For the longest time I had wanted a V8 in my 4Runner. It was mostly a pipedream until I came upon an opportunity I couldn't pass up. My brother's 1976 Chevy Blazer had transmission troubles, and a rusted out body. It was headed for the scrap yard. But the 350 engine ran great! So I bought it off him for cheap, kept the engine, and parted the rest out. I actually made a little money on the deal. This was a perfect beginning for my budged minded swap!
The 3vze engine in my 4Runner actually ran pretty good, all things considered. I did have a few problems with clogged fuel injectors, but all that was fixed. A lot of people do an engine swap after their original motors die. In my case, the engine was just fine. This allowed me to pull the engine and sell it and make some money to fund the V8 swap!
Click here for my v8 swap page!
After reading about other people modifying their intakes cheaply I wanted to do the same. I read up on the various styles that have already been done. Here's some links
http://www.yotatech.com/~corey/tech/blu_intake/blu.htm
http://www.yotatech.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13752
http://www.yotatech.com/showthread.php?t=35665
http://www.yotatech.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6322
http://www.yotatech.com/showthread.php?t=43186
Now, I attempted to do this to my 1st gen. I quickly found out there was not enough room in the engine compartment to use the flexible muffler tubing. The engine bay in the 1st gen must be a bit smaller than the 2nd gen.
What I ended up doing was removing the intake silencers and reusing the stock intake pipe, and capping off the Y where the silencers were. I also connected the 2 large hoses to each other and terminated the smaller hose. I still need to get a hose coupler for the larger hose and figure out some way to get the smaller hose back into the intake pipe. I used a 2" pipe cap and some glue to cover up the hole left by the stock silencer boxes. Here's a pic. I call it the "ISB" mod. Intake Silencer Bypass!
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The muffler that was on the truck when I bought it finally rusted off. I decided to upgrade the stock muffler and pipes to 2.25". I went with a Vortex muffler, manufactured by Maremont, which is primarily sold at Meineke. I actually bought it used from a friend. I then had it welded up at a local muffler shop. Ryan Muffler Center on Banklick near Turfway in Florence Kentucky. They were very reasonable. I went to Meineke and they wanted $175 just to do the job. Ryan only wanted $75. I paid $50 for the muffler, so my entire setup cost me $125. Not bad. I'm still getting used to the sound and performance of the new setup. But I have noticed that it is much more mellow than this same muffler was on my 96 4Runner with the 3.4 V6. I don't know exactly why, but my guess is the 3.4 pushed more exhaust gasses and therefore creates a louder tone. But it still sounds good on my 3.0. At highway speeds it is barely noticeable. Even driving down the road is not very loud. But my engine is rather loud, so that drowns it out a lot. You will notice in the mp3 file posted that when it is sitting at a stand still, and I redline it, there is a raspy crackling sound. This is only when at a standstill. I have never heard that noise during regular driving. I did see a slight performance gain from the new muffler as well. It seems to rev faster, and pull harder from 3500-4500 RPM. Here are some pics and below is an MP3 audio file I made. Sometime soon I will install some sort of header.
The following is a 2.6 megabyte mp3 sound file. It's best to right click on the link and save it to your hard drive.
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