My (actual) budget build.

Joined
Jul 22, 2024
Messages
43
Hey what’s up everyone, my name is Mike-
I’ve viewed many threads on here, but this is my first time actually posting. My friends have been on me about documenting my build and posting it somewhere so here I am.

This is my 1998 4Runner sr5. (No e locker unfortunately) Being New England based my goal was to build something small and nimble enough to handle our tight trails, while being capable enough to handle our mixed bag of terrain as well as still being a “reliable” daily driver. If you’re from the area you’ve probably heard people joke about how the rocks seem to grow out of the ground every year. We have lots of rock gardens, boulders, granite slabs, sticky mud, water crossings, and wicked tight single track trails that you’re going to pinstripe every body panel with trees on the way through.

*NOTE- I’m not documenting basic maintenance and such that happened in between this stuff. It’s been gone over a million times and I don’t think anyone wants more pictures of a timing belt job.*


This is what I started with, this is the first day that I bought it. I immediately ordered wheels and tires as these were dry rotted and one of the wheels was cracked. I also removed the running boards at the same time.

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I went with d hole steelies and 265/75/16 Hankook dynapro at/m’s. I knew these would fit at stock height without any rubbing issues.
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I knew my shocks were pretty blown and my rear springs had some sag to them, and I knew for damn sure that I didn’t want to have a LBJ failure. Next in line was some suspension upgrades. Here I went with bilstein 5100s upfront with eibach springs.
In the rear I used 4th gen 4Runner 5100’s with a set of toyec superflex springs from a 5th gen 4Runner that I got from a buddy and welded in a PCK from eimkeith, this was just more logical than taking the time to make one myself. This gave the rear about 3.5” of lift and the front around 2.5” of lift. While I had the front end apart in threw in a set of sankei 555 LBJ’s.


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Spent some time in the woods and did some camping.

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Fast forward through a beautiful New England fall and a rough winter. Not much happens during this time for me- I coach high school wrestling which takes damn near all of my time.

I notice that my rockers had been hacked by the previous owner. They did the ol’ fill it with spray foam, bondo, sand paint. Welp, they salt the roads here heavier than they salt the fries at your local McDonald’s. So I cut out my rockers and dog leg and welded in some rectangle tubing I had laying around the shop.

Here I should probably stop to mention a little about my background. I’m a welder by trade, the majority of my experience being in aerospace and custom sheet metal fab as well as motorsports. I run the shop I’m currently at and I do all of our CAD work, operate our laser jet, all of our tig welding and handle mig welding and the press brake when needed. I’m fortunate enough to have learned as much as I could over the years, and spent time learning to fabricate. I like to make as much of my own stuff as a reasonably can.
I’m old school in the sense that when somebody starts talking about building something, I except to see one off stuff, not just a bunch of bolt on parts.


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Again, nothing but some maintenance happens after this for quite some time. i did get a bunch of wheeling in though when i wasnt busy training and competing in Muay Thai.

my cousin ends up getting a shop and buys a tube bender, he tells me let’s build you some bumpers. I’m all for it! My goal here was to build something strong, yet fairly light, good approach angle, and I could mount a winch on. I really didn’t like any of the other tube bumpers on the market. They either stuck out like a fat lip, or just were over complicated with tube work. I like things simple.

Playing around and trying to make the vision in my head come to reality.
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This is what I came up with for awhile.
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Some things would soon change. I got a 12k harbor freight winch on sale for $150. Installed that, made some light tabs to mount some bumpers lights.
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I also had moved up to 285/75/16 general grabber AT/x’s.

Next at task was building a set of skid plates. Not having skids was holding me back from running the trails I knew I was capable off. Once again, I didn’t really like what was on the market, I also knew I could make them myself for free, So I got to designing. I wanted simple, with a flat bottom and easy mounting.

Temporarily mounted until I got my permanent fasteners. All 7gauge mild steel.

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Right after I finished this up I said well… might as well tackle my rear bumper, so I made quick work of that.


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Still wanted to build a tire carrier but I was waiting on parts to come in and I wanted to go hit the trails. So I temporarily threw the bumper on.
 
