Crunchy Taco? - 1st gen on 35s BS

I have known about my trip for quite a while and have been chipping away at things but even so I underestimated how much I wanted to have done. Do you think you'll be able to crank everything ou!?!

 

I finally am in a good spot. Spent all weekend rebuilding the rear axle, and getting the bed back together. I just gotta pack and roll out now, which is good since I leave tomorrow lol Also since I just did all my AC shit recently, I feel your pain. I hated that job.

 

Did you get everything wrapped up before your trip?! I was still doing things the morning I was supposed to leave and my buddy came over unprompted and asked what he could help with to get things wrapped up. I managed to leave on schedule after all, with working AC to boot



I'm going to do some trail writeups but overall the truck did great aside from a few kinks.

On the funny side I aired up my four tires and my friend's 32" tire before my brand new Walmart hybrid air hose popped! I'm assuming it got weak from the heat of the compressor, I never even considered that to be a possibility. I happened to have a cheapy HF PVC hose with me which lasted through the rest of the trip.

I have ordered a transmission cooler to use as a power steering cooler. On Friday I was running trails in the Alpine loop and burned up my power steering really good on all the switch backs. Even though it wasn't anything technical my steering was fading off and on and I was turning into a particularly steep downhill switchback when it cut out, which was a fun surprise. Saturday I did a quick steering fluid change in the Walmart parking lot in preparation for wheeling on Sunday. Again, I burned up the fluid and had the steering cutting out intermittently. In addition to the cooler I'm thinking about cutting the reservoir to weld in an extension to bump up the fluid capacity a little bit to help keep things cooler as well, but that might be overkill.

With the 35s and stock gears I got stuck on one obstacle in particular, the V notch on Wheeler Lake, and was having to slip the clutch quite a bit to keep from stalling when it started to hook. I ended up heating up the clutch pretty good and had to wait for it to cool down. In the same spot I lost my power steering while trying to finesse the 35s where I wanted them while stopped or rolling at low speed.

 

Ha I did and it was an awesome trip. And I also burned up my pump, and had to drive home 7 hours with no PS lol. Glad to hear yours went well too minus the hiccups!

 

That sucks! Turning 35s without PS is a real PITA if you have to turn while stopped.

Are you going to go with another stock pump?

I was looking at the Trail Gear mount for Saginaw TC pumps which have a higher flow rate but I think I'll only go that route if I killed more than one stock pump with the cooler in place.

 

I kept going with remans and it would be silent for like 2-3 weeks and then start having a noise again. But as far as I know I really never burnt it up until this last trip. So the current plan is going OEM pump, replace the lines, and install an external filter and cooler.

Can a larger pump over pressurize a stock rack?

 

Which remans? I'm running (as far as I know) the OEM pump still.

That's a great question, I have no idea. I imagine you'd need the larger pump for keeping good steering with a solid axle, especially with a hydro assist.

 

You definitely do for a solid axle but AFAIK their steering boxes can handle the higher pressures. Since I am still running the OEM rack, I want to keep the system pressures OEM too, just cooler. All the pumps have been A1 Cardone pumps which are supposed to be good pumps. I have had this whine for forever and I am trying to figure it out and finally resolve it.

 

Well mine whined two weeks after install, and then continued to for 2 years before it finally gave up. At this point I have a semi brand new not cheap OEM rack in it and I want to protect the investment in the new rack. Also hard to compare stock tires and mudding to 35's and the heavy rock crawling and abuse I do.

 

Cooler for PS came today so I drained the reservoir, disconnected the low pressure steering line, and started to install the cooler. The cooler comes with cheesy zip ties to hold it to the condenser/radiator, which I was going to run, but they were snapping as I snugged them up.

I'll have to come up with some kind of mount. Not sure if I will put it in front of the condenser or if I can tuck it in the passenger fender and get enough passive cooling that way.

 

I can probably fit it on the top of the fender well without having to worry about the tire rubbing. Not sure if the UCA would hit

 

Need to come up with a better way to stand the cooler off of the AC line at the center of the core support but I figured out more or less how to mount the cooler. I think I'll get a steel bushing from the hardware store to push it back 3/8~ if I can. the cooler and bracket I made came off for a coat of Rust-Oleum engine paint so they don't stand out so much

 

Been a while since I heard a good emo joke

 

I love the fact that you used a drill press to be precise, but then followed it up with like 8 zip ties lmao

 

Don't worry, that was just for mocking things up. The final version will have at least 12 zip ties

Since paint was drying and I still had a little energy I tinted 3 windows on the Taco. I'd give one an 8/10 and the other two a 6/10 which is fine by me since it's no beauty queen. Id rather have privacy and an ugly tint than no tint at all lmao. I still have the other 3/4 panes of the rear window to do, which should honestly be the easiest

 

most of them just don't cut it

 

Last weekend's trip started in Ouray:

Thursday we took Mineral Creek / Engineer Mountain to Animas Forks. We took California to Hurricane to Corkscrew out.

 

Sunday we ran up wheeler lake. It was a bit of a shit show as there were already 40~ jeeps up the trail for the All4Fun group event by the time we got there. Going up we got caught up because one of them flopped their TJ at the V notch, then coming down we spent a lot of time waiting for them as they came down in a bunch of smaller groups. No clue how they were able to park so many at the top.

Aside from that we all made it to the top and got to enjoy some beautiful views





























I made it through everything effortlessly save for the V notch, where the 35s and stock gears really made it tricky to maintain enough control to get up and over.









Posers R Us pic

 

I've been thinking about doing a paint job to make the truck a little more presentable. @eon_blue whipped up some pics to give me some ideas of what things would look like

 

Thanks for the Taco love! Much appreciated!

Wonder if a wrap would be cheaper than paint?