My First Taco

Hiyas! I just bought my first Tacoma last week and decided to join the forum. I've owned three other Toys in the past though (an '81, '83, and an '87). The '83 was my fav and it's the one in my profile and avatar pics...at least until I can get some good ones of my Taco.

Anyway, I bought a 1998 Tacoma Xtracab SR5 4x4. The truck has a pretty straight body, but the paint is pretty rough with the clear coat wearing off in several places. It seems to run good and the interior is in decent shape for a 15 y/o truck. It has a 2" Procomp lift on it with 31x10.5 R15 BGF Mall Terrain street tires on stock wheels.

It was due for a timing belt change and I learned my first painful lesson in Tacoma ownership: avoid Stealership Service at all costs! They are way too costly. On the other hand, they have had my truck for the last two days and project at least half a day tomorrow due to finding that many of the bolts they had to remove for service were seized (which doesn't bode well for my future maintenance and modding projects), so I'm sort of glad I let someone else deal with it.

I'm a little nervous about the truck actually. I didn't know about the frame recall until after I bought it and started looking around this forum. The frame looked okay and it's a Florida truck so it might not be a problem, but I was really hoping that this truck would last me for another 20 or 30 years. (My last truck was a '96 F250 that I had for 10 years and I only put about 11,000 miles on it in that time, with most of that being in the first two years I had it, so the Taco won't be getting much mileage racked up on it.) Unfortunately, it's probably not covered by the warranty or buy back anymore, so if the frame has an issue I did notice, I'm pretty much SOL.

Oh, well. These trucks are scarce as hen's teeth so I feel lucky I found one in decent condition that was in my price range. That said, the truck is surprisingly spartan. A/C is the most luxurious thing it has. It doesn't even have a trip odo, which shocked me when I noticed. I guess that just means I have more options for upgrading, lol. I do like that it has manual hubs though. That'll be much better if I ever put a locker in the front (with my extremely limited budget, it'll probably be a Lincoln Locker ).

As an additional note, I'm a huge fan of early '90s Toyota trucks. I like first gen Tacos as well. 2nd Gens...with respect to the 2nd Gen owners...just don't appeal to me. The way the wheel wells are shaped to match the contour of the A-pillar and roof-line just looks goofy to me. And the A-pillar is way too wide. I liked them at first, but the longer I looked at them the less appealing they were. That said, some of the modded 2nd Gens on here look fantastic--especially the ones with the plate bumpers made by Elite and Relentless (wish I could afford one for my '98).

Any way, I'll probably do a build thread for the truck as I do have some plans for it and would like to mine some knowledge on how to do some of the stuff I want to do.

Cheers!

TNB

 

I should say, I'm a bit of a tire snob. If it isn't made by Interco and doesn't say "Swamper" or "Bogger" on the side of it, it's pretty much weak in my book.