The Little Black Toyota Right after my wife and I got married we purchased a 2001 Toyota Tacoma, and over the next nine years we built and drove that truck all over the Southwest United States. We absolutely loved the truck and had spent a ton of time building it. It was perfect … until we started having kids. One kid was okay; we could kind of make a car seat work in the back of the extended cab truck, but then the second kid came around. By the time he was ready to really hit some long trails with us, our third kid was on the way! At this point I knew our family of 4, almost 5 had outgrown that little extended cab Tacoma and it was time for a change. My wife and I talked about a few different platforms, but really only one made sense to me for many reasons, and that was the third generation
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4Runner. Seating for five was obviously huge, but the other big reason was it shares a very similar platform to the first generation Tacoma. That meant I already had a majority of parts sitting around to build the 4Runner, a huge financial savings! The search was on and in January 2015 (one week after our third kid was born), we found the one in southern Utah, a bone stock 2000 Toyota 4Runner Limited. It had everything I needed to be compatible with the parts on my Taco: v6, automatic, 4wd, and factory rear locker.
started this build, I knew I wanted it to be that same kind of “dual sport” setup.
I test drove it around the block in Utah and made sure everything worked. I put it on a trawwiler, headed back to Las Vegas, pulled it in the garage and blew it apart! I hadn’t put a full mile on the truck when I tore it down. I had built the Tacoma to be a “dual sport” rig. My family loves overlanding and exploring old ghost towns around the Southwest, but we also love to rock crawl and push the boundaries of our vehicle. When I
The Tacoma had changed gradually over time as our desires for it changed, so we had a pretty good idea of how we wanted certain aspects of the 4Runner to be. We knew what worked and didn’t work for us. For example, when it was time to lay out the electrical, I was able to draw out the circuits I wanted ahead of time, gut the interior, and lay out all the electrical at once, instead of piecing it together over time and making a mess
So, with the 4Runner and Tacoma both up on jack stands, I started swapping parts. Some of the biggest pieces were the re-geared differentials with ARB front air locker, Marlin Crawler Taco box, Donahoe (Icon) front coilovers, and Camburg front upper control arms. With all the “good parts” off the Tacoma, we finally said goodbye to it and put all of our time into setting up the 4Runner for adventures.
