The Coleman 413G camp stove as it was when purchased.
In addition to my Coleman 220J pressure lantern, I also picked up a vintage Coleman 413G camp stove at the same flea market for $25. This is the larger of the two classic Coleman pressure camp stoves—I’d like to get the smaller 425 at some point as well.
The plunger with the original leather pump cup.
The stove was in pretty decent shape to start with. As with the lantern, I immediately noticed that the pump wasn’t holding pressure and appeared to also have the rubber pump cup, so I ordered a replacement leather pump cup for it as well. However, it turned out that the stove actually already had a leather cup, it was just almost black with oil and age. So, I was able to clean and oil it and bring it back around to building pressure successfully, and now I have a spare on hand in case it fails down the road.
The old 3-piece filler cap alongside the new 1-piece cap.
The tank had one of the old 3-piece filler caps (although not one of the notoriously dangerous ones), and I went ahead and replaced it with a new one-piece brass cap just to be safe and ensure it holds pressure.
The underside of the old 3-piece filler cap with rust and worn-out gasket versus the new 1-piece cap.
I gave the whole stove a good wipe-down, then cleaned up the exposed metal parts with a wire brush and steel wool and applied Ballistol to keep them rust-free.
Putting the Coleman 413G camp stove to work!
With some fresh fuel in the tank, it was time for a test firing. The stove lit up right away, and after re-pumping the tank, I was able to get a nice, blue, almost invisible flame on both the main and secondary burners. This larger stove model will fit 2 12″ cast iron pans on it, which should work out really well for family camping trips. It fried an egg easily: success!
I recently picked up a vintage Coleman 200J lantern at a flea market for $20. I had been looking for some vintage camping gear for a few weeks and this was exactly what I wanted. My goal is replace some of my more modern camping gear with older equipment that, while perhaps a bit bulkier, is more reliable and rebuildable and will ultimately last a lot longer.
The 220J lantern with missing glass and old mantles.
The lantern is a Coleman model 220J manufactured in November 1976. It has a dent on the side near the bottom and the paint is chipping off in places, but it’s otherwise in pretty decent shape with all the parts. Unfortunately, as soon as I got it home and started to clean it, I dropped the glass globe and it shattered. That’s the first thing I added to the list of parts to buy, and, thankfully, Old Coleman Parts has replacement original globes with the same red logo on them.
Soaking the new leather pump cup in Ballistol. The plunger with the old rubber pump cup can be seen in the background on the left.
The second part I bought was a leather pump cup. I had noticed at the flea market that the pump didn’t build pressure, and when I pulled the plunger out, I confirmed it was one of the rubber pump cups that deteriorate over time. The leather pump cups, from what I’ve read, last much longer and just need to be oiled occasionally to stay in good shape. To break in the new leather pump cup, I soaked it in Ballistol to lubricate it and make it more pliable.
Plunger assembly with old backing plate and new leather pump cup and clip.
Then I disassembled the plunger and, after some trial and error, found that the old backing plate worked with the new leather pump cup and new clip. The leather pump cup comes with a new backing plate too, but maybe it doesn’t work with all models.
The 220J lantern with mantles and a new globe.
I gave everything a good wipe down, lightly scrubbing at rust with steel wool and a wire brush, and coating any exposed metal with Ballistol to protect it. Then I put on new mantles, carefully installed the new globe, and put the hat back on.
The new mantles warming up on the Coleman 220J lantern.
Following the instructions printed on the lantern body, I pumped up the tank, which successfully built pressure with the new pump cup, and lit the lantern, which started right up! Once the new mantles were fully ignited, it glowed nice and bright and put off a pleasant warmth. It’s hard to beat a classic Coleman lantern.
P.S. Another great resource for learning about and restoring these old pressure lanterns and other Coleman gear is Old Town Coleman. They have user manuals, parts diagrams, and lots of other useful information.
For Christmas 2021, I was gifted an inclinometer to install in my 4Runner. It was an inexpensive model from Amazon, and in true fashion, I couldn’t help but disassemble it and make it my own. I made a few changes, starting with how it mounts.
The inclinometer, modded and mountedThe inclinometer at night, matching the rest of the green LED dash lights
Custom Mount
The inclinometer came with a flat mounting plate with an adhesive backing, but the dashboard in my ’92 4Runner doesn’t have a nice flat spot that would work where I could see it from the driver seat. Since I was in the process of installing some RAM Mount tracks, I decided to convert the inclinometer to work with the RAM Mount system instead.
The original flat mounting plate
Thankfully, the original mounting plate just snaps off the back, leaving a nice flat surface to work with. Using the RAM base as a template, I marked and drilled 2 holes for the screws.
Holes drilled and parts laid out
Note that I mounted it slightly off-center to leave room for the square hole, which is a notch for the wires to hook on inside. The offset also worked out well for positioning it in the vehicle, moving it slightly further away from my phone mount.
The new RAM base installed
A couple of additional pieces are necessary to mount this on a RAM track: a T-track ball mount and a double socket arm
LED Lighting
The single factory incandescent bulb wasn’t cutting it for me since it didn’t match the other green LED dash lights I had put in place. Fortunately, it was pretty easy to replace the bulb with a strip of green LEDs with a soldering iron. The bulb was mounted to a board with the power supply wires soldered to it. I could reuse the board for the LED strip, so I desoldered the wires and bulb.
