92Shawman's 1992 3VZ-E SR5 Pickup

The truck:
1992 SR5 pickup, extended cab, 3VZ-E v6, manual, 4x4.

Most recent photo:
Sand Canyon, Eastern Sierra Nevada - September 2017
Untitled by Kevin Shaw, on Flickr

The very beginning: My parents purchased this truck new back in 1992 just before I was born. Here I am as a baby in front of the truck back in 1992, a month after the truck was purchased and less than a month after I was born:

DSCN4167_Cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

The first addition was the Gemtop workmaster camper shell, added in 1993 or 94. After that, the only things that my parents did were replacing parts and tires. This is one of the first photos of the shell back in 95.

DSCN4166_cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

My mom used it as a daily driver until 2007 when she purchased a 2007 DCSB speedway blue tacoma (Pictured above). I began to drive it in 2009 once I began learning to drive and have been driving it as a daily driver since then. In high school I was introduced to 4 Wheel Drive Toyota Owner Magazine and started itching for modifications. In college I began adding things and then Logcabinwc introduced me to tacomaworld and things really started moving.

The modifications/additions so far:

• 33"x10.5"x15 BFG KO2 all-terrain tires - minimal pinch-weld and fender liner trimming in the front, none in the rear
• ARB deluxe bumper
• Smittybuilt XRC8 8000lb winch
• 3/8" x 85' Amsteel Blue synthetic winch line
• Hi-Lift jack and various accessories
• B.A.M.F 79" kickout sliders - legs specially sized to my frame
• Uniden PRO 510XL CB radio mounted in the ashtray location -- Upgraded to a Uniden Pro 520XL in the same location
• Wilson 1000 antenna magnet mount - Upgraded to roof-mounted with breedlove 3" SO-239 mount
• Superstrut Channeling as bed side channels for Hi-Lift mount
• Front and rear differential breather extensions. Front extended up into the engine compartment and rear extended into the bed near the top of the bed sides
• Old Man Emu suspension:
  -OME N98 shocks up front
  -OME Torsion bars
  -Medium duty Dakar springs (CS019R)
  -OME N94 shocks in the rear
  -OMESD33 steering stabilizer
  
• ARB Air Locker and CKMA12 Compressor
• Elite rear bumper off JLee's rig (with some slight modification)
• Somewhat of an OBA setup
• Sleeping platform
• Kenwood tm-v71a dual band ham radio with Larsen NMO2/70B antenna
• Kenwood HD262U stereo and stock-replacement 4" Pioneer speakers
• IndelB 40L Fridge
• Safari Snorkel
• 2x Iggy 9" round LED lights

To do/Want list:

• Maybe skids

Trips:

Southern California:

• Coyote Canyon (when I was like 1.5 years old...so I don't remember. I wanna take it back there so badly, though) - Check! Went back this winter. It had been all but graded smooth, though.
• Valley of the Moon/Elliot Mine trail and surrounding trails many times, I've been on these trails more than any other trail.
• Diablo drop-off and accompanying wash roads
• Canyon sin Nombre
• Sandstone Canyon
• Espinosa Trail out by Corral Canyon OHV area
• Carveacre Trail/Pancake Rock (Haven't gone up the pancake yet, though)
• Countless fire roads and access roads only permitted for work doing biological field surveys
• The Slot in Anza Borrego
• Big Anza Borrego Trip from South to North, October 23-26, 2014
• Death Valley roads (Titus Canyon, Saline Valley, Steel Pass, Lippincott Pass)
• Mojave National Preserve (Mojave road, New York Mountains, Calico)
• Anza Borrego (Canyon Sin Nombre, Diablo Drop-off, Fish Creek Wash with family)
• Anza Borrego (Rockhouse Canyon Road, Clark Dry Lake, Borrego Badlands, The Slot with a friend)
  
• Anza Borrego (Culp Valley, Grapevine Canyon)
• Anza Borrego (Borrego Springs, Swainson's Hawk Migration)
• Valley of the Moon and Anza Borrego (Dos Cabezas, Carrizo Gorge)

Northern California:

• Slickrock Trail
• Eagle Lakes Trail
• Knoxville OHV Area
• Hollister Hills SVRA
• Ice House Road Snow Wheeling
• Eastern Sierra Nevada, CA
• Eastern Sierras September 2017

Elsewhere:

• Fire roads in Deschutes and Willamette National Forests, OR
• Schnebly hill and Oak Creek Homestead trails in Sedona, AZ
• Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument roads
• Panama (not with the truck)
• Death Valley
• Utah 2016 (Capitol Reef, Canyonlands)
• Colorado 2016 (Ophir, Telluride, Ouray, Breckenridge, RMNP, and Estes Park)
• Baja California, Mexico (All the way to Cabo San Lucas)

Cheers!

