Anthony y El Burrito Blanco

I bought my truck from a Craigslist ad posted by a guy up in Monterey. I had just been in an accident and my vehicle was totaled. I saw this Tacoma come up on Craigslist and before long I was driving it. We met up in Paso Robles right outside of where I used to live in San Luis Obispo. It had a huge heavy camper shell with a full lumber rack, bald misworn tires, a bad headlight, but other than that, it was perfect. No rust - barely even any spots on the muffler. I guess it was a girl's truck before this and she worked on an organic farm in the Oxnard and he scooped it up from her when she had to move up to Canada for work and the wheelbase was declared too short (?). Anyway that was his story, but I took it. The price was at least a thousand or two below any other trucks of similar year / milage. It had 97k when I bought it.




2008 Regular Cab Prerunner
2.7 2TR 4 Cylinder / 5 Speed Manual
140k Miles

Suspension
Front
TRD Take-off CO's
TC Cam Tab Gussets

Rear
TRD Take-off shocks
Recall Leaf Packs

Wheels / Tires
Dick Cepek 16x8
BFG Rugged Trails 265/70/R16


Exterior Mods
Leer Camper Shell
Ebay headlights
Tinted taillights
Stock Fog Lights
Satoshi Grill
Painted front bumper

Interior Mods
Painted carpet black
Carpet in bed
TRD floormats

Maintenance
Replaced spark plugs, diff fluid, trans gear oil @ 100k miles
Replaced front brakes @ 100k miles w/ Brembo blanks & Hawk HPS pads
Mobil 1 synthetic oil changes @ ~4500 miles

Future Mods
Sell


Here a shot from the craigslist ad:

 

First I decided to clean it and get some new tires. I cleaned out all of the junk left in the cab. I found a cracked piece of a bong, some dirt, a couple vintage dress patterns, a couple empty medicinal baggies - you know the usual stuff. A couple of those things definitely accounted for the distinct skunk smell.

Here it is with the camper shell removed (the lumber rack was making the whole truck nose dive and roll when braking and turning)



The cabin air filter for the cab was a little bit dirty and needed replacing or maybe I could have just dusted it off and reused it? lol



Under the hood smelled a little (lot) like manure so I detailed the engine bay:



Cleaning out a little bit of debris behind the rear license plate I found this:



Lol

 

Dude, given today's cureent .22 situation you could easily neckbeard that bullet for attests $5-10

 

And congrats on the truck!

 

So now the truck was more or less clean - I ordered some new floor mats because it looked like someone had spilled bong water in the cab and the old carpet mats caught most of it.



I bought new tires (265/70/16 Goodyear Rugged Trails - I know they're not the most popular tire, but I needed something quick and my friend could hook me up with them at his shop on short notice - those baldies - the original dunlops !? were about to blow. I also picked up a set of 2014 TRD struts and shocks and had them installed. So sad - I wanted to do it myself but I didn't have the tools at the time.

 

Lol, that's what I've been trying to do with the rest of the stuff I take off the truck. I missed out on that one - like 3 gallons of gas too!

Thank you!

 

So now it was time to take it to the next level and work on the truck myself with the little vehicular skill I have:

I painted the rear wheel wells because they were salt / mineral stained from driving all over that farm:





I used Duplicolor Undercoating spray - at under $5 from Autozone a can it's good stuff for this.



I should have hit the frame at the same time, but I got to it later when I had the wheels off installing spacers.

 

Next up were the headlights. I had one OEM (driver's side) with a badly yellowed and cracked lens that didn't leak and an aftermarket one with a nice clear lens that did leak lol. I took the plunge and went for the BHLM at the same time I had them pulled apart. I had bought a used OEM replacement for the driver's side on eBay, but the thing was missing 1.5 installation tabs which was not mentioned in the description so the seller gave it to me for free rather than pay for shipping back to Florida from CA. I used the lens from it and the housing from my existing light.









There's the gallon or so of water that poured out of my passenger side light. j/k

I found it easiest to get to the difficult bolt on the outside of the engine bay by going under the bumper rather than through the fender liner:







I reconditioned the headlight lenses by a cross between this thread:

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/how-to-tinting-tail-lights-the-right-way-pics.84694/

and this how to by ChrisFix (an awesome guy)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEJbKLZ7RmM

and on with the headlight restoration / BHLM:



The difference in the turn signal lenses on the OEM and aftermarket lights.



We have contact!

Please keep in mind before this the most I had ever done on a car was change a few flats, take apart an air intake to spray out the throttle body (which stayed attached to the the engine), and change a bulb in a headlight lol.





After polishing and buffing with a microfiber towel:





Little did I know that I would pulling one of these apart again and taking them out twice to get them to be completely sealed. I finally used silicone the way I used to seal in houses when I was a painter and smush it into the cracks with my finger and wipe off all the excess. I failed with the butyl tape, but they're held together well with it and the silicone 'sealed' the deal for me lol.

 

About this time I started getting more into looking at Tacomaworld and I found something called a "Satoshi grill" Interesting. The mother of my landlord's family is from Japan, I guess Satoshi is a name. Other than that... I have no idea what it is except it looks sweet and can be useful for putting lights behind that people can't steal easily (or appear to not be easy to steal).

The thing of it is, they tend to be pricey and I'm a college student with a shoestring budget. Here was my solution:



Enough to make about 4 grills lol.



Had these from another project - from the electrical aisle at Home Depot.



