C7mb's Build Thread

Hello everyone!

I am a new owner/member and figured I would get my build thread started, as I have already begun modding my taco.

The truck is a Black 2010 DCSB TRD Off Road with 142k miles. She has a few dings here and there and is in desperate need of paint correction (which will be taken care of in the spring) but other than that, the truck is pretty clean. The primary use of the truck will be as a daily and work truck, but I will also be doing some off road mods (even though there is no where to seriously off-road near me in MA).

As she stood last week:



In my spare time I operate a detailing company, so naturally, the first thing I did when I brought the truck home was strip out the interior to deep clean the truck.




The truck was pretty filthy, to say the least. There was dirt and dust on every surface, embedded in the carpet, seats and headliner, as well as under the carpet. It took a great deal of vacuuming, wiping and brushing to clean the interior frame, and a few days to clean all the upholstery/carpeting. Everything was spot cleaned, shampooed, scrubbed, heat extracted and steamed.





With the carpet removed, I took the opportunity to run some wires for rear footwell lights. Its silly that Toyota didnt think people would want footwell lights but at least they made it easy to wire in some auxiliary LEDs.

For this mod, I used 55 lumen, waterproof LED bolt lights and built an 18awg wiring harness to the rear dome light. This allows the lights turn on when the doors are opened. I then secured the bolts to the vertical carpet by the under-seat storage boxes.






I have not had a chance to finish reinstalling the interior yet (due to the temperature being in the negative degrees) but it should warm up very soon. I also have pneumatic hood and tailgate struts and steering wheel wrap sitting in the garage waiting to be installed.

As for future mods, I am looking into the Relentless Fab front plate bumper, skid plates (no brand yet), high clearance rear bumper (no brand yet), custom roof rack, communications and GPS install, LED exterior lighting, custom interior panels and some suspension parts. I will update this thread as necessary.

Thanks for checking out my build!

 

Nice

 

Found some time to perform a few more cosmetic and functional mods.

The first of which was "refinishing" the steering wheel which had a hole worn in it from the previous owner. It didnt make any sense to buy a used wheel or get this wheel professionally refinished in leather so I bought some bike handle wrap, and wrapped it myself. The new wrap gives the wheel an awesome grip and is very comfortable to hold during long drives. Heres a before and after shot:



Next I replaced the stock junk speakers with some Pioneer speakers that I had laying around. Even with the stock head unit, there is a significant improvement in sound quality. Due to the shape of the OEM speakers, I had to use some 1/8" plywood as a backing plate.


I then installed the Redline Tuning hood and tailgate struts.



While I was under the hood, I also replaced the air filter. The old filter was coated with dirt and the truck got some nice throttle response after the replacement.


Finally, I coated all of the bed screws with POR15 to both protect the bolts from rusting further, as well as clean up the cosmetic appearance of the bed.


Now I just need to get some armor installed!

 

Had some time last week to swap out the gauge cluster LEDs. I used White OSRAM PLCC2 LEDs for the gauge face LEDs and upgraded the green and blue LEDs to brighter OSRAM diodes. Here is a before and after shot of the solder job.





I also sanded the gauge needles to remove the red paint and to frost the needles. Here is a shot of the cluster after everything was reassembled.



This week I will be swapping out the rest of the interior bulbs to white LEDs and should hopefully have a few more mods in the works this summer.

 

Updates!

Derped the wheels black to tie me over until I can get a proper wheel and tire setup.




I also changed the oil for the first time since buying the truck and was welcomed with thick, burnt oil. I will be doing another change in a few weeks to get all of the sludge out of the system. This is how bad it was:



I also removed the second air intake filter to free up some air. This resulted in a noticeable improvement in throttle response.




This week, I performed a full paint correction which took about 23 work hours. Here is a quick cell phone shot of the completed passenger doors. I will have DSLR pictures posted shortly.



And finally, I purchased some Spidertrax spacers from a member on here and got them installed tonight. I have yet to drive the truck, but they look absolutely fantastic.

 

Subbed!