y=mx+b's 05 4runner Build Thread

Dang, that’s a big bummer. A lot of extra work for nothing.

 

Yeah for sure. It's shitty in the moment, but it's not the end of the world and I almost have everything back together now with the original passenger spindle

Got the tie rods done too, so it's still a win in the end

 

Are you sure? You're just trying to avoid having the pink spindles on your rig.

 

All back together now. Just need to align and will be all set. Might be able to make it to Chris's tomorrow if I can finish my homework

 

These have mostly been showed here in bits and pieces, so heres the consolidated version that t4r saw:


Mid-Frame Rust Hole
This past week was my spring break, so I had some truck mods planned. I was getting ready to make a skid plate for my trans and tcase areas, when I discovered some rust holes

1st hole was about mid frame on the passenger side and the second was right where the frame connects to the trans crossmember. Both of these, and all of my other rust problem areas, are on factory weld seams. So my thoughts are that the weld seals were not properly prepared before paint


I did not get to the trans crossmember hole this week, but I did get to the one on that mid frame seam

Started by cutting it out, and it was crusty. Used a combination of the grinder and plasma cutter


Interestingly enough, the weld seam was super crusty, but the other side of the frame was mint looking. These frames are welded together of C shaped sections that are offset, like hardwood floors, so weld seams aren't directly across from each other


I then made up a patch piece and painted the inside


Here is the rough cut hole that was cleaned up a bit from here. Before cutting the hole entirely, I made a little crossmember to span the hole area and keep the frame from spreading


The I burned it in and painted the outside to prevent future rusting. There is an exhaust hanger here, so I did drill and tap an appropriate hole so it could be reinstalled.


1/2 Gusseted Spindles
I've had these spindles since August, where I purchased them from a junkyard and stripped them down. Just got caught up with school and didn't get around to them. Came with spindles, great condition dust shields, some parts store wheel bearings, OEM speed sensors, and the speed sensor wiring harness


I ordered the JD fab tacoma gussets and welded them onto these OEM spindles




Then I painted them black, made a joke post for my friend @EatSleepTacos on TW, and then lost a bet and had to paint them Patrick Star pink lol


Installing the driver side was a breeze!


I was worried about tire to spindle clearance, since I'm running low offset wheels, but it cleared fine for street driving! I was thinking I'd pick up some 1/2" bora hub centric spacers to keep scrub radius low, while also adding a bit more room there for a budged, aired down tire. The are close enough that they'd probably rub when aired down


The doing the passenger side led to problems. Started by breaking the wheel speed sensor and ended up finding out that spindle must have been bent. The tire was contacting the gusset and was really close to the UCA with the ball joint slider in about the same position as the driver side. Also looking down the tire, the wheel was cambered in much more without changing any of the alignment.


It was a big bummer, and I was trying to go wheeling the next day, so I quickly reversed it all back to the original spindle. Fortunately or unfortunately, I'm now pretty quick at this. Also added some pink to the stock spindle for good measure


While I was in there, I also did Sankei 555 inner and outer tie rods, since I think mine were original at 238k lol. They didn't actually have a lot of play in them, but it was a "while I'm in there" kind of job

so now I have 1 gusseted spindle, and 1 regular spindle. Hence the title, 1/2 gusseted spindle lol. Hopefully I can just buy one gusset and make a day out of gusseting my current spindle.

 

Thanks to @3pooches for having us out this weekend! It was a gross one, but still a blast





and probably one of my favorite pictures of the 4runner: featuring the super stuffed tire

 

also randomly noticed my wipers would not turn off on my way to Chris's and the wiper pump wasn't working. Still have rear wiper pump switch feeding the front nozzles, because I haven't gotten around to extending the wiring for the front pump. for the wipers: Off was low, int was low, low was low, and high was high. But off was not off. FR and Rear wipers/pumps are on separate fuses. It eventually turned itself off, but when I hit them to clear some of the mud later, they wouldn't turn off again. I pulled the fuse for the front because it was annoying

Today whatever wet mud had dried and I also washed it. Pump worked and I put the fuse for the front wiper back in and it turned off when it was supposed to.

My thought is the loose connector for the front pump got snowy slush in it crossing Afton mountain and the car thought the front pump was on. Because it thought the front pump was on, it was doing the wipers to spread and wipe off the fluid spray that it thought it was spraying. Which would make sense on why it would keep wiping in the off position. Still doesn't explain the rear pump (which is fed to my front nozzles), since they're on separate circuits

electricity bad

 

Harry from JD Fabrication is sending me another passenger side spindle gusset, so I'm excited to get this back together

Now to decide if I just pull my known good one and gusset then reinstall it, or order one off rock auto. I like that the one I have is original to the truck and known to be unscrewed up, but the ease of hot-swapping the spindle with no downtime is appealing

 

I vote just weld it on your current known oem good one. Then make sure to reinstall it while the paint is still sticky

