HackD's ongoing 5-lug armored-slug build.

I've only got a 30km highway trip, and a few local surface road trips to go by, but i would say that i've met my expectations for overall improvement, 101%.

It's now a bit over-geared as was expected pre-install, so starting off at a standing-stop is merely a brief responsive skip through 1st gear to get going, now. Prior to that, it had a real off-idle hesitancy issue with throttle response/gearing overcoming inertial resistance with the tall gearing, such as it was.

It now accelerates MUCH more crisply, shifting through the gears is now a real treat - whether that's a function of my performance exhaust work done late last year, or a combination of gearing and exhaust .. it works real well.

The Pro-Comp AT-S tires, while being a semi-aggressive tread pattern, are dead quiet on the highway. It's turning an indicated 2.2k RPM at 120km/h (75mph) in 5th gear, with no real need to boot it down to 4th gear. A world of difference for the highway - i am going to need to be cautious and 'relearn' visual speed cues - otherwise, it's now a ticket-magnet as it's not limited on the highway with need to shift down each time i hit a 5 mph headwind..

Summary - i am pleased with the end result - it was so worth the planning. I now have the ideal truck that i want for the next number of years. Anything further you'd like to know - please ask.

 

AWESOME!!!!

One day when the money is flowing faster, I'll do the same thing. Today, I was on an onramp with a slight incline heading onto the expressway and my friend was in front me driving a Dodge Ram Hemi. It was embarrassing to witness my underpowered Tacoma trying its best to go up that tiny, little hill. I'm sure my friend was laughing at me as I choked on his exhaust fumes.

 

Coincidentally - i went out for dinner an hour or so ago - the highway onramps locally are relatively tight and short to get up to 90 km/h (55mph more or less) ... i was followed on by an F150 that was following relatively closely/aggressively right up to that onramp. It was obvious i wasn't exceeding the speed limit enough by his standards, on the surface street.

To my pleasant surprise - I gapped him by a significant amount, getting onto the highway. Rowing through the gears, and hoping to get enough of a head of steam to enter the highway, is no longer a big concern. It gets up to speed quite a bit more comfortably, than previous.

It's obviously not a cheap modification to do - if you do it with a 5-lug, you aren't likely getting your money back, but if the truck is a long term 'keeper', at this early stage - i'd say it's well worth it. This truck is a cradle to grave vehicle .. i won't be getting another one, until it expires - no longer economically repairable.

Obviously, i didn't do this install - i had my local 4wheelparts franchise do it, based on the information and components that i provided them. They do 99% Heeps, and this was a first-time regear procedure for their present techs, in regard to 5-lug Tacoma's. They were initially cautious of taking my truck, and various components on .. but in the end, they did say that it was a deceptively easy job for them to do. The biggest issue was Toyota Canada kept sending them the wrong replacement carrier bearings for the differential, to install the TruTrac first.

 

Now going on to finishing up the various components of the interior .. hopefully before the temperature drops. and the potential for consistently bad weather rolls in with the fall. This also a form of physical therapy to get my busted shoulder mobile again.

I actually don't foresee using some of these add-ons on a routine basis - it's more of a case of i've always wanted a vehicle with a proper interior setup to my tastes, and this is my opportunity - the one that i am focused on right now, is a 200 watt PA system installed into the overhead console - the added complication is that i'm adding Arduino into the mix, and learning the electronics end as i am going along. I need to get the total electronics package sorted out, before i can form-fit and install the completed overhead console itself. This is very much an exercise in skills and knowledge development.

I needed to make a simple backing plate, to hold the small PA box in place, into the DIN slot, out of 1/16" aluminium plate.

I'll post up more, as i make further progress.

 

Nothing photo-wise this post - but while in a thoughtful mood, i thought i would put some thoughts down on the build blog, as to my post-exterior/mechanical mods, and results/impressions vs original goals/desires for the truck. My apologies about the forthcoming wall of text .. move on if you desire.

This is not the same truck that i bought in 2011. Aside from the parts replacement factor alone (obviously) .. the total characteristics of the truck in terms of performance and handling is entirely different, and more akin to what i remember of my old 1980's F150 of 20 years ago. I have been slowly 'getting up to speed' post-shoulder injury - today was the first day that i got an extended 200 km run on the highway at 'extra-legal' speed ranges, in order to round out varied road types and conditions over the past week since it got out of the shop. Below, listed in point form, are purely subjective seat of the pants opinions, based upon knowing this truck through it's various states from The Dealer, to Now. At this time, i now have 106,000km (66,000 miles) on the truck.

