Betterbuckleup's 2000 taco build & BS

little update on some work i've got done and some things I still have to do.

Got the front bumper mounted up and welded in the frame end cap inserts. I added some weld to the passenger front body mount support since some of the metal was torn and one of the side nutserts was hanging on by a thread. It was a pain doing it by myself, putting the bumper on and taking it off a ton of times to check alignment. I had to slightly oblong one of the mounting holes on the bumper because it was off just by a bit.
It'll have to come off one more time to get powder coated, but im gonna do that when I get my rear All-Pro wrap around bumper and front skid plate so I can do them at the same time.



Picked up some new Total Chaos fab UCA's from a guy who didn't need them for a good deal. Got those installed after wrestling with getting the upper ball joints out of the factory UCA.

I did what a few people recommended in the TCF UCA installation thread of freezing the pucks and torching the spindle to get the pucks to slip right in. Didn't even need a hammer. It made the install so much easier.

I also installed a new shorter radiator that doesn't interfere with the bumper. Now it mounts up with all 4 holes and is up and out of the way from everything.

New one is on the left and the old one is on the right. I think i'm gonna hold onto my old one for now since it's still good. If anyone wants it, you can have it for the cost of shipping or you can come pick it up fo free.



Also figured out what was causing the huge oil mess on the side of my engine (hopefully at least). The oil filter extension housing. I wish I had known that when I did my exhaust manifold, because it would have been a hell of a lot easier but it still wasn't too difficult. I ordered new two new o-rings from the dealership and threw those on this last weekend, so hopefully now I will have a leak-free engine!

This is the leak i'm talking about shown below.


I also ordered a magnefine PS in-line filter and a hayden Power steering oil cooler kit from Amazon. I'm due for an oil change soon so i'll throw both of those on when I get around to doing that.

 

Nice work. Those welds on the frame end caps look really good

 

Thanks man! I'm pretty happy with the turnout.

Been loving my miller and the welds that it makes. I've always loved fabrication so i'm excited for the possibilities of what I can do now.

Been pondering the idea of making a custom tailgate recently....

 

Looks good man! Glad you liked the freezer trick haha.

 

Got the allpro wraparound rear bumper installed and have been messing around with getting the allpro IFS skid plate to mount up. I'll have some pictures of it when I hopefully get it all powder coated this weekend.

Also got 50 sq. ft of 50 mil sound deadening on Amazon. Covered both doors with it and plan to do the floor and rear of the cab at some point.

It was a pain in the ass to install and I wish I had bought one of those wooden rollers they say to use for installing it.
I replaced the vapor barrier on the doors with some 2 mil plastic sheeting from Home depot and black silicone sealant. It's not pretty and I should have gotten some thicker sheeting, but it'll do for now. I also broke my driver outside door handle after buttoning it all up, so i ordered a new one on amazon that i'm installing today. I wish someone made a better exterior door handle for these trucks that didn't break so easily.


Running into some problems with getting the skid plate to bolt on. For starters, one of the mounts on the rear LCA pivot was ripped of at some point so i cut the other side off and i'm gonna just weld new stronger ones on out of 1/4" flat bar. Also, my front dif drop spacers are too tall causing the front diff mount points to hit the top of the skid plate. When I can get access to a metal band saw this weekend, I'm planning on shortening them a bit to hopefully fix that.




As for mounting the rear tabs on the LCA pivots, i'm having trouble getting the tabs to sit flat on the spots that i'll weld them to. The nut I welded is contacting the part of the LCA mount I have circled in the picture below. I shaved some material off the sides with a grinder to hopefully give some more room, but it didn't seem to help much. There's not much side-to-side movement, so when I cut down the diff drop spacers, I'm hoping that i'll have some wiggle room to work with. If not, i'll have to get creative.

 

Dropped off the bumpers and stuff to get powder coated this weekend.

Also picked out a paint color that i'll be repainting the truck in. Working with the same body guy from before and gonna wet hand sand the whole thing with some 400 grit and then just do a single stage base coat in omni paint. Really excited to get the truck back to 100% and see how it all turns out.


Since the front dif drop spacers were causing my dif mounts to hit the skid plate, I turned the 1" thick spacers down .25 inches to. Hopefully it's enough. Got them between 0.05" of each other.

Pretty good imo for only having some plastic cheapo calipers on hand while using a chinese lathe with no DRO.

before is left and after is right

 

Finished up paint today.

It's not perfect and has some spots that need to be cut and buffed, but i'm happy with it. Definitely an 8 foot paint job haha. Not bad at all given the conditions we were painting in. The wind picked up a bit toward the end of it and there's some stuff in the paint here and there, but I think it should clean up nice.

