El Taco Diablo... Mall Crawlin, now with LT for tall curbs

...continuing with the maintenance theme of the day.



Bought these fancy schmancy pads from O'Reilly.





Here's my trick for cleaning the brake pad pins.



Also pulled the driver side coil over and adjusted it 4 turns down. Truck still leaned annoyingly to the driver side. One day I'll get that where I want it.

Did an oil change and repaired a ground wire under the bed (for my rear facing lights) must have gotten caught in some brush. Rerouted it as well.

 

And it also looks like @MattJakobs is in on the action getting me going with a regear.

Shoved this bitch in the back of his friggen Prius to score it.

We got square up on that soon brotha.

 

Realized I'm going to need to do these soon, when I was doing the pads.



So I got them ordered.

 

Man, is that brand new?!! I never get to see anything so clean up here!!

 

Damn near. Not a spec of even surface rust, 100 miles on a fresh set of 5.29s w/ elocker, new brake drum, new bearings, etc

 

i kinda hate you right now!! What a score!!

 

What a badass weekend! (Pic heavy post)

Started out Friday afternoon with my wife and my good buddies @Blue Canary @Motofox and @essjay. Headed up the hill and found a pretty epic spot.



@CemenTRDgen met up with us Saturday morning and we set out to explore Long Valley. The area we were camping in.




Headed out back to the highway, to run over Sonora Pass towards Leavitt Lake.



On the way back to camp, we stopped off and supported the Dardanelle Resort (decimated b the Donnell Fire a couple years ago) by getting some snacks, ice cream, beer (and Jen got herself a sweatshirt)



@TacoJohn4x4 met up with us Saturday night, and we chilled around the camp fire.



Then Sunday was a big day... Niagara Rim Trail was waiting for us to run it.



And run it we did... all with minimal damage to rigs



Wrapped it up by airing down and talking a little shit about the day.

 

Operation Rusty spindle







To make it easier to deal with bearings going out, I'm refurbishing a second set of spindles. That way when I have a bearing go out I can just swap in the other set and replace the bad bearing when I have a chance.

These spindles will get a freash set of bearings, dust seals, etc after we get everything cleaned up and weld in the gussets.

 

My brake pads don't com in a fancy schmancy box like that!

 

The guy at the couter said they are brand new items they carry. They hadn't even gotten a chance to stock them yet.

I saw the box, and said damn, how much are these things? They were around 50 bucks so I said sure why not.

 

Spindles soaked in rust remover most of the day. We wire brushed them to remove everything loose. We brought the mating surfaces back to bare metal. They are all prepped and ready to weld gussets tomorrow.

Then we'll tape em up and paint em.

Hubs soaked all day too. I'd say they came out nicely.






And then we have the pile of parts:
Bearings
Retainer clips
Inner dust seals
Outer dust seals

 

Operation: Rusty spindle (Continued)

I bent the top tabs inward to get a better fit.


Also, Beveled the edges where the gussets are welded under/inside where the UBJs are. If you run SPC or similar, that needs a clip to go around the UBJ sleeve, you don't want the weld to build up in this area. It will make it so the clip doesn't fit.



Robert started the 4th off early, by running some sparklers


I think they turned out just fine



All taped up and first coat is on.



Jen loves it when I get overspray on the lawn

 

I have a spare set I need to get after with this! pretty sure I'll need to do this yearly from now on!

 

I wouldn't be at all surprised with them big ole tires you're runnin. Seems like I have to do it every year and I'm only running 285s.... right now

 

Since it looks like I'll do doing these damn wheel bearings every year, or so... I decided to buy some materials to make dedicated press fixtures for it.

I know I could have just gotten some press plates and sleeves, but once I've got this all together, I think it's going to make the job a lot easier.

 

Made a trip up to see my buddy @MattJakobs today. 1 step closer to being F/R locked at 5.29.

Thank you Matt, for pushin the deal through and baby sitting it till I could come get it from ya




Elocked Tacoma axle... but has already been swapped to 5.29. I'll just swap the 3rds because my shock relocates have already been done to my current Elocker housing.

 

That white claw drinking mothafucka hooked it up! Yeeeee

 

I'm sure there's a thread somewhere that has all the details but what gears and tires are you looking at