eon_blue's 1st gen Build: Radiant Red 2004 Tacoma

After a year and a half or so of being on here and having my '04, I've finally decided to start a build thread...it's in the works so bear with me.

As she currently sits, @ 88k miles:





Some more pics





When I got her in March of 2016, @ 24,500 miles:



...they grow up so fast



Bit of the backstory:

I picked my '04 4x4 TRD 5speed Tacoma with only 24,500 miles on the odometer. It was a accidental find, I was looking for a Tacoma but not necessarily a 1st gen as I didn't want something with really high mileage (which most are). One day, I was scanning the interwebs like I had been for the past few months, and this beauty popped up on Autotrader down in San Diego at Mossy Toyota, for $20,000.

At first I couldn't believe it, a 24k mile 1st gen 4x4? Had to be some sort of scam (was used to seeing them on Craigslist). But the fact that it was on Autotrader and listed at a Toyota dealership, I thought I'd give it a shot. They had just posted the ad and I knew that it wouldn't last long, so I called them up that night around 8pm and made an appointment with the sales person to come in the next morning when they opened (about a 3 hour drive from me). Fortunately, it was a Saturday so I was able to do it.

I was driving a 2013 Scion tC at the time, it was a good car but I had the itch to get myself back into a Tacoma ever since I used to wheel my '99 Prerunner back when I had that truck before selling it to go to college. I knew this time I wanted a 4x4, and being 31 years old with a stable job and steady income, I knew I could at least try to afford the habit. After seeing the truck in person, I was sold. And low and behold, when I popped the hood I found out it had the TRD supercharger installed as well (salesperson had no idea what it was, the ad made no mention of it). It also had the TRD headers and TRD exhaust done by the previous owner.

After some back and forth, I signed the paperwork and left the dealership half afraid that I had made a terrible mistake trading in a perfectly good (and paid off) Scion tC on a 13 year old truck that I planned to beat the crap out of. Turned out to be one of the best (and most expensive) decisions I've every made.

Couple years and many thousands $$$$$ spent in mods/maintenance/repairs later (thanks TW)...

Been on countless wheeling trips and adventures, enjoying every opportunity I can to get out and explore in my truck. Made some great friends along the way on here, and looking forward to all the adventures and mishaps that lie ahead. Truck currently has ~64k on the odometer and rising every day.


TLDR; here's the short of it:

Bought an '04 4x4 TRD Tacoma with 24k miles in March 2016. Surprise supercharger.

Wheeled the piss out of it between now and then, installed many mods and made several cosmetic changes listed below (in no particular order):



MODS/CUSTOMIZATION

- TRD supercharger

- TRD headers

- Shmellfab welded sliders

- SPC Light Racing UCA's

- Rear steel plate bumper

- URD 7th injector kit

- 255/85r16 Cooper ST Maxx tires

- Kings 2.5 non-resi coilovers up front

- Icon 2.0 w/resi in rear

- All Pro APEX front bumper + full skids

- Ghost_Ship custom swing out tail gate

- Avid Low Profile Bed Rack

- Tuff Stuff 'Delta' Roof Top Tent

- Wheeler's Rear Superbumps

- All Pro Expo Leaf Springs

- Durobumps front bump stops

 

Omg. I couldn't read all that.Lucky for me I know the story already. You got a badass 1st gen dude. We should go break shit sometime.

 

Awesome

 

It would've been a lot longer (photos and stories) if I hadn't made it while on my lunch break at work, lol

Yeah dude I finally got my Budbilt skid on last night (the front/IFS skid anyway), I'm ready to scrape that bitch up

 

Beautiful truck

Gorgeous wheels

How many hours you spend at the gym ?!

 

haha thanks. I try to go after work every day, maybe 5 - 6 hours a week?

Still curious what kind of wheels I have, haven't been able to figure it out (also haven't looked very hard). I do like them though, I need to touch up the paint on them

 

I LOVE the shouts outs! I love the truck man!

 

So jealous of the miles

 

Got a few photos of my mods and things...

Photo of the TRD supercharger under the hood the day I brought her home (hasn't been this clean since, doubt it ever will be..).

The truck ran really lean under boost (pinged like crazy) so I finally pulled the trigger on the URD 7th injector kit earlier this summer.



