Gents,
I have only this weekend to finish all this work. Unfortunately one of my best friends from 3rd grade time passed away last week. His funeral is next Thurs and I'm planning to attend the funeral. Got to get the 4runner running.
I've read a lot of threads and the one consistent thing I've read is the lack of hand and wrench space to remove the nuts on both lines that run to the steering rack. I would agree that the best way to do this job is to loosen the steering rack from the mounts, sway it as far away from the mount (without breaking anything of course), and then loosening the lines.
Now some people have gone so far as just saying F-it and taking a sawzall to the lines right above the nut and using a long 17mm socket with a combination of u-joint adapters, long extensions, and a breaker bar (threading this all through the engine bay). That's probably what I'll do too since I bought new replacement lines.
The easy part so far was to unbolt the 3 nuts that secure the brackets that secure the hoses. The hoses have a rubber split sleeve encasing them between the lines and the brackets. One is located near and below the steering pump itself, one is dead center on the vehicle, and the hardest one to access is the one thats kinda buried in the engine bay. Just follow the lines w/ your hands and eventually you'll hit it. All take a 10mm socket or wrench.
Unbolting the large bolt w/ the holes (forget what its called) on the bottom of the power steering pump that releases the return line took a breaker bar. Notice a theme here? Yes. A breaker bar is needed for this work. Once the large nut w/ holes was undone, the bolt was easy to remove. Note though there are two copper washers, which one of them fell on the garage floor but fortunately my old failing eyes saw it fast enough and so I had to search for it and found it.
Removing the return hose that runs vertically from the pump to the top of the return line was simple enough. I used 90 degree pliers to clamp and move the clamps towards the center of the hose. Pushing the hose off took a little effort, but got it done. I'll have to remind myself again (forgotten twice now) to buy some of that rubber hose grease on the hose nipple ends. I drained the hose, cleaned it out, and let things drain. That included the metal return line too.
So there I stopped. Sorry no pics, I have to rush to get this done. Maybe when things are looking promising I'll take some pics, but this is an extremely dirty job esp since the hoses are leaking everywhere along w/ the oil.