What have you done to your Tacoma today? 1st Gen Edition

New one as in a new to you 1st gen? Or new as in a turd gen?

 

Keep poking, there is still hope. What year are you again?

 

Build date is 9/02 so this is my last salt filled winter before the 15 years is up

 

So I've got a vibe at slow speed. As in only when I'm in traffic or coming off a completely stop, once it get to 2nd gear (12-15 mph and up) it goes away. It happens on slowing down and speeding up. I'm thinking it's my drive shaft from what I've read, mainly the rear u-joint. I'm going to grease it Friday (it's been a while) any way to test it?

I know its not the CB because there is little play matter of mm.

 

Here's hoping.

 

Seeing this no. But I wonder how many of these are moog and how many of these are from not even testing them at all.

Reminds me I need to change out my pure center gravity ball joint

 

Started working on getting the rust off! I feel like my frame is about as bad as it can get without needing a frame recall!! I have three years left on the recal so at least I have that! Anyways, this is gonna be a long job! I'm going to work a little bit on it every morning then have a few days where I'm gonna try and take the truck bed off and really hammer out some long days then repaint her with por 15. Here's a few pics of the rust!

 

I thought my frame was bad

 

thats so weird, mine literally just popped right in. barely had to put my ball joint press on it..

 

Is it just the back that's really rusty?

 

Only way I can think of testing w/o removing the drive shaft is to grease them (especially since you know it's been a while) and test out. If the vibes continue, then it wasn't the ujoints? I'd grease the entire driveline.

 

It'll get ya every time

 

Everybody freaks out about lower ball joints failure, but for what I read everywhere, most of the failures are from oem BJ in high milage tacomas and the bolts coming loose for not doing right torque to specs or not using blueloctite.
I have moog 555 installed with oem bolts and moog tie rods. Truck drives like a champ.

 

are moog tripple 5 made in japan also? i know the ac delco ones i bought were also labeled tripple 5 and made in japan. just did both of mine over the weekend, super easy and quick. old ones were oem with 140k and had about 1/8" of play in them

 

Bahahahaha thanks

Yeah the front isn't too bad. Sadly I have yet to find one damn hole in the frame. It's solid!! I was kind of hoping I'd find a hole somewhere!

 

*casually packs frame full of mud and salt while scraping paint off*

 

I am curious...and yeah I'm usually pulling 3rd gear on most passes at 3500 rpm's and higher lol and it does just dandy. Honestly I think my tent helps me on the highway other than the additional weight...going 70mph on a somewhat flat highway I got 20-21 mph with the tent on lol. I about shit my pants when I looked at I had got almost 200 miles on half a tank. I thinks its because the wind flows over the tent and back down rather than circulating in the bed. I think @m3bassman had a representation of the windflow with and without the tent a while back

 

That was the plan, I read somewhere that somebody had vibes and greased the drive shaft and it went away. One can hope.

Last time I greased it the last zerk wouldn't let me pump any thing in. So I'll look into remedies of that

 

What mine looked like

 

On the Moog subject..
when I joined this site, I too fell victim to the cheap parts bandwagon. In some cases it's ok, in others, it's a matter of safety.

I had my front end done with Moog lower ball joints and Moog outer tie rods just about two years ago.
The tie rods had under 20,000 miles and they were replaced, both shot. The ball joints were replaced shortly after that, less than 30,000 miles. Very gritty in the ball and socket, lots of play beginning at that point. Yes they are greasable, but you have to take them out to grease them. Never had to grease the OEM parts.
Both I replaced with OEM. I would have saved money and time by going OEM from the beginning.

The originals from the factory made it over 200,000 miles. Do the math, replace with Moog every 30,000, give or take, until you hit the 200,000 mile mark, (roughly 7 times)... compared to OEM one time replacement.

The Lower Ball Joint is subjected to forces that normal ball joints never see. It spends it's life literally being pulled apart by the front end weight as opposed to being pushed together.
Yes, some bolts have sheared. But there are some that also simply pulled from the socket.

Moog makes good parts, for other vehicles. I will never install another aftermarket part, except for performance parts, on my truck again.