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

BS. Firestone mounted and balanced my old Guard Dogs no questions asked. They balanced great too and I wheeled the piss out of them when I had them.

 

My experience was different with Discount Tire. They dont mount retreads.

If i owned a tire shop, i wouldn't mount them either. Not worth mounting tires of debatable safety for the pennies that tire labor in. The real money is in retail tire sales. The markup is incedibly high. And before you go on about customer loyalty, the guy that buys retreads online is not your prime customer base.

As a side note, I try to stay away from firestone. They mangled my steering rack bellows on my last alignment, and didnt have the decency to tell me, let alone.....i dont know.....replace them. I discovered that i could see my inner tie rod a few weeks later. Now there is a real customer loyalty issue.

 

Axle seal gone? It doesn't look bad but I've never had it

 

Thats what it looks like. You'll likely need new brake shoes as well.

 

x2

And I wouldn't replace just the seals without doing the wheel bearings. Do it right or do it twice.

 

Or the bearing could be the worn part, wither way do it all. Could also be the wheel cylinder too though so check to see if it smells like gear oil or brake fluid first.

 

Damn I have to make a 600 mile round trip this weekend. If I bring fluid with me I should be good right?

 

Finally upgrade to real offroad tires. 255/85 on a 16x8 with 4.5" bs. Tires fit great, except the passenger side rubs at full lock. Actually, the wheel gaps between the driver side and passenger are off. Less clearance on the passenger side. Bent frame? Alignment? Rack (leaking)?

 

Looks great!! I think the difference is due to alignment, mind is the same.

 

Thanks bro, really appreciate all of your advice. I'm taking it to get aligned on Sunday morning. So far, I love it's stance and feel. 10x improvement over my worn down 265/75s.

 

Lol yea you'll be good, I've had a bad seal for a long time now, I should probably fix that, just been lazy

 

That sucks never had an issue with Firestone alignment! This is the third truck ive got the lifetime alignment from them and they have been amazing every time. With this truck one of the bolts wouldn't come off due to rust so they gave me a free oil change and told me to come back tomorrow after letting PB Blaster settle. Came back and get her aligned no issues.

 

Wow! That is great. Well i also purchased the lifetime. I hope they stand behind it.

 

Whats with running the flipped overload. Looks stiff...

 

ha

 

I thought it was a single aal

 

That makes me feel better, I don't wanna pay a shop to do it for me but I gotta figure something out. Good thing my commute is only 20 miles total.

Uh I didn't know it was flipped, I bought the truck like that. It rides pretty stiff so that could be the reason. May look into that

 

Looks like a single aal not an overload

 

Definitely an overload. Its almost as thick as the 3 main leafs together

 

IMO, you are asking for trouble if you continue to drive it that way if it is the axle seal.

If it a brake seal, you should be fine for a while. If it is an axle seal, the gear oil has washed the grease out of the bearing which will cause the bearing to fail. When my driver side seal failed, I barely got home (300 miles). Near the end it got loud and crunchy sounding with an ominous rhythmic vibration. YMMV.

Having had that experience, I would never knowingly plan for a long trip without fixing it first.