 

you were an ugly baby

looks good with the ARB

 

Haha, you jerk

 

lol, hey it's pretty cool, it's like your truck got a second life in the family

 

Yeah man, it's definitely part of the family, which is why I am 99% sure that I won't ever sell it. Too much sentimental value, but I love it!

 

Got 1" front diff and 1" sway bar drop spacers installed at the end of last week. The ride feels much smoother, probably because of the sway bar drop, and the front axle boot ribs don't rub together any more, which is good. I checked the binding at full droop before and after and the front driver side was binding quite a bit before, now it's pretty slight, but still there a little.
I think next on the list are extended stainless steel brake lines in the rear. Any one have any suggestions for vendors or anything regarding that?

 

Had a great time wheeling with a bunch of 4runners and FJCs back on July 20th. I'll post some pictures here soon. The new suspension performed very well in the rutted out carveacre trail.

More recently, my Dakars had developed their characteristic squeak right near the hanger pin, so I did the Oz-T fix and wedged a part of an old bicycle inner tube in there to work as an isolator. No more squeak!
Then I loosened the torsion bars a little bit to a) level the front out because it was high in the driver side and b) relax the front to get a bit more travel.
So far in my test drive over speed bumps it feels really good. I may lower it a little more tomorrow, but we'll see how I'm feelin'.

I'm also working on finishing an auxiliary light in the rear. The bolt keeps rusting before I can paint it, so I'll get that off and then paint it and be done!
That's all for now

 

Took a little dirt back road yesterday evening to test out the looser torsion bars. MUCH NICER! I could kinda feel a bit more articulation in some wonky areas, but mostly it was just a lot smoother. Success!

 

sub'd,you got a nice looking truck.

 

Thanks, man!

 

Started looking around for rear bumper armor again. I'm still not sure if I want to get a tube bumper to match the sliders or get a plate bumper to match the front plate bumper. I'm leaning towards plate, but none of the ones I've found have side protection in the rear.

For tube I'm looking at the trail-gear bumper or Dave'z off road bumper. I don't really care for the look of the marlin crawler one.
For plate I have only found the CBI DIY bumper and the Warn bumper. The CBI one is $350 but I don't have a welder and can't weld, so I'd have to take it to someone to weld it up. The Warn bumper is a surprising $800+. Neither of these offer the wrap around protection that I want, so that would need to be modified anyways, making me lean towards the CBI.

Hmmmmmmm...

 

Looking into adding the Elite rear plate bumper to the list of bumpers. I still need to compare the measurements between the rear frame points on a 1st gen taco and my truck, and the overall width. If it seems like they both match then I'll go over to JLee's and try on his bumper.
I "photoshopped" the Elite bumper onto my truck to see how it would look. Thoughts? Looks pretty good to me:

Mock Elite Bumper_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Uploading photos to photobucket and about to do a big photo dump into here from various wheeling trips and modification stuffs.

 

My first foray into doing my own work on my truck was back in 2009 when I had to replace the headlights. The old ones were corroded in the back, all the chrome had disintegrated. It was a horrible pita to do. I had to remove the grill, which required unclipping about 10 plastic clips that were probably 17 years old, so of course they unclipped by breaking.


DSC08456_cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Then I didn't have any clips to put the grill back on so I drove around like this for a few days until my dad brought home a new pack of clips:

DSC08465_cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

 

Some oddball wheeling pics from before I began any modifications:
Out at a job site doing biological surveys:

DSC08655_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Did a trip to Anza Borrego with my girlfriend in winter of 2010. Drove from the south via I-8 to the Carrizo Badlands overlook, then dropped down through Canyon sin Nombre to the mudcaves up arroyo tapiado. Went north on arroyo tapiado to the crossover that goes east to arroyo del diablo. Camped up there out of the washes. Next morning we went down the Diablo dropoff and came out through fish creek wash and the split mountain area.

Down the Diablo Drop-off:

IMG_3877_cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

IMG_3884_cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Between the drop-off and Fish Creek wash is a rockier wash that was pretty challenging to navigate for me. This area made me want sliders for the first time.

IMG_3885_cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

IMG_3899_cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr


My girlfriend and I did a road trip in it from San Diego up to Bend, OR via the 395 and various highways in northern California. We then crossed through Deschutes national forest, spent a night there, and then went over the mountains to Willamette national forest and spent a night there. We went from Eugene out to the coast and drove along the coast until we got to the Sequoias in Nor Cal, then cut in to the 5 and drove home. Awesome, Awesome trip. I don't have too many photos of the truck from it, it wasn't a wheeling trip, but here are some. This was soon after I decided to get the BFG All Terrains.