 

That's what I'm leaning towards. I'm very impatient with painting, so sticky paint is a guarantee. Pink paint + greasy fingers will be a masterpiece

 

Drove in circles for 23 hours this week, which is the most I've done. My set schedule is ~10hrs per week and usually I've been doing about 13-16. Gotta buy trok parts

 

window regulator met an untimely demise yesterday when my friend decided it would be a good idea to hold the window button down, so I couldn't roll it back up, while yelling penis out the window. Initially was looking at just the motor, but the whole regulator has to come out anyway. The assembly wasn't as expensive as I was expecting, so I just got it all. managed to snag the last AISIN part on rock auto.

in return they received 1 entire trip around a roundabout with no swaybars at a speed of my choice. thanks to my broken wheel speed sensor, safety was completely disregarded



I'll be taking pictures to hopefully do a writeup on T4R of the replacement. Found one of the driver front door, but the rear windows and regulator are setup a lot differently. I'll put the pictures in my build thread here as well for entertainment value, but I'd guess the tacoma door regulators are different.

 

While I'm in the money spending mood, I purchased some BORA 1/2" spacers, which should provide a little more clearance up front for the gusseted spindles. Theres already plenty of room on the unbent spindle side for street driving, but I want a hair extra for a blobby aired down tire to have plenty of room too.

Need to buy some extended lug studs to pair with these puppies. ARP studs are expensive AF, so bought these ones that @EatSleepTacos is using https://www.wheeladapter.com/product/extended-wheel-studs-for-toyotas-set-of-12.

Now I need to either reuse my current good condition, but 40k mile, parts-store wheel bearings with the new studs, or just buy new ones while I'm in the spending money mood. Feels wasteful to toss the ones that are fine on there now, but also feels like rewearing underwear to reuse them while installing all that new-new.

Probably dropped a pic of it already, but this is the current amount of space


Edit: like an absolute hotdog I messed up the shipping address on the Bora spacers, so I sent them an email with the correct information. Going to call tomorrow too. Hopefully it doesn't get sent to the wrong place lolol

edit 2: Shipping address fixed whoohoo

 

Big parts day. I think I'm going to wait until the spacers arrive to weld the spindle gussets. That what if this gusset somehow rubs, I'll have the spacers to throw on there immideielty to fix

window regulator and motor


Extended lug nuts


was worried that they would be too long, since I read here that someone ordered them and they were more than 1/2" larger. Took a spare lug and threaded it on until it bottoms out, so hopefully there is enough thickness of caliper, spacer, and wheel that the lug tightens up before bottoming out

 

Doing some nerd stuff at school, but I'm always trying to draw connections from all the theoreticals to the real world stuff. Recently worked on a lab that reminded me a lot of speed sensor control and speedometer correction that would be applicable to our Toyotas. In the moment, doing things like this lab is kinda boring. In hindsight, this stuff is really cool and explaining it here helps me to solidify it further. I tried to not use any jargon, so hopefully it makes sense for anyone interested

Essentially, an servo motor is given some voltage input, and an encoder reads the position/speed. However, there is some random noise signals that are mixed into the voltage input. The goal is to filter out the noise, while also adjusting the speed/position read by the encoder to be representative of the motors actual speed/position. The motor position control system is sometimes hard to wrap ones head around, but its very similar to a house thermostat. The values read from the position encoder are like the thermometer in the room. Noise is like opening and closing the door, which varies the room temperature slightly. Input to the motor is like what your HVAC system does to try to regulate the room temperature based on what its reading from the thermometer

This would also be just like the signal coming off of the speed sensors on a 4runner/tacoma, where there is a speed signal + some inevitable noise. The adjustment between the values read by the encoder and the actual values could represent the correction to speed signal for larger tires.



In this below graph, Vcontrol (blue line, first plot) is the voltage going into a micro controller. it represents the speed of the motor + a random noise signal (liken to room temperature when the door opens and closes - a lot of little changes in temperature)

Vsens (orange line, 2nd plot) is representative of the control signal after is goes through a bandpass filter. The bandpass filter filters out frequencies above and below some threshold values to try and eliminate the noise. (liken it to the temperature in the room without opening and closing the door, but would include long term temp changes like opening your window for a while to let in fresh air)

Vsim (blue line, 2nd plot) is representative of the simulated time response from my analytically derived function. The function is derived from an basic electromechanical system by hand, and then put into the computer and combined with the Vcontrol input to get the Vsim output we see plotted.