• Tires - 235/85R16 - My greatest niggling fear for this tire size, was that at 10-ply, the carcass would be too stiff, and would be very harsh on the ride - this is not the case. The shop lied, or didn't go full lock to lock - they do rub by the tiniest bit. Nothing that i am concerned about, considering i only go lock to lock pulling into and out of my own driveway. If i had gone 245/70R16 or 245/75R16 they would have been rubbing in an unacceptable range of steering radius. Taking into account the +40 back-spacing of the 16x7 wheels, spacers (and extended hub bolts) would have been required, had i gone larger than 235/85R16. The tires themselves - Pro-Comp AT-S have a fairly aggressive looking tread pattern - i can very happily report there is no appreciable road noise to be heard, even in the highway fast-lane. The mechanical LSD will need a separate rain/snow-hooligan report later, as conditions allow.
  
  I am pleased that i won't be needing the 1.5" wheel spacers - i had bought them, 'just in case'... but i was always a bit sketched about going that far down the rabbit hole, in terms of the potential for things to go wrong.

• Gearing - I definitely got this one right. 5-lug, 5-speed manual has a 3.31:1 final drive ratio. 235/85R16 called for 3.90:1 to correct to OEM gearing. The replacement 4.10:1 gearing obviously gives it a bit more grunt from a standing stop. I no longer have any complaints about the i4's 2.7l relative gutlessness, from factory! I am no longer forever rowing the 5-speed in congested highway conditions - it still needs to be knocked down to 4th on occasion - 5th simply isn't going to pull rapidly beyond 120 km/h+ when acceleration needs to be snappish. The truck is fighting too much in the way of parasitic drag at that speed, for 5th gear to deal with efficiently.

• Reworked Exhaust/LCE Header - now that the motor has the gearing characteristics to work more closely to original setup for the drivetrain - the exhaust has fully woken up the motor. There was a small improvement with going the exhaust route pre-regear, but full benefits being realized, needed the re-gear. The motor is now fully responsive throughout the rev-range - from idle, to top-end. On the down-side - with the re-gear, comes a more noticeable degree of highway-drone, as the motor is operating at a higher rev-range than before the re-gear. The noise coming from the roof-line/presently missing overhead console is more annoying.
  
  
• Speedo actual vs indicated is really out of wack now - i believe in the neighborhood of +17.9% off. Concurrent GPS will need to be used for a little while until i get used to actual vs indicated. At least i'm going slower, than i actually think i am/see on the dashboard.

The big $64,000 question - was it worth it, would i do it again? If i had the money/courage to take on more consumer debt at the time of purchase for a 6-lug Pre-Runner or 4x4, it obviously wouldn't have been worth doing a 5-lug. To do, or not to do, was a moot question, once bought. Necessity is the Mother of Making Do (as well as invention) - I sat on the truck as OEM stock for nearly 4 years, before i started in on this little project - making sure that this truck was the truck for the long-term. It was - but it definitely needed a bit of help to meet long-term expectations. I've met, and exceeded some of those expectations that i had for the final outcome of the project.

Someday, i'll actually load my ATV aboard the truck, and see how the lift-level suspension upgrade performs to that task

 

Well done and glad you were able to do without the flares. They weren't working for me. I hope you're shoulder continues to improve and doesn't interfere with snowmobiling. I'm in the position you were several years ago deciding whether and what and in what order to do mods. Mine will more likely be an incognito slug w/out the armour but there are still quite a few other mods I'm contemplating in common. Thanks for putting so much time into sharing your efforts.

 

I guess I was wrong, but I thought a re-gearing would bring the speedometer closer to being true because the wheel size and the gears have been re-aligned. Can you explain?

 

One more question -- have you experienced any improvement in MPG as a result of re-gearing?

 

No worries - there is no sense in reinventing the wheel (so to speak) and part of the project posts i hope helped show what worked, what was of value, and what was of priority. The flares really didn't work all that well with me either - and neither did the need for spacers.. i'm glad i was able to avoid use of both - It was really dependent on those aftermarket rims that i wanted to continue using - fortunately those potential fitment issues resolved better than expected (i'm a pessimistic kind of guy) and i just have some parts to resell.