A hell of a lot better than it was before though. And I really like the red that I went with. The pearl is a really cool touch to it.

This particular red ended up being pretty transparent so we needed a lot of coats to cover up the black primered replacement fender and other spots that showed through easily.



Filling in some rock chips and trouble spots

Masked and ready for paint

A few coats in on one side

 

Got one of the LCA's swapped out last night with the whiteline poly bushings in installed. It was a total pain in the ass since part of the subframe where the rear most LCA pivot goes into was slightly bend in. The alignment is totally out of whack, but i'm gonna wait to take it in until I get the other side done sometime this weekend hopefully.

On another note, I got my fresh set of rubber 285/75r16 General grabber x3. They are heavy load range E SOBs so i'm sure my truck will hate me for it....

 

Finally got the front skid mounted up. Need a few more bolts for the front mount though.



Also mounted up the low range gas tank skid after throwing some spray on bedliner on it.

 

Did the pinch weld mod the other day to prevent any rubbing I might have on the trail.


I modified the spare tire location to fit my full size spare for now. Until I get some material and start making a swing-out tailgate, that's where it'll stay.

I tried to bend the brackets like what some people did in the DIY mods sticky, but I wasn't able to get it to budge with my shitty little clamp-on table vise. So I improvised and just chopped of the ends and welded on some flat bar to help locate and center the tire on the carrier. It's not pretty, but it'll do what I need for the time being.



I used the forklift at work to flex out the truck and see if there were any outstanding places I was rubbing at full lock. Nothing really that bad other than a few spots on the fender liner.

It flexes out way better in the front now with the sway bar removed (didn't get any pics of the front though).




Oh and here's a shot of it with the new wheels and tires but before I had the front skid installed.



I'm also hoping to score some tacoma bucket seats and a middle console later today from some people on craigslist. The price is right and it'll be nice to have some more storage and supportive seats.

 

Got my new coilovers in yesterday and spend all night mounting the reservoirs. These things are massive! Some serious shock beef

The included resi mount brackets weren't going to work since I don't have the OEM bumper.

It was tricky to find somewhere that the tires would rub the resi or hose at full steering lock. I think it still might rub at full stuff and lock, but we'll see. I'm going back and forth with the idea of doing some 1/2 wheel spacers or something to get the tire out from the frame a little more. It would also solve my frame rubbing on the passenger side.

I was thinking about the 1" TG lug centric spacers, but with my wheels being 4.5" BS, I don't know how I like the idea of my wheels being effectively 3.5" BS with the spacer. That's sticking out more from the body than my previous set of rims were. Maybe some 1/2 wheel spacers like these https://www.amazon.com/6x139-7-Wheel-Escalade-Suburban-Silverado/dp/B01KY7UJMC
Although I would most def have to get longer wheel studs to run those.

Still need to pull the brackets and paint them so they don't rust, but it was late when I finished and I still don't 100% know if the location will be final.

Either way, stoked with the outcome and they ride fantastic! Can't wait to put them to use in some rough stuff where they really shine. Accutune offroad did a great job with the custom valving too.

 

Been working on the tailgate swingout some more. Picking up some more tubing this afternoon and should hopefully have the everything done minus the spare tire mount this weekend.

Notching tubing with a grinder is a pain and takes a while. But then again this if my first time doing any notching with a grinder so i'm sure there's an easier way to do it than how i'm doing.

I also messed up and used 1/8" plate instead of the 3/16" plate that I bought for the swingout tabs . In reality it'll probably be strong enough, but i'm going to gusset them just in case. I only want to do this once.



Also got my Allpro trans skid, axle relocation plates, and TC spindle gussets in the mail so I have that to install at some point.

 

Update on the swingout:

Got it all pretty much done minus the tire carrier. Might wait to do the tire carrier until I decide what i'm doing with my current wheel situation. Might sell the F5's I just got when I can get a set in the 3.5" bs.

Don't have any completed pictures, but here is when it was all tacked up and doing some spare tire location mockup

 

Took a break on the tailgate swingout for now. I think take it back apart to straighten it out since it currently pulls in the bedsides more than i'm comfortable with. I also wanna add some more tubing to the middle section.

Since i'm gonna get some new F5's with a deeper backspacing sometime early August when they're back in stock, i'm gonna hold off on mounting the spare to the swingout so I can get the placement right.
I also ordered a lolo 6 bike rack for transporting my bikes so I wanna make sure that it'll clear the rack with wherever I place it first.

