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

Thanks for saying this dude. Sometimes this place seems like an echo chamber of people just ragging on anyone who doesn’t do as they do or say as they say

 

It just annoys the hell out me. I mean this guy had less than 50 posts when he posted that pic. And if you look at his profile it even says "So many mods, so little money"

He's probably a working stiff, with bills, that just wants to improve his truck. That's what we're all fricken here for... right?

He posts a pic of essentialy 15 one hundred dollar bills sitting on the floor and then he's told he should have spent triple what he spent.

It's the same with the whole OEM thing. I know I have a rep for being "anti-OEM" which is not the case... I use OEM any time I can. But my thought is that even MOOG lower ball joints are better than OEM LBJs with 250,000 miles on them... especially if that's what you can afford.

A couple months ago a brand new member with less than 50 posts, posted a pic of about $900 in MOOG parts... it was probably what he could afford, and it was almost certainly better than what was on his 16 year old truck.

And what happened? The know it all assholes came from the wood work to shit on his decision to buy what he could afford... And as far as I know, he's never made a post since. (That's fucked up)

And then the arguement insued. It's stupid.

 

Good said... I'm not the smartest , my wallet is empty but for sure don't want to be the rudest smartass either...is not worth to argue with those clever ones... there is bunch of good people here too , that is why I try to keep up.... tks to all that nicely reply to my dumb q...
My ahead spinning for an unsolved rear axle seal.... wrote a letter to Toyota of Plano to see if they can lower those thousands of dollars quote they gave me .... waiting for answers now...
Cheer Up is December !!!!

 

ADS does a new shock made for doing this I was told by them specifically for our application.

I was surprised at how short there were too but it's awesome!

I suspect this could be in your future. But maybe not.

 

My thought as well, although if that does end up being the case I need to find a more effective measuring method then as well. I drove his axle with one leaf as far up as I could go before, like it was to the point where it was lifting it back up off the jack stands and my bouncing wouldn't make it frown anymore. And that was the upper boundary. His leafs almost never invert, but now I need to know what is the variable we missed. We didn't account for the bumpstop on the shock, so there's is an inch more shaft to go. The whole thing cycled like 8.5"

 

Thanks for doing it. Someone really needed to bring this up

 

Wow that's not much.

Did you measure the ride height before taking the bed off? I think I'd do that so you can place the axle and get the shocks as centered as possible.

Also I'd do the whole axle up not just a side to decrease binding as that will generally go up higher than one wheel. Down is a different story.

 

Looks great man! You’re truck is about to very badass

 

Installed SpiderTrax 1.25" spacers on all 4 corners today. Hoping this will take car of the rubbing I've been getting at full lock.

 

Put a bunch of weight on the back. Those leaves will invert.

With the bed off and no weight, it's easy to lift the frame even with just one leaf.

 

When you articulate the truck you not only have the bed weight but also the force of the front of the truck transfering the load being transfered to the springs thus applying more than a jack could do. . If you jack up the truck and not flatten the springs it sounds like the shackle is also limiting the leafs from flattening out combined with the resistance of the leaf pack thickness. If you put a straight edge from main eye bolt to horizontally flat shackle bolt that would be you inverted state. That measurment is your compress limit.

Does any of this help, or make sense. I have been working wayyy to much so sorry abiuy the gibberish.

Edit:

 

Hope the spacers work better for you than they did for me. Just transferred the rubbing from the frame to the pinch weld area. And they were back off that quickly!!

 

The BFH will fix rubbing at the pinch weld area if it’s not that bad.

 

Ha, they got me for rims this past weekend. Got the wife for tires and rims...lol.

 

I just bought some spacers. I figure if I have that problem I can beat that section and trim the fenders but not so much with the frame.
I need to make the turns on the trail, and I need the traction (Rocks and sand) of the wider tires and I need the larger wheel size to catch the next obstacle. Fingers crossed

 

4 liters of black Raptor @ $109 total
4 liters of tintable Raptor @ $109 total
12oz of Gunship Grey tint @ $20
Masking tape, masking paper, sand paper and etching primer.

I’m guessing less than $300...and it took me approximately 10 hours to do...and it was actually fun to do! The Raptor liner is sooo forgiving!
And yes I sanded all of the paint so there wasn’t anything shiny left...but not down to the metal if possible. Where I did get down to the metal, I then primed with the etch primer before Raptoring.

 

I have no aversions to beating that pinch weld into submission. Already did some of that before I even installed the spacers.

 

.


Got them at Napa, I can't remember the brand name, but they came in a 2 pack for like $25 bucks, about 7 inches long and less than an inch wide.

Got the switch for like 3 bucks and had wires and weather proof connectors. They came with sticky 3m backing tape then I just decided where I wanted them and ran the wires.


Started by taking 2 lengths of wire, one yellow one black, about 10 feet long and taping them together. Yellow for hot, black for ground.


Cleaned up the underside of the hood and stuck the lights where I wanted them.


Then I took a temporary wire and got it through this channel here on the side of the engine compartment where my I wanted my final wires to go. For pulling through black and yellow.


You can see in this picture, my finger in the bottom right corner where it came through near the battery


Connected my pre-wrapped wires to the temporary wire. Strip, bend, twist and taped the ends together.


Pulled through easily, here you can see the yellow and black wires coming through.


I put these little grommets in all of the holes that i ran wires through, for protection.


Then I just fed the yellow and black wire up through the hoods frame to where I put the lights wires through. The pre-wrapped wires make it look nice and clean where the wires span from the hood compartment to the hood.


I put the lights wires in through this hole


Taped up the wires so they stay put. Connected lights to yellow and black wires, from earlier.


Close up of connection from the two lights wires, to the yellow and black wires.


Wiring at the switch


Pretty straight forward. Used weatherproof heat shrink connectors or heat shrink tubing over connectors that weren't weather proof.

Drilled a hole for the switch. Its like daylight under the hood at night now.

 

Great write brother

Thanks!

 

Finished the sas on my truck and tested it out works great ready to hit some trails