RockGoat Version 3RZ (1 Viewer)

[RichardSkinner]

I would like a build log so that I can look back on this rig, laugh at my lessons, and keep in perspective that I am indeed making progress. If you want to watch a guy learn from the school of hardknocks then tune in every once in a while.

Back story -
My brother had a 1987 4runner and I had a 1985 that I foolishly sold in 2019. By 2022 I was itching for another too much. And damn, prices have changed on these things! I found a semi built 1984 4runner with 22re swap for a decent price, but I could tell it needed a good bit of clean up and work. I didn't know the 22re was a ticking time bomb, but I am rolling with the punches and going for a 3RZ swap.

I'll Tarantino this and show where I am at, sit down with some brews later and hammer out where I have been, and then continue as I go.

The 22re in this truck felt particularly weak. After a couple months of ownership, I noticed oil spatter on the side of my house near where the tail pipe was aimed when I would warm up... I could feel the engine losing power over the next few months. Long story short, in late February, I set off on a snow wheeling trip and overheated the s*** out of it on a grade with no exits and heavy snow banks with no where safe to pull off. It had enough life to pull onto the trailer and then up my steep driveway under it's own power, but it's basically dead.

So I found a donor with "197,000 miles" on it. More on it later in the thread.

Currently, the 3RZ is in my garage, stripped of the superficial BS. I am hoping to get the block and head off to the machine shop next week.

There has been a decent amount of clean up, mods, and KOH23 between July 2022 when I got the 4runner and this point. I'll sit down with a couple suds soon and hammer out some fill in posts. Can't wait to get this 3RZ rebuilt and running in this puppy. Going to feel like a rocket ship coming from a 22re with serious health problems.

A low boost LCE supercharger kit is a serious risk on my "poor financial, but highly hard to resist" list of decisions.

 

[RichardSkinner]

I picked up the 1984 in July 2022. It had a lot of what I wanted, but also a lot that I could see at surface value that needed work.

The good:
- Winch is cheap, but it’s there and bumper is decent.
- ARB front locker
- Rear springs up front
- Marlin high steer
- was told chromoly shafts up front (turns out they were TG longfield that were dying)
- allpro toyrear3 springs
- IFS width rear axle with u bolt eliminator kit
- spool rear with spare V6 third with stripped gears but good detroit
- 35” MTRs with good tread (also under bad)
- 22re swapped and passed smog
- W56 swapped
- Marlin dual cases with 4.7 rear
- double Cardan shafts front and rear
- floor pans are solid

It was described as a 225k mi rig with a rebuilt 22re swapped in approx 25k mi ago. Engine seemed ok when I checked it out. I knew I should have compression tested it, but I didn’t… could see a new water pump and it looked like a pretty clean engine.

Bad
- rear shackle angles looked very wrong.
- front axle was leaking gear oil at the wiper seals and clearly needed rebuild
- salvage title, had been rolled and could tell it had a top grafted on
- hard top was hosed
- probably has bad rust under the diamond plate ghetto patches
- I could smell a bad heater core within the cab
- The MTRs were the old school type and sketchy cracked out. A trail run would be risky

Interior and body are pretty rough, but I like to wheel my stuff and it will kiss some rocks and get trail wear. It had good bones and I can work with it.

 

[RichardSkinner]

Pictures are a little deceiving and make the interior look real plush. It's pretty good... but it's also a unit that has lived a life of abuse since 1984. We make a good match.

It had a nice garage hack double stack of 3"x1" box tube to make bump stops. Prairie City OHV is just down the hill from me, so a quick visit to check how for rubbing was in order. My last runner with RUF had pretty bad rubbing when turning into a stuffed front wheel. Sure enough on real mild s*** this on showed rubbing that if left unattended would be catastrophic to tires on Fordyce.
Note the rear shackle.

Going to have to BFH this spot later.

At Prairie City, the axle seals were visibly weeping when flexed. It was too much for me to even want to take it up to the Rubicon for a day trip. An accident is one thing, but I can't bring myself to be the guy to dribble on the trail.