In the meantime, I ordered some 555 LBJ's from LROR as preventative maintenance since i've never done them in my ownership of the truck. Would be a shame to do all this work just to have a LBJ mess it all up.

Also got some folding mirrors from rockauto since they were cheap and the tilt mechanism on my driver mirror never really worked right. Stoked to have functional mirrors and have more visibility of my surroundings. Gonna get some stick-on blind spot mirrors to put on them too.

Before:


After:

 

Haven't been able to do any major work on the truck recently because of my broken wrist. It's being a stubborn SOB and I don't want to re-injure it.

Although I did get a chance to change my oil and install my power steering filter & cooler this last weekend.



Things I plan on doing once i'm more healed up:

• install & paint sliders
• finish spare tire tailgate swingout
• Fabricate & install bed stiffeners
• weld TC spindle gussets
• install rear axle relocation plate
• weld on angle iron to transmission skid for reinforcement

 

Started experiencing some really bad clutch shudder on acceleration from both first and second gear.

It appears that my oil pan has been leaking from the rear and probably into my bell housing causing contamination on my clutch disc.

So now I have to pull the front diff to drop the oil pan as well as do a full clutch job again....
I figured that while i'm down there, i'll replace my slave clutch cylinder and upgrade the clutch line to a steel one.

Gonna use this post as a reference for what I need to get done and what I have ordered/will need to get for the job.

Parts I ordered:

yotashop.com
Aisin clutch kit
10x flywheel bolts
LUK flywheel
Aisin Slave cylinder
Marlincrawler
steel 11" clutch line
Concord Toyota
Toyota FPIG sealant for oil pan

I don't want to have to pull the tranny or do another clutch job for a long time so i'm replacing everything just to be sure (even though my last full clutch job was 20k miles ago...). Hopefully with a sealed oil pan this one will last much longer.

Hopefully I can this all done over a weekend:

disconnect battery (prevent starter motor contact from shorting)
re-seal oil pan
install new LBJ's
new pilot bearing
new throwout bearing
new flywheel & bolts torqued to spec
new pressure plate & clutch disc
new slave cylinder & steel line w/ new fluid gravity bleed
lubricate clutch fork before reinstallation

Tools I need to get/rent:

low profile transmission jack
slide hammer for pilot bearing removal & socket for installation
better torque wrench
6-ton jack stands (another pair for equal height on all 4 corners)
creeper

 

FYI, I just returned a LUK flywheel because it would not fit over my crank. I bought another brand locally and it fit fine.

Also, don't forget about the rear main seal if you have not done it already.

CAZ

 

Good to know. If I run into that, i'll likely pick one up locally like you did.

I did the rear main seal when I did my last clutch job so I figured it should still be good. It's about 20k miles old.

 

Finished everything up and should be headed out tonight for Reno and do some wheeling this weekend. It was a hustle to get it all done in time, but stoked to be able to finish it all up in less than a week!

Shit that got replaced
clutch
flywheel
clutch cover
throwout bearing
pilot bearing
rear main seal
clutch slave cylinder
steel braided clutch line
flywheel bolts
new bolts to mount transmission to block
installed missing lower bellhousing inspection cover & dust seal
Installed new 555 LBJ's & new bolts

Shit that got fixed
Resealed oil pan
resealted T-case & transmission top shifter plates
Re-packed manual hubs with grease
front diff filled with new gear oil

$30 75w-90 Synthetic Gear Lube - 1 Quart (Pack of 2)

75w-90

So in taking the transmission out, I discovered that there was only 1 out of 4 bolts holding the transmission onto the engine block . That could have been really bad! The rear crossmember mount must have been doing a majority of the work holding it in place. Ordered 3 new ones from the dealership.




Upon inspection, the clutch still had plenty of life left, but I still replaced everything. The flywheel and pressure plate had visible chatter marks on it.



While I was in there, I pulled off the rear oil seal retainer plate that holds the rear main seal on to seal that up as well. I cleaned it up in the parts washer at work since it had some old oil caked on there pretty good.

Instead of using a puller, I removed the pilot bearing using the wet newspaper method. It took a while, but actually worked well. not too bad of a mess to clean up either. Better than using bread imo too.


Bottom of my engine looks OK for its age. Not the cleanest i've seen but not too bad. The oil pickup was pretty clean too which is always good to see.




Overall a success and should have the driveshafts back in today after work and be on the road this evening. Just wish I had enough time to get my sliders installed.

 

Forgot to mention that I ran into the same thing you did. My LUK flywheel was a super tight fit over the crank. I went to my local Oreilly and grabbed a "power torque" brand one that worked just fine.