Diet Taco... trying to keep things light

Ha! I literally just printed out the before and after pictures yesterday so I can take them to a shop next week to have the same thing done. The exhaust vibrates against my BudBuilt skid plate, even with the supplied spacer and some big-ass washers added. Gets worse in the cold for some reason, and it's cooling down here at night.

 

Dumb Ideas

Well in the rush to get some last things done on the truck before we left CA things didn't always go as planned. Or perhaps more to the point the planning and forethought was severely deficient.

Example number one was failing to carefully check dimensions on something before ordering. I've got a 10x20 camo net that I plan to use for expanded shade in those rarer cases when I'm camping in a single spot during daylight hours in warmer weather. I'll be using the Fiamma awning and one side of the deployed Flip-Pac as a starting point for erecting larger shade cover but will probably use one or two tent poles as well and was thinking about what to put on top of the poles as spreaders. I was thinking a plastic plate or platter with a hole drilled in it for the top of the pole was sensible and easy, but hey why not something built for exactly that job! I checked some surplus stores online for camo net spreaders and sure enough found some. I'm still not sure exactly what I thought the dimensions were or if I confused diameter and radius or something, but in my head I thought these might be perhaps as large as two dinner plates...

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Erm, no... Four feet in diameter. And very heavy. That hole in the center is more than 1" in diameter, it would just slide down my whole tent pole and fall on the ground. I had thought the store shipping it was just doing the standard over priced shipping and handling charge until the box actually showed up and I figured something was not what I expected before even opening it.

So still looking for a reasonable camo net spreading solution. I will probably jury rig my own at this point.

Example two of a bad idea was my ingenious plan for UV proofing/water repelling the Flip-Pac tent. Now I know just the stuff to use for this, other people have reported on it, but it seemed crazy to stand on a ladder all day with a little squirt bottle and rubbing the stuff in with a rag. So...

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Application over a wide area and rub it in with a mop. Should work great! I'm so clever!

Two problems. First, I have no idea why but the Flip-Pac tent was absorbing way less than the Nikwax bottles estimated for the given area. Second would be a combination of over spray and a lot of dripping. A lot of the Nikwax ended up on the truck. I tried to rinse this off as it happened but clearly a residue was left behind on the windows where it dripped. I figured it was limited to those areas and the truck was getting a wash and wax in two days anyway.

Well, my poor detailer learned that this stuff actually got effing everywhere all over the truck. It took a lot of elbow grease to get it off and they broke out the buffer in a few places. Anyway, it is all off and the truck has a nice shiny wax coat but oh my goodness what a stupid idea.

I'm hoping that I'm done with quick rush jobs for awhile. In a few weeks I'll be out in Vegas with the truck for a trip and plan to do a tire rotation and anti-seize the cams. I'm going to go to a DIY shop in the area with a lift and air tools so I figure that is a pretty simple task that I won't feel compelled to rush through!

 

Yup x2.

This is the single most effective mod I can make on this longbed pig to improve breakover angle and just improve general off road clearance. Such a horrible OEM design.

 

This was the very first thing I did.

 

Scheduled for next Friday at the exhaust shop.

 

Do you have a part number or link for the heat shields? The above link isn't working.

Thanks?

 

Check out the products discussed in this thread area below, here's a link that works for me:

$39 Thermo-Tec 11600 1' X 6" Pipe Shield , Silver

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004PIHZOM

 

Ah, I hadn't actually provided a link there but the TW parser that links to manufacturer names so TW can get referral bonuses automatically added a generic link to Amazon (like I bet it just did when I typed that here). @HeavyThumbs has you covered - that's the link to the part. And I went back and edited the original post and linked to the product there in place of the auto-generated generic link.

 

I had the exhaust reroute done this Friday, and it turned out great. The crossover is now just under the trailing edge of my transfer case skid plate. I need to get under there tomorrow and removed the BS skid plate spacer that was needed for the factory crossover, and I'll try to grab some pictures then. Looks nearly identical to the OP's set-up. I have the heat shields coming from Amazon, and some POR-15 High Temp Coating on the way from Summit. I live in salt land, so I'm going to paint the old and new pipes from cats to muffler before putting on the heat shields. I think I'll chop the tailpipe and paint it too.

