NeonHeights build

My second vehicle was a 2007 Mazda B4000 pickup. It was a rusty piece of crap that had no power, tons of mechanical and electrical issues, and was noisy as all hell on the highway. And I loved it. It was the first truck I had, and I loved the size of it and how easy it was to work on. I bought it for $6500 in 2016 and had it for a solid year until one rainy day this happened...



The insurance company considered it as a write-off due to the damage to the front end. I wasnt terribly upset with loosing it though, as the frame was coated in rust and virtually all suspension components were seized in place. I believe the owner before me kept it in a field unused for years and it accumulated rust and corrosion until I bought it. It also had a lot of weird electrical issues which resulted in me getting locked out on a number of occasions with the truck still running.

So I kept an eye out for a new truck. I wanted a small pickup, something that was reliable. I started looking at the tacomas and nissan frontiers, the frontiers were more appealing due to being quite a bit cheaper, but ultimately I ended up going with the Tacoma due to the known reliability of the trucks.

I picked up my 2007 DCSB 4x4 on March 17th 2017 for $16500 CAD. It had 180,000km on it and came with a color matched ARE Z-Series cap and a few other things the owner added onto it.



First things first, get rid of all the stickers/decals/hood wrap.



Shortly after that, I joined TacomaWorld after looking into getting a replacement grille for my truck. This was both a great and equally terrible thing. The amount of money ive put into my truck because of this website is ridiculous. I learned about lift kits and after doing research for a few months and going back and forth constantly about whether or not I wanted a 3" or a 6", I had finally made my decision.

I found a local offroad shop that was also a distributor of BDS products. I absolutely loved the look of the 6" lift kits. So I saved up for a while and all at once dropped 4 months rent on a brand new set of tires, rims, and a lift kit.



I ran the lift for around 4-5 months, and wheeled with it a few times. I loved it and I didnt make a whole lot of other modifications to my truck at that time. Fall rolled around and I got underneath my truck to clean it up and scrape off some of the old mud/gunk that had accumulated on the frame. I wanted to take it to get oil sprayed for the winter.

As I was scraping some crap off the frame, my scraping tool caught a small lip in the metal. I wiggled it a bit and a chunk of my frame fell onto the ground. There was a hole in my frame that had been hiding behind old undercoat and mud, probably for years. I was aware of the frame recall and immediately called toyota to book an inspection.



After being with them for an hour or two, I got a call to come pick the truck up. They had to send the frame request to get approved, but were sure that it was going to have to be done. I got the confirmation a week later, and within 2 months the truck was at the dealer getting new bones



Continued below-

 

Investigating my faulty transfer case..

When I bought my truck, I flicked the 4x4 button into 4HI to test if it was working. When the light illuminated, I assumed all was well. However, the first time I went offroading, I attempted to put the truck into 4LO and it refused to engage. I tried many different times, and the truck refused to go into low range. 4Hi worked completely fine, and I ruled out any problems with the transfer case actuator or front ADD. Both were functioning properly.

I recently performed an FJ cruiser transfer case swap on my truck, and now have functioning 4LO once again. Ive had my old Tacoma transfer case sitting on my shelf, and figured I might as well dive in and see what the problem actually was. The intention was to possibly fix the issue, and sell the case as a fully functioning transfer case.



So I started disassembling the case by removing the flange nut on the front drive flange. After that was removed, the whole flange slides off. I then unbolted the actuator by removing 3 bolts holding it onto the transfer case, and then removing the actuator gear under the small cover on the side of the actuator.




After that, I unbolted the 12 bolts around the case, holding the two halves together, and separating them with a prybar (revealing the inner workings of my taco case).



I then began investigating the case for any stuck components/unusual movement. The actuator rod that moves the shift forks moves easily from 2HI, to 4HI, but will not move into 4LO. It just stops after 4HI and will not move past that position regardless of how much pressure is put on it.



