New member - CaliBama gal and her first Tacoma, 1st gen

I finally did it! I bought my first Toyota truck, my dream truck - a 1999 Xcab Prerunner 2wd/locker, in white, with a topper. I’ve wanted a Toyota truck since I was a little gal. Now I can stop lurking and start posting, lol. I pretty much got everything I was looking for in this old truck, except someone forgot to leave a bag of benjamins in the bed. I can already tell I’m about to drop a small fortune into this rad little mammer jammer.

Safety first - I’ll be working on this tired old suspension. I have a “stuck” front L shock in the coil, I need a good bit of other suspension/steering components (tie rods, links), and this leaf pack is sad, sad, sad. Buuuut, he drives pretty nicely for 229k, and I’m a happy camper so far, even with all the work I’m about to have to put into it. That’s part of the fun, right?!

I’ve already learned SO much from reading TW threads over the past year, and I’m excited to now be a bigger part of this community. Thanks for having me!

 

Welcome to TW

 

Welcome aboard Misty
Good looking Taco you have there

 

Thanks! It's a little full of Monet. The paint looks nicer from afar than up close, but i'll get around to that later. It runs just fine, and I'm loving it.

 

Welcome. Perfect 1st rig in my opinion. I've gone through 3 first gen tacomas already and still love them.

 

Welcome to TW

 

Welcome and sweet rig!

 

Thanks! Glad to be here.

 

Welcome to TW!

 

Welcome!

 

Congrats on your purchase, and welcome to TW Misty!

Remember that YouTube is your friend when it comes to working on your Tacoma. When searching, put in the year and model of your Tacoma, and the job you want to do, and you'll find videos of people doing that exact same repair.

Was going to recommend the Bentley Toyota Truck manual, but appears it only goes through 1996 Toyotas.

Recommend investing in a basic set of metric tools, then buy additional ones required as you start to do specific jobs.

Enjoy!

 

Welcome to TW!

 

Thanks for the tips! I have been watching a ton of YouTube videos already, and I have really been liking Timmy the Toolman's vids. I have also been shopping local pawn shops, HF, etc for tools, mostly metric. I have yet to undertake any repairs, but I'm getting close to it even though I'm nervous lol. I used to do simple repairs on the Corolla I had for 16 years prior to this Taco, but for some reason I'm nervous about f***ing something up on this old truck lol.

I did have success troubleshooting an issue with my suspension system so far. I was having a very distinct front driver side "clunk". 2 different shops told me I need tie rods (which I also do need), but neither shop noticed the real issue at hand that was causing the distinct clunk. Turned out that after I stared at ALL.OF.MY.SUSPENSION.COMPONENTS for a day or two, I noticed that the driver side shock (5100s) was "stuck" in a weird position in the coil mount. It was sitting at least 1-2 inches out of the coil higher than the passenger side, and the rubber thing and washer was literally loose and spinning. Because I'm a newb and I didn't want to mess with coil compression, and especially because the shock seems crossthreaded in there, I had I had a local shop install a set of cheap Monroe's on in the meantime until I can get my funds together for a full suspension upgrade. Voila - clunkin issue GONE! Go me - at least I now feel confident in my own inspection and diagnostic intuition/skill! Only problem now is that I don't really trust shops for proper diagnosis or for the repair itself (seeing as how the mechanic banged the hell out of my UCA while changing the shock and dented it up : (. I'm hoping I can find a new friend locally who know his/her stuff and who wants to help me work on this rig.

Anyhoo, thanks for reading and for the warm welcome!

Now, on to the tie rods and sway bar links, which I think will be my first actual repair done myself.

 

One additional tip that should help: before doing a job where you have rusted nuts and bolts, liberally spray a penetrant all over the bolts the day prior, then spray them again about an hour before you start working on your truck.

 

Will do!