The Pope's Incredibly Slow Build

Thank you!

 

May 15th, 2019

Cheap TRD Preaux Grille, OME Dakar's, and First Nights in RTT:

After adding the drawer system, rack, and RTT I quickly realized that the AAL system that I thought would hold me over for longer was not going to cut it. My leafs were sagging and I was bottom out over speed bumps.

A quick call over to Hugo @Toytec Lifts and I had some OME Dakar's purchased. I'm fulling capable of putting these on myself, but after a really long first 4 and a half months of the year, I needed a break from work and my every day life schedule. So I packed up the truck and drove from Tennessee out to Colorado to get them installed and to turn my phone off for a couple of days.



This trip also gave me the opportunity to use the Smittybilt RTT that I had put on in December, but hadn't had a chance to use yet. What better way to break in the tent than a windy and rainy night in the middle of nowhere in Kansas? I stayed dry, but the tent was definitely soaked through the canvas that wasn't protected by the rainfly. Not sure if that's normal in the higher quality brands, but it was dry by the time I was ready to pack up in the morning.




Before I left for the trip, I had ordered a cheap TRD Pro knock-off grille on e-bay for $100 shipped. I knew I was taking a risk, but was willing to see what showed up. When I got home, I opened the box up to inspect the product. Nicely packaged, everything was accounted for, and the material of the grille wasn't horrible but there were a few things I didn't like.

• It was missing a cut-out for the main center top clip for the grill surround to connect
• It was missing holes for two of the Torx screws on the bottom
• It had a cheap, small foam strip on the top where the weather-stripping normally would be on an OEM grille, and no holes to re-connect the old weatherstripping to it.

So I packed it back up and requested a return on e-bay. I sat on it for a day and waiting for the vendor from China to respond. And then I thought about it for a bit. I wouldn't be buying a real one ever, and the other cheap ones are $100 more than what I spent. I already have it, and I have tools, so why not just keep it and see if I can make it work? So that's what I did. I got out the drill and Dremel, and make the necessary changes.

The fitment of it actually isn't horrible, but there are two things that are bad and laughable.

• I didn't remove the entire foam strip that was already on the fake grille. I only cut out the places where I would drill the holes for the OEM weatherstripping. If you looks closely at the picture where the grille meets the hood, you can see a "wavey" pattern. That's the foam piece pushing up the weatherstrip. I need to remove it and cut out the foam so it lays flat.
• The lettering is hilarious. On the OEM Pro grille and most of the other knock-offs, the lettering inlay is one piece that screws into the back of the grille. These had a screw for each letter individually. So cheap it's ridiculous. It looks fine from afar, but if you get up close (and even in the picture) you can see some of the letters are crooked. I'm going to try and fix this but it's pretty funny.

Overall, it was $100. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but it will work. Hard for me to justify much more than that for something that literally does nothing for the truck other than change the look. We'll see how long it lasts.



And that's where we sit now. I really need to get some sliders and other protection, but the lead times and shipping are insane. Not sure what my plan is to offset that.

Loved having the RTT, but it's going to take a few more trips to figure out what works for me. Both nights I woke up to a wet canvas. I wasn't wet, but the inside of the tent was. First night was from rain, but the second night was due to a massive condensation problem. The outside was totally dry, but the inside of the tent was SOAKING wet. We even had a couple of the windows open. So I'm looking into solutions to that.

 

May 20th, 2019

At the Helm Bed Stiffeners:

I've got some bed flex. I'm not entirely sure when it started happening, but it was magnified by the added weight from the rack and RTT.

I was always going to go with ATH, but delayed buying them for some reason. Finally put in an order last week and the shipping time was insanely fast. The product is super solid and beautifully made.

Waiting for the first coat of paint to dry as I'm typing this. Looking forward to putting them on. Thanks Morgan!!! @At The Helm

 

May 22, 2019

At The Helm Bed Stiffeners Installed:

Finished installing the bed stiffeners from @At The Helm . Really easy install, and I now have peace of mind that my issue at least won't get worse now.




ARB 1250 Awning:

Since my drawer system contains my camp kitchen system, I wanted to add an awning to protect that area from the sun or rain while it's open. So I added the small ARB awning. Haven't used it yet, but it should do the job well enough. Definitely not very wide, so it won't do much in driving rain, but should do fine in a light rain.

 

Awhile back I posted in the @Toytec Lifts thread regarding a "clunk" I had been having, and then also posted in the local TN thread to see if anyone had any ideas as to what was going on.

A few months have passed since then, and I'm starting to get a little worried about the components on my front end. It may all be in my head but I think I can actually feel something loose through my feet and the steering wheel, but I've check and re-checked everything and can't seem to find anything. On top of that I still have the "clunk" over bumps & speed bumps when going under 40 MPH.

I'm debating on taking the sway bar off just to see if that's part of the problem. The only other thing I can think of is maybe loosening the LCA bolt and re-torque.

 

Triple check all torqued specs on the parts when the static weight of the Tacoma is on the ground (not in the air), that is a common overlooked thing that a lot of people do when they are installing a lift kit is they tighten everything while in the air which will cause parts to be at a "bind" when the vehicle is lowered back down on the ground..


