Welding cam tabs

I’ve read about people welding a support to these cam tabs instead of replacing them with TC ones.

Has anyone done it? If so, how well does it hold up?

Only 2 of my tabs are bent, but I’d like to reinforce the ones that are still good.

 

Pretty sure @SilverGhost did that on his 1st Gen.

 

I did them on my 2000 and on my 07 .No problems at all

 

Either get a welder to lay a good bead behind the original tabs to prevent them from bending, or grind them off and replace with @TOTAL CHAOS tabs.

 

Yup

Got my supports/gussets for the cam bolts tabs in. I pick up 3' of 5/16" for .50 cents to make these. I cut them all about 1 1/2" long. I welded them to the original tabs and to the frame. Cleaned them up and painted them. I did 12 out of 16 because of the steering rack. I do those when i put the suspension in. Hopefully these hold well. If not then i'll remove them and fab up full gussets for those sections.







On this one I just ran a few beads along side of it. I'll see how it does. If it doesn't work then i'll just make something else to go there.

 

Well when you go Dukes of Hazards in a mall parking lot you need those.

 

thanks everyone, I’m going to have my buddy lay a weld on the stock supports for now. I don’t feel like buying the Total chaos ones

 

For sure. Watch out once I get the links on

 

subb'ed
@tacobell007

 

When welding a bead on these tabs is it advised to drop the LCA in order to protect the bushing? or can it be done without the removal of the eccentrics and LCA.

 

I welded mine without removing anything. It didn’t hurt anything. I just laid 1 or two downhill beads

 

I completely removed mine because I didn’t want to risk burning the bushings.

 

Sorry to bring up an old thread but I just bent one of my tabs today...
I have a harbor freight special 125amp flux core welder. Will this be strong enough to add a few beads on to the original tabs?

 

If you don't get an answer in here from anyone, pop into the welding thread. Those guys would know.

 

Welds might be ugly, but yes it will be fine

 

I welded mine. It think it's a good solution. You could go with the Total Chaos or something similar but I think the stock tabs welded option will work fine for 99% of us. Please note: That numerical statistic is pure speculation....
Heck, nothing at all works for most of us so welding them is like 1,000% better. Please note: That numerical statistic is pure speculation.....

 

I'm looking at doing this on my 3rd gen. I need to get under the truck again but it looked like a couple of the tabs were at the end of the material so there wouldn't be a place to put a reinforcement weld on the outside of the tab. Did I see it wrong?
I was planning on dropping the LCA and then greasing the cam bolts but I'm running out of time and my new tires and alignment are scheduled before I will have an entire day to do that. I'm tempted to act like it's body work and go slow and cool it with air to save the bushing. Anyway, I just found this thread so I figured I would comment so I wouldn't lose it

 

You’ll burn the bushings. If you wanna weld a bead, take off the LCA

 

So I recently got back from a long towing tour (Newfoundland, highly recommend). I hit some bad bumps, and my steering wheel got thrown off centre, but it still drove straight, no pulling either way. Got an alignment done and all's good now.
Would getting my cam tabs welded help prevent this in the future?

 

Crawl under your truck and see if you have a tab bent flat. If you do, this would be a recommended mod. Many Tacoma owners will never have an issue with this. I did because I was installing a lift. In the process, I determined that my lower control arm bushings were seized.
I had to cut them all out, but before I did, I flattened one of my alignment tabs trying to press/beat one of the bolts out. If you never mod your truck, you'll probably never know. This is jut my opinion, but I think most alignment techs just set toe, since everything else should pretty much stay in spec (again, for the average user).