Z's Approach/Utility Build

If you do, avoid that Pioneer. I hate it! Totally un-usable! It is as if the person who designed the user-interface never actually used a car stereo, in a car!

 

Haha good tip I've had good luck with Other companies in the past I think jvc was what I had in my old 4runner

 

Downieville/TNF...

Dying to get out, and pulling the father's day card, the missus joined me for a little backroads exploring. Our goal was Downievile-Poker Flat-La Porte, but with the dismal report from the ranger at La Porte, I expected to have to turn around at Poker Flat. The ranger from TNF was more optimistic, but unsure of conditions past Saddleback Lookout. Downloaded the Yuba North MVUM into Avenza PDF Maps on the ipad... (which works AMAZINGLY well) and set off out of Downieville. Turns out there is still a lot of snow up there.



We made it to the red bar.



The red dot is the Saddleback Lookout. Poker Flat is where the road ends at the North end of the map. With a couple other vehicles and some light shovel work, (and a chain saw) we would have made it further, but i'm not sure how much further... I'm kind of bummed we didn't have the presence of mind to try going around out to 25 and past Devils Postpile (the blue line), but... ah well.

We ended up in a little cabin on the Yuba, which definitely did not suck. Next morning decided to go up to see what the road to Deer lake looked like. Also snowed in. No surprise. There is still a lot of snow up there.



So, my consolation trail was to bump up to the amazingly beautiful Upper Sardine Lake.



Sign at the bottom recommeded high clearance short wheel base 4wd, but never mind the bone stock crew cab F150 behind me.



Still, i felt like i had at least driven somewhere you couldn't get in a Camry. Can't wait to get back up there in a month or so. I'd love to go Sierra Buttes, Deer Lake... past Snake Lake to... 507? Does anyone know if you can drive trail 11E67 past Hawley Lake?

 

Ohhh, i got parts parts parts parts parts in the mail mail mail.

 

Home Alignment and Tire Rub

Ok, only a YEAR later, i finally got back to investigating what is rubbing and how bad. Took the wheels off - took the sway bar off - took the coilover out - put the wheel back on. Got the jack under the LCA and jacked the wheel up to various heights and found that indeed, at about 20-30° turn to the left, the driver-side wheel hits the pinch weld - and probably interferes by as much as a 3/16-1/4". (Whoops - probably not so safe to drive) The passenger side wasn't as bad - only interfering by 1/8". ("Only...")



I also noticed that at full droop the UCA hits the coil:



That can't be good!

So, next step, I marked the LCA cam positions (rear was maxed outboard on driver side - not a good sign) and then tried adjusting for clearance. With the driver side absolutely maxed forward (max caster, neutral camber) the wheel still slightly hit the pinch weld at full flex. Passenger side had more adjustment, and rear adjuster fully maxed out and front about 1/2 way in, the wheel fully cleared the pinchweld - no more rubbing.

Alighment was now obviously way off though. The truck looked like a knock-kneed duck-footed... something. (Argh). Long story short, i think i will be flattening the pinchweld to get back towards neutral camber.

While i had them out, I adjusted the 5100/OME coilovers up to the second notch. (After adding the winch, bumper, dual batteries... everything had settled and was starting to look a little droopy) I wish i'd taken a before/after measurement.

So the bummer is it looks like something is off with my truck! Absolutely maxxing out the caster on the driver side (front adjuster all the way in, rear adjuster all the way out), i still get the slightest rub at full stuff, about 20-30° wheel turn, but the passenger side totally clears not even maxxed out. I know some vehicles are manufactured square to +/- 1-2mm, but not sure what's "normal" tolerance on a Tacoma. It doesn't look like it's been in a front-ender, but if well reparied and done early in it's life, i may not be seeing it. Am going to look again, more carefully, for sure.

I have not made it to a home depot to get me some floor tiles, so I still don't know where my caster ended up (i'm guessing about 4° judging from how the truck really wants to go straight, now!) but camber ended up at about +1.5L, +1.0R. Toe was 4" out! YIKES. I could feel it driving in my driveway so decided I needed to fix that before i drove it today. I'm going to leave the camber and caster as is until i get back from my next couple trips. But the toe, I had to fix.

