Adventure Mechanic

Many years ago, my dad bought a Toyota pickup truck for $350 and gave it to me as a project truck. At this time I had no clue what I was doing. Torque wrenches were an unknown concept in my brain. But with his guidance and reading the manual a bunch, I changed the brakes, hubs, and changed the oil. When he first purchased it there was a ground wire that was corroded enough that the truck wouldn’t drive faster than 35mph. I learned how to fix the ground wire. At that point I was finally able to drive it highway speeds.

How I got the Toyota pickup

Before this point in time, I was driving my mom’s car 50 miles one way to college. Then, in rush hour traffic my attention was somewhere else and I crashed her car. It was not financially responsible to put it back together. It was practically toast, even though it could have been fixed. But it was just a little sedan that I could buy for the same price it would take to fix.

After many months of long bus rides my dad bought the Toyota pickup truck. It was rough around the edges. It even came with scratched off data plates. When I finally got it up to highway speeds I was driving it to school. Months and months of riding a bus for over 100 miles round trip each day was my motivation to never need public transportation again. That was my goal.

How it broke

After I got the truck running, my friend and I started tinkering with it. The AC motor was disconnected, so we tossed it for “weight savings”. We started sanding and painting the exterior. And we even did a coolant flush. The catch to that was I was not working enough to afford gas and coolant. So we stuck water in the radiator instead.

Looking back at this, I suspect that there had been a head gasket issue prior to my ownership and we knocked loose whatever was plugging it. So… my truck started over heating. It overheated so much that when I finally got the engine apart I could see the curve of the cylinder head a mile away.

Sadly, this rendered the truck caput within my care since I was a full time college student working one night per week. I did not have the funds for another engine. So my dad and I sold it to my neighbor. Years later I realized what a gem I had lost. It had some rough edges, but $350 for a Toyota pickup chassis? That is a steal these days! It might have been a steal then too! How I wish for those prices again!

The Toyota 4Runner project

A few years ago I got my hands on a Toyota 4Runner. I’ve been driving a sedan ever since the pickup died. I realized that sedans were not the best when the terrain is anything worse than paved and my load is more than just me and a hiking backpack. I needed something that would let me take friends, host ham radios and a repeater, have an extra 10 or more gallon aux tank, have armor for the underside, and much more. The sedan had to go, but also it gave up on me in the desert… That’s another story for another day.

This 4runner will be the bridge to better adventures as well as it will help in the deep snow. The sedan could drive fine in snow, except when the snow was deep enough to touch the bumper. After that there was nothing I could do. Also, there was no spot to put a winch for recovery of me or random people on the side of the road.

I was looking for a vehicle that is reliable and/or I could mod out to be more reliable. As well as I needed it to have a good aftermarket for sweet mods. The other thing is, I don’t really like all that new, “we’re going to connect your car to the internet” thing. Why does my car need to be connected to the internet? Why should my vacuum and fridge need the internet? So I got a 1995 model. Yes… the 3.0 slow version. I figure, as long as the chassis remains in good condition I can swap out the engine every so often and just keep up on corrosion.

There’s a lot of work to do. At first I thought it was running fairly well. Then some issues started revealing themselves. First, I needed a new battery because all the fluid drained out of it. Then I realized that the cylinder rings were bad as well as the head gasket. And there’s some wiring that needs to be fixed. And there’s a few other things that are being revealed as I dig in. With that said, this is a project vehicle until further notice. But that won’t stop me from going on adventures.