Betterbuckleup's 2000 taco build & BS

Hell yea. That'll be fun to play around with.

I've been happy with the tune that Accutune did on mine, but I think there is definitely more performance to be had out of them.

 

That do be the beauty of shock tuning. You can tune the shocks for whatever you want. Start with spring rate first, and then adjust shims to your liking.

 

Yea they originally tuned mine with 600lb coils, but then I swapped to 650's. Still seems to keep up, I just crank the LSC & HSC clickers up a bit more.

 

So I was fucking around in the garage tonight and hacked together a DIY trans jack for my floor jack.
Don't know if I'll actually use it though because there's still a considerable amount of weight in front of those two mounts. Not to mention the floor jack only has swivel wheels in the back and not the front. So maneuvering it around to get it to line up wouldn't be the easiest. We'll see.

Going to pull the tranny & cases coming up here soon so that I can properly pound the tunnel out some more.

Then start working on a center console.

 

Picked up a topper for the truck.

It'll be nice to have for if I wanna do any winter camping or where I just don't wanna have to deal with a tent. Likely won't leave it on for summer wheeling and camping though.

Haven't decided on if I'm going to paint it black or color match it yet.

Thanks @techfinsoup! You're the man!!




Also worked on sealing up some exhaust leaks this last week & some other things.

I knew it was leaking pretty bad at the connection between the manifold and intermediate pipe. Could feel it with your hand blowing out one side of it.

The top gasket was completely wasted when I took it out and you can see on the flange where the gases were escaping.



I put new gaskets in there and tried tapping the stripped out hole from before that I had a thru bolt installed in. The hole is pretty fucked up and the threads I was able to tap are super weak and I could feel them pulling through, so I used an OEM exhaust stud and put a nut on both top and bottom to hopefully clamp it down better.



In my drive to sac, I heard that I actually also have an additional exhaust leak at the rear of the cylinder head between the manifold and head....smh

In looking back through the photos, you can see where it's leaking from. I just didn't notice it when I had it apart before.



I believe all of these exhaust leaks are likely due to worn out engine mounts and my missing exhaust support bracket that ties that intermediate pipe to the bellhousing. Twisting the whole thing around and moving the whole exhaust more than it should allowing for leakage and things to loosen up.

So I'm going to replace that support bracket & exhaust manifold gasket at the cylinder head and hope that keeps things more planted.

 

TW FTW!!

 

You going to replace the motor mounts?

 

No. I'm likely going to do the mar-mount mod on the driver side mount to cut down on the engine rotation
https://board.marlincrawler.com/index.php?topic=95884.0

 

Haven't gotten around to pulling the front diff and doing the marmount on the engine mount, but I did it to my old OEM transmission mount and removed the HD crawlbox mount I had. The vibrations were killing me.

So far I don't notice too much of a difference than from not having it, but I can tell that it helped reduce the amount of twisting on the drivetrain a little bit. Based off of how much the shifters move around in the cab when doing clutch dumps, etc.






In more efforts to eliminate exhaust leaks, I got all new OEM gaskets from the exhaust manifold to just before the cat.
I also bought the OEM bracket I've been missing to help support the intermediate pipe off of the bellhousing of the transmission.

Although it didn't fit for some reason, so I had to modify it some. Then rattle-canned it with some red VHT paint.






So far so good, but i'm gonna keep an eye on things.
Gonna be driving to Reno this weekend so that should be a good test on how it will all hold up after putting some prolonged heat into everything.

 

Drive Ferny's truck, then try and tell me you have vibrations.

 

You aint lying

 

Lol yea I have yet to experience that. If I recall Hot metal fab used the Trail gear bombproof mount which is even more burly and rigid than the Marlin one I was running.

I think I am agreeing more with the school of thought that you shouldn't mix poly mounts with rubber mounts. Either all poly, or all rubber. But that's just been my experience so far from a drivability perspective. Especially with a manual, the clutch was more sensitive due to the drivetrain not absorbing much of the load. So that also took some getting used to.

I would like to eventually put an OEM rubber one in it's place, but I figured I would try the marmound mod first on my existing one. The OEM rubber rf1a mounts are also like twice as expensive as a HD one. Go figure

 

Picked izzy up from school today and the damn truck was vibrating soo much when we were backing it in the driveway. Yuck. Doesnt do it in neutral. I think my motor mounts are shot.


I need to hit up hot metal fab

 

I do agree. I don't really like the poly busing I have, but the amount of twist in the drivetrain is so minimal now that I can't really look back. Here's hoping suspension seats help with that.

 

For me it was happening the most at low rpms outside of idle & just driving around. Like on initial acceleration from a stop, etc. It was also always the worst on a cold start when all the bushings didn't have any heat in them from driving around.

At this rate if you give them back your truck again they'll just hold onto it for 2 months this time lmao

What issues were you having with the drivetrain twisting? Clearance in the tunnel?

The suspension seats def helped with the vibration in the butt feel department, but still annoying imo with the dash & basically everything else vibrating at times. ymmv

 

My driver side motor mount perch is broken off the frame. The engine needs to be removed to fix it.
So, I attached a ratchet strap to the engine hoist next to the valve cover and ran it down to the frame.
It’s working well for now.

 

Lol yea I remember you telling me that on the slick rock trip.
I was like "who tf does this guy think he is showing up to do slick rock with no skids & his engine ratchet strapped to the frame"
Clearly here to party tho!

 

Lmao. Fucken owned it too!

 

I have enough torque in the drivetrain to twist the factory mounts when under strain with just the 4.7 gear. It constantly would smack the trans tunnel since I didn't clearance for the twisting.

 

To be fair I had excellent spotters.