I mulled it over and decided to just knock out the front axle rebuild and deal with pushing my front axle later.

 

[RichardSkinner]

Pulled the crusty old axle...

found a nice chocolate milk shake....

and found this.... At first I tried to argue "well it's just work hardened. It's actually STRONGER"... then I decided I'd rather nip this in the bud, so I ordered RCVs.

 

[RichardSkinner]

So I had this extra axle housing. I intended to use this one since it had a top truss, but when I went to put in the trunion races, 3/4 went in well, and the 4th would slip in and out with some play to spare. Anyone have any suggestions? I'm not entirely sure what is a decent fix is.

 

[RichardSkinner]

After a full day of wire wheel time and rattle can work, I had a clean axle and knuckles. Also not shown - I had a ruffstuff axle truss that I welded on after this coat of paint. It's a pretty grossly tall truss and I was too stupid to trim it down, but it's what I had.

Also cleaned up the RUF spring

During the next week I dropped the V6 third off at River City Diff to have a new set of 5.29 installed. In the mean time I rebuild the knuckles.

 

[RichardSkinner]

Some fancy new RCVs came in the mail over the next week.

I went to throw them into the front axle with my ARB, but found the long side shaft would absolutely not seat into the carrier. I started second guessing myself and getting all pissed off and did a small amount of grinding of the inside of the knuckle to make it clear. After knowing full well I had enough room to clear the flat on the CV, it was time to start panicking that I had a bent axle housing.... WHY ELSE WOULDN'T IT FIT IN?!

This is about when I realized I had that rebuild V6 third member laying in the garage. I insert my old shafts into the front housing/ARB. Works fine.
I insert the old shafts into the detroit. It works fine.
I try the RCVs. It does not go into either the ARB in the front housing or the spare V6 third.

After eyeing the splines on the RCV shafts, I notice a wear mark on the shaft that won't go in. Turns out it was machined incorrectly and had a flat on the top of the splines about 0.020" wider than any of my other shafts (TG or RCV). I called RCV and returned that inner long side shaft for a replacement. Kind of a hassle I beat my head over, but they exchanged the shaft.

Was happy to get that behind me.

 

[ferg]

Before you BFH that p-side fender, make sure the engine computer is out of the way. It's inside the p-side kick panel.

 

[RichardSkinner]

Before you BFH that p-side fender, make sure the engine computer is out of the way. It's inside the p-side kick panel

Definitely. I was actually surprised to see that a 1984 carbed model still had what looked like factory mounting for the computer. The computer is what kept me from fully cutting and welding in a new inner fender on both this 4runner and my last one.

I have hammered and cut some of the pinch weld back on both sides. Good clearance on it now.
I guess we can get to some of the topic of working for clearance...

I hit up a rubicon day trip around September. It's only about 1hr 20 min to the trail head for me. Everything did well, except that damn rubbing that I am familiar with..

Came home, ordered Sky's Offroad 3F front springs, a steering box relocation kit becuase I knew the current position would be tight, and a flat pitman arm.

The sky 3F push the axle forward and extra inch from RUF springs. +3" total from stock. I knew this would happen...

So radiator comes out, fan off, and time to get working. Mocked up the box as far forward as I could get it with out the steering shaft hitting the frame arch and the TRE hitting the underside of frame.

zipped it up, threw on some paint, and went to flex to test it out.

 

[RichardSkinner]

I forgot, at some point I got a fresh set of 35x12.5R15 Cooper STT Pros. I really dig these tires. Flexed out on a rock to check it out --

A few problems showed. First the rear has almost no flex. Two problems I spotted immediately
1. Shackle angle mount position was such that the spring was binding the shackle by pulling it straight into tension, rather than using the shackle as a lever. The angle of that shackle, seen in the earlier post, is a symptom of those mount dimesions in relation to the free spring length. It shackle hanger needs to be moved.
2. The previous owner put an extra 3/8" thick add-a-leaf in the pack. The springs were way too stout.

