Hilux Revo 2016 Build....

Really cool to see the beloved Hilux all modded out. In the Middle East, I've driven mostly bone stock base model Hiluxes and have always been impressed by them. I've never been able to break them, and I run them HARD. Good looking truck you have.

 

Hey Thanks. Having owned a few Tacomas in the states I really like the Hilux here in SEAsia. They take pretty good abuse. I love the turbo diesel engine.

 

Road trip complete. 8 days and 1467 miles in my Revo.

We had many stops and stays along the way from Northern Thailand to Koh Kood Island facing the east Andaman sea. (More pics on that later)

The most important stop (for me anyway) was the stop at Piak Off Road factory in Rayong. I met up with a great group of off road guys. Needless to say after a few minutes of talk we set off to install my front end replacement. The cool thing is if you come to their factory and buy direct you get a great deal plus they install it for free.



This is the factory where they fab (start to finish) all their bumpers, rollbars and side steps. I took a tour of the place with the foreman. Man I love fab stuff.



My truck as we discuss option on the bumper. First concern was the bumper I originally wanted would not work as the Warn Zeon 10 winch is to large to fit behind it so I needed to upgrade to their brand new 2018 newly released set up. Typical as mods go. Start out with one idea and end up with another.



One thing I laughed about was they pulled my set up right off the assembly floor and brought it over on the fork lift after it had gone through final assembly and kitting inspection.



Now as a fab guy I struggled to watch as a team of guys jumped right on my truck to do the install. They were great folks. We laughed a lot as I kept walking up handing them wrenches and holding brackets. My wife said...let them work. We all laughed



Front of my truck disassembled



While they were disassembling the truck I was installing my PIAA HID lights on the new bumper. This bumper is 3mm plate steel and is a stout piece. The bumper in the fore ground was the one that would not fit because the winch was too large.





The Winch holder and bumper mount are very heavy duty and add a ton of support to the front of the truck versus the plastic skin that the Hilux has.





Few pics after install in Piaks front lot just before the rain started. I will post up more pics and some close ups in a day or so along with a few pics of the road trip. I took my drone and got some aerial pictures of the island and other road pics.

 

Wow, that is pretty cool!

 

I washed up the truck and filtered through some other pics of the road trip





Front angle of bumper.



Side view to see how it sits out front. Piak really spent some time designing this bumper as it follows the body lines of the truck very well. Doesn't look like some clunky piece on the nose.



I forgot to mention in the other post I also added Piaks side steps. I am not a side step person but these looked OK and will stop people from bitching about getting in and out of my truck. HAHA. Funny really as it does not even sit all that high. I'd like it to be another 2"......

Other various pics



Over here this type of Hilux use is common daily scenes. This is a average one. I have seen them carrying 30 to 40 bails of hay on a specially made bed roof rack.



The weather was nice for most of the road trip even though it is rainy season now in Thailand.



View from the hotel we stayed in at Rayong.



Of course what road trip doesn't include a day with a beer on the beach?



I took out my Mavic Pro Drone and did some fly overs. This is the resort we stayed at on the island of Koh Kood.

 

My BFGoodrich KM2's have been looking pretty tired (DOM 02/13). These KM2 tires were on my Tacoma in the states and then brought over here and have been used on my Hilux for another 2.5 years. After researching and reading many reviews on various tires I almost went with the Mickey Thompson tire but changed my mind and went with the BFGoodrich KM3. I did not go up in tire size as I like the clearance I have and did not want to be clipping more fender stuff off to make larger ones fit.

First impression after driving about 100 miles on the KM3 is they are way less noisy then my KM2s. I have not been out in the mud yet but would expect them to perform as well as the KM2 or better. Appearance wise they look far more aggressive with the sidewall enhancements.

Here are a few pics;

 

Having used Hiluxes extensively for work in the Middle East, I’ve seen some decent setups. Yours is, by far, the sickest ride ever.

Just a week ago, I was riding through the North Carolina backwoods and our RHD uparmored Hilux started missing some beats. Just sputtering and didn’t want to give any power. So we popped the hood and opened the air box and scooped about half a gallon of sand out of there and beat the filter out real good. Got back in and we were good to go. Can’t beat it!

 

Hey Thanks Atlsmedic.

I sure love the 2.8 liter Turbo diesel. I might even move back to the states if they offered up a diesel in the Tacoma....LOL

 

Where do you think Chevy and Ford got their designs from?

They modeled the Hilux redesign after it hit in Australia....

 

I’ve got to say that’s one of the best looking trucks I’ve seen. Good work!

 

Good Lord that is B-E-A-Utiful!!!

 

Interesting here in Thailand the trucks makers do seem to follow Toyota looks in many regards. Isuzu DMAX, Chevrolet Colorado. Mazada D50 looks different and not very appealing. One thing over here that I will never really care for much is they put these huge letters in the grill. The Ranger says FORD....Some Toyota's say REVO in big red letters. Not sure what option box gets checked for that but......