I disassembled the shift forks in an attempt to find the issue, but couldn't see anything. I then realized that the shift forks werent the problem. The problem was the HI-LOW clutch sleeve that the HI-LOW fork attaches to. It seems to be stuck onto the surrounding gear and will not budge at all. I took a hammer and punch and wacked it for a solid 20 minutes straight. every 20 or so wacks moved it forward about a 1/16th of an inch. It was extremely slow going and I eventually tired out. I remembered that I had a puller set and immediately went to grab it. The puller made short work of it, and I was able to seperate the gears



I came to find that the teeth on the clutch sleeve have physically moved in some sections. They do not align properly with the teeth on the main high range gear set. As a result of this, the teeth put an extreme amount of pressure on the teeth of the other gear they contacted, which resulted in them being virtually unmovable. It took a thousand wacks of a hammer and a puller to separate these gears, so I highly doubt a mini 12v motor could do it...



The gear will not go back on now that it had been removed. Im legitimately curious as to how this could of happened. Im wondering if the previous owner possibly damaged it by improperly engaging 4x4, or if it was like this out of the factory. Its possible, as I highly doubt the previous owner ever used 4LO and likely didnt even realize it was broken.

 

Mucho improvement once you removed all the stickers and stuff. Nice looking truck.

 

Finished my roof rack project today. Started the design in Adobe Illustrator, transferred the design to AutoCad, and then sent that to the Laser Cutter. I designed the rack specifically to fit these flush-mount led lights I bought on Amazon. The rack had 3 cutouts on each side so the lights can sit flush with the surface of the rack, and recess into the rack. I 3D printed these spacers that are the exact shape of the flush-mount lights, and sit behind the lights to tilt the flush-mount leds on a 15 degree angle to provide better light output on the ground surrounding the truck.

 

Here are some pictures from my most recent FJ Cruiser transfer case swap. I modified the case to accept twin stick shifters. It was a ton of extra fab work, but turned out really nice. I started off with a Twin Stick setup from Front Range Offroad, and cut down the shifters and modified them to pop up in the correct location in the shifter bezel. I painted them with POR15 and tapped the ends for 1/2"-13 threads. Im now working on a 3D printed shift knob for the twin sticks. The knobs that Front Range provided are just simple black circles with no indicator on them. So I 3D printed a test knob which indicates 4WD or 2WD and I will make another one for Low range and High Range gearing. I intend to clean these up, sand them, and paint them.

 

That looks awesome!

 

Finally got my 6" BDS drop bracket lift back on. Went from stock/no suspension lift to 6" BDS lift with Toytec coils and extended Bilstien shocks up front. No coil spacers this time around. Took some measurements pre and post-lift. Measurements were taken from center of the hub to the bottom of the fender flare. CV angles look good.

Running 6.5" of suspension lift in the front, with 6" of lift in the back. I also have a 1.5" body lift all around, totalling 8" of lift. Truck sits fairly level other than the lean on the rear drivers side, which im still trying to figure out why its happening (it happened way before the lift).

PRE LIFT:

Front Left ----- 21"
Front Right ---- 21.5"
Rear Left ------ 22"
Rear Right ----- 23.5"
Front Diff Clearance ----- 9.25"

AFTER LIFT:

Front Left ----- 27.5"
Front Right ---- 27.75"
Rear Left ------ 28"
Rear Right ----- 29.5"
Front Diff Clearance ----- 11.5"

 

Nice! Lean is due to has tank on drivers side. You just need to add a small spacer / trim packed and that should fix it for you. Nice work though. How's riding before and after?

 

I have a trim spacer. Theres something else funky going on. The leaf springs arent the issue either. Lean is there whether gas tank is full or empty

Just finished today so ride is stiff in the rear from the AAL, but will soften as I load up the bed a bit. Front is smooth as butter from the new coils and shocks. Ive now gone from Stock to 6" lift with giant coil preload spacers, back to stock with 1.5" Body lift, then to 6" Lift with coilover front and no preload spacer. So ive tried a lot at this point. The preload spacers I tried previously were insanely stiff the first day then softened out over the course of about a week. But were still fairly hard riding for a while. Im eager to see how these ride in another day or two

 

Hmm, wonder what would give it that lean still?