Ryan @Shmellmopwho welding on the sliders he made for me last year. This was my first "real mod".



My first suspension setup (5100s/OME 881s). I only got about an inch of lift up front with this setup so I eventually raised the 5100s to the 1st setting, still had some significant rake with the 3 leaf AALs in the rear...



Added a compact Smittybilt Defender roof rack. This required drilling eight 1/2" holes in my roof, which I've come to regret doing. It doesn't leak or anything, I'm just bothered by the permanence of it. No going back now....I do like the look of the rack though. I'd recommend going with a non-drilling rack however.



Christian @Croth51 welding on the rear steel plate bumper he made for me last year...



Picked up a used Softtopper off of Craigslist 6 hours away for $125. Scored a great deal on it, however it's an early model and is really old...the back zipper broke off on one side and since the back flap isn't replaceable on the old models, it's pretty much just stuck that way now.



Taken last January at Rowher Flats outside of Valencia, CA



Gold Mountain trail up in Big Bear, taken around a year ago.




One of the first wheeling trips I went on after getting my truck, up in Pilot Rock. Look how clean and shiny she is (was)



The bed was immaculately well-preserved. Not anymore, lol. I Herculined it awhile ago and need to go over it again, it's taken quite a beating from the many fully loaded camping trips I've been on.



More pics/details to come, thanks for eyeballing my build thread y'all

 

Installed my Budbilt 3/16" steel IFS skid a couple nights ago. My tin can stock skid plate was beat to hell and ready to be replaced, it served me well.





I've got the full underbelly skid from Budbilt too, going to install that heavy sonofabitch some other time.

Also put these bad boys on the about a month ago, first time I did some "real" wrenching on my truck (installed myself). Also put on a set of Icon 2.0's with resis in the rear...

 

Glad to be part of the build!! Awesome truck buddy!

 

Thank you so much for letting us help you with your build!

 

I love this picture you took of all of our trucks at MJT. Me you and Brian. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gens

 

Also what you got the kings! Was anything wrong with the Swayaway?

 

You sold your old suspension setup ?

 

It’s hard to watch such a clean first gen with crazy low miles and all the fixins get dinged on the trail. I would have parked it in the garage only to drive it to church on sundays. It’s also a bit surprising to me that someone at Toyota didn’t realize what they had.

I’d also like to add that if I look up my vin it says retail started at 19k. A 13 year old truck sold for nearly what it retailed for? Which sounds low considering trucks retail for upwards of 80k these days.

 

Believe me it was hard for me at first too, lol. But I knew exactly what I wanted to do with and to this truck, so it was a perfect platform for me to start with (stock minus the TRD s/c and exhaust) and low mileage.

The mileage being SO low was actually a bit of a worry for me (and still is sometimes)...vehicles are designed to be driven and if left to sit for too long, can develop a lot of bugs and quirks that are hard to iron out. I had a few from the get go but she's never let me down; always gotten me home and to work the next day.

I looked up the retail on this truck when it was new and it was around $27k at the time (if I remember right)...fully loaded TRD v6 4x4, sans the Limited package which would have made it cost more. That would have equaled close to $40k in today's money so it's not too far off from what a TRD OR Tacoma costs nowadays. I got it for a little under $20k last year after negotiating the cost down due to the supercharger (they had no service record of it and couldn't verify who installed it or how many miles were on it).

I still toy with the idea of removing the supercharger because as much as I love the power, it's been one headache after another for me. The truck still runs lean even with the URD 7th injector I got installed this year, and it's eating through catalytic converters now as a result. Need to figure out how to fine tune it otherwise I may just pull it off and go back to N/A; it's a fun thing to have but that's really all it's for....it serves me no real purpose on the trails and is a liability if anything.

 

Nope I decided to keep the 5100s/881s for when I have to get the Kings/Icons rebuilt someday....I'll just throw them back on in the meantime while I'm waiting.

 

I still have them, lol. To be honest, I waited so long to look into rebuilding them that I eventually realized I had saved up enough to get a new set of Kings so I just went ahead and got those. I do want to get the SAWs rebuilt though, if anything I'll have 2 sets of awesome coilovers I can go between. They're still sitting in my storage right now but I think I may hit up DSM soon to see how much of a process it will be to get them rebuilt. I don't think it'll be too bad