Often drive dirt roads, what maintenance to do?

I do wonder though - could the new bushings be too stiff?

Just food for thought, at a previous job of mine, where the vehicles we repaired spent 85-90% of their time offroad, the death knell for a vehicle was when the body mounts cracked and separated from the body. Its a little unnerving when something is moving under your floor mat. I suspect that if the bushings had been absorbing more of the shocks, the body mounts would have been less likely to break.

 

Clean off the undercarriage and inside your engine bay frequently.

Do your engine a favor and check all of your air intake hoses and seals to ensure a proper snug fit.

Run an oil analysis to make sure your engine isn’t ingesting a ton of dirt (1gr-fe’s tend to do this a lot).

Grease your u joints every 5k and check your drive shaft bolts and leaf spring u-bolts/suspension for proper torque once a year or so.

Keep the interior of your truck clean (regular vacuuming and shampoo your seats occasionally). Dirt works it’s way into the seats and carpet and acts like an abrasive, reducing the lifespan of your interior.

 

Damn dirt does make its way everywhere. I have leather- they definitely need a clean up.

 

Clean interiors last longer - even with heavy use.

 

To me, which is probably different than the standard parlance, "on-board" just means you have it with you! So a nice portable with clips is totally useful and what I did for awhile until I converted my "portable" to "permanent". The main trade off is in how long/complicated it is to air up vs. how often you need to do it. Portable with clips increases the total time involved and as I discovered depending on where you store the compressor you may need to wait for it to cool a bit as well before putting it away. So for infrequent use no big deal, but if you do it more frequently getting something more permanently mounted can save another five minutes from the process potentially.

Anyway, lots and lots of way to air up tires whether portable compressor, permanently mounted compressor, CO2 tank, compressed air tank... But having *something* opens up the possibility for airing down more on long dirt runs and airing back up before hitting the highway again.

Agree. It makes little sense to spend 10 minutes airing down and 15 minutes airing up if you are going to be on a dirt road for all of 30 minutes. I'll often air down a little if I know I'm going to be on and off dirt and paved roads and those paved road runs aren't going to be super long and I can keep the speed down on them.

Besides wear the other big thing to be aware of is that you can pop the bead when making a fast turn on pavement with an aired down tire. Dirt roads can't generate such high lateral forces because the tire doesn't have enough traction to do it. But on pavement the tread just isn't going to slip and so the forces on the tire are much higher in a turn. That can be a real tragedy so besides keeping the speeds down to reduce heating and wear also be sure so slow down more than usual for turns if running low pressure on pavement.

 

So far I have had problems with both front windows. I’m a windows down heat cranked kind of guy, and I think that is bad for extra play in the window mechanism. The right one was a loud rattle where there was a loose nut on the scissor lift part. The drivers side window has a squeak now just started recently that stops when the window is up just a little bit. If it’s all the way down it squeaks over bumps. Will post when I find the problem in there.

 

Found another annoying rattle. The bolt above the right side of the speaker had rattled loose and backed way off. Also all the screws around the speaker were a bit loose.

Tightening the bolt above the speaker fixed a loud annoying rattle that was prominent when the window was all the way down.

 

I’m looking for suggestions on how to remove these orange spots? I assumed it was tar but the bug and tar remover I tried didn’t work. They are little orange rust looking spots all over the truck that come off if you reallllllly rub.

 

pin holes in the paint.
small fractures from debris.
wash. wax. repeat

 

There are probably hundreds all over the truck with many on the sides. I didn’t think it was from impact.

 

Some sounds can be from the front brake pads sloppy slopping around. I was hearing them slopping around when going over rough roads.
If you get a clack at low speeds while first applying the brake from changing direction (forwards to reverse to forwards ect), look up the double spring mod.

 

So the “popping” or “creaking” has gotten slow and steadily worse. Front end passenger side. I can now hear it most times pulling in and out of a parking spot. I don’t think it’s the brake pads. I’m hoping to check a few things tomorrow and narrow down this sound.

I’m looking for advice to check for the following:

Bad ball joints
Bad cv
Seized control arms ( doubt its this as it sounds like metal on metal sounds)

 

Inner tie rod?

 

I finally got to do some work on the Tacoma. Still have no Speedo. I was able to connect and solder the wire back onto the the plug that goes into the rear right speed sensor. Was really hoping that would fix it but nope.

the codes read open or short sensor on the right rear and right left sensors.

does anyone have any suggestions on how to proceed? I thought it was just the right rear that was causing problems since the wire ripped right out. But now it’s showing both rears are throwing codes.

 

The popping noise particularly when turning always makes me think LCA needs torque checked.

 

Haven’t heard the popping noise in months... haven’t done anything to stop it...

 

Check rear leaf springs u-bolt torque. I've heard the fsm 37fp setting is wrong. Makes sense. I set mine to 73fp, thinking 37 might have been a dyslexia moment. Your truck is newer than my '06, so this may have been fixed in the fsm, idk.

 

Owners manual, severe duty maintenance schedule. Have you had the spiral cable recall done yet?

 

I have not had it replaced. After a quick search I see that it attaches to the air bag. My horn has actually stopped working I noticed about two weeks ago. Would this be the problem?

 

Try IronX by CarPro (or any similar product). It's meant to take care of what was commonly called "rail dust" - basically ferrous materials from the environment that settle on your paint. IronX is great for keeping wheels clean as well as removing those yellow spots from your paint.