Up front a few other problems surfaced.

First, when driver stuffed, the spring keeper bracket, or whatever it's called, contacts my drag link.

Second, when passenger is drooped and it is turned driver (pushing steering arm towards passenger spring), the drag link would begin to contact the spring. I am digging back in my head, but this would happen somewhere around 9" of 12" shock shaft showing. I feared getting to KOH and flexing and the TRE being put in a massive levering tension load.

 

[RichardSkinner]

By this time it was right at early January and I was damn sure going to bring this rig to KOH23 in first week of February, but had a pretty decent laundry list of items to get done.

Front axle issues were potentially catastrophic issues on the trail, so I attacked those first.

1st step was cutting the front keeper bracket off. I figure the rear keeper will keep the springs from spreading out. I am not totally excited at losing that flexure point the bolt on the bracket gives, but I had the back up plan of welding a spacer to move the top bolt back towards the axle about an inch if needed. So far (speaking in current tense - after a hammers trip), it has been fine. The front of the springs has the military wrap, so the dual leaf portion has much more support than cutting the rear bracket off.

I also removed the lower ~ 10" long 1/4" leaf from both packs to move the axle up 1/4" and therefore gaining clearance between the drag link and the top of the spring pack.

After this, the drag link/spring keeper on driver side issue was good to go, but the drag link still hit the top of the spring at droop on passenger. Removing the 1/4" leaf wasn't enough. I was fairly sure that if left alone, it would cause a TRE to blow up on the trail - or maybe really damage the sector shaft through all that leverage the drag link could give if the springs became a fulcrum for it to show the pitman upward.
I started to look towards castor/pinion angle...

My pinion angle wasn't great as it was, so I started thinking perhaps shims would correct the pinion and also work to raise the steering arms while lowering the pinion. I had some 4.5* shims sent to me. Unfortunately they would also add some thickeness and also push the axle downward, thus bringing the steering arm down. It was kind of a wash, but it at least gets that pinion angle more in line with where it should be.

Final idea was to limit the spring flex a slight amount to stop it from coming up into the drag link. I came up with this 0.75" tube and scrap steel. After this, I was good! I could see a hair of daylight between the spring and the drag link when going full droop on passenger and turning driver.

 

[ALX4X4]

Nice stuff - got a side on pic of the pinion after the wedge ?

 

[RichardSkinner]

Nice stuff - got a side on pic of the pinion after the wedge ?

This is all I have checking my pics right now. No angle finder, but it's much closer to the Tcase output. I'm not a fan of shims. This was more a quick fix and to see if this is where I want to go. I have much bigger fish to fry, but I'd like to eventually cut the perches and weld them into this angle more. I'd fab perches that are lower than stock which would help bring the steering arms higher over the top of the spring pack. That would also eliminate the shim thickness. I know that would set me straight, but it's not priority work at this point.

I did check that drive shaft at full bump and full droop before heading to KOH. It's long as s***. Plenty of droop and a couple inches extra at stuff to make sure I don't punch my tcase out while bombing the desert

 

[RichardSkinner]

Remember, majority of this work was in the month of January before KOH. So when waiting on parts for one thing, I was jamming on another. Here was some of the filler work.

That heater core I mentioned I could smell? It was absolutely gone. Not surprising for a 39 year old heater core and actually pretty impressive that it was only this bad. I do have to say I absolutely hate this design toyota did for the pipes out of the core. The pipes stick inside the flange of the core and use an oring and a sort of crimp band to hold pressure against the oring. The after market cores now days don't seal well. I could easily wobble and rotate them by hand once fitted up. There's no way I could trust it to hold for how much of a hassle it is to rip the entire dash apart to get to the core.

On the left you can also see I got the wrong one (rear heat) off Rock Auto. I ordered the right one, but it came missing the orings so I had to make a claim and have another sent. Needless to say I wrapped up this job about a week before loading up for KOH.

This was my solution. Cut the flanges off the both sides and hose clamp over both pipes. It should hold better, but we will see.

