What Have You Done To Your 2nd Gen Tacoma Today?

Hope you can laugh long & hard, gonna be essspensive!

 

Yep! I matched my bike though

 

Installed Toyota running boards

$528 PT212-35055 Running Board

PT212-35055 and a full set of 3rd gen bilstein 2020 take offs

 

Urgh, stupid tpms light, lol
I disabled mine,

 

LOL, I need to do that or get new ones......Funny how it tries to communicate with them every once in ahwile. catch light blinking trying to find them. New ones won't happen until new tire time....which will be a year or so. Daily commute much shorter nowadays, FTW.

 

I just used the same grip all my bikes have on them. ODI rogue ftw

 

It's a simple one wire mod, light be gone.

 

What? You mean I just wasted 120.00 on new ones because mine cracked when changing wheels

 

It's not a waste if you use the functionality. It's only a waste if you check your pressure regularly and don't need them.

 

And sometimes I should just stay in bed......

So, while I'm still trying to get my magnet mount to stick to the A pillar panel (now using hot glue); I thought it was time to try new speakers in the front. I have old man ears and need lots of extra high end, so I really just wanted new tweeters. Couldn't figure out how to make the Subaru tweeters work, and then noticed Taco Tunes was having a Christmas sale. So for the price on 2 Subaru tweeters, I got 4 "plug and play" speakers for the front. Supposedly an OEM Toyota kit, plug and play, done in under an hour. Eh, yeah.

Exhibit A, the box, loaded with the words OEM and Plug and Play.


So first thing even before I ordered them was to confirm they would work on my 2014 Taco. Then I watched all their install videos. One question came to mind as all their adapters seemed to take the 4 wire tweeter connector and convert it to a single wire. Those kits had amps or crossovers but mine was a speaker only kit. So I hit the chat button on their website and waited. Then the site said to send them an email because no chat was available. OK, sent an email and waited. So, 2 weeks later the kit arrives. I open it up to find the speakers, rivets, and some adapters. (BTW - the tweeters are not in their brackets, some assembly required)



So, I figure I can do this because I've been installing stereos since the 1980's. How hard can it be? The taco tunes videos show 80lb girls doing the installs. Surley I can do it.
Well I do get the door off, but I'm pretty sure all the connectors were loosened for the young girls in the video.
Anyway, I check out the OEM tweeter connector vs the Taco tunes adapter and see this



That's not gonna work. So I call the taco tunes hotline and wait. After a while, it says go to the website and open a ticket. So I open a ticket and wait. Nothing.
Then I try chat and wait...... The chat tells me to try calling them as they are busy. Ok, circular argument.

So I try plan B - modify their connector



OK, now it fits the OEM side. Nice and tight all pins are making contact.
Turn on stereo, and nothing from that side. Check connectors, still nothing.

So, it turns out the Tacoma does an interesting trick with the front door wiring. There are 4 wires going to the tweeter connector which then bridges into 2 wires.
This backfeeds the main speaker on 2 wires. The wires are arranged plus-minus-plus-minus.
The taco tunes OEM plug and play adapter also bridges the wires but only if they are plus-plus-minus-minus. So much for easy install.

At this point I had about 15 minutes before a predicted storm would roll through and taco tunes hadn't bothered to call me back.
I ended the attempt by reinstalling the OEM tweeter and keeping the taco tunes big speaker in place. Sounds about the same, but at least part of the install is done.
So, now either I wait for taco tunes or see if I can mod up an adapter of some sort.

Moral of the story.... well my advice for now is stay away from taco tunes. I should have known better.

 

I also had a horrible experience with taco tunes

 

The Subaru speaker mod is easy......Will give back some of that high frequency some of us older folks have lost. I have not had a problem with taco tunes in the past...I guess they have changed.

 

I don't understand something and I am hoping you can explain it to me. The front speakers are either 2 or 4 wires per side depending on how it's done, you have done stereo installs in the past, so why is everyone seem to be very concerned about the install being plug and play?

An alarm install, a remote start install, an amplifier install, etc I can definitely understand, but tweeters?

 

The Subaru tweeters are $95, they're made by Kicker, the set of Kicker tweeters and 6x9 mids and crossovers are $129 on Amazon, but it isn't plug and play.

 

Lol, not really. $250 deductible. Parts are like $1000.

 

Huh i've had good experiences with taco tunes ....but i say that with a note that i've had their sub box and speaker adapters for almost 10 years now....so alot could have changed with them.

 

Replaced the rear stock suspension on my 07 TRD OR with 5100's. Passenger rear reads 36.25" from ground to fender, driver rear reads 35.75". I didn't get readings before, but never noticed a lean. Now it is definitely noticeable. I'm having a shop do the fronts, is there anything they can do to correct the difference? Thanks!

 

spacer on the drivers side.... welcome to taco lean!

 

I think I saw that somewhere else, thought it was mainly for the front. Oddly enough the fronts are dead even. Might wait until those are replaced in case I need to add a spacer to this as well. Also read a thread about replacing the body bushings, but it looked like way too much work.

 

yeah it's kind of a random thing that seems to be prevalent with these trucks, since our fuel tanks are on the drivers side. but yeah putting a small block under the leaf spring on the drivers side is an easy option.