Error is the difference in Vsim and Vsens. The Vsim value follows Vsens very closely on the graph, but Vsim actually has a magnitude difference from Vsens due to how the position encoder works. The magnitude difference here is representative of the larger tires size affecting the speedometer by X%. In my project, I wanted the error to be 0, but with larger tires it represents the difference in speedometer reading and actual speed





nerd stuff, so may have limited entertainment value. but helpful for me to explain it and draw the connection

 

This is just me rambling and a good place to store it so I can come back and read it. Feel free to comment on my plan here

Essentially I find myself moving my tools around to go wrench with buddies, help my parents, and this summer I'm relocating across the country for a summer internship. I'm not really in a situation where having a set of shop tools and on-the-go tools makes sense, so trying to figure out a good solution to move my tools in an organized fashion. I landed on the idea of using those packout style plastic tool bins. Brands I've looked at are Milwaukee Packout, Rigid PRO, Husky Connect, and Hart STACK.

The Milwaukee Packout seems like a large expenditure for a DIY'er, but for someone using them commercially may be worth the extra price tag for extra features. Rigid PRO system only seemed to have small selection of compatible boxes, so I'm thinking they're out. The Husky Connect and Hart Stack are what I've been really looking into.

The tools I'd be mostly toting around are hand tools like wrenches, sockets, extensions, pliers, bfh, picks, etc. I also have an 18v impact, drill, 2 batteries (and maybe more in the future), and a charger that I'd like to fit too.

The box size I see myself using the most is shallowest, and replacing the little organizer cups with a layer of Kaizan foam or the like (Kaizan foam). I'd probably use a more generic brand of foam, but easier to call it by an identifiable brand name. Then I'd make cutouts for each tool, so when I'm packing up, I know that I have everything with me.

For the Hart box, I liked that you could get the base box separately, since my use case doesn't really justify having the medium depth box like a lot of the 3-piece kits have (typical 3 piece - 1 large box base, 1 med box, 1 small box).

Base 3-piece: https://www.walmart.com/ip/HART-STA...Modular-Storage-System/547011403?athbdg=L1600

Base only: https://www.walmart.com/ip/HART-STA...Storage-Fits-Modular-Storage-System/105472220

Shallow/small box: https://www.walmart.com/ip/HART-Sta...rganization-Black-with-Blue-Accents/389098304

shallow box + x2 half size boxes: https://www.walmart.com/ip/HART-Sta...anizers-Fits-Modular-Storage-System/348804743

half size individual box: https://www.walmart.com/ip/HART-Sta...-Hart-Stack-Modular-Tool-Box-System/189619700


For the Husky Box, you unfortunately have to buy the whole 3-piece kit it looks like. but the shallow boxes themselves are much cheaper at $15 for x2 vs the Hart at $23 for x1 or $40 for x1 + x2 half size. Husky also a modular box part one with two drawers, which could be useful to not have to unstack everything to access tools. They also have some cantilever boxes, which seem potentially useful for keeping adjacently related tools together.

3 piece and base: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-22-in-Connect-Rolling-System-Tool-Box-230381/207138757

shallow box: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-3...ganizer-in-Black-2-Pack-THD2020-002/315003287

drawer box: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Connect-2-Drawer-13-Compartment-Small-Parts-Organizer-248984/314213515

med cantilever box: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-22-in-Connect-Cantilever-Portable-Tool-Box-230378/207138794

lil cantilever: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-2...er-for-Small-Parts-Organizer-230379/207138779

--
So the next steps for me are to determine which box system best fits the tools I have. Probably going to try and lay them out and get some measurements. After looking at the prices of everything, I'm also wondering if it would be just better to buy one of those large tool kits in a blow molded case that would have probably 75% of what I need. Then all the organization is done, but customization is gone. I dunno, something to thing about

 

Have you thought about possibly going simpler with just some plastic totes? I have a couple sizes of these sterilite stackers that I've moved around to different uses a dozen times. They're not as sexy but they work really well and stack fairly well, they just don't interlock. Two 4 gal fit onto the 10 gal, etc. Bonus: two of the 10 gallon flatter ones side by side fit perfectly underneath the 4th gen 4runner double decker cargo tray thing.

https://www.containerstore.com/s/st...te-black-stacker-totes/12d?productId=11007874

 

true, this is a good idea too. Definitely cheaper than the roller thingies. I currently have a 17 and a 27 gallon tough tote that I keep my spare parts and welding stuff in, but they are too heavy and cumbersome so I kind of tossed that idea out. I didn't consider something smaller like those, so that path is now back in consideration lol.

I do see myself just leaving those tools in my trunk all summer, so hiding them under the cargo tray is a great idea

 

Not sure if it'll let me post a post from 4runners.com, but that's a pic of my current setup. I have tools, jump starter, jumper cables, recovery gear in one and first aid kit, blankets, garbage bags, random other stuff in the other. Using more smaller ones helps it from getting too heavy, plus you can just grab what you need and not have to bring everything with.

Don't get me wrong through, the modular stackers systems definitely have their advantages when it comes to organizing your tools and stuff. Pros and cons to both approaches.

Oh, and my local walmart carries the yellow top ones still, might be worth swinging through and taking a look at least.