Colinb17's kinda sorta build thread - now with 4-link and long travel

Had a beautiful day to spend working on the truck.

finally took care of the rat's nest of wires and home built aux fuse box i had rigged up. Went with the 12 port blue sea box with the ground buss.

while I was at it, i slapped on some tsunami battery clamps to organize the heavier gauge wires i have going directly to the battery (winch, amp, power to fuse box).

should be all set to work on the trail/rock cameras come wednesday/thursday.

 

Looking tight Col!

I have done none of these things.

I'm lousy at automotive electrical stuff... Glad I've got a few locals that are!

 

i've always been able to make electronics work, but until more recently, didn't really pay much attention to neatness and organization.

this picture is from 20011, since then, more relays and some other wires have been added.

you can see that i just slammed everything onto the factory positive clamp, and spliced two 8 port piece of junk fuse banks together. real crappy exposed little things. when this picture was taken, i had at least 3 fewer lights, so it got even messier. something needed to be done.

 

What's that filter for on the right? Oh, and if I give you $10 and a beer will you clean up my wire job?

 

cover the plane ticket and lodging too, and i'd be happy to do it for ya

the filter is my rear diff breather. i didn't like the gas filler area, because it gets wet and filthy all of the time. where i have it under the hood never gets wet, and usually only get dust. never direct mud spray like other areas of the truck/under the hood. also wanted to run a filter to it, instead of the factory style breather, that to my knowledge, has no filter element in it.

 

No thanks, that's new gears money

You ran your rear diff breather all the way to under your hood? And you threw a filter on it? The hell kind of off roading do you do?

 

lol, well for example, when my front tires hit climbed the rocks you see coming out of the water in front of me, the bow wake had bounced off the walls next time me and come pack at the truck and swamped a good part of my bedsides, including my entire fuel filler area.

might as well have the breather on the axle at that point.

 

Don't forget to take heat into account when you mount the cameras.

 

Hmm. I don't really ever plan on crawling through a creek like that but you never know. Aren't there a couple breathers in the front as well? Did you extend/move them at all? I can see two in my engine bay near the drivers side spark plug area but I thought there were others down a bit lower or something. I remember someone doing a writeup on extending them. Might have been PSU Anthony or whatever.

 

cameras shouldn't really be near heat if my potential mounts work out. if i put one under the truck for the rear it will be opposite of the exhaust. the one/s for the front on the bumper shouldn't bee close enough to the headers to be affected.

the front diff and transmission breathers are under the hood from the factory. in the picture of what my wiring used to be like you can see them. they are the two small circled just to the right of the open fuse box.

i've seen a couple people extend them. i think there was a guy a couple years ago who actually ran them into his bed tool box.

though they're more in the center of the engine bay than my rear breather, they really aren't much lower. i haven't had an issue with them yet, so they'll probably just stay where they are.

 

http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/2nd-gen-tacomas/161637-how-relocate-t-case-breather.html

This is what I was talking about. Now he has three vents up there instead of the two.

 

ah, yeah. i remember seeing that when he first posted. thanks for reminding me i still need to do it

 

Do you have a full, up to date mod list anywhere on here for this thing?

 

hmm, seems i don't. i'll try to put one together in the next day or two and ad it to the OP.

 

Cool. Any plans to add any LED's to your lighting setup?

 

Haha, I've had it in the back of my head for a while now. It doesn't look overly complex but lately I'm not in the mood to drive to the store to pick up parts for it.

Oh yes, please do. I want to do some of the stuff you've done and can never find it after I see you do it and it gets buried like 10 pages back.

 

i'll probably have them at some point, but lockers/gears and a full suspension overhaul are trumping LEDs on the "expensive to-do list"

yeah, i'll definitely get a complete, organized, list up soon. i have pictures organized on my computer a lot better than anywhere in this thread, so if you need, i'd be happy to repost anything you think of. it's a lot quicker than searching backwards.

 

How heavy is your truck?

 

i think it's still under 6000

 

Good to know. Probably the only thing I really liked that you did (besides the sweet rack of course) was all the solar panel stuff. I don't really camp to take advantage of it but I plan on getting a tent and camping more often so that and a new battery would probably be on my list of stuff to do.