Diet Taco... trying to keep things light

Noted! You are first in line.

Nah, I was thinking a moderate price but decent quality light bar in the lower grill of the stock bumper would be the most sensible option really. You can get a CaliRaised 32" with brackets for a stealth mounting behind the lower grill for just $270. That's 300W and claims 28,000 lumens. Even if we think its light output is over rated it would certainly still trump the 9800 lumens I'll get from the pair of BDs and the BDs cost more. CaliRaised is certainly not at the quality level of BD but by all accounts is pretty darn good stuff at a great price point. In this particular case I became irrationally set on using the stock fog locations for my off-road lights and BD can throw more light from those locations than anything else on the market by a wide margin.

As for your cow problem you just need enough lumens to set them on fire at about 50 meters. Once burning they are easy to see even if they are black cows or even if they run out of your light pattern.

@scocar's "Try hiding from me now, Bessy!" new ride:

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I'll be following how those new fogs do once you get them installed. I feel the same as you about adding extra lights, but I also hate being surprised when driving unfamiliar dirt roads in the desert at night. If these do what you think they will, I'm going to have to get a set!

 

Must have gone right over my head, but I still don't feel like after reading this through I understand the solution. Is it to host the pictures on a secure image hosting site? or something to do with the security settings of my browsers?

 

I just had a flashback to when they released a re-master of Lawrence of Arabia for the 50th anniversary and we saw it in a huge, old theater in San Diego, I believe it was Cinema 21, 1 screen, 975 seats.

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/18093/photos/101980

 

The solution is to make sure when you link to wherever you host your images you use a "secure" link - that is https instead of http. Your host would need to support that but most do these days.

The reason you need to do that is because most default browser settings these days will object to non-secure (http) links or content on a secure page (https). So if a poster links to a non-secure image the TW forum software will create a compressed local copy of that image and will always display that compressed copy from its own secure domain rather than the original image in the non-secure domain. TW is doing this so that typical browser settings won't have problems displaying images if the poster uses a non-secure link - but that means it affects all users regardless of their individual browser settings.

Clear as mud?

 

I saw a bunch of movies there growing up. Was a pretty awesome theater!

 

You my friend have successfully clarified that. Thank you sir

 

Writing my first trip report right now and DAMN it's some work. But fun. Hardest thing to do is to balance not making it TOO long and boring. Props to you man. Yours are great and one of the reasons I wanna write up my reports.

 

Can't wait to read it!

Definitely a challenge. In my writing/editing/re-writing I probably end up throwing away half the text I initially have!

 

This thread is so awesome. When I first was looking to build out my truck, someone referred me to this thread. And the more I learn along the ways lurking around...the more I come back to this thread to see how you've done things. Has made me rethink the entire direction I want to go. And it goes without saying that your photography is top notch!! What did you have Jason set your suspension too height-wise? And where did it end up after everything settled. Also looking forward to your Yeti vs fridge comparison. Thanks for all the effort that went into writing this up

 

Thanks for the compliments and glad the thread is helpful! Really being helpful is the primary goal here. Before I started looking into the Tacoma and Flip-Pac I didn't know there was such a thing as a "build thread". I read through so many in the process of making the buying decision that I began to realize what a uniquely useful thing they are. Individual product reviews are of course very helpful but seeing how someone puts everything together in an integrated system with some specific goal for use is so much more enlightening - you start to understand the trade-offs and pitfalls when you can read through what someone else has done over time.

So anyway, that was the goal of this thread - give back in some way to the community that helped me out so much with all the various build threads I read through (and still read through). I'm glad it is proving to be useful to people and that my approach being a little bit different than the typical builds maybe means this thread offers a few new ideas for folks to integrate into their builds.

I had Jason leave the coilovers at their factory setting from Icon - which they say should produce 2.5" of lift. My goal was to be in the 2.5" lift range with the hope that staying short of 3" might reduce CV boot rubbing. My truck has a stock bumper and battery - basically nothing loading down the front end so I figured the Icon recommendation was the best starting point and if things settled out to something I wasn't happy with I'd adjust from there. There is no setting for the rear lift either so it would come down to how the rear settled out as well and what was an acceptable rake.

So where did it settle? Well I'm a bit embarrassed to say I don't know for sure! I took hub to fender measurements before the lift for comparison and then decided to wait a few months for everything to settle before taking final measurements. And then life intervened and I keep forgetting to measure again. I meant to measure when I did my last axle weights a few months ago but still forgot in all the hub-bub of trip logistics.

What I can say is the rake/stance of the truck from the rear to the front is about perfect in my opinion so I don't think I'll adjust. But I would like to measure it. That is on my to-do list and in theory I should be out with my truck in two weeks (fingers crossed work/life doesn't get in the way). So stay tuned for measurements.

Another of my to-dos for the thread! Want to take some pictures of my Yeti internal setup before the write up. Might get that done this next trip in a few weeks. The TL;DR though is that if you drink a lot of beer you'll likely fall in love with a fridge. If you just need to keep food cold and you drink things that can be stored warm and add ice cubes to then the Yeti reduces weight and complexity with perfect reliability.

 

Back to lighting talk... These might be what you want. It seems to throw light around pretty good

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...-pods-new-product.485010/page-8#post-15116833

 

Good stuff. I'm probably gonna see @Speed Freek in the desert at the races this weekend, so I gotta pick his brain on a couple things. I gotta a general direction of where I want to go...and a few ways to get there so I need to figure out whats best. Once again thank you for taking the time to write your well-informed posts!