Thank you for the best wishes - the shoulder is slowly resolving - 'physio' will actually start this week - in the form of getting into that interior as far as possible, to get things sorted before it gets too cold, as my shoulder allows.

I don't have an answer to that one - the speedo sensor I think is located on the output shaft on the exterior of the transmission clamshell.. It's counting the revolutions of the driveshaft - I have to wonder if i replaced that sensor (should be possible, given the 5-speed transmission is shared on 4x4 models) with the basic Prerunner or 4x4 Tacoma model, whether that would be a fix (albeit not a cheap replacement fix) - my thought process being that it's possibly calibrated differently for the 4.10 gearing of those models, as well as larger diameter tires. It might also be a common speedo sensor, but calibration and output to the dashboard is something that is hard-coded into the truck brain-box, which requires a relatively expensive 'speedo-healer' electronic device to correct for.

I've run less than a full tank of gas through the truck since the beginning of August/time of my injury - i'm only halfway through my post re-gear tank of gas. I'm also interested in the results - but i suspect that gas mileage is not as good as it once was - given that the motor is now performing throughout the rev-range very well, and i'm fully taking advantage of that performance improvement so far. I will try to post up my results as best as i can calculate/conversion them.

 

So if the sensor is before the diff then after regearing the drive shaft will turn more rpm's for the same actual speed resulting in a higher than true reading(you're going slower than the speedo says). Larger wheels/tires would offset that but in this case he still has a higher than factory effective ratio. With all the hills around here and the loads I typically carry I'd do this a heartbeat if/when I can afford it and worry about calibration afterwards. I look forward to seeing what you do with the overhead console. I'm still just trying to list the mods so I can organize where I put things.

 

The speedo error is somewhat annoying in an OCD sort of way, but i do run GPS pretty much all the time anyway.

Regionally, cops are few and far between here - far too busy answering collision and service calls to be running radar on a routine basis. As far as compliance to speed limits go, it's generally considered more of a suggestion of a minimal speed to be doing, rather than an actual maximum allowable. If you are doing the speed limit on the highway, you just might get run over by something bigger than you.

Traffic generally flows about 15-20km/h (10-12 mph) over on 100km/h (88 mph) highways - the key is to not stand out and do other silly stuff that will get you noticed and reported.. stay in the pack that is moving, and you don't need to worry about being bothered. Cops get real eager going after those not just bending the speed limit, but committing actions that could be considered competitive with other motorists (street racing) or driving significantly over the posted limits being considered stunt driving (50km/h over posted).

I was running on the highway yesterday - 80km/h speed limit. I was showing an indicated 80 km/h on the GPS - the speedometer was indicating around 96km/h. People were totally passing by me continually.. this is a high-incident, highly-travelled rural highway and cops are known to patrol and issue tickets much more often than on other problem highways, as far as accident stats are involved.

 

Another issue with calibration is inaccurate odo and racking up more miles than actually traveled affecting service intervals and resale but that's not as much an issue for some, more just a logistics note.

 

None will apply to me... the truck is to be a one-owner Cradle to Grave, in terms of personal ownership.

No one else would buy this particular version of personalized oogly anyway, LOL.

 

Hack -- you may have to invest in a device like this to re-calibrate the speedometer and odometer:

Dakota Digital SGI-5ELatest Design - Universal Speedometer Signal Interface Controller

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014N07F8W?psc=1

Glad you guys are having this conversation. At least I know what to expect once I re-gear.

 

There's a kit you can buy that plugs into the back of the cluster and makes the correction. You program it before install with the correct tire and gear info. Otherwise take it to the dealer and have them ajust the mcu. I guess a benefit of the kit is you can always reprogram if you change tires but that means digging the unit out again. Still, probably cheaper than the stealership if it works. Be nice if they made the unit cable long enough to access it without opening the dash.

 

Early B's is cheaper, hyper tech is the one I saw. Both warn about possible abs or lsd issues.

 

Those really aren't all that necessary up here north of the border .. what few cops there are out there - they've usually got faster fish to fry than me. I did look up Hypertech at one point - something like $349.00 CDN at that time... flipping ouch. Early B.'s might be worth picking up, to give it a shot.

A positive side-benefit of the off speedometer/odometer - it'll be seeing oil change and service intervals more often.

 

Ruh-Ro..

 

I've been there more often then I should admit lol but I finally got this done
Nexus tablet installed