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

Replaced my radiator!

After running Isuzu pickups for a few years, I really wanted some Toyota reliability in my life. My Isuzu was 34 years old and required a lot of attention.

So I found a 2000 Tacoma base model with the 2.4. It was a facility truck, or the previous owner guessed, a Mall Cop truck. Has holes in the roof where there used to be a flashing yellow light. With 99,000 miles I decided to pay the Toyota tax, 4,800$ to get something reliable I could spend less time underneath and more time driving.

Ran great for a month but developed a little antifreeze smell after driving on the highway. I was wanting to investigate on the weekend, but.......on the way home. Steam! coming out from the hood. So I pulled over, let things cool down, limped it home and started looking into it. Found some good info on here and on YouTube. Started checking cooling system stuff to discover a crack in the upper radiator! just to the right of the upper radiator hose. Must be a common spot because I noticed that same crack in some of the radiators on YouTube. Thanks for the recommendations on here I found a Denso radiator through the local NAPA. Already bought 2 new radiator hoses to swap out. I have replaced radiators before, so it was similar. Nice not having to remove the fan like some other engines.

The problem was reinstalling the mounting bolts. The new radiator had spring clips instead of bolt holes like the OEM one. Took some advice on here about aligning the spring clips, but could not get the bolts to go in. Didn't want to start threading and I kept dropping the damn things. Well, I picked one up and examined it. It was stripped out a little bit. I still had only managed to get two in and the others didn't want anything to do with getting started. So off I went to the hardware store. In the nuts and bolts section, in the 1,001 bins I found some actual spring clip bolts that fit perfectly, a little longer with a nice point on them to help get started. Got 4 of them so they would all match and be the same size bolt head. And less than 6$. Went in smoothly. Radiator nice and secure.

 

Congrats on the toy addition. FWIW have found the replacement rad side mounts might not line up with the front apron mounting holes. Have swapped the mounts from old rads onto the densos so the front apron holes line up.

 

Replaced my flimsy plastic door handles with the nice metal ones and put in a new vapor barrier while I was at it

 

Swapped out my 24 year-old springs for General HDs and added 5100s. What a difference! Probably didn't need to change out the shackles but, hey, in for a penny...

 

Good point

 

Ah yes I agree with that statement

 

Of all the things said, that was one of them

 

ftfy

 

even more profound, Bravo

 

Alright, break it up, boys: he was just complimenting the license plate that I dreamed about as a 9 year-old.
(Full disclosure: I thought I'd removed that photo. The dog likes to use my truck as a blind for squirrel hunting and caught three the week that I was doing LBJs and springs/shocks.)

 

It's all good. I know these fools well. They called me on my mistake somehow burying my reply in the quote. I then doubled down on them. Just some joking around

 

25yr plates

 

Anyone know what exactly might make my radio not turn on? I know its the head unit and I just replaced it with a new one but it has a green backlight and I am wondering if I can just replace a resistor or something. I read that R753 could go out but i tested it and its fine. Nothing else is obviously fried or anything. Probably a long shot but just wondering if anyones got any ideas lol

 

Replaced the IAC as well as the remaining vac lines. New coolant lines for the IAC as well. Didn’t get to replacing the EGR gasket or harmonic balancer with it getting dark so early now.

Noticed a huge difference in idle with the new IAC. I was chasing a really low idle around 620 for a while, this corrected that. Probably could have cleaned it but figured if I’m gonna go in there, just gonna replace it.

 

Check any grounds. I can't remember where the oem radio ground is. But that's always the first place to start

 

Did you replace with new OEM? When I went to do mine, new oem price was outrageous

 

Yup it stung. $245. I’ve noticed parts availability decreasing for our trucks so thought it was well worth it.