Manual Door Locks, Windows & Mirrors to Power Retrofit-Conversion [BUILD THREAD/WRITE-UP]

Yup, I folded the plastic three ways so I could have 3 barriers.

You were right about the driver's side door... absolute PITA to reinstall. It took two people and half an hour to put it back. In the process I stripped the uppermost hinge bolt and threads. I replaced the bolt but now the bolt just spins freely.

I was working on the passenger door (still attached to the cab) and it's a hundred times easier than with the door removed. I don't know what was going through my head when I took it off.

I got the lock actuator installed and I had to call it since I have to run some errands. I'll see if I can finish the doors tonight and install the wiring tomorrow.

I'm glad I bought those spare complete power doors from that parts truck... I've had to use so many parts from it from breakage on my original parts.

 

That bolt is important. You need to grab the nut from inside the door with vise grips. Eventually the door will crack around other bolt eventually.

 

Aw crap. I was scared about that. How can I fix it?

Right now there's three bolts out of four holding the door to the frame. The lower hinge is complete, and the upper hinge has the topmost bolt just spinning infinitely. I'm guessing the weld broke.

 

Your going to have to remove panel and speaker mount. Then reach up in there with vise grips and hold nut. Then unscrew it. Or cut the head off some how. Then put a bolt and nut on the inside.

 

Can I just hold it with the vice grips and tighten it some more? I put a new bolt in it's just there's nothing for it to grip to. It just spins.

 

As long as it will tighten up ya. It's not cross threaded?

 

I'm not sure.

 

So the truck I got these parts from were really beat up from the rollover accident, especially the front passenger side. I ended up having to use a new window regulator from a 4Runner, a new handle, and a new armrest. The inner weatherstripping was bent and falling off so I melted the plastic welds and used micro screws to hold it in. Here's what the donor truck A pillar looked like:



The window scrapes against the inner weatherstripping so I might end up having to buy an entire new door panel.

On the plus side, paracord armrest and handle until I get a new door panel.

 

Well everyone, it's been a long and tedious process but I'm happy to say it's all done and working great. I finished the install over spring break about a month ago. Here's some final pictures depicting my install.

(Excuse the out of order captions, I posted this on Snapchat while I was doing this)

Here is the control box and complete custom wiring harness I made before installing it in the truck.



First I needed to mount the control box, so I bough a piece of flat stock Aluminum and bent it to shape to make a bracket. I found an unused tapped bolt hole above the integration module so I bought an M8 bolt and used that to affix it. (This tapped bolt hole is used for the Clutch Pedal Assembly on Manual vehicles)



Here's the wiring running under the driver's side carpet, and into the center console area under the radio.



I did not want to mess with the existing 1998 wiring so I kept the speaker wiring harness independent from the 2004 wiring (since Toyota introduced a Tweeter in 2001, and the previous years did not have one). That is what the connector on the bottom is responsible for. You can see in the second picture how I merged the 2004 and 1998 harnesses.



(1998 Speaker Connector on Top)



Wiring running from the center console area underneath the passenger footwell.



Tapped the turn signal wires coming out from the Integration Module/B-ECU to flash the turn signals when you lock or unlock the vehicle remotely. The aftermarket lock computer sends a +12v pulse to flash the signals or sound the horn. I used two diodes between the B-ECU splice and the locking computer splice so power doesn't get sent in the wrong direction.

The roll of bundled green wire you can see in the first picture on this post was used to activate the original Toyota horn relay through the horn button wire coming from the steering column and utilizing the other +12v pulse wire coming from the locking computer. I found that the stock horn was way too loud for this purpose so I just disconnected it. I'm planning on using a quieter one from a Prius or something just for the lock and unlock.



And the final product:





And lastly here you can see some pictures of the old 1998 components versus the new 2004 components. I ended up using a passenger window regulator from a 1997 4Runner since the one I had was bent badly from a rollover on the donor truck. I'm going to have to end up getting a new pass. door panel as well since the old one scrapes on the glass from the deformation.



This is one of the major differences. In 2001 Toyota redesigned the entire Tacoma, especially the interior. The most significant difference with the 2004 components installed in my 1998 is the color difference as you can see below. (1995-2004 Gray on Left, 2001-2004 Gray on the Right)



And that's about it! I'll post later with some more info with what happened, the mistakes I ran into, and what you should and shouldn't do. One month of use later and it's working great. Please ask me if you have any questions.

Huge shoutout to @mechanicjon who made this project possible. Couldn't have done it without you man.

Life Pro Tip: DO NOT under ANY circumstance take the doors off no matter how tempting it may be. I did it to my driver's side and it took us an hour and two people to put it back, and I ended up chipping the paint and stripping a bolt in the process.

 

When I put the newer panels in my 99 I noticed a lot of things like this. The oak color from 95-00 is darker than the oak in the 01-04. I also realized that the a pillar and b pillar trim panels are different as well. I am not sure on the actual dash though.

 

The rear extended cab panels are different too. In the '95-'00 models, it takes 5 seconds to pop off the speaker grille and access the speaker. In the '01-'04 models you have to remove the entire rear trim pop off the seatbelt IIRC.

 

True story. Huge pain in the butt.

 

Oh yeah. I wanted to swap in the '01 to '04 interior, but the trim is so different from the older styles. Plus the color is pretty different.

 

And here's some pictures of the new 2001-2004 door panels versus the 1995-2000 door panels.

You will notice I have four switches on my master control switch, even though I only have a two door extended cab. Eventually I plan on utilizing the rear double cab switches to power the rear vent windows using the motorized window linkage that you'd find in minivans like Ford Windstars and Honda Odysseys and adapt it to work with the Tacoma. If I can find an '01 to '04 rear single pane sliding window I plan on motorizing that too using the same gear system that a Honda Ridgeline uses. The second gen guys have successfully done this.

You'll notice the passenger door panel looks a little janky, that is because the door panel I used from the donor truck was damaged from a rollover accident and the 'A' pillar caved in on that door. I had to mix and match some handles and use a paracord handle until I get a new door panel.

Before/After

​

 

I was at the junkyard today getting the seats out of a Tacoma they had and there was a guy taking the power components out of it (beat me to it). I asked him about it and he told me he used the dash harness out of a 2003 Tundra to adapt to the Tacoma door harnesses. I don't know if he got it to work, but perhaps Tundra components would also work in a pinch.

 

Damn

 

Yeah I had the same reaction, haha. It looks like he isolated the power delivery, signal, and relay portions of the Tundra dash harness, spliced them into the Tacoma integration module, and ran the wires to the doors. That seems like a lot of work compared to my method.

 

Ya it does

 

So I thought I would upgrade my door panels on my 1998 Tacoma to a set of 2002 door panels.

Went to my local pick and pull and got the following items:
Driver side door panel
Passenger side door panel
Driver side wire harness
Passenger side wire harness
Driver side speakers
Passenger side speakers

Brought everything home and test fit the door panels, they fit.
Then I tried a test fit on the harness, that is where I hit a snag. The window power plug fit, but the top speaker plug was a no-go.
I was really hoping this would have been a plug and play swap.

 

The 1995-2000 did not have the provisions for the tweeter. The way the tweeter works on 2001-2004 trucks is that it piggybacks off of the stock speaker harness. The 2001-2004 trucks don't have provisions for the red warning light. Like I said in one of my posts if you want to keep your round stock speaker you'll have to trim a lot of the speaker shroud to get it to fit.

What are you trying to get to work?