I am sorry to hear about your friend, but it's very honorable for you to carry on his project.

The 22r series of engines are very solid engines, but power houses they are not. They can be turboed, some came factory with turbos (those are rare and highly sought after) but even then not much power. Many just gear the trucks to oblivion and stay within the bounds, living with a slow truck.

The 4.3 is a good swap candidate, and if not making a ton of power or really flogging on it, the factory trans can live.

I haven't looked at your K5 build (really I'm back here getting ideas for a potential cookie cutter style project) but if that's a high powered rig, I would probably keep this one as is, great for a cruise through town, beach, narrow trails, etc. Look at gearing the axles and, if needed, a doubler setup for the transfer case (going on the assumption I bought it). What were Mark's plans for the rig? That may be a solid plan to explore too

 

The blazer is definitely the higher hp build. Fuel injected 383 with cam, aluminum heads, 9.8 compression, dual plane, rollers, yadda yadda. It’s also a never ending project as I just learned that my model year 4l80 changed cooler port locations so the premade lines I bought won’t work and now I’m off to adapter hell.

The 4Runner isn’t going to be built much. The 22re is solid. It will get geared as it’s got some 31x10.50’s on it. This is my second 4Runner and third Toyota so gearing is well known (just did 5.29’s in the tundra). But the engine will get some love because it’s just so dang cheap to upgrade. Remove and block off all the emissions junk, new intake, maybe an LC Engineering header.

He just wanted a fun cruiser out of it. That’s all. Simple and easy. Take the top off and enjoy it. And that’s the plan I’m sticking with. Turn it into a daily driver for myself.

 

Looks like I need to buy a couple more parts. Pump hanger and sending unit are trashed.

 

Solid. I think that's a great plan. And for 31s probably don't need to gear crazy, Even probably good up to 33s. Seems you have a great foothold for the platform too, so I'm excited to see you moving forward!

Looks like overall it's a clean start, compared to what we have here for older Toyotas, rusted to hell and not even in the rust belt!

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Oh my god that pump is destroyed…

 

Found a complete knock off pump hanger on amazon for $50 with the 3 ports on it so hope that works. And decided to say screw it and get a universal sending unit because I'm just not going to drop $100+ on an OEM model when a universal is $20. These are not complicated pieces of machinery.

 

Who the hell at Toyota thought it was a good idea to mount the fuel pump under the intake manifold and bolt it to the block?

 

Dang! Wasn't that like 1970s technology?

So you gotta remove the intake to access the pump?

 

Someone who retired along time ago...

 

That or be a contortionist with your fingers and do the whole thing by feel through the fender well. Took a 12mm socket with 3/8” ratchet for the top bolt, a 12mm flex head ratcheting wrench for the bottom bolt, and then a 17mm flex head ratcheting wrench for the banjo bolts. Three different freaking tools to get one fuel filter out. Of course I was cussing to a friend of mine afterwards and she sent me a link where you can just move it to the inner fender and bolt it to an existing AC clamp.