Realised that this has been a bit blank for the last few months... I might ask a Mod to retitle the Thread to Ed's Australian Garage, and I'll see if I can redo the photos as Farcebook has changed the URL's
We now have a working 4Runner; I got the headers fitted and 2.25" secondarys to 2.5"... which stops at the cat... as I ran out of money again...
Ran for a couple of thousand km's without an O2 sensor, burnt a bit more fuel but that was about it, but it now has one fitted again; I'm glad that we fitted quite a few flanges as it's really easy to drop a section out for gearbox or other purposes.
I had the in-laws visit from Scotland (I'm sure that living in Australia was supposed to mean that we couldn't get unexpected visits!) as a Christmas surprise, which was a mix of good and bad...
The bad bit first... I'd got a few problems when I refitted the heads; I had an oil leak which I thought was from the rocker cover gasket, but it was in fact from 2 bolts that had come loose; we'd gone to visit a friend and her family 500km away (where we found the in-laws) and her father runs a garage, so he had a look and used some magic paste that locked and sealed the thread. Whilst we were in there, there was a noise that wasn't great from the timing belt, so we pulled the cover off and I'd got the tensioner spring not quite tight enough; by that time we'd done about 6500km since doing the heads so we were a bit lucky! In refitting the cover though, a bit of rubber came off, and we suspect caused the timing belt to skip a couple of teeth after another 600km (luckily we were back home) amazingly the 3VZE runs when the timing is out 2 teeth on one bank, and 3 on the other! So reset the belt, and it seemed OK, but it seems to be a bit stretched, so I have a new belt to fit in due course. Add in the other fun part of the power steering pump fouling on the EGR bracket, which makes removing the belt nearly impossible (now remedied with a grinder) and it's been fun...
On the flip side, we got a set of cheap Narva driving lights for the really cheap price of free; just needed a wiring loom creating, so we got a kit and fitted those, and the father in law got us a UHF for Christmas; because he's into Ham Radio he had quite specific requirements of what it should do, and in all honesty he was spot on!
It had to have a speaker mic. That was the main requirement he stipulated.... so that gave us some of the Uniden range and some of the iCom's, but not really anything from GME. Price was a factor, and given I found a Uniden UH7760NB with 2x antennas for a good price (sub $300) that was that!
So I spent part of a day pulling the dash apart to find cable routing options, and some lost trim pieces and a lot of fluff, and ended up with it fitted like this:
It's mounted in lieu of the ashtray (which was only used for storing shopper dockets) so no real loss (and I think I've just come up with a new idea for a storage solution) using the screws that held the cradle in place and some brackets I got from Bunnings for about $3! It uses the stock bracket, so that gives me a base to make a small shelf on as well.
Mic mount? Hi-tech.... wife had a hair bobble/pony tail thingy on a bit of cord (doubles as her hair band at times) and I was using that until I realised that it would go on the cup holder, meaning I can easily see the mic (and controls) from the drivers seat, or the passenger can use it as well.
I'll update this thread a bit more often, rather than creating other ones and go from there with it!