Desoldering the wires and incandescent bulb from the board
Then I soldered the wires to the LED strip, peeled off the protective backing, and stuck it to the board.
The LED strip attached to the board with wires soldered to it.
Then it was just a matter of reinstalling the board in the inclinometer like it was before.
The board reinstalled with the LED strip
To get power to the inclinometer, I drilled an extra hole in the dash inside the RAM mount track where I could feed the wire. Then, I actually disassembled a T5 LED bulb (size 74 factory bulb) and soldered a couple of lead wires on it so that I could easily plug it into a factory dash bulb location. Since my Midland MXT115 GMRS radio is now where the ashtray used to live, the ash tray bulb socket wasn’t being used, making it the perfect candidate to tie into and keep tucked behind the radio.
Modified T5 LED bulb with lead wiresThe inclinometer illuminated with the green LED strip
Cost
The inclinometer was free to me, but RAM Mount parts aren’t terribly cheap. However, they’re such a great product, this was one of those “buy once, cry once” situations in my book. That said, see if you can buy them on eBay with free shipping since RAM Mount charges a lot for shipping!
Last weekend, we attended Rendezvous in the Ozarks for the second year in a row. It was rainy the first couple of days, so we brought along a 10’ x 10’ canopy to give us cover between our ground tent and the back of the 4Runner. But man! that thing is heavy and bulky.
So when we got back from camping, I started looking into alternatives. There are lighter-weight canopies out there, and also a really cool product called the MoonShade, which is basically a fancy lightweight vehicle awning. But I’m overlanding on a budget, and $325 is a bit steep for an awning. Enter the DIY Poor Man’s MoonShade.
The basic concept consists of a tarp with one side affixed to the vehicle and the opposite side supported by 2 poles. Since I want this to come off the back of the 4Runner, and it’s pretty narrow, I also need a strut to hold the tarp out wider than the 4Runner, similar to the MoonShade’s solution. I also want to run guy lines from the corners to help keep it taut.
Fiberglass tent pole repair kit with crimped ferrules. That last part is important because it allows the pole to insert into the tarp grommets.
2-4 Tent stakes
2 Carabiners (optional)
X ft of paracord
The nice thing about fully adjustable tent poles is that you can set up one slightly taller than the other, or both shorter than the vehicle, to create a slope to shed rain.
The tent pole repair kit was the key piece to this puzzle for me. I was having trouble finding a double-ended tent pole with 2 pins for the grommets like the MoonShade has, and was seriously considering fabricating something myself until I stumbled across this kit with enough poles and pieces to make exactly what I needed.
Build
The main thing that needed to be built was the strut. I assembled the tent pole pieces and laid them out on the 8’ side of the tarp, with the pin end in one of the grommets, and set the other pin end in the opposite grommet to see where to cut the last tent pole section, marking it with a pencil.
Measuring to cut the fiberglass tent pole
Then I cut the tent pole section with a hacksaw, sanded the cut end, and fully assembled the tent pole with the provided shock cord. I tied the shock cord after the pin ends so the whole assembly is contained, and melted the ends of the shock cord to keep it from fraying.
Shock cord tied after the pin endThe completed strut
I also needed a way to affix the strut to my vehicle. MoonShade offers a variety of attachment methods, but since I have a roof rack, I kept it simple and used a couple of tarp ball bungees to hold the strut to the roof rack. In my case, the tarp grommets lined up pretty close to the sides of my roof rack, so I loop the ball bungees through those as well to hold everything together.
Ball bungee in the background holding the strut and tarp to the roof rack
The last piece is the guy lines. I measured out paracord with enough length to tie taut-line hitches for adjustability and tied them permanently to all 4 corners of the tarp. On the vehicle side, I actually attached these to my roof rack with carabiners, but they’re long enough I could stake them to the ground instead.
Guy lines attached to the roof rack
The far side is supported by the telescoping tarp poles and held taut with guy lines staked to the ground.
The Poor Man’s MoonShade
I need to play around with tensioning to make sure water doesn’t pool in the center, but overall, I’m really happy with this build. It’s easier to set up with 2 people, but I can tear it down by myself in just a couple of minutes, which is a lot faster than my 10’ x 10’ pop-up canopy!
When I swapped a 3.4 engine and ECU into my 4Runner, the donor vehicle had an automatic transmission, and the ECU expected to see signals from the automatic transmission solenoids. Without those signals, it would illuminate the check engine light, masking any real issues I may need to investigate. To avoid that, the signals can be spoofed or simulated using resistors. All that’s needed is a little wiring and soldering.