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Joined
Jul 22, 2024
Messages
43
Back out on the trails

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Ending up breaking some stuff.
One of my rear body mounts tore off so I ended up fabbing 2 new ones and replacing them both. I also completely blew out a front strut tower. That wasn’t as easy as a fix.


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7g reinforcements I made as well as pieces to reinforce the side of the towers.
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Luckily the rest of the frame is as solid as can be for the rust belt. Just issues with the smaller brackets and mounts. No big deal though.
 
Joined
Jul 22, 2024
Messages
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Ended tearing an upper link mount off the frame side after a wheeling trip. My original plan was to relocate the fuel tank and do a dual triangulated 4 link to get rid of this roll steer and fix the rear geometry. The fab work and figuring out geometry is no issue for me, my issue was the possible down time from my only vehicle. So I decided to just build a set of HD upper link mounts out and a set of upper links for the time being. While I had the fuel tank down I figured it would be a good time to reinforce my lower link mounts and build a fuel tank skid. I ended up just buying the lower link mount reinforcements from eimkeith to save some time- he makes a great product, very well designed and high quality.
I designed the new upper link mounts to sit at the exact angle needed so there was no guess work of where to set them. I ended up building them out of 3/16ths plate and welding on an additional 1/8th weld washer. This is more than strong enough for this mount. For the upper links I used 1.5” OD .250 wall Dom tubing with Johnny joints on both ends. One narrow and one regular, as well as one side left hand thread and one side right hand thread.
When designed my fuel tank skid I wanted to continue to make the belly as flat as possible, and also minimize drive shaft interference.


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Stairgod

Two bad decisions away from buying a bulldozer
Joined
Apr 22, 2019
Messages
2,514
Funny thing is that I got more done ony truck when it was my daily.
Not that she is a dedicated trail rug I get even less done to her
 
Joined
Jul 22, 2024
Messages
43
Funny thing is that I got more done ony truck when it was my daily.
Not that she is a dedicated trail rug I get even less done to her
If I had a daily driver I’d probably be in the same boat. Unfortunately this is a dual purpose vehicle for me at the time. If you knew the level of parking lot maintenance I’ve done on the thing you’d laugh.
 
Joined
Jul 22, 2024
Messages
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Front wheel bearing went bad so I grabbed a set of spindles off someone local. Cleaned them up, made a set of spindle gussets and threw in some new UBJ’s before bringing them to my buddy to press in some new koyo wheel bearings.
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My suspension had about 90k on since I had done it with many many hard miles off-road. It was time to replace and figured now was a perfect time. I went with another set of 5100’s for the front. I’m still unsure if I want to build a LT setup, or eventually SAS the front- my friend has a set of super duty axles I can have for free. So I’m not going too crazy with the front suspension quite yet.

Anyways… out with the old.
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In with the new.
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I also ended up replacing my front brakes, and converting to Tacoma front brake hoses.

Made a trip up north with a few buddies and did some wheeling, fishing, and shooting. Cant ask for much more.

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Got back home and my new rear shocks finally came in. I went with 12” bilstein 5125’s. I’ll probably eventually upgrade to 7100’s.
I whipped up some upper shock hoops and lower shock mounts. The shock hoops were made from 1.5” OD .125 wall DOM. The upper shock tabs I lasered out of .187 sheet. And for my lower shock mounts I lasered them out from .250 hot rolled steel. I set up my new bump stops at the same time and uptravel was literally perfect the first try! I have about .75” of shock shaft left showing and more down travel than I can probably even use.
No rubbing anywhere, which is great.



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4runner DOA

Hold my beer
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Buy once cry once. Get a set of shocks from the big 4 and be done with it. Personally I'm an ADS fan boy, but you really can't go wrong. Get something you can do maintenance on. Billy's work, but they just aren't it.
 
