1995 Rebuild

I have a 1995 Tacoma with 247k miles that I use as my beater truck. I put around 7k miles a year on it driving to a from my summer house. I use it to haul tons of junk to the dump, building supplies and my boat. This truck has saved me 100s of yard of dumpsters. My kids and I call it "The Donkey" since it hauls stuff and never complains.

Recently it developed a really bad frame issue. Since I love this thing so much I could not let it go without a fight.


Now the rust...


Work in progress...

Replacing the tank, filler, tank guard, leafs, complete exhaust, bumper, shackles, LSPV, brake lines and body mounts.

I wire wheeled the chassis, beat on it with a hammer and then welded in 3/16 plate where needed. Then coated the whole thing is chassis saver. The entire inside of the boxed frame was flushed for hours and coated in rust converter. When done it will be fluid filmed.

NOTE: I am aware the bumper mounts are on backwards -- they were labeled wrong and at 2 am they seemed fine.

 

Is that a brand new frame?

 

Original from 1995.

 

Holy, wow.... you are indeed a great man to be able to do this. what's your total coast so far and what do you expect it to be?

and is repairing/welding the frame safe?

 

Oh my bad.

 

Spending about 2k. Repairing is safe if you have a good welder. Probably stronger than when it came out of the factory.

It's most likely going to spend the remainder of its life at my summer house as a second car.

 

I gotta learn to weld..........

 

<3 Thank you for saving another first gen. It's a very clean truck for being dubbed a beater! Work looks great so far!

 

Awesome restoration so far, keep the pics coming!

 

Got the exhaust from the muffler back temporarily clamped in. Bring good it to my welder this Sunday to weld in the complete exhaust. Getting new cat and downstream O2 sensor.

 

Here is a video if the rust.

 

Damn good job. Exactly what i would have done. Another 1st gen saved

 

you may not have any idea how brave you were to 1) not get scared about having that rusty frame, and 2) to actually be able to repair the damage as though it was nothing.....

think about this though. put some rubberized undercoating on the frame. it may help to quiet down any future noises!

 

Crazy thing is the weekend before I looked at the frame I gutted my kitchen. Had the truck fully loaded with drywall debris and then threw the oven on top of it. We literally dumped in on top by throwing it off the deck. Got really lucky it didn't snap then.

My goal is to get this Taco to make it to 500k. It's going to be really tough for me to get it there since it is not my daily form of transportation. I'm finishing up my construction projects this year and might not need it anymore. Maybe I will sell it.

 

These types of rebuilds are not uncommon on the various jeep forums I've frequented. Sucks we have a rust problem but good to see we have people willing to put them back together.

 

Got the bumper on, brakes and electric do e today. LSPV was a pain to bend.

 

Didn't think '95 was OBDII, so should only have 1 pre cat O2?

Did Toyota start a year early?

Nice work. Totally understand why you want to save it!

You are on the right path with chassis saver (what kind if I may ask?) which I assume is a rust encapsulater? The fluid film for ongoing care sounds just right for salt country.

 

Yes - has OBDII which comes in very handy. First year of the Taco was 95.5.

I used the gloss black Chassis Saver. I wanted to use the flat black, but you first have to paint with the aluminum CS, then cover with black. I used gloss black then sprayed over the sections that will be seen with flat black. It is an encapsulator and converter in one. You put it on over surface rust and it does both functions.

The truck lives about 500 feet from salt water (Peconic Bay) for about half of the year. So between the salt air, beach driving and the roads in winter it gets its share of salt.

I am going to be building a Defender this winter / spring and am going to do on a galvy frame so that I have a little more protection.

 

Ah. Comes from these folks

http://monstaliner.com/

You might consider using the liner on the bottom and front of the bed and back of the cab while you have things apart. Inside the bumper too. Bet you could find one of the colors that would be close enough.............

As a side note, I see a few threads around here talking about linex and some of the DIY liners for beds, rockers, etc. I suggest they look at this site often. But for some reason Toyota folks don't seem to take to it. Some of the builds on their site where customers have used the products inside and out are pretty amazing.

 

I was thinking of plasti dipping the truck when done. The one problem with the bedliner on the entire truck is that it doesn't come off. Lots of Jeep Guys do it.

I am going to paint the underside of the bed, the back of the cab, and the front of the bed with Chassis Saver. Its warm in NY today so I might be able to get it done before winter.