2000 Tacoma Prerunner to 4x4 conversion

@Timmah! helping out all the time with our rigs

 

Dam that sucks, hell if you wanted I could sell you mine once I figure out how I'm going to go about this

 

Good looking swap! And glad to see another get done. Best thing I ever did to my old ‘00

 

What size tires do you have

 

We could just trade transmissions haha

But luckily I have my old transmission and it works fine. The only problem is it's 2wd

 

35x12.5 nitro mudgrapplers

Loud as hell on the road but great in the dirt.

 

So I have achieved what I would consider success with this truck! Goddamn motor went out at 298,xxx miles and I was able to remove and install the motor. Ended up getting a $500 junkyard motor with a 90 day warranty. Only has 188k, timing belt replaced at 171 in 2009. Mother fucker has been sitting since 2011... I hope it lasts but so far it feels good.

I did install a shitty $200 mystery 3.4 from a 97 T100 that didn’t have any body damage so I figured something may be wrong... sure enough goddamn headgasket. Got it running and it had an odd misfire even though all my coils and plug wires were good. Got it running and then figured I’d install the radiator and fill err up. As soon as it got coolant in the system it started spewing milkshake everywhere and made a huge mess. What a pain in my ass. Pulled that motor and immediately went to buy the junkyard motor with the warranty. I may redo the headgaskets on that beater motor... definitely good practice on motor install end removal

 

Here is the shit motor milkshaking everywhere... I was pissed! And legit a good $30 in oil and $20 in coolant. Goddamn!

 

Here is the motor that is very much so promising. Feels great so far, drove some freeway today and low key has all the power I remember missing as my motor was slowly dieing. I want to say the original motor suffered neglect from 186,xxx to 236,xxx miles and and then I drove it hard and put away wet every day from then till 298,xxx. I don’t blame Toyota, and frankly I enjoyed replacing the motor! Here’s some pics of the clean setup...

 

Seems I haven’t posted any pictures of when I took the bed off to start adding tube. Been daily driving it like this as well as AZ is pretty friendly about what is necessary to be road legal. Pretty much just slowly adding more and more directly onto the truck as I get new ideas. Getting close to building a rack over the top and caging up the back of the cab. So far the truck is still lighter than when I had the bed on it but not

 

Here’s some pics. I’m going to caption each as well as today I did a little bit more work. I like to slowly build directly onto the truck as I get time and tube. All the tube is .120 wall 1 3/4” DOM. Lots of fabrication help by my buddy Joey JLfab.


This is when I just started mocking up additional tube on the rear for the “bed sides”... you can see I’ve been painting the tube white and I’ve become quite fond of how it looks matching the cab.

Spare tire mount and a front post for the “bed”. Super stoked with how my “bed sides” came out... it’s slightly tubbed in the rear.

Doing some work with my truck, got a bit of expanded metal down and it holds some good weight. It’s been coming along!

Today I finally did sliders... very different from traditional bolt on or weld on sliders and far from done. I’m going to do a lot of bracing on them directly to the frame but want to be able to maintain the ability for them to slide and not get hung up.

You can see the beastly angle and how they are tucked along the cab!

Then we decided cut the exhaust off while we were at it. It was a very nicely bullett racing catback exhaust system. I chopped it then chopped the tip and made it transition to a high side exit.

Very nice job welding it up and encorperating an exhaust bracket into the frame that allows it to sit centered through the side cavity.

That bracing on the slider just behind the door upending under the cab, can’t wait to start building my rack up!

 

Nothing like a little blown torque converter Action! Was making a grinding noise lately in drive anytime it was under load. Slowly making it rev high in rpm just to make it pickup speed. When it went completely it would rev up and just not pickup any speed. I let it cool all the way down and could get it to engage the torque converter again. Anyways got it home and already got the trans out ready to clean it all up slap a new TC on and go!


Rare sight right there

Dirty tranny!

Feels like something is missing

Those tho driver side trans plugs pulled out of the connector and so did my vss... looks like I’ve got some wiring to do :/

 

You have to be getting really good @ pulling the tranny and motor by now!

 

@RoberTacoma28 how did you find a speed sensor for your new transmission? I recently swapped my 2wd transmission for a 4x4 and I have the same problem. Only thing I can find is some $300 OEM replacement speed sensor

 

What’s wrong with your original one?

 

I’m in the same situation as Robert where my donor trans is out of a 4Runner and I don’t have a speedometer other than the one from my 2wd trans, but the collar on the sensor is different

 

So you just need the correct speed sensor and it'll bolt in?

 

@RoberTacoma28 You know I ran into a torque converter issue when I did my 4WD swap too. It was warped from a collision from the donor truck unbeknownst to me and left me stranded. It grenaded the flexplate badly.

The advice I am giving to everyone who does this swap is to just purchase a brand new OEM torque converter to save the trouble.

 

Yeah I’m not sure what the part number for the vehicle speed sensor is so I was hoping to find some help here

 

A340F? I see them all the time at pick-n-pull except they’re on 4Runners. Call Camelback Toyota in Phoenix and I’m sure they can help you. I’d say message them on here but it seems poor Gary is backed up.