Adding this to my other "Family 4-Runner" thread was a bit of a mistake. Enough has happened with this that I can really see it needs its own thread. If you were interested, there's a few pages here:
(it starts about half way down)
That covers everything in great detail, but the short and sweet of it is, I bought a VERY used First Generation 4-Runner for about $6000usd. Exact year is unknown at the moment as the Europeans go by when the vehicle was first registered (1989) and none of the VIN decoders I find can translate a European VIN. Ah well... My only issue here is that 1989 had a generational difference in it, right in the middle. Calling it a 1989 here has already caused me to get the wrong part more than once.
This thing was an exercise in bodge by its previous owner. Trucks like this are bigger than anything out here barring agricultural equipment and they share all the same uses. Duct tape and mud pretty much were stuffed everywhere and maintenance was non existant. Plug wires were burned, manifolds were cracked, diffs were puking fluid... all fun stuff.
These things make me happy though, so I soldiered on and that brings us to present day.
She's up, she's running, and she just got back from paint:
(she's dirty, I promise I'll do plenty of pretty shots when summer rolls back around)
The bull bar bumper is gone, the LPG kit is gone, all the fluids (save for the coolant) have been changed, all the bodge has been unbodged. Most recently I had to change a throttle position sensor because the old one wouldn't recognize "idle". The problem with that is, if it doesn't know it's idling then it kicks the timing way advanced and you cant put a timing gun on it. When all that was fixed, I found the timing needed to be advanced about 5-degrees from where it had been set these last two years.
All was good for about a day, until I started having shifter issues. I've replaced a leaking clutch master cylinder, verified there are no cracks in the clutch fork or the clutch pedal bracket, and am currently waiting on shifter bushings from Marlin Crawler to try to fix it.
These two little chunkies (below)
Came out from where the shifter (above) meets transmission. There's a bushing in the area that could be the cause of the issues. For more, here's the advice thread on that one:
So there we are! All up to speed. Goals for the truck are simple:
1) Load family
2) go on adventures.
Begin 
I've got a special trip coming up in almost exactly a year. I shall do the Tacovatos proud and take lots of pictures.