Our campsite in Willamette. Fantastic place, didn't look like anyone had driven up that road in years.

IMG_9947_cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Ate lunch along a forest road in Willamette. Beautiful scenery, amazing roads.

IMG_0126_cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Headed home along the Pacific coast. Pulled over to get a shot of the ocean.

IMG_0365_cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr


I've been to Valley of the moon around 9 times now. My friends and I love to go climbing there and I'm the only one with a 4WD vehicle that can get in there. These are some pics from the first time I tried driving all the way up to the top of Elliot mine. I chickened out for the last bit because I saw the rock steps in the road just before the top and a very narrow road with steep dropoffs between me and the obstacle, so I stopped at the first switch back bend. I was the only vehicle there and didn't have a winch or really anything to winch to anyways, so it would have made recovery pretty challenging. I can't find my earlier pictures from the entrance to the valley, I'll try to do more digging..

IMG_1889_cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

IMG_1890_cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

IMG_1934_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

IMG_1942_cleaned_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

 

Cool pics man

 

i think it looks good, i bet it'd bolt up, but i'm not sure.

 

Thanks!

I feel like it should, but I'll measure it today. I think the problem will be where the body is in relation to the frame. That's the same issue that I had with the sliders because the body is lower on the frame than it is on the tacomas, which means I'll probably have to cut into the bit of body around the licence plate to allow the mounting brackets to pass through. I'm okay with that because most of the off-road bumpers produced for my truck require that anyways.

 

Measurements:
A) Distance between the outside faces of the frame in the rear: 41 1/4"
B) Distance between mounting bolts that attach the bumper mounts to the frame: 3 5/8"
C) Distance from the mounting bolts to the bottom edge of the body (basically how low the body is in relation to the frame): 4 1/2"
D) Distance from the last mounting bolt to the back of the fender: 7 1/2 to 8"
E) Total width of the body: 64"

Any 1st geners care to take 10 minutes to grab these measurements for me, pretty please?
I'll upload a drawing to help in a few.

EDIT: Drawing Uploaded. Letters in front of measurements (A-E) correspond to the measurement letters (A-E) in this post.

 

I added the ARB front bumper and the smittybilt xrc-8 winch in winter of 2011. I ordered it through Off Road Warehouse in Escondido and then had them install it. I should have just ordered it and had it delivered or picked it up because they took a long time to install it and they were pretty slow going even though I had told them that I would be leaving for a few months to go to school. I ended up having to drive down to their Mira Mesa store because their delivery truck would have gone from Mira Mesa straight past the Escondido store without stopping up to the Temecula store, and then back to the escondido store. Then they wouldn't have had time to install it and I was planning on leaving the next day. So I picked it up in mira mesa and took it to the escondido store so that they would have enough time to install it before the end of the day. I dropped it off at around 12:30 and they finished it up at closing time (5:30 or 6, I don't remember). So I take it home, it's already dark because it's winter, and when I get home I look at it closer and they removed my front skid plate without telling me and didn't put it back on... So back to the store I go first thing the next morning to get my skid plate back. It was such a pita.
OH, and they clocked the winch 180* so that instead of feeding from the bottom like a winch is supposed to, it fed through the top and had a ridiculous angle through the fairlead. A few months later I replaced the steel cable line with 3/8" Amsteel Blue and then I pulled the winch out a little later on and turned it back to the right spot, which involved having to rotate the housing that the power cables run through. At the same time, I pulled the solenoid apart and sealed it up to avoid failure and then I pulled the gears apart to repack the grease. It had some seriously messed up grease in there. From now on I think I'll be doing all my own installs especially of stuff like that.

On to pictures:
Soon after spooling the Amsteel blue. Here you see the line coming out from on top of the winch at a terrible angle.

IMG_3408_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Pulled the bumper off to fix the winch. You can see why they clocked it the way they did. They didn't want to bother with longer electrical cords so to get them close to the controller box they rotated the winch and fed the cables through that hole.

IMG_3669_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

I rotated the winch and fed the cables through the other hole. Had to rotate the housing on the motor side of the winch to get it to fit and so I didn't have to bother with cutting new wires.

IMG_3674_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Took apart the control box and solenoid to seal it up to prevent it from corroding, as is a common problem with the smittybilt xrc-8. I don't have any pictures of the inside or anything, but it looked very clean. Hopefully it stays that way!

IMG_3673_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

 

Looks good (the winch with the blue synthetic), i have class tonight, but i can try to measure on my truck tomorrow.