Bringing us up to Speed
I live in Charleston, SC, and bought the truck off a fella in a trailer park up in the swamp country. He was in the process of converting it to a rockcrawler when he ran out of money and posted it to craigslist. She had 36" swampers, a 7" lift, and was converted to carbureted but didn't run as the fuel tank was still set up for EFI. In order to show me that the motor ran he had to feed the carb with gas out of Mellow Yellow bottle with a pin hole in the top.
The truck began its life in 1987, as a Toyota 4Runner Turbo SR5, and appears to have spent the first 25 years of its life on a horse ranch in near Aiken, SC. It still bears the scars of inquisitive horse teeth and climbing goat hooves. At some point in time, the turbo must have blown, though I can't image it was while delivering hay across the ranch. She must have sat for few years up against a shed, baking in the oppressive South Carolina sun. The driver's side still has most of the clear coat intact and the side mirror looked pretty good. The Passenger side however, looks as though it was used for horse-sized scratching post.
The Rancher must have eventually tired of the bright red goat watchtower, and sold her off. This is where our swamp friend comes in. It's really frustrating to know that he just tossed the 22rte block and head and associated plumping and that would take me so long to resource again. He told me he put in a "rebuilt" 22r, that I would later determine had a massive oil leak in the valves. He also hacked the harness all up like a absolute ********. People, if you're going to mod a classic vehicle that you don't plan on owning for the rest of your life, please leave the harness as unmolested as possible. Obviously, rewiring will have to be done, but don't go in and hack 1" of wire harness off like a bad leg in the civil war. It just sucks for the next guy.
It's not all bad though. Lucky, he hadn't scrapped the 22rte ECU, or messed around with the fuel tank (still setup for EFi) which was the major obstacle in his way to being up and running. He also hadn't touched the digital dash or tossed the turbo boost pressure sensor, two parts that are pretty hard to find. But the best thing he did was swap out the automatic trans for a G54. At least, that was the best thing 4 years ago, when the thought of swapping out a transmission had me running for the hills in fear.