 

See ya there Andyroo!

 

Sweet, double classing it on Saturday...only doing one LWTII race though. How's the courses looking?

 

I saw those - Caliraised is coming up with some nice stuff! The dedicated LEDs and optics for throwing extra light to the side is clever and well executed.

Not interested in them personally as I don't think I'd like ditch lights compared to other options. One issue is light is very on-axis to my eyes which hides surface features - but if these were just a supplementary light source with a brighter source lower that'd probably be fine. I've got a white hood and so the foreground glare from these would probably be sort of wicked.

I think it'd be excellent to take the side light concept here and apply them to supplementary back up lights. Often your making a tight turn when backing up off-road and so having really wide light on the back would be excellent.

Oh and good luck this weekend @Speed Freek and @Andrew_v949!

 

Inventory Additions

Fingers crossed I'll be headed out to the truck in a bit under two weeks. I've got a building list of things to bring out with me. Thankfully I fly Southwest which has free checked baggage!

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First up is a pretty hefty first aid kit - the

Adventure Medical Kits Sportsman Series Grizzly Pack First Aid Kit

AMK Grizzly. Much of what is in these kits can be assembled yourself at some cost savings of course but then there is the time and hassle in doing so. Plus you'd have to decide what to put in. In this case multiple reviews from EMTs suggested this really had essentially everything you'd likely want.

For me the main thing included here not typical in most kits is modern useful tools to stop severe bleeding. Really a lot of "first aid" would triage to a very low priority in an emergency (minor cuts, burns, fractures) leaving much of what is in a "first aid" kit as comfort and convenience items (obviously still really good to have). Severe bleeding can kill someone quick and in an off-road situation even pushing the rescue button on an EPIRB or having cell signal for 911 leaves you with a very long wait - too long a wait. You can supplement most any existing kit with tools for severe bleeding too. SWAT-T and QuikClot are available separately and might make a good addition to any existing kit.

I anticipate never opening this thing after taking initial inventory and making sure I understand how to use everything. I've got a separate easy to replenish mini-kit for typical camping scrapes that is self assembled.

In the more mundane categories I've also got:

• A good kick mat to protect the seat back from my daughter's dirty shoes. This one is perhaps the best I've ever found and we use it in our vehicles at home. I'll report back if there are any fitment issues on the Tacoma.
• $18 NEIKO 10074A Metric Hex Bit Socket Set | 13-Piece Set | S2 and Cr-V Steel | 1/4", 3/8" and 1/2" Drive | 2mm to 14mm
  Metric Hex Bit Sockets to add to the tool kit. I'll pull only the necessary ones from this kit (5, 6, 8, 10 and 12mm).
• A pair of el cheapo Harbor Freight .
• Three more of my favorite
  $23 Rothco Mechanic's Tool Bag - Heavy-Duty Organization for Your Essential Tools and Gear, Woodland Digital Camo
  tool bags which are great for holding various kits of whatever. I now have every color/pattern made! I needed one to hold an Alt/Az mount for the telescope. Another to hold a seemingly continuously replenished list of "to-do" parts. I'm sure I'll find a use for the third. These fit perfectly either behind the rear seat or under the raised floor in the bed.

Last but not least I'm bringing out my final and ultimate solution for jacking the truck. This deserves its whole own post - forthcoming after my trip when I can try it out with the Safe-Jack accessories I already have. But I'm overly proud of my ghetto machining results here so preview pictures are in order:

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Ken- were you able to find the correct adapter for the Safe Jack accessories? I am considering this Safe Jack purchase and definitely concerned about a leaky hydraulic jack.

 

So there wasn't a particularly good safe jack option for the stock Tacoma jack because its ram is to wide. But talking to Bogen they said the 3rd gen 4Runner jack had a 1.25" OD once you remove the metal cap on the top.

That's the jack in the photos above. I bought it off EBay for about $50 and plan to sell the Tacoma jack on EBay. The metal cap comes off pretty easy just drilling out four dimples that hold it on to the shaft. It is rated for a few more kg than the Tacoma jack actually and has almost the same working height.

I'm mobile at the moment and plan to post a lot more details next week when back from my trip and trying out the jack setup. I'll include the jack part number but you might be able to pull it off the full resolution images above.

 

Ride Height

Just a little back @Andrew_v949 asked about where the ride height had settled and I had to admit I kept forgetting to measure! Well I've finally measured (hub center to bottom edge of wheel well):

Stock F/R (based on averaged TW posts): 20.5/22
Diet Taco just before lift F/R: 19.75/19.5
Diet Taco one year after lift: 21.75/24

As you can see the poor stock leafs were sagging badly before the lift and the All Pro Expos added 4.5" back in. Rear now rides fully loaded about 2 inches above an unloaded stock truck. I was targeting between 2 and 3 inches loaded so I'm happy with that number.

The front is riding only 1.25" above stock unloaded height - so no need to worry about my CV boots. Overall about 2" above the pre-lift height which is at the bottom end of the range I wanted. There is no extra weight up front here - no upgraded battery, no steel bumper, no winch - so clearly if you have those you'll want some stiffer springs! Not shown in the above numbers but the driver side is a little lower and the passenger side a little higher - maybe 0.25" difference at the between the two. I'm happy with where it is riding but clearly I could nudge the front up 0.5-1.0" if I wanted to. Perhaps around 30K when I have the shocks rebuilt I'll dial in a bit more - there are "safe" threads left to use on the coilovers.