Mods
3rz-5vze engine swap, drive line swap, customer carpet deleted interior, high angle inner and outer CV boots, upgraded heavy duty leaf pack, E-locker repair and grey wire mod, Short Shifter, ram mount cup holders, quick release fire extinguisher, new 12k Amazon winch, and I'm sure there's stuff in forgetting.
Build story
1996, 2.7, 4cyl Tacoma bought as a work truck. 4cyl never ran right, and as I learned, are a pain to get parts for. After popping and replacing the head gasket, I lost faith in the engine completely. Purchased a 1999 3.4 V6 truck with a rotten frame, with the intention of doing a simple swap. As things go it snowballed. The "clean frame" from the 96 ended up needing some pretty serious repair, and the "clean" cab and box from the 99 ended up having 3/4" of bondo disguising a previous side impact.
The part of the build I was most concerned about being the actual engine swap ended up being a simple as moving engine mounts 5/8". Then just as simple as using the donor trans, t-case, difs and drive shaft. Thankfully Toyota shares a lot of parts and mount locations across platforms which made the powertrain/drivetrain portion simple.
The frame repair while time consuming came out great. The body work, while imperfect, is now rust free, and ever but as good as is needed for a company work truck.
A set of Amazon race buckets were a much needed upgrade from the sacked out factory seats. And a home made Short Shifter was a fun little upgrade. Getting the E-locker from the donor working was a fun little project also. (The grey wire mod makes for a quick and easy donut button)
There has been a few issues since getting it on the road. The donor trans had a worn out 4th gear synchro, thankfully sourcing a brand used trans was fairly simple. Snapped an upper passenger BJ stud on a road trip, got really lucky where it snapped. Was a brand new part, and not a common issue like the lower BJ's on these trucks, was quite the fun xmas Eve suprise.
All in all I've gone through the full cycle of love and hate many times with this project. Without having much info online for if this swap was easy or not I'm quite happy with my ability to make it work.
The truck gets used daily for my custom home construction company. And most weekends you can find us on the Hwy with our new custom camper racing around surfing, biking hunting, and skiing.
The part of the build I was most concerned about being the actual engine swap ended up being a simple as moving engine mounts 5/8". Then just as simple as using the donor trans, t-case, difs and drive shaft. Thankfully Toyota shares a lot of parts and mount locations across platforms which made the powertrain/drivetrain portion simple.
The frame repair while time consuming came out great. The body work, while imperfect, is now rust free, and ever but as good as is needed for a company work truck.
A set of Amazon race buckets were a much needed upgrade from the sacked out factory seats. And a home made Short Shifter was a fun little upgrade. Getting the E-locker from the donor working was a fun little project also. (The grey wire mod makes for a quick and easy donut button)
There has been a few issues since getting it on the road. The donor trans had a worn out 4th gear synchro, thankfully sourcing a brand used trans was fairly simple. Snapped an upper passenger BJ stud on a road trip, got really lucky where it snapped. Was a brand new part, and not a common issue like the lower BJ's on these trucks, was quite the fun xmas Eve suprise.
All in all I've gone through the full cycle of love and hate many times with this project. Without having much info online for if this swap was easy or not I'm quite happy with my ability to make it work.
The truck gets used daily for my custom home construction company. And most weekends you can find us on the Hwy with our new custom camper racing around surfing, biking hunting, and skiing.