What Have You Done To Your 3rd Gen Today?

Yup! One of the camshafts is setup differently on the crawl control trucks, since it doesnt need a vaccum pump driven off of the camshaft.

 

Nice! I got the same ones for the fronts plus the DS18 tweeters. I'm going to wait on the rears for now. Let me know what you think after you get them installed. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to wait a couple of weeks before I install mine.

 

For sure!

 

Footwell lights

 

Too hot for my weekend wash so I finally got it down to Firestone for an alignment. They are having a 169.00 lifetime alignment special, great deal so I went with that.

 

Dang those are cool!

 

Buy what you want, think what you want. The laws of physics don't change. And I'm not about to teach you structural mechanics on Tacomaworld.

What you are trying to do with a bed stiffener is stop the (rear) bed sides from spreading outward due to a load on the tops of the bed sides. The rear of the bed is especially a problem because, unlike the front, there is no piece holding one side of the bed to the other--the tailgate is not designed to do this.

To stiffen the bed sides at the rear of the truck you need to tie the bed sides more strongly to the bed bottom.
When the portion of the stiffener that attaches to the bed bed bottom is weak, so is the whole stiffener. You could probably bend the horizontal piece of your stiffener with your hands, which shows that it is weak. Like the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Same thing goes for bed stiffeners. The only strong portion of the horizontal leg is that small triangular gusset in the corner, per my original comment--and it does almost nothing for the overall strength of the horizontal leg.

Like I said, I'm sorry I'm raining on your parade.

I see a lot of people buying similar stiffeners that do almost nothing. they fall into three categories.
1. One or both legs are weak (yours is in this category)
2. The legs are too short to be any good at all (ie 3 to 4" long).
3. The corner (the most important part to be strong) has been weakened by being cut out (ie those triangular pieces which are in your stiffener have been cut out) to make the fabrication of the stiffener cheaper.

 

I like that a lot, might have to do this to mine.

 

There are many members on these forums who have voiced that bed stiffeners are not needed. With that, any increase of "stiffness" is better, right?
If these "un-needed" items are pleasing, who can say they should be "better" ?

I see a lot of very useful tie in locations, but do not care to give up the clear side to slide stuff in and out.

I say a WIN for the OP, and to each their own!

 

Switched the Thule bars over from my Jeep to the Tacoma.

 

I would like to have a flat bottom piece too, but since I have a cap on my bed I wanted to have some extra stiffness instead of the easier slide in/out. I also like the extra tie down loops (I have the Total Chaos stiffeners), but if you want a stiffener you may as well get one that actually does what it is supposed too. Just the engineer in me.

I also am not totally convinced that stiffeners are needed but have seen some evidence they do indeed work for people who have a load on the tops of the bed sides as well as do some serious and bumpy off-roading like I do.

 

Not who you asked, but check out Swisstrax Ribtrax. Obsessed Garage has a big sale during Black Friday with free shipping. I've been very happy with mine.

I almost ordered the blue versions of those.

 

Good looking wheels!

 

I installed the Morimoto X3B led 3rd brake light that I ordered from Cali Raised.
Ordered the one for the 2nd gen since I have an access cab 3rd gen.
It looks and works great. Only disappointed that the flasher module didn't show up too. (I did order it)
I'm sure that they will make it right.

 

Well, at least half of that is definite true. Source material and your head unit does matter a hugr alt, since you cannot amplify crap and make it good. Wiring in 12v is a funnier thing. Speaker wire is not so crucial at all. Optimally it will be actually copper, and for mids and highs under100 watts per channel, 14-16 ga is way more than sufficient. Low frequency 120hz and lower is the only thing you really benefit from having 12ga or larger speaker.

 

Added some pinstripes and light scratches today. We went to test out the suspension upgrade and took Rowher trail to Sierra Pelona and then Sierra Pelona down to Bouquet Canyon Rd. All the obstacles I was worried about were a non issue. However the rest of drive was spicy. With a side of a rock slide that required clearing and touchy-feely bushes.

 

The discussion was about home audio… I couldn’t care less about car audio. Improving audio components in a car is like polishing a turd, it’ll always be shit
Just my unpopular opinion.
Quality wire absolutely makes a huge difference in hifi

 

I peeled off the goofy looking SX stickers from the bed.

 

Crawl control requires an electric break pump to work with the software, non control vehicles get a manual brake pump.

 

Built a small platform for the fridge slide. This slide comes with a little table top extension which seems kinda cool. I have a feeling it will be the bartending station during the trip. This will be my first long trip with a fridge. First test fit pics.