My 400 dolla pre-runner

Just picked this up for 400 bucks. Its been beat to shit, It was my buddies, he's broken several ball joints with it being a 5 lugger, but the price was right so i went for it.

98 2rz, shifts great, 136k drives and has decent power, 31" bfg at's in good shape, in need of a cyl head, header, rear suspension, 3" body lift brought down to a 1" so i can adjust front camber accordingly... and who knows what else.


downy wen't out of business so i don't have any info on this kit, he bought it right as they were going out of bus, and finally put it on. It has virtually no miles on it. Anybody know what kind of travel this kit pulls?



owner before my buddy got into an accident and bent the frame so he cut it... Now i have to add some box tube to the extend it enough for some shackle mounts to accomidate my chevy 63's i just got.
it'll give me a reason to do the necessary frame re-inforcing anyway








lil bitch that just sold me these chevy 63's and shackles didn't tell me they were slightly ben't in the middle... hopfully re-arching will fix it. This shackle that came with them is too short.


both front fenders are eff'ed from ball joints breaking


need fiberglass asap


i'm thinking i may have 8-10"s of travel. i need to cycle it. their billy's w/ downy coils.


he didn't put the shackle on yet, its from downy and i think too short as well.


int is decent, need cage asap


crack that supposedly did in the burnt ex. valve and killed compression in that cyl. We'll see once i pull the head.
Fix your cracks boys and gals...


i'll update here as i make progress, opening up the motor first so fix compression issue.

 

wtf.. more pictures of the arm plz

 

Cool score.............

 

which arm? lower?

 

Yea i think thats what he talking about

 

Not a bad find for $400.

 

ok i'll get some more tomorrow. Anybody have any experience with this kit? travel numbers? I don't see any of it breaking before a lower balljoint. I think the only way to get away from that is to convert to ibeams if i wanna keep this budget. We'll see...

 

Nice project for $400. Can't wait to see the results. Have you looked at Kuneff's Black Beater? He's pretty much done with his...the first phase anyways...and it was in the same condition as yours.

The interior actually looks really nice. Probably in better shape than my $8000 truck, lol.

That is a totally weird lower control arm set-up. I've never seen one with just one main arm coming out of the middle, and not a traditional triangle/A-arm. I'd say you're probably getting 8" out of that.

I see some nice upper control arms, though. That's a definite plus.

That manifold looks exactly like mine when I bought my truck - the crack, mud, rust. I bought some Doug Thorley Ceramic Tri-Y's for $350 at TRDparts4u.com

 

I'll give you 800

 

some dude on here wanted to see better pics of the lower arm...

i definately see a weak point in the junction between the lowerarm/lower ball joint. I'm going to have to figure out how to beef this up a lil


who want's to recomend a 3" body lift after seing this...





every body lift mount on the driver side is destroyed. for some reason the passenger were all intact but a couple were cracking.

Has anybody fixed this before? guess it's custom plating time...


one of the truck in my garage just cuz...it'll be here for hopefully no more than 2 weeks...which is what i'm anticipating the cyl head to take to fix after dissasembally, diagnosis and delivery of whatever new parts are needed...

 

Hell you can't beat $400. Looks like you have a lot to work with. And a lot of work to do!

 

does anybody know if this steering shaft looks extended? Its angled slightly to the drivers side too much and is in the way of moving my upper a-arm back so i can adjust camber. I'm hoping once i fix my body lift this shaft will move to the passenger side a little.

 

i haven't seen anyone rally this susp. set up yet and neither has my friend since he put it on so i'm going to test it out for a while. It seems decent.

Where i need to add spacers to bring camber back to spec.



its got a long ass cherry bomb exiting on the side above tire through body panel, that actually sounds pretty good, passes smog in cali, low pro, looks cool running out side panel and a cherry topper me thinks it done some good as i can't seem to keep the tires from burning out with this truck even on 31's with low comp in 1 cyl...so i think it yielded some decent power.

after all we used to tow this boat with this yota through out the bay area all the time...

i'm still amazed at the places we've towd this boat with this lil yota 4 banger.


obviously wasn't towing it during this mission, take hand out tows when you recieve them.
boats are primarly the reason the body mounts on this truck are soo effed. schlubb like to rally it faster when he had a boat packed in the bed becasue it felt safer/stiffer/better handling with more wait in the back.

 

5lugs of fury!!! enjoy the build!

 

yea partially why the axle looks so rusty from the first post. She's seen a lot of salt water.
Thanks i'm really excited about this truck. I've already got some body mount plates mocked up.

 

way coo. doing solid body mount? With the steering joint and UCA. I ground down the gusset on my LT and moved that spacer on top of the bushing mount.

 

Didn't plan on doing a solid body mount. Rubber seems more effective for dampening pourpases. I was just going to take a chop saw to the current body lift mounts and cut them down to a 1" body lift.
I'm having trouble picturing what you did for the upper arm, pics? I won't be able to grind anything and need to move steershaft over regardless. I need to bring the upper arm into the engine compartment for more negative camber, need more / \ its currently sitting \ /

 

Yeah you just put a spacer behind it to get what you want. I was just giving you a heads up about clearance issues with the steering coupler when you move the UCA towards the motor. I'll go take a pic of what I did if you have a steering binding issue with the UCA.

 

looks like a ghetto little beater but a lotta life left in her and at a steal of a price looking forward to seeing the progress

 

Great price!