One added benefit is that the interior drone associated with the TRD exhaust on my Baja has been dramatically reduced, I read another post somewhere that claimed this benefit, and now I can testify in the affirmative. It really did quiet the the system's lower frequencies down inside the cab. No idea how or why, but I'll take it. Sounds the same outside.

I also blew the diet and binged on a set of heavier tires. I replaced the factory 265/70/16D BFG All Terrain KOs with 265/75/16E KO2s. BFG doesn't offer a D load rating tire in that size, so I picked up 3.4 pounds per tire. I don't notice any difference in performance other than the fact that these have new tread and my old ones were getting worn down.

Finally, I had a Wheeler's 1.5" single-add-a-leaf set installed, but I'm having a problem with the springs. The Wheeler set advertises a 1.5" increase in height. With the factory 1.75" Baja lift in front and everything else stock the truck sat dead level. To get rid of rear end squat when carrying ANYTHING, I added these springs. This should have resulted in a rake that was very close to a factory OR truck, just about an inch-and-a-half higher all around. However, the rear is now 2.5 inches higher! Do these things settle, how long does that typically take, and is a 1 inch settling realistic? I'm worried about my rear brake lines and shocks which can take an extra 1.5 inches, but not much more off road. The rake is also pretty extreme. I'm driving it very carefully and waiting to hear back from Wheeler's. Help!!!

 

It will settle. Go flex it out a bit.

 

Ugh, it has been too long since having a break and I miss my truck. Fortunately just a few days until I'm out in the truck using these...

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It will have been worth the wait!!!

 

Wish I could join you. Have fun, be safe.

 

Mojave National Preserve - Part 1
November 2016

In September we moved back to Maryland and left the truck in storage in Las Vegas. Having been settled in MD for a few months it was time for solo camping trip without the family. I could use the break and some solitude! This week was the 49er encampment in Death Valley along with another event in Panamint Valley which would make for not much solitude there. Back in April I had run the Mojave Road pretty fast and so I decided to return to Mojave National Preserve and spend more time exploring at leisure. The weather was forecast to be about perfect - sunny, no wind, mid-80s at low elevations and low-70s at higher elevations.

Monday morning left the house around 4:45AM EST for the airport, caught a direct flight to Las Vegas. Southwest has very cheap fares between BWI and LAS which is one of the reasons the truck now lives in Las Vegas. Got into Vegas a bit before 9AM PST, took an Uber to the storage facility. Truck started right up after reconnecting the battery. Besides provisioning at the grocery store I had some other odds and ends to purchase and a little repacking of the truck to do. Grabbed lunch in Vegas before finally getting on the I-15S around noon.

First stop of the day was Valley Wells. This site is just north of the 15 at the Cima Rd. exit. It had a smelter at it around the turn of the century. There are distinctive black slag heaps at the site. Otherwise at first glance it is hard to tell much of anything is there. All the large structures have since been removed but there are a number of foundations and various concrete tanks used in the processing. The most distinctive part of the site are multiple dugouts excavated from the side of a wash that use a hard caliche layer for their roofs combined with some basic wood framing.

Having spent almost twelve hours getting here from my bed in MD it was a nice spot to just wander and explore slowly. It was really good to be back in the desert and this is sort of a classic eastern Mojave landscape to take in. Given the harsh mid-day lighting and slight haze I decided to break out my less frequently used IR converted camera for a shot.

Valley Wells
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I drove just a little up the road to a small fenced cemetery associated with Valley Wells. There are actually some modern headstones here for some folks who passed away almost a century ago along with the more recently departed.

Crossing back across the I-15 to south on Cima Rd. for a number of miles took me to the Evening Star Mine. I visited this site almost 8 years ago to the day and thought it would be a nice spot for a sunset photo and a decent camping spot for the night. This mine has a truly gigantic head frame still preserved and a few outbuildings. I was a little sad to see that a red tin shack that had previously been standing near the base of the head frame had collapsed at some point in the past few years, the desert does slowly reclaim the land on its own. I walked and climbed around the site to find a decent composition for sunset and finally found something likely to work OK. I returned to the truck for an afternoon snack and then headed back up the hillside with my camera gear for sunset.

