My 1999 Taco TuRD Build - I sold it

Picked up my new RTT from Wheeleveryweekend.com yesterday afternoon. Installed straight onto the rack posted above. The rack works great, it's just a little low. It doesn't leave much room for anything in the bed that might be taller than the bedsides.

Ian at Wheel Every Weekend is a great guy with 2 1st gen Tacomas. One is the double cab in the pics and the other that's poking it's nose out from the shop is in the process of being rebuilt. It's a 97 (I think) extended cab, SASd with a GM 14 bolt rear end and a D60 front axle.







Setup the tent today for the first time and checked everything over. Everything looks great. Ian takes the time to improve certain things on the tent and platform to make sure it's going to hold up to years of off-road abuse and use. He upgrades the main platform hinge to 1/8" CNC bent plates, replaces almost all of the nylock nuts with better ones, the tent material is 320g material that has an additional layer of waterproofing applied and he uses CNC billet aluminum clamps to hold the tent in place on the rack instead of the steel plates that others use.









Super happy with the tent and can't wait to use it for the first time.

 

Man that tent looks sweet! Glad you did your research, I know which direction I’d go when I buy my next one.

 

Pics from today's exploration and hunt for snow. Didn't have much luck on the snow part but me and the dog had a good time. Also the first time offroad without the front sway bar. Feels much better and I was not aired down either. I am getting some rubbing at full stuff on the front, especially on the driver's side. So looks like I need to do some more trimming. Tires are 285/75/16. Plans are to step up in size when these tires wear out so trimming ahead of time will be a good thing.

 

Looks like the flats N^ of Catalina State Park.

What are you up to this weekend? Was thinking about PreRunning some of the AZBRD and camping near Sonoita.

 

Let's do it!

 

Going camping for one night with @Ace115 tomorrow, prerunning a trail we plan on doing with a bunch of TW people in late February. After seeing how much mud was thrown up the bedsides and into the bed from my tires sticking out past the factory fender flares, I decided to make a set of extenders for them to see if that helped. Didn't want to spend $400-$500 on a set of aftermarket flares. This cost me about $25 and about an hours worth of time so far.

I've only done the rear 2 flares so far and will see how they do and then, if I'm happy with it, will finish doing the front flares.

I picked up 16' of rubber garage door seal (for a 1 piece garage door) from Lowes. If you are very careful with how you cut it, there "should" be enough to do all 4 flares but you might want to consider getting 2 packs of the 9' seal instead to give yourself some extra to play with.



Thought I had the revetes for it but didn't so also picked up a 50 pack of 3/16" rivets with 1/2" grab and a box of 3/16"x1 1/4" fender washers.



I eyeballed where I wanted the seal to sit on the flare, as in how far out. There is more than enough room on both the stock flare and the seal to adjust it in or out a good amount so you have to play with it to see what you like. Drill through the seal and into the stock flare with a 3/16" drill bit.



Put a rivet through one of the fender washers and then through the seal and into the flare and rivet in place. I started from about the center and worked my way out to each end.






And all the rivets are done. Still need to trip the excess rubber here. Used a lot of rivets and washers per flare, mainly to get it to sit decently on the flare when looking at it installed on the truck. Otherwise, there are a lot of gaps.



Flare installed on the truck, now you can figure out how you want to trim the excess.






Lastly, I sprayed all the rivets/washers with Herculiner spray on bedliner, mainly to have them blend in better.

 

Nice work. I've been looking for a way to reduce mud on the truck with my 3.5" backspace - throws mud everywhere. Was hoping you figured out a removable way, since when I'm around town, I'd rather not have the extended flares. Still interested to see how this works on your upcoming trip.

​

 

Your posts were one of the reasons I started thinking about this mod.

This was a quick and dirty install. Now that I think about it, you could probably make these removeable by using some flat stock aluminum bent to shape. Rivet the seal to that and then bolt the aluminum in place using the factory flare bolts and sandwich the seal between the flare the the aluminum strip. Maybe I'll play with that idea for the front flares.

Another option is to get 01-04 flares and also do the extension on those. They are already wider than the 95-00 flares from what I have seen and would help a bunch.

 

Follow up to my fender flare extensions.

Without the extensions on the rear:



With the extensions on the rear:



Did they help? Maybe a little. I think I really need them more on the front than just the rear. And the biggest help of all would be to have mud flaps on the front at the very least. Most of the mud and shit that gets into the bed is coming from the front tires but the rear certainly contribute their fair share as you can see. Mud flaps are probably the best answer, in combination with extending or a wider fender flare.

 

Spent New Years eve and day running the first 2 sections of the AZBDR with @Ace115 and his son. Had a great time with tons of off-pavement action, a little bit of hiking and woke up to snow cover at our impromptu camp site.

Started off driving from Tucson down to Sonoita and running section 1 in reverse and stopping for a short hike up the Coronado Memorial Overlook Trail to take in the views.


















Brought my dog with me. This was his first encounter with snow. He was not impressed.