Supplies
(3) 15 ohm power resistor, rated for 25W or higher
(1) 5 ohm power resistor, rated for 50W or higher
18-20 AWG wire
Project box or mounting surface
Tools
Wire cutters/strippers
Soldering iron and solder
Pinout
A 3rd gen 4runner auto ECU will have 5 pins for the Electronically Controlled Transmission (ECT) Solenoid. In a 2002 4runner, these pins are as follows:
SL (Connector E9 Pin 1, LG)
S1 (Connector E9 Pin 3, P-L)
S2 (Connector E9 Pin 2, L-W)
SLT+ (Connector E11 Pin 5, R-Y)
SLT- (Connector E11 Pin 11, Y-B)
Diagram for 2002 4Runner with automatic transmission
The SL, S1, and S2 wires all go through the solenoids to ground. The SLT+ wire goes through the solenoid and back to the ECU to the SLT- pin.
You will need to look at the Electronic Wiring Diagram (EWD) for your 3.4 engine’s model year and confirm the ECU pin locations and wire colors because they vary by year.
Theory
Each solenoid has a range of resistance and voltage that the computer expects to see.
The SL, No. 1, and No. 2 solenoids all have a resistance of 11–15 ohms, and range in voltage from < 1.5 V to 9–14 V, depending on which gear the auto transmission is currently in. Using the formula I = V / R, we can therefore calculate the maximum wattage as 14 V / 11 ohms = 17.8 W. To be safe, I rounded this up to be able to dissipate at least 25 W of power.
The SLT solenoid has a resistance of 5.0–5.6 ohms, and pulses between < 1.5 V and 10–12 V when the engine is idling. Consequently, we can calculate the maximum wattage as 12 V / 5 ohms = 28.8 W. I rounded this up to safely dissipate at least 50 W of power.
Based on this information, we can use 3 power resistors rated for 15 ohms and 25 W to spoof the SL, No. 1, and No. 2 solenoids, and we can use 1 power resistor rated for 5 ohms and 50 W to spoof the SLT solenoid.
Build
Essentially all that needs to be done is soldering wires to the resistors and then connecting the wires to the ECU and ground accordingly.
The wires to the ECU connectors should ideally be joined with a lineman splice to the connector wires and then soldered. This will create a very strong connection to avoid signal interruption to the ECU. Optionally, instead of a direct splice, the wires can be crimped and soldered to terminals or a multi-pin connector so that the simulator can be easily removed from the ECU.
Prototype of the simulator. Notice how the brown ground wires are chained together at the bottom. The wire nuts are very temporary and shouldn’t be used long-term!
There are 2 options for the ground wire coming from 3 of the resistors:
Run it directly to a bolt on the chassis for a direct ground
Splice it into the ground wire coming from the ECU
I opted for option 2 to keep everything ECU-related contained and not have another ground point to worry about.
Testing
Once everything is wired up and the simulator is connected to the ECU and properly grounded, then the ECU should no longer through a Diagnostic Trouble Code (DTC) related to the automatic transmission solenoids. You may need an OBD-II port connected to your ECU to verify this, but if this was the only issue causing the check engine light to illuminate, then the check engine light should no longer be on!
Cost
This was a pretty cheap fix. I only needed to buy the power resistors, and was able to use wires and hardware I already had on hand.
15 ohm power resistors: $15.60
5 ohm power resistor: $7.70
Scrap wires: free
Wood mounting plate: free
Wire nuts: free
Total cost: $23.30
I’m planning to revisit this mod in the near future to tidy it up and move it to the engine bay. The resistors still get pretty toasty, so I’ve slipped the whole assembly into an old coffee can that sits on the passenger floorboard for now so my wife doesn’t burn her foot!
One of the (few) flaws of the 2nd gen 4runner, in my opinion, is the lack of a drip rail above the rear window. Even if the rear of the vehicle is under cover (such as my Poor Man’s MoonShade), if the rear window is open, rain on the roof will run straight into the cargo area!
I should be able to open the rear window under cover without getting rain in the back!
I spent several hours trying to find someone else who had solved this problem before, and maybe my Google-fu is getting rusty, but I was surprised that I couldn’t find anyone else doing something about this!
I think the ideal long-term solution would be to weld a proper drip rail above the window, but I don’t have a welder, and I’m not prepared to strip and repaint. Maybe someday…
What I did find, though, was a product called RV rain gutter, which is essentially J-channel rubber molding that can be applied above windows and doors on an RV to solve this same problem.
Old toothbrush (for pressing the gutter into place)
Build
This build was really straightforward, and I basically just followed the instructions that came with the RV gutter. I cleaned the area to which I was going to apply the gutter, then rubbed it down with isopropyl alcohol and quickly dried it to get it extra clean and ready to accept the 3M adhesive strip. Then I laid out masking tape right below where I was going to put the channel.
Masking tape as a guide for the drip rail
I have a window wiper assembly above my rear window, so I didn’t have a lot of room to work with, and basically mounted the drip rail immediately above the wiper. I ran the channel around the corners on either side towards the windows, where there’s a vent that handles drainage already. This gets the rain completely out of the way of the rear window and allows it to drain down the sides of the vehicle.
Look ma, no water in the back!
I tested it out by pouring a jug of water on the roof and watching it run down with the rear window open. I was very pleased that no water made it into the cargo area!
Cost
The only thing I had to buy for this project was the RV gutter itself, which was $14.74. Cheap, easy, and effective!
