TX Bat's Pro Build, Off-Road, and BS Thread

I haven't been around much lately. I have been busy with work (trying to prove my worth) and a total kitchen renovations.

My wife and I moved to Allen, TX almost seventeen years ago. We did several remodels/renovations shortly after moving in the the house. The kitchen was saved for last because we knew it would be the most expensive and we wanted to make sure that it was the most "modern" room in the house. It was still, mostly, an early '90s builders grade kitchen.

Here are some before pics.

Note the small island.




To the right of the 'fridge.... There's no room for much of anything there. WTF?


Also note the opening to the right of the ovens. That is the entrance to my office. It was a formal dining room but who uses those?
The pantry is the closed door to the right of the office entrance.


The finished product will be in the next post.

 

Oh yeah! What a difference!





I blocked off the entrance to my office. Now I have extra storage in the kitchen and a closet in my office.


My wife also has a new desk.

 

One unexpected addition....

A cat door. It goes from the kitchen to my office.

This is Karen. She complains a lot. We adopted her in mid December. We have two boys that are 13 and 6.

 

Another unexpected replacement. We hadn't used our dishwasher for quite a long time because the air gap kept flooding water all over the counter. Because we hadn't used it, the dishwasher was busted.

We got a new one. He works much better.



Stows away real nice when not in use.

 

Back to Tacomas

This is a random addendum. I had built a carputer into my '01 Taco. It was Alpine Audio with a PC tor the entire interface.

I had AM/FM/Digital Radio, DVD player, MP3 Player, Sat radio, navigation, all combined into one unit. All about 5 years before any head units offered all in the same package.

I ended up replacing this with an actual Alpine head unit that had all of the same features. The only reason I did that was because the carputer really sucked the life out of my battery.

 

So if you could only choose one between the Softopper and the tri-fold, which would it be?

 

Tri-fold.

It has a little bit more security than the Softopper.

I would say that I run the Softopper about 7 to 8 months of the year now. Circumstances have changed though. If I were driving into work every day, I would keep my tri-fold on for most of the time. My truck is more of a garage princess for the past year.

Today, I just took off the Softopper so that I can put on my tri-fold. I'm about to go in to my office for the second time in the past year. It's downtown Dallas, so I want the security.... For now.

I do like that I can switch between the two, with minimal effort.

 

Took the bumper off....




Mounted the winch...



And it's finally installed!



Got a little help from my son and his friend.

I ended up removing my skid plate so that I could maneuver the bumper back in place. We struggled before removing it and it was a breeze after it was removed.

I think that tires are the next item on the agenda.

 

Nice Taco Pro

 

I did this last weekend but I should add it here.

It was probably about $4.

I added some rivet nuts in the fender wells and mounted my box full of recovery gear into the bed.

Might as well add it now to keep track of it.





Easy in and out, if needed.

 

Just going to throw this one out there for now.

 

It's been a little wet in Port Aransas this week.

 

This is going to be fun....

 

Rear shocks (Fox 2.0 with LSA) and Icon AAL are on in the back. Also did a U-bolt flip.

The hardest part was cutting the bracket and rivet out of the leaf pack. The bracket on the Icon AAL interferes with it.

The lower shock mount was a little rough too. The bushings were a very tight in the mount position.

It took about four hours to do the passenger side and then about two hours to do the driver side. It would go a bit better if I did this sort of thing more frequently.

I will need to get to the front tomorrow.

 

LOL!

I'm getting to it. Suddenly I have been busy.

 

Out with the old.

 

In with the new.

 

She sits much better now.