We then headed down the mountain and into Sierra Vist for some food. The road down the mountain from the Overlook Trail had some decent snow cover.



After food and a fill-up we continued on the section 2 of the AZBDR.





Didn't take many pictures until the next day. The route up to our campsite was pretty casual until it started getting dark and then it became more challenging, partly due to the darkness but the road itself actually got a little more challenging. We finally called it a night after @Ace115 son almost drove his truck into a 4' deep hole on the driver side. Fortunately they stopped in time and were able to safely back the truck out. We decided that we would make camp there since there was a decently flat area with enough room for both trucks on the side of the trail. Turned out that was also the bypass for the hole that they almost dropped into. Would have been a bad situation if they had fallen all the way into it as it started raining around 10pm (it was about 7pm or so when we called it quits) and then the rain turned into snow by early morning.

This was also my first use of my brand new RTT from Wheel Every Weekend. I can't say enough about this tent. It has heavier, 320g fabric than any other RTT that I have seen on the market and all seams and tent fabric receive additional waterproofing, it has upgraded stainless steel main hinges that are 3/16" laser cut and CNC bent, all nuts and bolts are upgraded throughout the tent, 4 2" wide velcro straps are added to secure the base plates closed under the cover and the straps to secure the cover are upgraded to 2" wide heavy duty webbing straps with aluminum buckles to secure them in place and hold the cover in place, along with the standard heavy duty cover zipper. The tent is secured to your rack with their exclusive CNC cut security mounts which are included in the price of the tent. They also pre-build the tents before shipping and if you pick up (they are located in San Diego, CA) from their shop, they will help you install the tent and walk you through setting it up. Highly recommend these tents!

 

Woke up on New Year's Day to a nice snow cover from the rain the night before that turned into snow sometime in the early morning.






We packed up camp without breakfast since it was still snowing and we weren't too sure how bad the trail was going to be as we continued on. Turned out to be not so bad, not even requiring 4wd, although I did engage the rear e-locker. Don't know if the grey wire mode was ever done on my truck or if it's even needed on a 1999 manual but I'm able to engage the rear locker in 2wd.

We finally climbed out of the valley that we had camped in and were greeted with amazing snow covered scenery.





So we stopped to get out for some pictures of course!






Pictures taken, we continued down the trail, looking for the exit onto I10. The AZBDR maps that we had and the maps from the website really weren't of a huge help since the exit they show is a locked gate directly onto I10. We ended up having to back track a couple of times and head further east to finally find an exit at Marsh Station Rd. The trail to that road ended up getting very muddy with some decent hill climbs and mud holes. I actually ended up having to use 4wd for a couple of the climbs and finally 4wd low to get myself unstuck and not burn up my clutch in one extra deep mud hole. It was also the perfect test for the fender flare extenders that I added to the rear and have detailed in a previous post.







Overall it was a fantastic overnight trip with neither of the vehicles having any issues. Totally looking forward to doing it again soon! Thanks to @Ace115 for the invite!

 

Out with the old, 2 spoke which I hated.



And in the the new (old) 4 spoke which I much prefer. This one is from a 1999 SR5 4Runner so hopefully the cruise will still work. Haven't tested it yet. I did have to swap the airbag inflator thing since the plugs were different.

 

Interested to see if cruise control still works.
Want to do same swap on my truck. the grey I have gets dirty to quick.

 

Sorry, forgot to update here.

Yes, the cruise control does work without issues. Probably better than before since I think the cruise switch on the original wheel was having issues. Resume/Acc didn't work unless I really pushed up hard on the control. Now, it works normally.

 

Sweet ill need to go pick up one for my truck now.
Mine is and 02, hopefully the 3rd gen 4runner wheel will work

 

I think you will be good as long as you can find a wheel that is close to the same year as yours, so 00-04 4Runner.

 

Thanks Ill keep that in mind. By the way I swapped out my steering column cover to a black one a while back preparing to switch to the black steering wheel.
Just another thing to swap. was really simple and took about a minute.

 

Might do that eventually but honestly, the color mismatch isn't a big deal to me. With this truck, I prefer function over form, at least on the interior.

 

what lug nuts do you have for your wheels?

 

Finally installed my new pedal pad things. I didn't get them for looks but more for the grip they will offer, specifically on the clutch and brake pedals when my shoes are muddy or wet off road. Nothing sucks more than you foot slipping off the clutch because of wet/muddy shoes when you REALLY don't want the clutch out! Removes the OEM rubber pads from the pedals, the clutch was getting really worn out anyhow, cut about an inch off the new clutch pad and then drill a couple holes ad bolt them in place. The new pads are cast aluminum. Feel about the same as the original rubber ones, just grippier. Should also make heel-toe maneuvers easier since the brake and gas pedals are now wider.

$44 OMP - Sand-Blasted Aluminum Pedals (Set of 3) (OA0-1000-003)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003V515WS

This is the clutch side.



And the brake pedal.