BigMike’s Big Journey: New 2016 Tacoma

You should paint it to match your Hilux now...

 

subscribed, excited to see where this goes!!

 

Baaaaawhahahahahahah Awesome comment Sir!

You know, I've had a few people tell me this and while it would be very cool to have matching trucks I never liked how much the paint scheme of my Hilux limits the truck's marketability. Yes, it stands out because it's rare to find two tone trucks on the trail, but a Turtle Hood Sticker doesn't match and any sort of a company body wrap would only work if it had a blue hue or was in full gray scale. I'll be addressing the appearance of the Tacoma soon enough

 

When considering the bed bob, I could see two options.

The traditional bed bod is where the sky's the limit: You can bob as much as you'd like from the back of the wheel well to the front leading edge of the tail gate, and crop up from the bottom (dark blue lines / removing the side marker light) to gain more ground clearance.




(Edit: I forgot to mention that it's common to see beds bobbed up to the rear shackle hanger. This is how the Crawler Truck was done.)

So you can get a good 24-inches removed with a Hilux. With the Tacoma we can see it's not as straight forward...



I'm also not looking to alter the original design of the bed. I really like, no, I love how Toyota designed the body of the 3rd gen. I love the body line that runs up between the wheels and up again behind the rear axle. But this body line greatly limits how much meat can be removed. Not only that but the tail gate overhangs the entirety of the bedsides. So right off the back I knew I would not be able to do as big of a bob as what I'm used to seeing.

My initial solution was to make multiple angled cuts around the taillights and receding line of the trailing edge of the bedside, like so:

(Option 1)


But then we've got the bottom of the bed to worry about (purple lines) and there is gonna be some body filler work.... meh. I dunno... Cutting clean corners and trying to align for re-weld here could be a crap ton of extra work just to get an extra 1 or 2 inches....

I left Bob with the idea that I'd like as much removed as practically as possible but without changing the nice factory body lines I love so much. Bob might very likely do a traditional, linear vertical cuts like this:

(Option 2)


Here's all lines combined for comparison:



After dropping the truck off and thinking about it while driving back home, I remember assuming the bob will be less than I had originally dreamed about. Having looked it over with tape and making rough measurements this was becoming plain to see. I guess if I ever really want to get crazy here then I'll just build a flat bed...........but that's not how a truck is supposed to look in my mind's eye. So in the end this will be a job of compromise, and knowing how pretty the truck is I'm sure I'll be quite okay with that

 

Ahhhhh these updates can't come in fast enough!

 

What about a factory double cab short bed?

 

May 24, 2017: Rubicon Preparation I: Bobbing the bed (continued)

Two days later it was time to start the first cut!

In discussing what to do with the side storage and bed A/C power inventor plug, I informed Bob's son not to worry about them and that I will 3D print new fixtures.

As for the cut, Bob is a very meticulous man who measures not twice but four times and cuts once. After careful measuring and planning Bob settled on removing exactly 6-inches from the bed. As expected, it's not the most amount of material removed but I know for sure this will make a huge improvement off-road. Even just Rubicon alone, I can already think of a few tight turns that I almost hit the rear of my Hilux with which will be a tight fit for the longer Tacoma. One is after Buck Island before cresting above the Big Sluice, and the other is half way down the Big Sluice. As for sharp climbs and drop-offs there are plenty of those too.



...and lobbed off! There is no turning back now!

 

Are you asking about fitting that bed onto my truck? If so I assume it would be too short in front of the wheel wells. I assume the distance between the wheel well and bumper is the same....?

 

I just did a google Image search and you are correct.

I thought I'd seen A short bed swapped on a first gen tacoma but looking at those it wouldn't work either.

I'm not sure what I saw,
maybe when you swap a Extra cab on a Single cab frame the short bed fits??

Anyway sorry for the de-rail.

Looking forward to watching this progress.

I'm a big fan a supporter of you and your dad.

 

Just spent an hour and a half reading this entire journey so far. Simply amazing. Alot of knowledge here too thanks for posting every tidbit! @BigMike I cannot wait to see where the rest of this build goes definitely going to be the most badass 3rd gen rock crawler out there!