Joined
Jul 22, 2024
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Buy once cry once. Get a set of shocks from the big 4 and be done with it. Personally I'm an ADS fan boy, but you really can't go wrong. Get something you can do maintenance on. Billy's work, but they just aren't it.
I disagree. 90+k of New England driving plus wheeling is good for any brand. Kings would need a rebuild by then here. I’ve had bilstein coil overs on some of my road race cars and for the price, they’re hard to beat. I could keep up with guys who had motons, no issue.
Also, this is a true budget build. Ads, fox, king etc aren’t exactly budget anymore, and to be quite honest, I can’t justify spending money on them to go 1mph over some rocks haha
 

4runner DOA

Hold my beer
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I disagree. 90+k of New England driving plus wheeling is good for any brand. Kings would need a rebuild by then here. I’ve had bilstein coil overs on some of my road race cars and for the price, they’re hard to beat. I could keep up with guys who had motons, no issue.
Also, this is a true budget build. Ads, fox, king etc aren’t exactly budget anymore, and to be quite honest, I can’t justify spending money on them to go 1mph over some rocks haha

Fair enough, but we've all learned that budget builds never stay a budget build. :rofl:

Start saving now, you'll learn eventually how bad Bilstein are for an off road rig.
 
Joined
Jul 22, 2024
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Fair enough, but we've all learned that budget builds never stay a budget build. :rofl:

Start saving now, you'll learn eventually how bad Bilstein are for an off road rig.
Hahahah yeah I know all about that from my time building bmw’s.
This thing just isn’t worth dumping a ton of money into for me. What’s so bad about bilstein for off roading though? Remember im never going over 10mph off-road ever.
I’ve seen factory race teams run them, tons of buggies, truggies, built crawlers etc run them. Is there something I don’t know?
 

4runner DOA

Hold my beer
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Hahahah yeah I know all about that from my time building bmw’s.
This thing just isn’t worth dumping a ton of money into for me. What’s so bad about bilstein for off roading though? Remember im never going over 10mph off-road ever.
I’ve seen factory race teams run them, tons of buggies, truggies, built crawlers etc run them. Is there something I don’t know?

They'll wear out and blow eventually, regardless how fast you're going, and then you'll have to replace them. They really aren't as strongly built as the big 4. Do that enough times and you could have paid for a shock that you can rebuild as many times as you need to. Aftermarket shocks really aren't that expensive and rebuilds are cheap and easy if you can do it yourself.
 

Dezert4Runner

Pineapples belong on pizza
Joined
Oct 23, 2018
Messages
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For slow stuff they do alright but from what I’ve seen they like to break at the eyelets if you beat on your vehicle. I’ve seen front shock lower eyelets broken I’ve personally had it happen on my 3rd gen T4R on the rear and stopped buying them because of that. I have extended bump stops and the shocks never cycled past available travel so it’s not anything to do with the vehicle setup, it’s 100% the shocks.
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Low end Bilsteins have their place since replacing a pair of 5100’s is as much or less than paying for a shock rebuild on a set of big name rebuildable shocks. My buddy was thinking he needed 2.5 King or Fox for his daily driver Tacoma but funds prevents him from pulling the trigger for quite a while for him to drop $3k on shocks alone. Now that I talked him into 5100’s front and back, he’ll get his shit installed a lot sooner and be able to enjoy a lift with occasional easy trails. Since that’s all he’ll ever realistically run, I don’t feel like I’m steering him in the wrong direction.
 
Joined
Jul 22, 2024
Messages
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For slow stuff they do alright but from what I’ve seen they like to break at the eyelets if you beat on your vehicle. I’ve seen front shock lower eyelets broken I’ve personally had it happen on my 3rd gen T4R on the rear and stopped buying them because of that. I have extended bump stops and the shocks never cycled past available travel so it’s not anything to do with the vehicle setup, it’s 100% the shocks.
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Low end Bilsteins have their place since replacing a pair of 5100’s is as much or less than paying for a shock rebuild on a set of big name rebuildable shocks. My buddy was thinking he needed 2.5 King or Fox for his daily driver Tacoma but funds prevents him from pulling the trigger for quite a while for him to drop $3k on shocks alone. Now that I talked him into 5100’s front and back, he’ll get his shit installed a lot sooner and be able to enjoy a lift with occasional easy trails. Since that’s all he’ll ever realistically run, I don’t feel like I’m steering him in the wrong direction.
I have also seen this. Broken shafts and broken eyelets. And I completely agree, they’re a budget shock, that does ok at slow speeds. I wouldn’t call them high performance by any means. If this was a dedicated trail rig, and our trails here required more, I’d look into better suspension for sure.
 
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