tighter sections are where my fingers were. Like I said, most of this has relaxed using a heat gun and hand massaging.

 

[GeoRoss]

Time for the the fiber board section. The plan was to just glue the padding to the fiber board, cut out the reliefs and then glue/staple the vinyl on. Sounds easy doesn't it. To say I was nervous about this is an understatement.

The first step was to make a stencil. I used the design from my DLX panels as a guide.

The exacto knife is your friend.

You begin to hate your exacto knife friend, but it is good to be done.

 

[GeoRoss]

The next step is to glue the padding onto the fiber board. However, I didn't want to glue anywhere I was going to be cutting out the reliefs. I used the spray contact cement and masked off all the places I didn't want glue.

I then used liquid contact cement to glue the other edge of the the long axis. Once dried I trimmed the padding the inside edge of the fiber board.

I then placed my poster board template on the padding. Carefully tried to keep it aligned and marked the relief cuts.

This is quite tedious and hard as the open cell foam doesn't really make it easy to do nice clean cuts.

All the staining is my fault. My shop has no AC and it is over 100˚ so I sweat a lot.

 

[GeoRoss]

Once all the reliefs are cut out I needed to keep them from flopping around. Liquid contact cement to the rescue.

Now that the padding is firmly attached, time to move to the vinyl. I used a similar technique as I did with the padding. I glued the lower section of the long axis down first. I used the liquid contact cement and that was a mistake on my part.

The glue bled through. I didn't see this in my tests. A heat gun has helped and I am hopeful this will not be too noticeable. Granted I notice it so we will find out if it drives me nuts enough to redo it.

 

[GeoRoss]

Time for the reliefs. I used the liquid cement again. I also cut out 3/8" dowels to length to act as presses. I marked where the glue should go and went to town.

I let things cure overnight at this point.