 

(Good morning build thread! I'm currently working from the road and on my way to Bob's place to pick up the Tacoma! I've been without the truck for one month so I'm beyond excited to see it! As they would say in Kumamoto-ben, 今日私はたいぎゃしあわせです！)

No worries buddy, you had a very good idea there. (Had it been true then I'd really look stuuuupid lol!!) Thank you for the kinds words also, I'll pass them on to Marlin. Comments like these go straight to our hearts and empowers us to continue down the path of providing high quality parts instead of trying to maximize profits. We've been making big improvements in our customer service and recent reviews on Google and elsewhere have really reflected this. Thanks again for the support!

Awesome, glad someone appreciates how as my wife would say I like to over analyze and over explain details of this build


May 24, 2017: Rubicon Preparation I: Bobbing the bed (continued)

Here is the back of the bed reattached for visual pleasure



This is the original frame left as-is so we can reattach the rear bumper for my return drive home

 

May 24, 2017: Rubicon Preparation I: Bobbing the bed (continued)

I don't know much about the process of welding resin together so I will report back with full details once Bob goes over everything with me. Bob told me that the SMC bed and the top plastic covers over the bedside panels are made from a different polymer and use different processes.

In asking Bob how much more difficult this job was than a Hilux he said, "Ohh it's muuucccchhhh more difficult" Thank you Bob and Russ for all your hard work!!

Here are pics of the bed being fused together. I'll post more info such as how long this process takes to set once I learn more about it







Clamps off!

 

May 29, 2017: Rubicon Preparation I: Bobbing the bed (continued)

Four days later they had the bed off to get the center fused together

 

June 3, 2017: Rubicon Preparation I: Bobbing the bed (continued)

Five days later they started on the bed sides. Here is where the cut will be made. You can see how we are preserving the factory body line which I'm a big fan of.



Had they removed more then it would have required a lot of body filler work to blend the prominent horizontal line down to the bottom of the fender, or bondo it up completely 1) taking away from the original Toyota design and 2) creating future issues from cracks and so forth from normal trail use.



The top of each bedside was cut forward to preserve the rearmost mount points for the top bedside pieces.

 

June 3, 2017: Rubicon Preparation I: Bobbing the bed (continued)

The first test fit!! I LOVE IT! I'll be making measurements but it appears that the wheel wells are now perfectly centered in the bed! This is how Toyota should have done it in the first place. Maybe they could have offered a short bed version of the Access Cab that could have looked just like this



<3



So this was back at the beginning of the month. Next the bedsides were painted (so far I don't have any pics of that) and Bob mentioned the bedside top plastic parts requiring a special type of molding/fusing process so he had to schedule an appointment and take those to a shop.

Two weeks later and now it is June 14 and I am officially 100% caught up with this thread for the first time in more than a year! I will be to Bob's house in about 45 more mins and will be posting up the final result later today!

 

now you need to swap in a solid front axle

 

Mike, If and when you do this would you choose a leaf spring setup or links and coil overs?

I have been thinking this over for the future on my truck and I am really leaning to the tried and true leaf springs. I would probably use the same set up I have on my Hilux. Old Man Emu CS010R rears up front but add the "heavy" add a leaf on the Tacoma.

 

It's looking sooo good. Congrats on taking the leap on a new truck!

I'm going to have to get in touch with you folks around the beginning of August for some t-case goodness.

 

If this ever happens then it will be 100% without question be a link setup.

Thank you Sir! Sounds great man!! Now that I've got the truck back I plan to post up some videos of the Crawler in action, hopefully sometime before Rubicon next month

 

I've had the Tacoma back for a few days and holy smokes they did the most professional bed bob I've ever seen @_@.

Bob gave me a few more pictures while over there so here they come!

On June 5th the bedsides got prepped for paint



Here you can see how the cut went up and forward along the top of each bedside in order to retain the proper aligning dowel slot and snap-clips for the upper plastic panel.



On June 9 they were painted! Toyota placed a barcode tag on the inside of each panel that contains information of the truck's paint code. The painter was able to get the exact matching factory paint