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

Taco Tuesday engine pulling to get to my broken crossmembers

 

Wow. That looks bad. Was the truck making noises before you were aware of the cracks?

 

What's the best way to fix rust on a rear axle and how do I determine whether the brownish stuff on my frame is rust? It might just be grimey.

 

Nah, I sent it. Cracks immediately happened.

 

Id clean it super well then see what needs attention and if its nothing undercoat it for winter

 

Dang, im on the look out for a deal. Im really wanting one

 

I got totally lucky, I was about 3 hours out of town headed camping and looked on craigslist, a guy had just posted it. He was goinga different direction with his rig. Needless to say, I stopped and got cash and bought it. It was pretty annoying to haul around for the weekend camping lol but I was happy overall. I will say you don’t see bumpers very often. In fact I don’t know if I’ve seen one since then. I guess it’s luck of the draw.

 

Had to change spark plugs and wires today because it started to misfire (long story is below)
For some reason who ever changed them last only did 5 of the 6. As you can see one of them is a quad electrode and the others are single.... And to top it all off 3 and 4 were super stuck in there and doubled the length of the whole project.



Long story:
Dad called me and asked if I’d go to the parts store to pick up an IAC for his F150 and while on my way there my motor starts shaking really bad, no codes though. So I get his IAC, I grab a new air filter for mine and some injector cleaner hoping it was something dumb. Well as soon an I left the parking lot I get a misfire code on 2. Back to the store but of course they didn’t have any dual electrode plugs and said I’d be okay with single (I’m sure it would have been since that’s what came out of the truck). I got the wires there though. So I limped my truck home on 5 cylinders and waited for my dad to get home so he could drive me to a different parts store with the correct oem denso plugs, mind you this is all at 8pm. I got home and did the great car shuffle, we have 6 vehicles and only a 2 car garage which is also where I work on all my vehicles. Got the wires pulled and started working on pulling the plugs. Cylinder 6 was easy, 4 was a bitch, 2 wasn’t that bad, 1 was good but I somehow snapped the bolt that holds down the coil pack, 3 was a nightmare, and 5 was easy. Put the new wires in and started right up. Took her out for a 20 mike drive to make sure she was good. All in all took about 3 hours since it was my first time and some of the plugs were stuck, I could easily do it in under and hour next time.

 

I hit frame and rear axle with a pressure washer and a wire wheel to knock the big rust off then hit it good with some Fluid Film. I think I'll paint it when I do my lift but fluid film is nice and easy and protects really well

 

make sure you put some anti seize on them!!!!

 

Truck wouldn't start this morning. When I turned the key, I got a clicking from the cluster, does that mean anything specific? gonna have a coworker jump it at lunch so we can figure out what's up. The battery is a no name parts store brand, but only a year old.

 

what's a good under coat? I used some PB Blaster and everyone at the house wasn't happy about the smel. LOL

 

I've used Rustoleum Bedliner spray bombs

 

We just applied NHOU. Curious to see how it compares to Fluid Film.

 

your battery probably is too low to crank the starter.

 

Damn. Like I said, the battery is about a year old. If that's the case, what should I replace my off brand battery with? Don't want to have to put a new one in every winter.

For clarity, my headlights and interior electronics work fine, and dim as expected when turning the key.

 

Ehhh I’ve heard mixed things about that whole deal. I’ll probably just change them out more often since it’s super easy to do. I’m assuming the guy I bought it off of didn’t do them and he got the truck at 167k and it now has 257k.

 

I know people run the "northstar Ultra High Preformance" battery, its in the products discussed below. You can pull your battery and run it to a parts store to get it checked. Ifs under a year old it might be under warranty still. Also check your cables, if there is any battery acid build up on the terminals or they are not tight on the battery that could cause the connection to be bad.

 

Cool, thanks. we're gonna check the connections at lunch today. I replaced my headlights a couple weeks ago, so it's possible there's a loose connection I missed.

 

as said before. You voltage is probably too low. Or your starter contacts need cleaned which is easy to do and much better than buying a parts store starter.

Get the battery tested.

Also do you have any accessories that could have drained it?