Your unique mod on the 1st Gens

Old post I know, but what kind of rack is that on your topper?

 

Legit man, nice work! I've been toying with the idea of trying to setup a RPi for similar purposes, but your on phone mod is pretty genius! Nicely done!

 

Rola Vortex I picked up for cheap from WalMart. Not the best quality rack but it's enough to hold some jerry cans and a duffel bag

 

The only real hurdle with the Pi set up is having a touch screen that works like a peripheral input and then hooking that up to play nice with phone calls, navigation and audio quality.

Side note: It would be cool to set up an arduino/pi and app for the truck so it turns on rock lights and unlocks the doors when your phone makes a Bluetooth connection. Possibilities are endless but it's definitely a time intensive project.

 

Recorded a short video on how this thing automatically tethers for internet and plays music after starting the truck. If it's on weekday during commute hours it would have lunched Waze right after to check/route for traffic.


Screen fads to clock after 3 minutes of idle during daytime (10 seconds at night) to minimize distraction and.....


because I cut out the factory clock. I wanted a reverse camera because reversing it after lift was kinda of a PITA


new bezel drawn up in CAD


3D printed


cut out the useless clock


glued in the new bezel, after first rough shaping


making sure the screen will fit correctly


added some body filler for final shaping


test the electronics


The LCD controller board was too wide to fit behind the bezel so it needed to be cut down


cut, stacked and where it will be mounted


Bezel after final shaping and paint


Here I was testing where to mount the reverse camera


Not a fan of this angle, cant see either side of the bumper which is pretty important when reversing.


This angle worked better, but I also realized this camera doesn't have wide enough FoV, so I ordered a different camera


As disappointing as it was, this was actually as far as I've gotten and got distracted by other projects. I needed to pick up a spare taillight to cut up and make a housing for the camera but never put in the effort to look for one cheap. Maybe I'll start looking and finally finish this thing.

 

I see that the phone is in airplane mode, are you tethering via Micro USB?

 

Airplane mode forces the phones cell radio to be forced off but still allows other radios to be manually toggle back on. I've tried other methods to disable via Rom but decided it wasn't worth the effort. After many many trial and error I've found tether via BT is the best option, there's no additional delay when initializing which makes automation a ton more predictable.

I actually recorded this video with my phone which it tethered to.

 

@chilicoke How do you get your dimensions for some of your cad drawings? Do you use a 3D scanner of some sort?

 

90% of the time I use a digital caliper, as most of these fitment parts are pretty easy to draw up in CAD and getting the critical dimensions accurate is import. Printed parts have a little bit of tolerance to them anyway (printer calibration accuracy, plastic shrinkage, etc) so it's good practice to sometimes oversize from experience for tight fitments.

Sometimes finding a curve requires taking multiples pictures and tracing them into CAD, test print drawn sliced sections onto regular paper, cut out with scissors, and test fit/compare to actual part.

I don't try to get these kind of parts to be completely spot-on straight out of the printer, there's always some sort of impromptu changes that require old fashion hand fabrication to get printed parts to look right.

I've only had limited experience with hobbiest level 3D scanners and their output files almost always need some sort of clean up before they are usable, far more troublesome vs drawing from scratch. There are some situations that I can see them being very useful; if the scanner is small enough, it could save a lot of time scanning small areas/crevices where you'd need to make something to fit into.

 

You are one talented sumbich!

 

I agree, calipers are the way to go. I've seen those scanners used, man unless it's like a NASA grade scanner, they don't work all that well lol

 

thats badass man

 

Completely agree with this. Scanners usually provide too much info compared to how the products were originally designed. Any man made thing was designed in a computer at some point, so it’s usually simple to figure out how they did it. Modeling something natural or organic is another story.

 

Impressive fucking work dude!

 

Thanks for the nice words everyone! I originally bought my Taco as a daily driver, kept telling myself I'm not going to mod this one but I simply love cars and building things too much. Kept it well maintained, polished up and only mod was the phone media player for multiple years.

Until one day the original front shocks started to leak from age, might as well lift the truck. Picked up some Chevy HD2500 leaf springs, took it apart, cut down the leafs, and built my own leaf pack, ended up around ~3.5" lift (~5" total from my frowning leafs). Lift made truck looked funky with factory wheels, new wheels/wires went on, and thought I was done. Then noticed steering wheel doesn't self center as well as before so figured the lift on IFS probably screwed up caster angle as well as other geometry, searched a bit found out that's why people get aftermarket UCAs, checked out a few and figured I could probably just modify the factory ones:

The OEM control arms are just stamped sheet mild steel in two pieces (upper/lower) and welded together. I can modify it fairly easily.

Quick CAD to plot out how much I'd need to offset the upper ball joint. I ended up just making them into straight cylinders to weld better instead of the shape drawn.


first gotta make a mounting jig for the control arms


locate my reference points


found my offset, pilot holed, and pocket time


driver side machined, turned out well.




both looking good.


2" CRS, test fitting the pockets, pretty damn spot on fit.


Cut to size and faced on lathe


upper ball joint hole drilled and bored to 3 degree taper




good fit




Welded in, unfortunately I only have a MIG welder and TIG is more ideal in this situation, so had to go to a welding shop to get this done. Will probably pick up a tig welder someday.


Painted satin black, gotta keep that OEM look


looking good!


install time. Looks like the paint on my "Tundra" calipers are holding up great, still looking pretty stock to me.


stock vs modified


full steering lock, got pretty close here, phew!


I know you can't see the control arm in this picture, but here's how she sat before I pulled out the drop in liner and DIY sprayed in Raptor liner. Brought it back for alighment and the front wheels were spot on; self center like the way they should.


I feel like I'm clogging up this thread with way too many pictures, perhaps I should just make a build thread. Should I make a post under "1st Gen" here or "Builds > 1st Gen"?

 

@chilicoke Dont worry about it except that ur making everyone drool about ur talent and know how, u can even lay some dimes there with ur welding. I also like the collection of Star Wars bobbleheads!, LOL U should start a build thread for sure

 

@chilicoke post up on > what have you done to your tacoma today. 1st gen edition. it’s a busy thread and everyone there would love to see what you have been doing

 

Holly crap dude you are seriously talented and have access to some nice equipment!

 

Excellent

 

Wow, man. That is some seriously impressive work. You should absolutely make a build thread. Drop us a link here if you do.