What have you done to your Tacoma today? 1st Gen Edition

Spent the past week with my wheels off. With an order in for new tires figured I might as well take advantage of rims being tire-bare and sand/spray them.

3 wheels were fairly clean, one however was a shitty rusted replacement from previous owner:

Don't have an abrasive blaster or an angle grinder, nothing fancy. Bead blasting is super expensive, went the sore-arm route and used a wire brush on a corded drill. Took awhile, but the result was nice and shiny.


Used the wire brush on the entire front face of the rim, for the lip I needed something more powerful and able to be held flat.. so this belt sander came in handy at about 10min a wheel:

The lips came out real nice!

After lots of fooling around I got 2 of the clean wheels sanded down to bare metal, then I started work on the rusted one. When I realized that it would take more years than I have left in life to remove the rust I settled for taking off the loose stuff and spraying it as-is:


At this point, I realized i had 2 pristine wheels, one rusty, and one left to sand. So, I made it an experiment and decided to rough the old paint up but not polish down to bare steel.

We'll see how long it lasts. Figure I'll put the sexiest wheel up front for traffic light encounters, the back 2 can be evidence of my lack-of-fucks-given attitude and propensity for wheelin!

Did my spraying today...

used this piece of wood to help with the process:

Here's primer coat:

I surprised myself by getting quite even coats.

Still need to finish the top coats of paint. For primer paint and gloss I bought rustoleum, was going for a gunmetal color of top coat. I picked up 2 different colors. One of them seemed too silver, the other was a dark greyish color more to my liking. After getting 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of the silver metallic paint on each wheel, I started on the other color to use for the next 2 coats. Of course, just as the sun was dying in the sky, this can turned out to be a dud, trigger mechanism doesn't depress the sprayer properly.. Looks like I'll be waiting an extra day to finish painting and get the new tires on. Not too disappointed anyway, these "metallic" paints have more glitter in them than a stripper's hooch after an average shift on a Tuesday. Guess what day today is... Gives me more time to find a decent color.
Anyone now a good brand/color for an understated gunmetal look?

 

Added my relentless mounts


Removed the basket!

 

Tell me about those headlights! @Iceman2448

 

I'm running piaa bulbs

 

I finally ordered my Relentless DIY Front Bumper!!

 

Sweet! Did you get the full tubes?

 

Yes sir i did and with dually d2 cutouts!

 

Nice!! Twins haha

 

Yeah except mine is white i want their rear bumper too but not wrap around

 

Oh thank god lol

 

So where should i go for new lca's the dealership wants an arm and a leg for them. Are there any good alternatives?

 

Just go LT bud, I heard it's the shits

 

Got the LBJ recall done on my taco - I admit it was in part due reading through both of Monte's LBJ failures.

 

Call calmini trucks. It's a Yota salvage yard in Cali. I've sold and scored parts from them. In fact I sold them my complete front suspension a year or so ago. That an try here in the 1st gen market place thread. There's a few guys going long travel with 1st gens, maybe ask in the longtravel bs thread....

 

Rebuilt my rear platform last night. Full width instead of just on the passenger side now, but still in 2 sections for ease of accessing the rear compartments. Using turnbuckles to restrain the tool box instead of a ratchet strap over the top = much easier to access!

 

wouldn't mind seeing/reading more about what you did specifally(in your build thread?)... I'm thinking of doing something before moab (end of May) to make organizing easier.

 

Are they new lenses? They look so good

 

Not sure going t a 5000 dollar setup vs 1000 for LCAs is the solution for someone complaining about price haha

Haha! Nice.

I didn't know you could still get that recall..wonder if I can for my 03

 

I asked about the LBJ recall at my dealer and they said I didn't qualify

 

I wonder what makes it qualify.