Zuninja's 2005 GX470 "Build" (3 Viewers)

[OG Zuninja]

So I've been lurking for a few months and sort of documenting my progress in the "What did you do to your 120 today" thread in that time. Since that's not the "proper" way to document builds, I figured now is as good a time as any to start a thread with some okay pictures and ramblings of mediocre work.

Late December of 24, I acquired this ol' girl from a dealer in Wake Forest, NC. A 2005 GX470 Sport non-nav with 204k on the odo:

Before getting her home, I had ordered a Kenwood Excelon DMX809s. I ordered it Christmas day like a psycho. A couple of days after ordering the HU, I find out during the four hour drive home the speakers in the front door were blown. Here's that Kenwood installed a week later due to slow holiday shipping along with a rearview camera and locating the USB input to the old cig lighter location. Yes, the PS vent trim blew up into a bunch of pieces when I took it out and yes I super glued it back together.

Yeah, that floppy rubber condom where the cables pass from body to barn door sucks and I fought with it when passing the camera cable through. Y'all know what I'm talking about. I took advantage and swapped in some LED replacements for the reverse lights. Little did I know I would be popping that panel off several times later but that was a future me problem.

I then installed some "wall boxes" following a couple threads here in Mud and some pictures in the GXOR Facebook group.

A couple weeks go by and I had a set of 265/70/17 Firestone Destination X/T tires installed. This was the least mangled wheel of the five for the sake of snapping a picture.

 

[OG Zuninja]

It was then time to replace those s*** ass OEM wheels. In comes a set of DX4 Beast in 17 x 8.5 0 offset. Picked these up on sale from Discount Tire. I also came up on a set of 5th gen 4Runner running boards because my short wife complained about having trouble climbing in to the passenger seat. These were short lived.

A few smaller projects happened to include finishing the rear coil conversion the PO started by removing all of the non-functioning air suspension stuff that was taking up space. I also installed the VSC disable switch from SBE Precision in a Blue Dog Design switch panel.

I then thought it was a great idea to bake open my fog lights to retrofit a set of Nilight fogs from Amazon. I polished up the DS fog the best I could because it was real cloudy.

And the finished product.

I also replaced all interior and exterior bulbs with LED. No pictures of this.

 

[OG Zuninja]

Moving on, I installed a 5th gen 4Runner style hitch, cut off the rear exhaust resonator and relocated the rear diff breather up to the fuel fill area. Around this time I sourced a pair of silver OEM running boards and sold the 4Runner running boards off. No pictures of that since you know what that looks like.

A few days later, the wife and I took a weekend to head up the George Washington National Forest area in northern Virginia. It was good disconnect from the day to day and we had a good time. This was our AirBnB for the weekend. Its a civil war era cottage that was only mildly brought into modern times with plumbing and electricity. The wife wasn't ready for full blown tent camping so this was a way of getting her toes wet.

Ventured into the forest via Braley Pond Road. Its a service road with some great greenery and eventually leads up to Reddish Knob.

To close out the day, we crossed Briery Branch Gap to Flagpole Knob and out by Switzer Lake. No pictures of that.

 

[OG Zuninja]

I kept a first aid kit in the DS wall box for a while but wasn't a fan of that. After someone else had posted their idea in the GXOR FB group, I went with a Milwaukee Packout setup on the barn door for a dedicated first aid kit. I also installed a fire extinguisher by the OEM jack compartment. You'll notice the cover above the hitch receiver is missing. It interfered with inserting the hitch pin so I removed it but didn't like the exposed mounting tabs of that cover and trimmed them off with a utility knife.

Remember those sun beaten OEM rack rails? I got tired of looking at them and painted them with rattle can bedliner and also added two more cross bars.

It also seemd like a good time to update the vanity plate.

More to come.