04 extra cab

I’ve been an observer and a creeper on this site for a long time. Hope to be able to contribute a little bit now that I’m starting to build on my Tacoma! This is her. She’s a 2004 V6 5 speed SR5 TRD in Impulse Red and Tan interior. I bought it with 69,000 in 2011. It now has 172,000 and I just started modifying it at the beginning of the 2019 summer. The bull bar and the canopy were purchased a month or so after buying the pickup.

list of mods:
ARB Bull Bar
Warn M8000 winch
ARE canopy carpet lined
Bed Mat
Grey wire, rear locker mod
2WD Low Mod
All Pro “Pro suspension 3 inch” with expo leafs and 650 lb bilsteins
All Pro UCA’s
All pro grease-able shackles
All pro Ubolt flip kit
Timbren rear bumpstops
Energy suspension LCA, Steering Rack, sway bar bushings
Vernier style hand throttle (needs improvement)
Marlin Crawler shift bushings (highly recommend!)


At 169,000ish miles I finally made it back to Idaho from South Carolina and always able to perform desperately needed work on my neglected Tacoma.

work accomplished included
-Removing third member and having it rebuilt by ECGS. The pinion would wobble horribly and it was leaking. It was time.
-Rear wheel bearings and wheel seals
-Driveshaft carrier bearing
-Clutch (and this is where I ran into my first, “Ah, F***!” Moment)
I’d wanted to change my clutch for a year or so because it would squeak when you put a heavy load on it from a stop, like getting out into traffic quickly or starting on a hill. While I was driving from South Carolina back to Idaho, I started hearing a bearing noise, which I assumed was the clutch release bearing. I got the transmission out, and started cleaning on the bellhousing and I thought the input shaft looked like it was stepped. I grabbed the pilot bearing from the clutch kit and put it on. It was super loose. I should have taken measurements with a caliper (hind sight is 20/20) but I soon realized that the sound I heard and thought was my throw out bearing was really the input shaft wobbling on the pilot bearing. I also knew that if I put it back together that way, I was liable to be pulling my transmission back out in a couple of years for rebuild because the input shaft wouldn’t be stabilized... so, over to eBay and a factory service manual was ordered along with a genuine Toyota input shaft that came from Saudi Arabia along with the main support bearing for that shaft. The transmission actually wasn’t all that difficult to pull apart and put back together with the instruction of the service manual. It came apart in a 3ish hours (mostly because I was taking pictures of everything and labeling everything and laying everyone out in order and putting things back together right after taking them apart so I could figure out the little tricks) it went back together, minus cleaning the mating surfaces, in about 2 hours. I was fairly surprised to see that the transmission was in really, really good shape! Clearances were all well within spec, and the synchros had very little wear at all. I replaced the shaft and the front bearing and left the rest alone. I wish now that I would have replaced the 1st gear thrust washer with a marlin crawler replacement. The little bit of reading I’ve done suggests that those tend to break when you start getting into twin cases and/ or higher horse power going into your transmission. Back to what work I’ve done!

-when I lifted it, I decided to go ahead and rebuild the front end (new lower ball joints, brand new bolts to hold the lower ball joints (I’ve heard of them snapping and rigs end up with their tire underneath the rockers ),new inner and outer tie rod ends, and new energy suspension bushings all the way around! I have more pictures of the transmission if anyone is interested!
New input shaft in place and ready to go back in the case halves!I used a fold up table with a big chunk of cardboard on it so I could write and label. I started in the top left corner and laid everting in order of disassembly from left to right and top to bottom. It was a bit of extra work, butter organization made reassembly a non issue. Highly recommend this method.Onto the next problem. Once I got the lift in, I decided to adress another issue I’ve had. The factory frame ends on the Tacoma were meant to support the factory bumper and that’s about it. After a few hard pulls trying to move down trees with my winch, the bull bar suddenly had a funny wiggle to it. I let this go for years, which I’m ashamed to admit, because I wasn’t using it for camping anymore and wasn’t going to be using the winch. I also was several states away from my tools to do the job, so it stayed that way for a long time. And this is what it looked like when I finally pulled it apart...

The face of the plate was cracked, and the entire weld was cracked on the passenger side!
A cutting torch made quick work of that! Much better! I used 1/4 plate and welded a bit on the back it’s welded all the way around now too! I’m been thinking that I should go back and drill a hold in the bottom corners to let the frame be able to drain so it doesn’t collect water. I’ll try to do that in the next couple of weeks. The ARB Brackets are kind of goofy. Ended up welding this gusset in to support it, because the bracket was also bent. I didn’t realize though, that the skid plate attach bracket is supposed to bolt in between the frame and that bracket..... so I’ll have to figure out a way to get the skid plate bracket back on before I get into anything too nasty.

I haven’t had a chance to pull on it yet, but it has to be better than it was stock! And yes, I did paint all of that.

That’s it for now! More to come! I’m in the process of designing a dual battery system and have gathered all of the parts for the 231mm tundra brake upgrade!

my current wishlist is
20” light bar driving beam
Ditch lights flood beam
Reverse lights flood beam
Camp light flood beam
Remote mounted power inverter
Winch isolator (parts gathered, just trying to figure out the dual battery setup before that)
In cab winch switch
Relocate winch solenoid box under the hood
Fridge/freezer
Abs delete and rip all of the excess hardware out associated with it
5.29’s
Dual cases with 4.70’s
Front locker
Air compressor
Rear disc brakes
Bead locks and marginally bigger tires
And of course, what v6’s wish list would be complete without a super charger!

 

Welcome to TacomaWorld!

 

Welcome aboard

 

Welcome to TW

 

Welcome to TW! Cool build!

 

Welcome to TW!!

 

Thank you all! Appreciate all of the passive support and the eye candy over the years.
Happy wheelin’!

 

Welcome to TW!