Produced with Spartan Air

First generation RAV4s are not gorgeous. They’re utilitarian. Some would consider them cute; I’m not one of those people. I enjoy the look of the car, the obscenely small bubbly nature of it tickles my fancy. It definitely has some room for improvement.

In true broverlander fashion, the first appearance mod to do is a snorkel. There are no direct-fit snorkels for RAV4s, but there are a couple that are pretty close. A few people have used a snorkel from a 1996-2000 Land Cruiser Prado. These can be bought fairly cheap on eBay. Mass produced out of China in the $50-60 range. Some sellers have even recently started listing the part as fitting both Prados and RAV4s. Installing this is fairly straightforward: drill a couple of holes in the fender and bolt it down. These snorkels include a template which I found to be completely useless. I ended up cutting of the actual air intake that leads to the engine in order to make it sit flush with the fender, then measure and drill from there. The included bracket is also useless for a RAV4, so I made a small steel bracket that I initially attached with JB Weld. This did not prove strong enough, big surprise, so I added a self tapping screw. I call this temporary, so expect to see this bracket replaced within the next 2-5 years.

As for the intake plumbing, what I did was nothing. This is not actually plumbed into the air intake yet. I need to design a proper enclosed airbox to allow this. I might not even completely seal it, and just allow it to act as a pressure relief for when water begins to enter the lower part of the intake. That’s probably a while out.

Next on my list was headlights. I want 1998+ headlights for increased visibility. I haven’t been able to find any headlights yet, so next on my list was taillights. I’m somewhat indifferent about the 1996 vs 1998 RAV4 taillights. I like both. I think either fit the car well, and what looks better depends on other aspects of the car.

For demonstration purposes, on the left I have a facelift taillight, and on the right I have a pre-facelift taillight. I think the pre-facelift taillight fit this specific car better, though I like the function of the clearer lenses found on the facelift lights, especially with the reverse light, which is quite dim on the factory taillights.
Clear can get clearer.
This was Su Virdee’s idea. As it turns out, if you remove the lens from the housing, those colored bits are inserts that can be removed. A slow and arduous process, easy to mess up. I started with four taillights and ended with two. The others were ruined. Both the lenses and the housings are extremely brittle, and the glue holding them together is very strong. Worst mix possible in this case. Slowly but surely, I was able to get a usable pair. I tidied up the wiring harnesses and installed a six-positon DT connector to make these more easily swappable in the future.

Some windowweld and a couple of clamps to hold the lights together, and they’re done. I’m pretty happy with these. With colored bulbs they make the lights super bright while maintaining a proper diffusion pattern. I do think they’re slightly out of place on my car. They are almost too clean. I’ll leave them for now. The bright reverse light might keep me here.

Some RAV4s came with fender flares. I’m not sure what trim level, years, or whatever was the differentiator. They’re not super easy to find so it must be an uncommon option, or maybe even dealer installed. They add about 1-1.5” to the width of the car, which isn’t a lot but it’s nice for OEM parts. The front flares are shared between two- and four-door models, but the rear flares are door count specific. That was always one of those things where if I found them I’d buy them. I ended up finding them. The seller was none other than Stefan Papadakis. His shop is in Long Beach, about 5.5 hours away from me. So, instead, I sent Max, who lives only about an hour away, and he jumped on the opportunity to meet the guy.

Stefan has a 3SGTE swap, which we can forgive. Maybe one day our RAV4s will sit next to each other. He has by far the most experience with high power 2ARs than anyone else on the planet. Anyway, Max held on to those for me for a while until we met up again. What really ended up happening was another friend from Phoenix, Hector, was in LA for something unrelated, and met up with Max to grab the parts. And they’ve sat in my garage for several months since then. Go figure. The thing preventing me from installing the flares was the weird clips that they use.

The flares have a rectangular hole that takes a rectangular insert plastic clip, which is all fine, but the recieving feature on the fender is also supposed to be a rectangular hole. I don’t have a strong desire to cut small rectangular holes. That would be really difficult to align. I have plenty of round peg clips to use, but after some experimenting, I can’t find a way to fit a round peg in a square hole. What I ended up doing was cutting an edge off the top of a clip I have on hand. This allowed me to insert the clip into the rectangular hole and rotate it to get the entire thing in.

I found some more body damage that I didn’t know existed. The rear quarter panels, both sides, are almost entirely made of body filler. Drilling the holes was fine, but with varying thicknesses it’s hard to get the plastic clips all the way in. They’re held in by screws in a few spots, so they won’t fall out at least. I may add some zip ties internally or some other way to hold it on, or in the future really go crazy and start a bodywork phase. This needs a lot of it.

Regardless, I have these actually installed now. I just have to keep an eye on the clips and make sure they stay in, and readdress that in the future if necessary. I don’t want to do bodywork, but if I need to, I’ll figure it out.

Sadly this didn’t end up working. While driving on the highway, one of the pieces caught some wind and the plastic clips let go. I was able to find the fender flare, but the front bumper extension is lost to time. I did some thinking, and I came up with something that I think is much better. Had I thought of this to begin with, I wouldn’t have ever bothered with the plastic clips.

I used an extended length M6 allen head set screw, along with a fender washer and nylock nut to add some loose “studs”. With this I can freely install and align the flare against the fender, and tighten it down against the fender, using an allen key and open ended wrench. I couldn’t use bolts here because the length needed wouldn’t fit under the height of the standoffs. So far, this solution has actually worked.