Also from Home Depot (for the small side triangles)

A lot of guys use fiber glass on for this, but I found a youtube video where guys would cut up the discarded part of the grill and use the parts in this crazy complicated way. I just kept it simple:



Thats from the center of the grill that comes out. Just put it where most people fiber glass and epoxy it in place:







A little unskilled bondo work lol (busted out the orbital sander to make this go quick)







Painted the grill black after cutting it to size. I didn't care if my bondo work wasn't perfect - I knew I was covering it in bedliner so it didn't have to be glass smooth.



Zip ties to secure it to the clips which I epoxied onto the back of the grill:



Used the goop for keeping the triangles in place:





And voila!



Satoshi on a shoestring budget!

 

So I guess the next thing on the list was those steel wheels. I didn't mind them, but there was something better in store for this project:



Yay! Dick Cepek DC-2's.

One caveat - I don't like the silver polished aluminum because since shaving my badges and selling them for $70 on ebay, I had no more chrome / silver on my truck!

Solution:



I masked the wheels tight to make sure that only the faces were painted and the barrel inside and out stayed factory smooth:



Sanded down for priming.



While priming I found that a 2 gallon bucket made a huge difference. Balancing the wheel on it, I could just spin the wheel and keep the spray can in the same spot. This helped out huge. Once in awhile the can would spit a drop of the bedliner and I would just use my gloved finger to dab the drop flush with the rest of the paint.





Painted the grill at the same time:





Lurking on Tacomaworld classifieds one night I found someone selling BORA 1.25" spacers. I bought them for a deal and put them on the next week:





I took this opportunity to paint the hubs and the drums with bedliner. I didn't have time / the thought to paint the calipers - that will come. They'll go black like everything else. I also painted the rest of the wheel wells front and back.

A test fit:



So the wheel spacers made a huge improvement in handling. The truck had seemed squirrely on the freeway at speed and with the spacers and the stock wheels this thing handled like a champ. It looked way better without the center caps and with the hubs painted:



This was a crazy day. I got up around 5 to help my friend Mr. Hong who's in his late 50's with the Cambodian New Year event at Eldorado Park in Long Beach. He's an awesome guy and does most of the setup for the temple and other stuff like make games for the kids. Here we are in the morning (well, the truck while we were working anyway).





Tacomas x2 lol

Today was the day I was finally getting the wheels put on.

The new wheels made a huge difference to my truck's appearance:



LoL. I saw this as I was walking back from the dealership after dropping my truck off to get the new wheels put on. Made me laugh because it was like a momma truck and my truck was the baby (pandas?) I guess lol.

Here's the first pic with the new wheels:



And a couple more lol

 

Nice Tacoma you got going on there!

 

I knew that all my work couldn't just be cosmetic. I had just hit 100k so I figured I'd do the transmission gear oil, differential gear oil, and a regular oil change since the guy I bought it from had said he changed it around 9Xk?

First up, the transmission gear oil:



I had everything for the job - or so I thought. The first quart killed my cheap Amazon pump:

$23 CUSTOM ACCESSORIES Pennzoil 36670 Pennzoil Fluid Transfer Pump - Quart

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001DKQZ9Q/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Then I was left with a truck that couldn't move and oil that couldn't get into the transmission until I remembered how people make frosting go onto cakes in bags with a hole in one end. Out came the zip lock bags and in went the oil into the transmission after about 10 bags or so lol.

Up next were the regular oil change and the differential gear oil change. Again this is the first time I do any of this stuff in my life...

All specs for torque, fill amounts, etc. were gotten from this great website.

Here was the scene that day. Oh and I tinted the tail lights that same day too.



I bought two pumps this time and only needed one:

$9 Plews 55001 Lubrimatic Fluid Quart Pump, Fits Standard Quart Bottles

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BQW5LK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The lights came out pretty good. I didn't even wet sand them after. The Rustoleum x2 clear lays down pretty smooth. I was going to wet sand them and polish them like I did with the headlights, but they looked good to me so they stayed that way.



I masked off the backup lights because it's already a little hard to see backing up:



Here's how they look on the truck:



The transmission fluid change made it feel like I was driving a new transmission. The oil that came out of it was like water, so maybe it had never been changed for 100k. Anyway, I'm loving the transmission now. So smooth!

 

Thank you! It's been keeping me busy, out of trouble, and having fun.

 

So that gets me caught up to today. I cleaned it up a little and took it out to the beach to take some pictures. A couple other random ones too - good ole traffic (which I'm usually not in, but I am coaching youth soccer this month in the mornings), a field trip to the Long Beach Grand Prix with our students from the after school program where I work, and the truck at the beach.











I want to say thank you to all the people that made awesome how to's on Tacomaworld, Kris from Toyotaparts4u.com, and to everyone else on here who keeps the ideas coming!

Next up: New hood w/ hood scoop, painted rocker panels w/ bedliner, tinted windows, and a little dent fix on the driver's side. Stay tuned over the summer lol. Thank you again. Take care.

- Anthony

 

never been a reg cab fan but i like this one for whatever reason lol

 

Thank you, it's perfect for what I need right now!

 

Sweet truck! Regular cab version of my truck

 

Looks real good! Nice work.

One can save some money by buying a vehicle with minor cosmetic stuff and doing it up himself. I did a lot of that in high school and reselling them.

 

Thank you. Thats what I wished I would have been doing in high school instead of playing video games lol. Now I get to start late, but at least I get a chance... This is a lot of fun.

 

One more shot of my truck in the parking lot next to where I stay.