As the dash went back together, I began to remember how much an "Oh s***" bar is nice for the passenger. My wife hated riding in my last 4runner with nothing to grab onto. I don't have a bender, and I need tight radius bends anyways, so it's this tedious method.

After a lot of work, I had something that resembles my plan burned into the cross member that runs behind the dash.

 

[RichardSkinner]

Obvious tip: Lay your parts out in order in which you pull them. I had been doing this dash project over about 3 weeks and it would have been a real hassle getting everything back if I didn't have an order to it.

The previous owner had the old bungee strapped battery floating around the engine bay. Working with what I had, some angle and the threaded rod was old u bolts I cut off, a holder was made. Overkill, but it beats getting killed in a fire, or burning the Rubicon trail down, because the battery is arcing in the engine bay.

No rocklights, so a $35 set of LEDs from Amazon was the solution. Quick 16 gauge brackets and then the dirty of welding them in and boring wiring. Luckily a guy who was going to ride passenger at KOH volunteered his time to run the wires.

And that old top I mentioned that was dog**** when I bought the runner... well 39 years took its toll. I didn't want to spend the money on a soft topper, but also knew this is something that would be nice to get out of the way. Sold the old top for $100 since it had good glass. Bought a tan softopper. Friend helped save me a few hours of work and installed the softopper while I jammed on some of the other tasks for KOH prep.

 

[RichardSkinner]

Forgot that at some point in Sept 2022, before the axle push/steering box relocation, I swapped the detroit V6 rear in. I have mixed feelings about it. It's better than a spool, but god damn is the slack in that thing annoying. It seems like it gets 1/4 turn of the pinion before power is transmitted to the shafts. On road, this makes a big old thump if you don't smooth it out by using more clutch than I like to use.

It was cheaper than buying another ARB because I had the carrier.. Still considering swapping the detroit to the front and the ARB to the rear. Any thoughts, anyone? Anyone still following?

Back to January tasks, last main goal before KOH is to make the rear suspension worth a s*** in this thing. Running Hammers trails on 35" tires and leafs is a task as it is, but not going to work if there is zero flex. And running the desert sure as s*** isn't happening with leafs that don't flex and have some 3/8" thick add-a-leaf. There would be way too much apple juice spilled

Pulled that nasty add-a-leaf. At this point I have a leaf spring farm on my side yard...

I recently got a plasma cutter off Amazon and it works amazingly well for $260. Zipped off the old brackets.

It required a ton of stone wheel work to grind back to the frame to work with. But I got the hangers tacked in and cycled it around. Made some adjustments, then burned in the final product. I was a little lazy in not breaking the leaf pack down to the main leafs and cycling it, but I was really short on time and those allpro leafs have this "anti wrap" design that would mean I could only break them down to 2-1/2 leafs and wasn't sure I would get much ability to cycle the axle - which would make me run out of time. Ultimately, where I landed them seems to be working well.

 

[RichardSkinner]

I wish I got a side profile with the RUF and the original rear leafs. Unfortunately I didn't. Here is with the Sky 3F fronts and the original rear end I was working with.

I am really don't like how a lot of 80's toyota turn into narrow and tall rigs. I have an IFS width rear, and really want to keep this thing low and wide in relative Toyota terms. So far I am liking the stance I've got. Here is with Sky 3F springs in front and my rear suspension changes with the AllPro TOYREAR3 springs and mounting. I also really dig losing the hard top. That's about 125lbs shaved off that was located real high in regard to CG. I am sitting a hair on the soft side for the rear now. I'll see when I get a load of camp gear piled in. I may have to rob a thin leaf from my leaf farm.

LOADED UP AND MADE IT DOWN TO HAMMERS!

 

[RichardSkinner]

I've been to KOH 5 times before. Twice in my own rig, but this was the first time in this rig. Since I hadn't taken it out for any kind of shake down, I was super nervous. I hit Tackhammer first, as it's an easy trial near where we camp. Everything felt good, except I was getting a clunking when I'd come on the throttle. We pinpointed to be fairly sure it is the t case housing grinding on the inside of the skid plate. Not ideal, but didn't want to deal with supporting the trans, pulling the skid plate, and trying to clearance it so I let it grind...