You really never know for sure how a sunset is going to go so you just have to be ready to take advantage of whatever may happen. There is usually about half an hour over which options present themselves. In this case the sky was mostly clear meaning it was unlikely there would be a colorful sky in the twilight right after sunset. Unfortunately there was also cirrus clouds way to the west which might block the last rays of sun right before sunset. All you can do is watch and wait.

In the end the sun did manage to find a crack in the cirrus right as the sun was at the extreme horizon which provided a patchy brilliant red sidelight to the foreground. It all lasted less than a minute. Twilight was as predicted lack luster, but that didn't matter as the sun had put on a show right before it dropped below the horizon.

Evening Star Mine
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It was getting dark and chilly as I climbed down the hillside. I relocated the truck to a flat spot for camping (I had tucked it out of the way for the photo) and was getting ready to put up the Flip-Pac when I noticed the cirrus in the far west were providing a bit of color along the horizon. There are a lot of Joshua trees around the Evening Star Mine so it seemed worth taking a nice if cliche sunset shot.

Joshua Tree Sunset
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Fairly exhausted having been up since about 1:30AM local time I had more of a snack than a dinner and them collapsed into my sleeping bag for the night. I slept like a log.

Tuesday morning I started the day exploring the various shafts and small buildings near the Evening Star Mine on foot. There are a few brilliant green tailings piles around area that look almost unreal. Unfortunately there is also some unsightly fencing put up by the NPS to protect fools from falling into shafts. This effort by the NPS is really mixed.

In some cases they have closed shafts in an effective and aesthetically pleasing way. They weld iron gates with bars spaced widely enough to allow bats to enter and exit but keep people out set a good ten or twenty feet into a shaft. You almost can't see the bars until you walk into the shaft. In other cases they have strung ugly chain link fence around entire pits even topping them with either barbed wire or concertina wire. This is an eyesore and completely ineffective as every fence I encountered had either been cut in one location or had gaps to slip through.

Now, I understand at one of the larger and better known sites like the Evening Star with practically drive up access it is probably sensible to seal the shafts. However, through the rest of the trip I'd discover insanely over engineered and often unsightly caps on shafts that were in extremely remote sites that required over a mile of walking to get to. Frankly this is insane and a complete waste of money. Somewhere in the NPS are a collection of lawyers and administrators that should have just been dropped down a remote open shaft instead of wasting dollars on these pointless projects.

For the rest of the day I explored a variety of sites in the Ivanpah Mountains. There are a number of claims and mines throughout the hills there. Some were functional mines while others were really homesteads that barely worked the mines to maintain the claim they lived on. There are a lot of structures out there mostly wasting away. A few are better maintained. It was a pleasant day driving on old roads and sticking my nose into various shafts and structures.

Abandoned Workshop


Abandoned Equipment


Nice spot for an afternoon snack
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As the day was coming to an end it was time to worry about some logistics. I was meeting up with @Crom this evening and we were going to explore together on Wednesday. Nick was making better time than originally planned so I needed to get to Baker to meet for dinner. I really didn't have a sunset shot planned at all but figured I'd just keep my eyes out along the way. Headed down the I-15 from Halloran Summit I noticed a nice stack up of mountains to the west slightly enveloped in haze. Seemed about as good a composition as I was likely to get. It took a bit of fast driving down various dirt roads to get to a decent vantage point in time. In the end it came out pretty good for a last minute shot (I think at least).

Halloran Sunset
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I made it to Baker with about ten minutes to spare before Nick showed up. I got a quick look at his legendary rig in the dark. We ate some fast food and then headed out to camp. The initial plan was to camp near Seventeen Mile Point which is on the Mojave Road just off of Kelbaker Road but there wasn't much there so we pressed on a little further. Nick noticed we were almost to one of our planned exploring locations and I recalled that it should have a decent camp spot so we just continued to there. Indeed there was plenty of flat space and an existing well designed fire ring. We had a nice campfire and then turned in to our respective trucks for the night.