I don’t love the factory wheels. They’re perfectly usable, they’re chunky, I’m sure they’re plenty strong. They are quite heavy for the size, however. They’re 16x6.5+45 and weigh 21 lb. There are pretty decent tire options in 16” and ~29-32” OD, thanks to the Subaru Crosstrek market, but more options in 15”, thanks to the Jeep market. Unfortunately. 15s won’t actually fit over the stock brakes. I’m perfectly okay with sticking with 16s for now, I don’t want to reinvent the wheel putting together a small brake kit.

Perfectly adequate, utilitarian, not gorgeous.

This is where it gets frustrating. So what I really want is a 16” wheel, 7-9” range, +40-+25 range, and decently lightweight, under 20lb ideally. There are plenty of those, but very very limited options for a 5x114.3 bolt pattern. No, I won’t get RPF1s. Those are not strong enough anyway. I really want bronze wheels but would settle for gold, which narrows my choices even further. I could of course paint or powdercoat any of the options, but it feels a little silly to powdercoat brand new wheels. I narrowed it down to four options.

Konig Runlite, 16x7.5+35, 17.75lb, Gold

Work Crag T-Grabic, 16x7+38, ??lb, Bronze

Method 502 Rally, 16x7+30, 19lb, Black
(Gold not in 16”)

Sparco Terra, 16x7+45, 21.42lb, Black
(Gold not in 16”)

Bad news right out the gate, I reached out to Konig tech support and they told me to absolutely not run the Runlites offroad. Check that one off the list. I really like the Sparco, but I’d be worried about strength on this one as well. They’re marketed towards rally, not slower rock crawling trails. I really should get something forged or at least a pretty thick/strong casting. The Method 502 is a decent option and definitely strong enough, but having to coat them out the gate sucks, especially when it’s a factory option for other sizes. I was really leaning towards the Works for a while. Work actually explicitly markets these as offroad wheels. Also it would be really cool to have some Work wheels that aren’t the cookie cutter Meister S1s. At the same time, it’s hard justifying spending $2500 on wheels for a car I bought for $500 more than that. Also spending $2500 for only an extra half inch. That’s fine, 7” is enough, but it’s a little disheartening. Those Black Rhino Boxer wheels that Papadakis has are actually a pretty decent choice too. 16x7+15, 18.41lb, but of course they recently stopped selling gold. Go figure.

Annoyingly there are a lot of wheels that meet my criteria, if I instead look at 5x100 wheels. Again, this is due to the Crosstrek market. The Crosstrek market giveth, the Crosstrek market taketh away. I could run some 5x114.3-5x100 adapters and have a lot bigger of a selection. I very heavily considered this. That’d give me a ton more options with a ton more color choices.

I mulled this over for quite a while until I thought of another option.

On a whim I went and test fit some R32 GTR wheels. Strangely enough, these fit all of my criteria. Fully forged from BBS, 16x8+30, 5x114.3, 17.2lb. They fit perfect. They make the car look like a blown up Hotwheels, in the best way possible. They’re kinda bronze, there’s some brown tint going on in that silver. “We produced with spartan air” must be the GTR equivalent of “A man in dandism” There are clearly only four here, and I want five matching wheels. So I have to find someone selling ONE GTR wheel in the US. Or…

Well that’s convenient.

$200 shipped to my door, a used single R32 GTR wheel straight from Japan. I reckon there aren’t many people in need of a single wheel. As of writing this, I bought this wheel 6 hours ago and it has already shipped. Must be that spartan air. They’re still not bronze.

They sure are now. This is Prismatic Powders “Stage Pass Bronze” PMB-8157.

I went down to my local Discount Tire to throw these on. I worked there in high school, so a couple of old friends there still take care of me. These look absolutely perfect. This is exactly what I wanted. The chunky spokes with meaty tires makes this car look even more like a giant Hot Wheels than it already did. This is probably placebo but my car feels easier to turn while stationary, I’m wondering if I eliminated some scrub with this offset. It wouldn’t make sense but I’ll have to measure to find out. Regardless, losing 20lb and gaining 100 appearance points, I’ll take it.

I knew I was getting these wheels powdercoated, and another thought crossed my mind. I’ve always wanted matching wheels and valve cover. I think that’s a good design philosophy. I’ve never been one for body-color valve covers. An issue that people often encounter when powdercoating these valve covers is sand from media blasting getting caught in the baffles, due to oil buildup. When the motor heats up, this sand will enter the engine either through oil drainage or into the intake directly. Either way, no bueno. Also, 2AR valve covers are made of magnesium, material that doesn’t play well with most stripping compounds. So realistically, you get one shot at this. I opted to buy a brand new valve cover for the best chances of success here.

One thing I had failed to realize is that 2ARs have at least two valve cover variants, one with metal oil sprayers and one with plastic. I had ordered the plastic version. I am perfectly fine with using plastic here, but I know that won’t hold up to the heat of an industrial powder coating oven, so I drilled out the rivets and removed the baffles regardless. I’ll drill and tap some holes to reinstall said baffle once it’s back. Some small diameter bolts and red threadlocker will do just fine here.

I’m waiting on a couple of things to finally install this cover, so for the interest of time you’ll have to accept these pictures and pretend I installed it. Some people strongly disagree but I think the 2ar has one of the better looking valve covers out there for 4 cylinder engines. I actually think it looks good. Even better when color matched to the wheels. The angularity really shows the powder off well.
That’s it for this post, I’m sure I’ll have to come back to some of these projects.
You may not be able to outpizza the hut. But you can certainly outPapa the John.