We made a night run and the group decided it was to be Clawhammer. I had run this trail once before a few years ago. I'd call it a mid level trail in the hammers scale. It's generally not that hard, with the exception of two pretty wicked water fall steps towards the end. My group is all on 40-42" tires and linked one ton axles with the exception of one jeep on 37", so I am definitely the runt in the group being 35" and leafs all around. The second step on the waterfall is pretty massive and you have to ride way up the left side wall and pivot on your slider. I am pretty sad no one got any pictures or video, but the Rock Goat did absolutely amazingly. I was able to walk right up it no problems. This was a serious moment of bonding between me and this truck. I was highly impressed and knew the past few months of grinding away at making the build right were all worth it.

A few pics on Claw Hammer.

We do an annual "race back to camp" at KOH. It's usually always started up near the inner valley where the remote pits are usually and is simply be the first dude sitting in a chair around the camp fire. The race began at the exit of claw hammer. Keep in mind my group is all linked and at worst have Jeep 4.0L to at best LS swaps. Something about the desert just messes with your head and forces you to go fast, and that's what I did. I had all 114 squirrels (probably more like 90 in this old unit) all pissed off. Somewhere around Chocolate Thunder, I was slamming through the whoops and hear over the radio "Holy s***.... Is that Dave!?" We were almost within eye sight of camp and I knew I was close to first place, so I hammer down extra hard. As I come blasting out of a creek wash and skid into camp, I can see Bill in his Jeep LJ sliding up on the opposite side of camp. I scream at my passenger "As soon as I stop, full sprint to the camp chairs!!" We bail out and Bill slams his ass in a chair about 4 seconds before us. We all were busting up laughing.

I still claim 1st place in the EMC stock class since Bill is on 40" tires and linked Dana 60/GM 14 bolt combo! Hell, he literally just had professional shock tuning done on the lake bed a couple days before

So at this point, I am fully in love with the Rock Goat, although I am crawling around under it at 1AM with a beer making sure I didn't just bend the s*** out of my knuckle balls from sending her so hard.

We do various spectating over the next few days. Another night run comes up. This time Resolution. Awesome trail with some sweet views at the end.

I have ran Chocolate Thunder plenty of times and this rig needed to get the notch on the belt. Sunday afternoon we all ventured in and it went smooth as eggs. Walked through the left side line first shot.

We did some various offshots and a little random linking trails, but not as many trails as some years. Overall I am absolutely thrilled with how it ran.

Coming out of KOH my goals were/are all secondary/luxury items:
- Finish wiring in the Yaesu FTM-300DR
- Final mount the Auxbeam switch panel (I didn't mention I had temp installed these in January)
- Finish mounting the glove box. Needs trimming to accommodate the passenger grab handle.
- Alternator upgrade to handle a battery isolator
- Install deep cycle in bed with battery isolator
- mount Alpicool 45 Quart ARB knock off fridge
- fab front recovery mounts
- Replace stuck heater/coolant valve (constantly flowing coolant, heats cab way too much)
- Do IFS hub swap

Large item:
- Fab roll cage.

I'd love to go 4xInno internal cage, but I am 6' 2" and would probably knock myself even more retarded with an internal cage. It'd a lot of work, but I'd love to fab an internal that exits the top of the cab and is like a roof rack above the outside to give more head room. Then the rest stays internal. Not sure yet. I am just theorizing. If anyone has any pics post them up!

Also really am thinking about hydro assist. I know I'm only on 35", but it would be nice to have more steering power and 37" are in the plans now that I will have 3RZ power instead of 22RE power. There are times where I can't really steer without rolling forward or back a little unless I am absolutely wrenching on the steering wheel.

This the update up to 2-14-2023

 

[Woodini]

Good read, nice work, cool truck!

 

[mtnbiker4evr13]

I'm ready for the 2/14 to Today update!