TheNatural's 2012 Totally Expo Trail Limo Build

Yeah I thought it was a little pricey too. It is a really nice mount though. And thanks!

 

@loco I just had a thought. My winter tires are 265/70r17's.... and I'll have 4.56's and a supercharger. I might spend the entire season sideways.

 

Hahaha it'll be a fun time then! I only had 265's and boost, never had the joy of gears too.

 

I did a little maintenance yesterday. Crawled underneith and cleaned the frame up then hit the couple little rusty spots with a wire wheel and some fresh paint (I used a rubberized undercoat spray can). After 107,500km and 3 years the frame is in pretty good shape. The welds seemed to be the worst places, plus a couple spots where there was obviously scratches from trail obstacles. Absolutely nothing to worry about though. I think if I do this every year or two I'll probably die before the truck does, given that the frames seem to be the leading cause of death for toyota trucks.

I also stared at the locker and compressor I got from @loco in Moab. We cut the air line during uninstall, so I needed either a coupler or a new air line to get that thing running. The little blue plastic air line seemed kinda fragile to me, so I ordered a

$80 Rubicon Express ARB Air Line Kit - RE1592

SS braided line with fittings for the ARB stuff on either end. I also ordered a 1/8 BSP filter for the outlet part of the solenoid - the east coasters told me that a little oil often came out with the air when disengaging the locker and it smelled up the cab with the compressor behind the back seat. Hopefully this prevents the problem. I also decided to make my own wiring harness as that was cut up during uninstall too. I'm sure I can get one from ARB, but they're not very complex.

 

you figure out that clunk yet?

 

Nope. That's why I was under the truck when I decided to clean the frame up though. I couldn't recreate the noise and nothing seemed wrong. No play in ball joints or anything else. The LCA bushings look pretty dry but there's no zerk, soooo I think I'm going to ignore that.

 

yea i get an occasional pop/clunk in the front and one more frequent in the back...been chasing them down for a while...i just keep fingers crossed the truck doesn't fall apart on the highway

 

I'm surprised you can notice an occasional clunk with all the squeaking! You have the noisiest truck I've ever had the pleasure of wheeling with.

 

lol thanks i guess....

for the record i fixed the squeak asshole

balls just needed a good cleaning and toss more lube in the bushings.....now i just mostly hear my tires growl

 

Did you end up painting your radiator and relocating your horns when you installed your grillcraft? It looks great in later pics but in the early ones it looks just like mine (big ass aluminum colored streak down the passenger side of the grill)

 

Yup! Horns are relocated and I hit the rad with high temp spray paint. I did a pretty thin coat of paint because I didn't want to reduce heat transfer too much, but it's held up pretty well.

 

I got a couple little things done over the last couple days.
-I finally got the right size t slot nuts to mount the bedrack properly!!!! Pretty excited about that.
-I cleaned up the rust and repainted the skid plates while I had them off, then remounted the IFS and mid skid.
-Now that I have the Ypipe with more ground clearance I can finally mount the transfer case skid, so I dug it out of the garage.
-I got a pair of LED bulbs for the vanity mirror lights in the mail yesterday and installed them. Now all the interior lights are LEDs.
-I got a second rifle case in the mail and mounted it to my Prinsu rack. Also mocked up the location of the maxtrax on the roof rack and realized that my crossbars are not spaced well for the mounting pins. I can't move the crossbars without drilling another set of holes in the rifle cases, so I think I'm going to get some custom brackets made up.
-Removed roof rack in order to give the roof it's annual wash and wax. Haven't had time to wax yet, so I'm cruising around kinda naked.

 

sick ground rack

 

You know it. Keeps my shit from getting dirty on my gravel driveway.

 

Soooo I'm adding a cargo glide to my wish list. I had intended to have the bed rack and RTT easily removable or flip open so the tonneau could be folded back/removed for full bed access. Easily removable is a check - 6 bolts and the rack&RTT can be lifted off with a cable lift in the garage (or by hand if you're feeling tough). The fold open plan isn't working as well. I've been thinking about adding a shock to make it reasonable for me to open by myself and converting the bolts on the opoening side to pins, but I think it would just be easier to use a cargoglide setup to access the whole bed while everything else is on. Link to product page here. Then I'll have the bed rack w/ RTT mounted on top, bed rack shelf just above top of bed line to hold 2x spare tires or action packers or whatever, and the tonneau with a good drawer system so I can have out of sight, dry storage and still be able to get at things at the front of the bed.

 

Swapped out my old LED headlights for some new ones. The passenger high beam was cutting in and out. New ones don't seem as bright, but people don't flash me anymore. Also put LED corner lights in (much brighter) and upgraded the dome light bulb to a bigger LED one as well. Old on left, new on right.

 

Nice lookin' truck.

Later.

 

Moar things accomplished this weekend!
-washed the whole truck and finally waxed the roof.
-The rear skid plate had a couple chips in the paint so I touched it up before mounting it. Finally full skids!
-I made mounting brackets to put the maxtrax on my prinsu. Came out awesome.
-Diff breather relocate, finally
-Ran the new SS braided air line from the rear diff into the cab. Still waiting on a couple fittings in the mail before I can get the locker going.

These are the mounting brackets. They are made out of 3"x3"x1/8" square aluminum, cut to be 3"x3" on top and 1" down the side to match the depth of the prinsu cross members. Gussets were welded in (not by me) on both sides to beef them up a little which was probably overkill. I used the triple economy tnuts from here and the Maxtrax mounting pins on top. Primed and painted in bedliner like everything else

In this picture you'll notice that my ground rack finally has maxtrax -attached- to it!

 

Dear diary,

It has been 19 days since I have purchased anything for the Tacoma. It grows harder with each passing day and I'm beginning to doubt that I'll be able to make it two more months to supercharger day. At lunch time I looked at Airflow snorkels on the internet. It's a good thing that the CAD/USD exchange is terrible and that the snorkels are currently backordered, otherwise I may have slipped. I pray that I find the strength to resist more mods for I must save for this supercharger install.