Highschooler’s OEM+ “Build”

Current Look:



2009 Regular Cab 4x4 SR5
2.7L 5 speed
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The truck is mostly stock, only “mods” include:
• Century truck topper
• Bike grip shift knob
• Removed secondary air filter
• Black emblems
• Paracord wrapped OS handles
• Black Rear bumper (due to crash haha)
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Plans for the near future:
• Color match grill surround
• Paint wheels black
• 265/76/16 All Terrains
• 3rd gen TRD Off-Road Suspension

 

Love them regular cabs!

 

Thanks! Im honestly not super fond of how stumpy the truck looks so i think a cap will fix that, but love it anyways.

 

Heck yeah, the caps are so useful. I would like to have one but $$$ lol

 

Updates from these last ten months. A little bit has changed, but my love for this thing hasn’t!

The day I brought her home! Still didn’t have a license but loved the hell out of this thing. Really opened my eyes to what I could do with a truck!

First “Mod” came one month after I got the truck. Saw a thread on wrapping the OS handles in Paracord and knew I had to do it! I think they turned out great, and are still looking good to this day.

First step in the de-chroming process, the emblems. I’ve always loved the look of black emblems.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider leaving it debadged. It stayed like this for about a month, until I was done procrastinating and decided to make a change.

The day came when I finally put them on! It was suuuper tedious work but it payed off, I love the end product! They’ve stayed on nicely and held the paint perfectly.

My stock truck doesn’t really fit in but this is our “car club” at school. I also removed the awful chrome hubcaps. Cool stuff.

First time giving the truck a good wash, and got some pretty lighting so i had a mini photo shoot out in a neighbor’s field.

For all you MTB guys out there, this is my Trek Remedy 9.7. Such a fun bike to ride and looks great in the back of my truck!

My little work truck! I was the only one with a truck so I was stuck taking out the trash after a big BMX race. Worth it!

And for quite some time all I did was daily drive the truck. I did have mice chew through some brake light wires and did my first oil change, but other than that it’s been pretty uneventful. And I’ve been looking for a cap/camper shell/topper for it for a long time. Turns out it’s hard to find them used for regular cabs. Well, until today. This is the last picture I took of it topless!

Finally found a cap! Saw this one on Facebook marketplace for $475 and only a 2 hour drive away in Michigan! It’s an ATC cap, cane with roof rails and sliding windows. Didn’t come with keys or a third brake light, so I’ll try and get those sorted out on the near future. And yes, I am aware, it doesn’t exactly match. I’m hoping to get some quotes soon to get it color matched, then we should be set!

The bikes even fit perfect!

 

I’ve been sitting on the idea of removing the secondary air filter for forever now. It scares me to remove something like this from my baby, even if it is just for emissions. But, I finally got around to taking it out yesterday! I took it for a spin after removal and got on it a ton. To be honest, I couldn’t feel a huge difference as I don’t normally drive full throttle everywhere. But today driving it to school I noticed the biggest difference when I have it at about half throttle, it goes a bit quicker than before! I’m excited to see MPG savings, too.

 

Been quite a while since I’ve updated this.
First off, got into a decent accident which ruined my left bedside and rear bumper. The crash was NOT MY FAULT! Some guy on my right tried to make a left turn and put me into a guardrail. His insurance paid for all the replacement parts and I even got a black rear bumper, because I wanted to paint the chrome one anyways. The ugly red cap was also damaged, so the insurance company bought that, which left me with money for a better cap, but I still have no place to lock and keep bikes out of the rain.




Although I badly want a new cap, I like the look of the truck with just the silver with black accents. I definitely need to paint the wheels black but I haven’t decided on paint options yet. I also plan on painting the chrome grille surround silver, just so I have something to do in this Coronapocolyptic world.

I also totally forgot, a while ago I had a friend of mine fab up an adapter for my shift knob so I could run a bike grip there. Basically a DIY Getta Grip shift knob.

it has since changed since I took this picture, it is now shorter so it isn’t a long throw shifter, and I have a different grip on it.

 

Well, the time came for me to buy my dream truck. Here it is!

So yes, this is the end of my beloved regular cab. It was an amazing first vehicle, but I knew I wouldn’t keep it forever for a couple big reasons. Firstly, that 2.7L is slow as all hell. That truck could barely get out of its own way, so I knew I would need something faster. Second, the regular cab was too small for what I wanted to do with it, luckily I had the topper for extra space but it was still tight when going camping or on mountain bike trips. I knew my perfect truck would be a V6, 4WD Access cab, and it had to be manual! It’s an absolute unicorn of a truck, and I’m extremely grateful to own one. I’ll get into more info about the new rig in a future post, but I should wrap up the old truck first.

I think the last time I updated this thread was when I bought the topper, and not much exciting has happened since then. I did manage to wire up the third brake light and some light for the topper, which I was really proud of. I also finally got rid of the ugly chrome grille surround and repainted it silver. Admittedly, this took me three tries. The first time, I used Classic Silver Streak (1F7) instead of Silver Streak Mica (1E7), thinking there was no difference. There was.

my next attempt I used the right color, I just did a horrible rushed job. I don’t have a picture but it turned out awful. My final attempt was... good enough. I made a couple errors but all in all it turned out pretty good.

And that’s how I left it. I wanted to do more but knew I didn’t want to keep this truck forever, so I just happily drove it every day, until the new one came along. You served me well, baby!