1st Gen Lunchtable Thread - General Discussion

Hm, I wonder why only 01-04s were named in the recall then?

And why did Toyota even come up with that design in the first place?

 

I can speculate that it was a cheap design that was barely acceptable and then manufacturing tolerances got bad from 01-04 leading them to fail even more prematurely. Wild ass guess tho.

 

The advice you'll get is; if you're questioning them, just replace them.

 

If they even look at you funny, replace them.

 

The PO told me he replaced them with OEM. When I had it at the shop for an alignment they said they looked solid. It might be worth checking the torque specs though.

 

I think they fixed the design for the second gens iirc.

 

My truck did something very similar when my battery tie down came loose on a trail and intermittently made contact with the battery posts. Entire truck would have a momentary seizure then go back to normal, but not that bad.

 

So I may have answer for this, if you look at Toyota's previous design changes you'll see that there are frequently hold overs in design, I think for them, this often actually leads to more stable model changes because a lot of what worked before is kept in one way or another (not literally but at least in the thought and operation of a mechanism). The transition from solid axle yotas to IFS yotas saw a major front end design change but even still the design of the wheel hubs, brakes, and steering linkages remained much the same and even have some interchangeable part numbers. Same is true of early IFS to taco IFS, the balljoint orientation is the same between the two. and as far as simplicity and packaging are concerned it is the most convenient on the 1st gen taco. Issue is, the early pickup IFS put spring tension on the upper control arm with a torsion bar. This led to the all the balljoints being pressed into their cups (loaded in compression). Well they retained the orientation, and on a 1st gen the spring load is generated at the lower control arm and this causes the weight load of the truck to push the wheel up and the spring load pushes the arm down, thus loading the balljoint in tension and unfortunately that isn't good as load increases (heavier spring rates, heavier trucks, more extreme terrain), so ou have to be cautious if using these trucks harder than stock and check them more often. Simple as that, is it the most ideal design... no. But it was more than adequate for a stock Tacoma, the BJs regularly make it over 125k with no failure and BJs should be changed more often according to service info anyway.

 

Mine did the same thing when my battery came loose and fell into the power steering pulley... good times.

 

That makes a ton of sense. Nice observation.

 

Thanks. We'll probably never know the whole story with the design. But I think it wasn't terribly urgent or worrisome in testing since 4 models and over 10 model years never saw a revision on the design. We just exacerbate it with how we use the trucks.

 

Yeah mine was literally mostly slid off the tray and only a hair away from the pulleys, held on only by the cables...got lucky

 

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=K15Afe-If7E&feature=share

 

2nd gens don't have the same LBJ issue we have but they do eat through wheel bearings every 100k or less if used hard, it seems like

 

They're easy as hell to change though luckily

 

If I ever get another truck I think it'll be a 2nd gen Tacoma single cab with the a 5 speed and 2TR-FE. It seems like they'd worked out most of the issues with the platform by then.

The only downside is no manual tcase lever.

 

do the FJ case swap on it, best of both worlds

When I was looking for a Tacoma I almost bought a single cab 2nd gen 4x4/manual. Guy sold it before I could go check it out though, but honestly was for the best....7 years later with a wife and a kid there's no way a single cab would work for me lol. But those little single cab 2nd gens do look awesome

 

You're gonna find issues with whatever you look at, really I think a new vehicle with a warranty would be best for you. Plenty of people regularly wheel 1st and 2nd gens, but every little problem looks insurmountable if you're not willing to actually fix any of them.

 

And at the age of these, so much of it comes down to maintenance and quality of repair/modification too.

For example, I Spent a couple of hours last night chasing down weird electrical issues on tbe gfs trailblazer. Turns out whoever installed the remote start just wrapped wires around wires and taped in place. She was considering selling it, but a little quality soldering might fix it right up.

 

Well it was bad enough for a recall. You explanation did make sense, but it seems like the engineers at Toyota would've thought of that beforehand.