3rd Gen 4Runner Build – TheOverlandEd

This is how it all started.

We bought our 1998 4Runner in August of 2001. We found it on a Toyota dealer lot in Dublin, Ohio and I fell instantly in love.

It was fresh off a 3-year lease and had under 36,000 miles on it. In retrospect, we got it for a pretty good deal on it, but it sure seemed like a lot of money back then. We secured a loan and I drove it off the lot, smiling all the way home.

For many years this was our family car. Our grocery-getter. My daily driver. Our road trip car.

Fast forward 17 years. The 4Runner is strictly my car now (the wife no longer drives it as she is very happy with her new Rav4 Hybrid Limited). I now primarily work from home, so it is no longer my daily driver. It was prime time for some upgrades.

Just a few years ago, I was looking at replacement options, as we were thinking it was time to part ways with “Mary Anne” and buy something with some more modern creature comforts.

(Yes, her nickname is Mary Anne. The name came from my favorite childhood book, “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel”. In the book, Mike named his steam shovel “Mary Anne” and in the book there is a line repeated many times: “Mike took such good care of Mary Anne that she never grew old”. The relationship I have with the 4Runner was very similar to Mike’s relationship with his steam shovel, so the nickname seemed appropriate.)

I looked at a lot of different vehicles, even the current model of 4Runners, and none seemed to be much of an upgrade to what I already had. I was leaning toward the newer 4Runners, but thought that if I was going to pay that much then I wanted something that didn’t seem almost as long in the tooth as my 1998. Sure, the new 5th gen 4Runners are awesome, but felt that Toyota needed to step its game up a bit with the aging model line.

I convinced myself that the right thing to do was wait a few more years until the 6th generation 4Runners come out or wait a few years and buy a couple year old 5th gen. Until then, the 1998 needed some upgrades.

OK, enough with me talking. This is what she looks like at the time of this writing.