Also Toyota is now offering a Rocco Option Hilux truck. I will post some pics when I see one. I cannot for the life of me figure out what this special optioned truck comes with. It appears special black wheels,big decals on the bed saying ROCCO and a special colored trim. I thought maybe Toyota was trying to bring Toyota Pro type deal here. Does not appear to be the case. The Chevy ZR2 Colorado would be a cool truck to have here with the diesel.

 

Thanks BrokenMech, Like all our projects they are work in progress. There are some really nice rides on this site.

 

While I posted some of these pics in another thread, I thought I would keep with the build updates

I decided that I wanted to paint match my Piak front bumper. The black was OK but just seemed to stand out like it didn't belong.

I have some buddies at the Toyota Paint and body shop so we yanked off the pumper and paint matched it.

Here are some pics before and after.





Before

 

Updating this thread,

I decided that the Toyota Nav/stereo system was not very user friendly. I also didn't like the fact I had to go in and have the maps and GPS updated. So I took out the factory unit and added an Android OS set up. The screen is 9" and uses Google maps, has Voice command, Youtube vids.



Factory unit





New Android OS unit in. All steering wheel functions are still in tact

 

My old Cobra 840 dash cam I brought from the US finally started acting up. I installed a new system front and rear. I like the feature that you can DL all vids direct to your phone via BT. I can run a 128gb card. As with all new systems its all HD. This can do 4k but why? I like 1080P. It also mounts very low profile on the windshield behind my mirror. I am extremely picky about wires hanging all over. I spent a lot of time pulling down the headliner and installing and then zip tied all the wires up behind the mirror





Front



Rear.

 

Looks good, been following your build from the start but its been almost 2 years since the last post I was worried you got swallowed up by the notorious Thai mud.

The paint matched bumper looks so much better than the black, great choice! The Android head unit is pretty sweet too. Could you share a link I'd like to have a better look at it, thx.
Hows the KM3's working out for you, have they gotten any louder with some miles on them? I had considered them for my Tacoma but since 90% of my miles are on road I stuck with the KO2's.

 

Thanks for the note. I got frustrated as Photobucket chapped lots of people and the thread had all this text and no pics. So I started posting in the "What have you done to your 3rd Gen" thread. Today I had sometime and cleaned up the thread and add all the pics back from page 1. I have been posting just not in this thread. I am always doing something to my truck.

That said and answering your questions;

Thanks on the front end replacement/bumper color. I like it better as well. Just looks like it came with the truck.

Let me dig up the link on the Head unit. This shop in Bangkok was referred to me from a friend and is a custom place and I think they make these up. I laughed as it didn't even come with an owners manual so its like a Smart Phone, you just figure it out as you go along. If you have a Samsung or Google phone it functions almost exactly like that.

So far I have 14K miles on the KM3's and they are still very quiet. I was waiting for the edge to break off them and start that road howl. I almost went with KO2's as I am back working (was sort of retired) and a good portion of my time is on the road these days. But then a HUGE rain comes and that clay mud goes everywhere and the KM tires just deal with it far better.

 

Well after lots of research and calls and questions for ECU upgrades to make a bit more power I went with RaceChip out of Germany. I had it narrowed down to the ECU shop and Racechip. Most everyone around these parts in Thailand has the ECU shop and if I was going racing they would be my choice but at this juncture I wanted a plug and play for a daily driver. I do like that Racechip has an App for my phone and I can change settings at any time.





Its a pretty straight forward plug in. While I do not have access to a dyno to do a pre and post install, it will be one of those seat of your pants type deals. Long before I switched to Tacoma when I lived in the states I had a K3500 Chevrolet Duramax truck. It was the first year they came out (LB7) and I worked very close with Edge Performance and ended up stacking boxes and I had the 6.6L Dmax at 725hp and 1015ftlbs of torque on the dyno. Anyway a story for another day. I used it for towing my Race car trailer.

RaceChip states that this will add ~50HP and ~ 115 ftlbs to tq. That takes the 2.8L 4 cylinder turbo diesel to about 230HP and 530 ft lbs tq ( on paper of course)

 

RaceChip installed. The phone app to change settings on the fly is very intuitive and easy to use. Install took about 45 mins



Had to pull bracket assy out to get to back fuel rail sensor control.



Module in place



And wasting no time I set it at max and went for a run. Why buy a module and run it at a low setting right? Well seat of the pants feel was pretty good. Much better throttle response as the turbo spools up quicker. You definitely feel the Tq increase as it pulls the truck up to speed much faster. I am a realist though and without dyno pulls before and after there is no way to validate Racechip's claim but seat of the pants feel..... it definitely added a noticeable amount more power.

Hey we mod our truck for fun anyway.