I remember watching guys at the SCCA events quickly check and adjust alignment all the time with a level, scribe, and u-shaped frame to make measuring between wheels easy. Turns out adjusting toe is actually pretty easy. Thanks to @jberry813 for the excellent step-by-step write up, here. I really recommend at least getting toe spot on after you mess with your suspension before you drive - even to the alignment shop!

My handy tire scriber:



And far side measuring tape helper: (turns out the short side of that square is exactly at the hub!



I want to turn this into a more permanent tool... lighter/smaller box along the floor and then two square sheetmetal strips up to hub-height with a built in scriber....

In the end, the only hard part was loosening the tie rod nut! Thanks to @drftsub for recommending this little tool:

TEKTON 3/8" Drive x 7/8" Offset 6-Point Oxygen Sensor Socket | 47749, Original Version

O2 Sensor Socket Much cheaper than a crowsfoot!

Anyway, fixing the toe only took about 45 min and I got it spot on.

Some tips for getting the toe on and steering wheel straight:

• seems a turn of the tie rod is equivalent to moving the front of my 33" about 1/8".
• frequently re-centering the steering wheel and then sighting down the side of the tire and noticing where it's pointing and shooting for the same location on the other tire seemed to work for keeping the steering wheel centered.
• and a note on tools - i bought a swanson digital torpedo level to try to help with the camber/caster angles and i would say AVOID THIS TOOL (for this purpose, at least) Measuring level things, it seems accurate to +/- 0.2-0.3° but measuring plumb, it's over 1° off. And that's after multiple calibrations. Kind of drives me nuts when folks make tools that have > 1:10000 precision but < 1:100 accuracy. For comparison - the level in my iphone is accurate to 0.1°. I may make a bracket to turn it into a magnetic angle finder. Hah.

All in all I think it took me three rounds of measure/adjust/recenter steering wheel to get it. Steering wheel now points dead ahead and the truck actually feels like it drives pretty normally. Not sure what i'm going to do about my 1.5° of positive camber... stay tuned...

 

Here's a thread related to the pinch weld if you haven't seen it already! I hammered mine outwards, and it was a quick job.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...lat-with-a-sledge-hammer-lets-discuss.425850/

 

Thank you! Gotta love @Crom

 

Glad it helped @Zebinator

 

Getting ready for what was supposed to be a speedy rear leaf spring swap. ("New" Dakars "EL095's") but my rear axle has some surface rust and i figure, when am I going to have it all taken apart again any time soon... so i decided to paint it too. Ugh. So, I'm midway through this, waiting for the surface treatment to do it's thing and i start getting the new pieces ready to bolt on and just thought i ought to check on a couple things. Which must be so obvious because there are no instructions or sketches with any of this stuff, but i just thought it would be a good thing to be sure of:

1. The big arrows on the leaf springs point to the front of the truck, right?
2. The new leaf pins that came with my 3° shims are really long, seems like a bad idea to have them protruding into the bump stop, no? I assume I'm going to trim those...
3. Anyone want to come over and help me get these leafs in? They're f'n HEAVY!

Hoping to head into the Sierra this weekend to help the springs settle in.

 

You're right about the center pin needing trimming. I've installed a few AALs and they always come with new center pins, and you're supposed to cut them down right above the nut.

 

Thank you!

Laid a couple coats of POR-15 this morning. hoping to get the last touches done so I can rapidly bolt everything back together friday afternoon and hit the road!

 

Dakar/OME EL095R's, U-Bolt Flip, 3° Shims, Rear Axle Finishing, and Breather Mod...

So... I thought this would be like an hour of work and instead it turned into about 8 hours...

My sad old OE springs were ready, and the ride seemed ready for improvement, and... well, why not. So, I ordered up u-bolt flips, axle shims, and the new Dakars. I was planning to take the third leaf out and add isolators, so the new springs actually seem perfect. Thinking i was planning ahead, i got the old units off and started prepping for install a week ahead of my planned weekend backroads trip...



First thing was to measure with the old springs.



38-5/16 on the driver side ground to arch, and 38-9/16" on the passenger side. First time i measured i had the truck dead level on my little plywood alighnment platforms but i forgot to take the new springs out of the bed! turns out 150# of spring equates to about 3/8 sag on the old springs.



