What have you done to your Tacoma today? 1st Gen Edition

Swapped to summer wheels from snow tires today and fixed my broken passenger door handle. Nice to have a working door handle for the first time in five months!

 

Whenever I've broken a handle I always feel the need to replace it ASAP, with my luck the other one will break and I'll be locked out of my truck lol.

 

My gawd there’s a lot of pieces to this puzzle



my carpet is gross

 

To further my issues with the crankshaft pulley the other day. I went to tackle it today and to my amazement the bolt was hand tight.. there’s my Play issues.. Could have been so bad! Put a new pulley on and torqued. Then even got the wife to help me put on my Cascadia solar panel and wired it up. Shakedown this week... finally..

 

I’ve seen some conflicting reports lately on replacing Whiteline LCA bushings, so I thought I’d throw my two cents in.

Just replaced my Whitelines after 60k miles, I have the LCA cams maxed out for caster so the bushings are completely crossed up. I wasn’t even sure I needed to replace them other than one of the outer polyurethane flanges was starting to tear - once they were out I could see that the insides were getting pretty torn up too.

I sprayed penetrating oil on them a couple minutes before throwing them in the press, they popped right out with a 32mm impact socket as the press fixture, as it closely matches the OD of the outer bushing sleeve. Pretty easy job, and they lasted a long time and held up well to a fair amount of abuse. I have no qualms about running them again.

 

What’s the best way to get the hold bushings out? I’ve read bottle Jack and some heat.

but I’ve also read you can bend the arms that way

 

Like, other than a press? I believe we used the bottle jack method once on @Digiratus LCAs to get the stock rubber bushings out, it didn’t seem to affect the arms.

 

Good to hear they were 'easy' to get out. Though 60K seems a bit low. I would have expected to get a little more out of them.

 

Not totally crossed up and lots of off-road miles. Seems about right to me.

 

The lower control arm bushings?

I used nothing more than just the stock bottle jack.

 

+1 for bottle jack and heat. I upgraded to a pump-action hydraulic bottle jack, though--it's much easier to use than the screw-action jack that came with my truck.

Bending the arms is a risk, especially if you're in a corrosive climate, but my impression is that the LCA are less prone to bending than the UCA. Some folks put a ratchet strap around the arms to discourage bending, but that wasn't necessary in my case.

 

Added redline hood struts and boom mat thermal insulation under the hood

 

Installing the vinyl finally? I didn't take the side walls off when i did mine.

 

Its not fitting very good

 

If you are bending the arms you are not using enough heat in the right place.

 

Brand new bars on the top! Those things needed to be replaced a while ago. Also got a wind fairing. Apparently helps with gas mileage and noise.

 

Used the shit out of the AC after I fixed it. But no amount of AC helped after I farted

 

Yeah I did mine in the heat of summer so that helped with the pliability. You need to cut a bunch of the outside excess that makes the fit nicer but especially in the back seat area my fit was not as much to my liking. Plus it legit fights you every step of the way. I din't put Jute padding back under mine too which i think helps smooth it out a little.



Once the seats, center console, weather techs, and fridge are in though it's less annoyingly distracting.

 

Is there much benefit to these on these trucks? I would assume that would hold the engines heat in more no? Like I know they absorb heat and protect the hood but I almost feel like it's now keeping more heat in the engine bay.

 

I messed up and cut too much around the shifter too, not a big deal.

definitely am not getting as good of fit around the floor lumps