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

Yeah I looked into the replacement reservoir, trying to avoid any unnecessary spending since I'm looking at $400+ for a couple pieces of plastic to put my door back together. If I can catch a break on that stuff maybe I'll splurge on a new bottle or just put it under my matress and see how long this one lasts

 

Not really. I rotated my tires late august and didn’t notice anything odd when I checked things out.

 

Jumped and plugged it in.

Let it sit too long and the cold always seems to get to it.

 

Oil showed up today so I rebuilt the shocks after work.

I was going to change valving again, increase rebound a little, decrease low speed compression (again), but instead I am just going to pull the last bleed screw and see how that feels.

I did increase preload on the rebound shims some... Replaced the .08 with a .06.

The main seal and wiper were a little beat up, probably not keeping the shaft clean. One of the shocks had good looking oil, the other did not and definitely had low air pressure.

 

Shock tuning is another thing I'd like to learn.

I just take them apart, change the wear items and oil, and put them back together

 

Read a lot of stuff, then change no more than 2 shims at a time!

 

Ya... that seems like a black hole I'd get sucked in to. I'd be rebuilding shocks every other weekend... until I started rebuilding them every weekend.

 

This is a bmw 6-series x-active rear bar that I got for... $60? And another $50 in valve and fittings, hopefully I get mounting worked out and have it installed soon.

 

That's basically the process of learning to do it. Only done it twice and learned a ton about achieving the feel I want. You get really fast at taking them apart and putting them back together with your changes.

 

I would have at the very least expected a clunk if they were OEM. But like @Dirty Pool has mentioned before, if they are not OEM IIRC they are constantly having pressure added (almost like spring loaded) as the stuff wears out. Which could then make no signs of play and I assume no clunk as well.

 

So I have a "new OEM" steering rack purchased thru my local dealer that agreed to price match the ~$500ish price other dealers have online...

its been a few months now and I have isolated a substantial amount of the steering play I am experiencing to the rack.

it turns out the rack is a "rebuilt OEM" NOT a NEW rack.

was I just under a rock on this?

 

I'm pretty sure there haven't been "NEW" steering racks in a long time, just like there haven't been "NEW" CVs in a long time

 

well now I feel silly.

and I now apparently must figure out rebuilding/tuning this rack (if possible) to reduce the play.

 

There isn't much inside besides some seals and some wear parts like guides. If you have play its probably from the guide bushings gone bad. That's one of the items changed in a rebuilt rack

 

yeah its got like 4k miles on it...

and is the new style guide...

I'll pop it open and look, maybe they didn't replace the spring?

 

If you grab the rack shaft and the rag joint and try to hold the shaft and rock the rag joint from side to side can you feel slop, that would be the bevel gears and I don't think those are replaced in a reman

 

Now that I have all the right tools to do it. I'm actually not that slow at rebuilding them.

The problem is, shit like that I tend to over think and make adjustments. I could totally see myself adjusting it back and forth, from almost the same set up, in an endless loop.

 

I mean you have to know what you're feeling and that can be difficult to begin with. You might think you know what a compression change feels like or when rebound comes into play but I'd bet you'd only be partially right. Once you have a feel for what changes what you can get pretty close to what you want rather quick. There is no "perfect" with single front or single rear (per side) shock systems. But you can get very close and even closer with bypasses when it comes to the rear. As long as you know when to stop chasing perfection, you'll hit a point where your changes to one area start to become a detriment to others.

The spring handles the weight and the shock controls the spring, keep that in mind and it all becomes a lot easier to think about.

 

Dang I legit thought I bought a brand new OEM rack in 2017.





IIRC there was even an option between choosing "New" and "Reman" from Toyota.

 

Ya, I'm going to probably need to get familiar with this anyway. By winter's end the plan is to have triple bypass in the back and coilover + triple bypass in the front.

If nothing else, I need to start familiarizing myself with getting the bypasses adjusted.