What Have You Done To Your 3rd Gen Today?

What lift, and Tire size? Please

 

After 4 years, I decided to do some undercoating on my truck. Truck is 4 years old and heading into its fifth winter.

Living in the PNW, we get intermittent road salt use. Nothing like the rust belt tho. That’s a whole different ballgame. However, some winters are worse than others here in the PNW.

After lots of research on what products to use I settled on CRC heavy duty corrosion inhibitor 6026 along with Tremclad Rust Reformer spray can in flat black.

I Removed the front skid and rear spare tire. Was surprised at how well everything looked underneath overall. Started to question if I really needed to do this. I do plan to keep this tuck as long as possible so I thought it may be worth the hassle of crawling around underneath the truck on a tarp over a gravel driveway.

I found just mainly surface rust in all the usual places. Such as the spare tire wheel, rear leafs, leaf shackles, rear u-bolt brackets, front and rear diffs, back side of hitch receiver on and around any welds.

Started by washing down the spare tire. Once the wheel and tire were dry I painted over the surface rust with the Tremclad on both sides. Let that dry, then applied the rust inhibitor on both sides as well. Then I did the skid plate.

Damp wiped the entire underside of the truck where possible to remove surface road grime. Wire brushed all loose surface rust. Sprayed the tremclad flat black rust reformer to cover areas of all surface rust. Lastly, suited up with appropriate PPE and sprayed all areas with rust inhibitor, concentrating on the frame and then all other areas. I did not do any cavities or pull plugs. I only did surfaces. Very smelly process.

6 rattle cans of CRC and one can of Tremclad, results were fantastic. Truck looks new underneath. So does the spare tire and skid plate. Didn’t have much time to take many before and after photos. Only remembered part way through. At 58 it’s painful crawling around under there with just a tarp over gravel.

Was it really worth it? I dunno. But it looks amazing and I’m hoping this will keep things rust free as long as I own the truck. I wasn’t able to get everything tho and I will have to monitor things over the next year to see how things turn out.

Now, if I lived in the rust belt I’d pay a shop to do a thorough job instead.

For now you could say it was a total labour of love.















Edit: Oh and of course I stripped a bolt out on the skid plate. Apparently quite common. Oh well, good excuse to get the Pro skid.

 

I'm still running my original 2017 OEM battery. Sometimes the truck is parked for two weeks, sometimes only parked over the weekend.
Starts great so far, but I am keeping a close eye out for any sign of trouble. I can usually get 10 years out of OEM (or close to it).

 

New beef from PRG Products. Steering fells much tighter.

https://www.prgproducts.com/product-page/toyota-tacoma-fj-4runner-heimtie-rod-end

 

I’m 99% sure it’s a 3” w/285/75-16

 

https://www.dashdesigns.com/

 

The funny thing i have the aftermarket one, and the dealership says they change my cabin filter , but they couldn't have because they never disturb the stuff in the glove box, as i have taken a photo of the glove box.
So i called them out on it and left the glove box empty the next time and they did it again, so i asked the general manager what's the deal, why say you do something but never do it.

he took me out to the shop floor with the garage manager and they showed him , he changed the filter himself and gave me a spare and made good on it.

 

Looks quite nice, Caber!! I am impressed the truck looks good underneath, and with your maneuvering on that blue tarp on gravel my imagination is running wild. The tire alone in the grass is like the pat of butter on the hotcakes.

Nice work! (stripping the bolt that is-now get that RCI or TRD skid plate.)

 

We shouldn't have to rub their noses, in EVERYTHING. Should we?

 

Ditch the carrier bearing drop and put in a 3 degree axle shim. That is what fixed it for me.

 

Damn! Nice job.

 

Just ordered from here. Pretty good deal

 

Nicely done, looks like a good day of projecting. Next time when you try to remove the CV’s by yourself, after you remove the hub end, take a piece of paracord and run it through the UCA. Then tie it in a loop and put the CV through and rest the axle shaft on the paracord. That has worked well for me when removing them solo.

 

Thanks for the tip... I'll give that a try. I tried a couple of other things to no success

 

Mountain States

 

Yes, Thanks.

 

Thank you.

 

Got my alignment done today. I asked the tech to shoot for 0 camber, 0.02 toe, and as much caster as possible up to 3. He tried pretty hard, but wasn't able to get caster above 1.7 and even that required 0.5 camber.

All good, I pretty much expected this since I chose to gamble and not do UCAs at this time. All values are still within OEM spec, so I'll drive it for a bit and then decide on UCAs. Also maybe things will improve a bit after everything settles.

 

My caster is in the same neighborhood IIRC and the truck doesn't drive bad at all.