While we slept the entire political world turned upside down, but out here you got the sense the desert doesn't much care one way or the other.

To be continued...

 

Well, after almost 4 weeks of carrying around an extra 400 pounds, the springs have not settled at all. The only noticeable result was a loss of fuel economy. Without any ballast the truck still sits 2.5" higher than stock, and I get a driveshaft vibration that wasn't there before when starting from a stop. I tried an OME carrier bearing shim kit and considered keeping the extra height, but the vibes only go away when I load the truck and it goes down an inch. So I am removing the Wheeler's springs when I get a change. They offered to refund the purchase price, but i have to cover the shipping. Nice.

Against the Diet Taco way of thinking, and in conflict with my desire to keep complexity low, I am now thinking of adding some Firestone Ride Rite air helper springs, Daystar cradles to preserve flex, and an on-board compressor so I can increase and decrease the cargo capacity of the truck as needed. My truck is my daily driver, so I need it to work under lots of different conditions loaded and unloaded. Anyone have any experience with these? There is a good thread about them here: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/official-firestone-riderite-lift-thread.279865/ What isn't discussed much is the compressors.

Anyway, I finished my exhaust crossover relocation with some POR15 hi-temp coating and the OP recomended heat shields. Came together well, and i just need to get the transfer skid bolted back on. You win some and you lose some I guess...

 

Whelp that's a bit surprising regarding not settling a bit more than that. The vibes may be the driveshaft and pinion angle that needs correction. You could do 3* axle shims before abandoning hope on that issue. As far as ride height, there aren't many (or any) incremental steps I can think of between stock leafpack and installing an AAL if you want to minimize lift. The only other thought is a built-to-order Alcan pack.

 

Well I get to cheat in keeping complexity low because my truck is always loaded I really don't know of a great option for dealing with a significant variation in load that is rock solid. The Ride Rites get good reviews from folks with removable campers. I always hear people say they might not be durable off road but I've never heard of one failing either. I think another common alternative that keeps things simple are Timbrens. In that scheme your springs set a low rate and slightly higher ride height when unloaded and when you are at a heavy load your Timberns act as a higher rate spring at a lower ride height. But of course you still have a ride height change, just not as extreme with only a higher rate leaf pack. But you can't dial in a specific ride height like the Ride Rites.

Very nice!

Second the recommendation to try a 3* axle shim. Every lift and suspension is a bit different, but before I did mine I polled around and the conclusion seemed to be for the 2-3" lift range almost no one had vibes with a 3* shim. Many people didn't have vibes without a shim either, but a fair number had vibes without a shim that went away when they added the shim. The CB drop was a bit more hit and miss, sometimes helping, rarely hurting and often doing nothing on its own without the 3* shim. Oh, and of course the people who put the shim in backwards ended up with far worse vibes...

Alcan pack of course is a good idea for a specific load and ride height but I don't know enough about leaf spring design to know if it can be designed to practically handle a large variation in loading without a significant change in ride height. I think most of the generic leaf designs are progressive rate springs and I don't know if practically you can make the spring rate any more progressive with out compromising something.

Hope you get the lift sorted! Glad the reroute worked out, looks slick.

 

Since I am actually buying lift parts now, it occurred to me that in general, and assuming the exact same lift spec, that a DCSB would have a greater chance of having vibes than a DCLB simply because the DCLB has a longer drive shaft, which would reduce the pinion angle, all other things being equal. Nevertheless, I'm install shims from square one with the new leaf pack, because it's is a PITA to do it afterward, and the CB drop is easy to do later if necessary.

 

i've got the wheeler's 3 leaf pack in mine and it gave me way more lift than advertised. the rear of thr tuck is 2" higher than the front. i've had them in there for a few months and they haven't settled at all. i'm so tickled with the inproved ride and weight capacity i can deal with the tiny vibration i get at first acceleration. i fabbed some cb shims and drpped it 1/8" and it helped i may get some longer bolts and try 1/4" and see what happens other than that very pleased. wheelers however will probably never get another order i have now recieved 2 incorrect sets of extended rear brake lines i'll have to call again and see what they'll do but would just as soon get my money back and go elsewhere glad to hear your having a good response from them though