But, after looking at the axle I decided since i had the springs off, now was the time to hit all that surface rust. A couple hours of scrubbing, wire brushing, and por-15 prepping ensued...



The POR stuff goes on great.



So, thursday I was left with just adding the shims, ubolt flips, and springs. Easy, right? Here i am after getting both springs on and then having to take them off because i got the shackle bolts on wrong side out.



ARGH. Didn't realize that spring pins would need changing (for shims) and then trimming, and that u-bolts would also need trimming, and that original bumps would need grinding and drilling... It's 7:00pm and we are supposed to be on the road! But, once that was all sorted, and i read up about using a cabinet clamp on the springs (Dakars get a bit of preload that the stock springs did not!) I got it all back together.

Ooh - and got the breather mod done at the same time (almost forgot!)



I can say the truck's ride is MUCH improved. And it looks like I got about 2" of lift. Will measure when i get back from a little work trip... Stay tuned.

Some post lift notes:
- plan to trim pins and u-bolts
- if you are going to do the Bilstein B110's do your brakelines first. Having the extra room to drop your axle will make installing the springs much easier. (I'm going to do this, but didn't have it together for this weekend. Wish I had)
- Unless you can curl 80lbs in a wheel well, get a friend to help. Those things are heavy!

Thanks to @Crom for all the data on his rear suspension work, I basically just copied him!

 

great write up as usual

 

thank you, sir!

 

I can't remember what you had in the back. Just oem springs ar did you have an aal or what?

 

Finally, Some Overlanding... Downieville to LaPorte via Gold Valley Trail

My little rear suspension project was supposed to be done at about 5pm allowing for nice dinner with my family friend's son, and then off to camp along the yuba. But, things took... a little longer. We hit the road around 9 and pulled into the first camp along the yuba at about 1:30am. Ooof. But, woke up to this:



Coffee and bloatmeal and we were on the road, hoping to find little if any snow. Last time I was stymied. We were going to follow the Funtreks route up to the Sierra Buttes Lookout, but saw 93 and figured, dirt is more fun than pavement. Up we went. Loved seeing the awesome moss on the trees above the usual snow line:



The buttes did not disappoint.



From there we headed up to Deer Lake. No snow. Georgous. And full of fish. Little rocky steps down to the lake added to the driving fun. As we were pulling out two extremely shiny modded jeeps drove down to where we had just been.



The Gold Valley OHV Route was fun - just right for being out w/o another vehicle. We did decide to see if we could get up to Snake Lake just to see the lake itself, and that section of trail was maybe the most challenging thing we saw this trip, but still no problem.



I'd like to do the snake lake/little deer lake trails. They looked challenging (risk of rolling?) and beyond my comfort level with just one vehicle. I hope I can get back out there latter this summer.

We turned around and headed over past Hawley lake - wild flowers were off-the-hook.



Pressing on, we found a great camp at Spencer Lakes. Kind of a hike to the lake but really beautiful, and fairly pristine for a place with 4x4 access. I hope others who visit keep it so!


On our way out we crossed a couple snow patches and went around a couple others, and ended up in the middle of two groups of jeepers. One pair had tried to blast over a huge snow pile (with a well-established go-around) and ended up in the trees, stuck, broken wheel, with 3 vehicles trying to pull them out.

The rest of the road out was pretty fun with amazing vistas. Hitting the gravel "road" at 11:00, we thought we might try to come back through Poker Flat. Saw a road that cut across under mt. filmore, but after navigating three washouts, a huge (three foot?) tree barring the road turned us around. So... Poker Flat will have to wait.

 

Just oem's and 5100's. I think they had sagged out enough that i was mostly riding on the overloads and hence the harsh ride. The new springs are soooo much nicer.

 

Great write up. What kind of line are your running for the diff breather mod? Looks nice.

 

Shiny hose from the ace hardware. Looks are deceiving. It's kind of cheap-o...

And yes, the por-15 is pretty nice. It brushes on but then flattens out kind of like lacquer. Which reminds me, I have a little touch up to do. I put a few scratches in it wrestling the springs into position.

 

Just stumbled across this thread. Super impressed with the fab skills. Subbed for sure!