If you feel like the clunk is coming from the coilover, always triple check and see if it is possible to swap the coilovers to the other side to see if the sound/ clunk moves with the coilover.


Let me know if you need any further assistance.




-David

 

Yea, thanks David! I torqued everything on the ground after installing the lift, and this will be my 4th time checking them again.

I just took off the factory skid plate and oddly that seems to have at least minimized the noise for some reason. Not sure how that would be the case, as those bolts were super tight.

Edit: Disregard the above. It's back. Fifth confirmation that everything is torqued properly. Going to have to find a shop in town to take a look at it. I'm at a loss.

 

Nice rig! Hope to see you around Franklin sometime!

 

Thanks, Mike! I hope to see you around as well. If you happen to see me out, don't hesitate to stop me and say hello.

 

May 29th, 2019

Rexing V1 - Hardwire Dash Cam

Well, after spending hours on r/idiotsincars on Reddit, and driving at least 10 seconds everyday in the greater Nashville area, I decided that it was time to get a dash cam.

I followed one of the many hardwire threads on here, and it was super simple. Only took about 20 minutes.

I bought this one:

$95 REXING V1 - 4K Ultra HD Car Dash Cam 2.4" LCD Screen, Wi-Fi, 170° Wide Angle Dashboard Camera Recorder with G-Sensor, WDR, Loop Recording, Supercapacitor, Mobile App, 256GB Supported

https://www.amazon.com/Rexing-Dashboard-Recorder-G-Sensor-Recording/dp/B00X528FNE/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=1QQTM0WCHO136&keywords=rexing+v1&qid=1559169226&s=gateway&sprefix=rexing%2Caps%2C285&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1

You can get it in 4k now, but I didn't really want to spend that much at the moment. This one has great reviews and was at a really good price.

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Came to a realization today while I was about to pull the trigger on some @SOS CONCEPTS sliders.

I am spending more money than necessary on things for the truck that I won't have any use for in my current life schedule, so I'm transitioning my purchases to things that are practical for what I use the truck for now. We will see how long that lasts.

I did order some replacement splash guards for the driver & passenger fronts, as the one on the drivers side is torn and has been flapping in the wind driving me insane inside the cab. I'm also getting ready to do the diff breather relocation next week.

 

June 18th, 2020

Living in an apartment sucks, for a lot of reasons. One major one being that it's nearly impossible for me to do any real work on the truck. I was finally able to make the drive up to my parents place to spend some time with them and steal their garage.

OME AAL

I've had the OME Dakar medium duty leafs on for awhile now. I probably should've just done the HD's from the beginning - but didn't expect my weight to cause them to sag as much as it did as they recommend the HD's for a 600lb constant load, which I'm not close to.

Finally got around to installing the AAL. It helped a bit, but now I'm nearly 1" higher on the passenger side somehow, even though I was dead even prior to the AAL install. Just ordered the Wheeler's 1/2" shim, and will probably give that a shot.

MOOG LCA Replacement

I'm still chasing a bad and constant knocking noise. I've tried just about everything. Finally just decided to replace the driver's side LCA, as I thought the LBJ would be the culprit. It wasn't. But we'll see how long this MOOG LCA lasts.



Bedside Decals

I hated the look of the stock red decals on the bedsides, and finally took them off. I thought I'd just stick with nothing back there but I didn't really like the way it looked. So I reached out to @CBoy808 and he made me these. Great product as always.

 

June 19th, 2020

Sound Deadening the Floor

I've had all four doors sound deadened for over a year now. It didn't really give the results I expected, and definitely was not worth the time spent to do it. So what did I decide to do? More!!

I had some left over material, and also have time to kill with everything going on right now - so I figured why not.




Adding the foam insulation.



Re-installing the carpet.



I feel like this, combined with the doors, actually made a little bit of a difference. I didn't do the roof, and haven't decided if I'm going to or not. In my truck, a substantial amount of the noise is coming through the door seals - so I'm not sure how I'm going to tackle that just yet.

 

June 21st, 2020

Rear Seat Removal and Platform Update

Last year over the the holidays my dad and I had quickly built a super basic platform for the back seats and a ramp for my dog with some spare wood he had in the garage. They worked great for what they were, but it was always just a temporary solution.

The dog ramp fit perfectly in the bed neck to the drawer system when it was just me traveling by myself with my dog, but if my girlfriend came along we ran out of space quickly. It was also annoying having to lower the bike rack, tailgate, get the ramp, and then reverse that process every time we would stop on trips.

So - I came up with an idea in my head and my dad helped it come to fruition. Neither of us are carpenters, woodworkers, etc of any kind. But I think it turned out great. It's prototype #1 - and I'll update it as I use it.


Cutting the initial 2x4 to an 11* angle so we can use the 4 seat bolts as the anchor for the front.



Drilling out the holes for the bolts that connect the platform.



Skipped a ton of steps without taking pictures, so the next photos will just be one big group. I personally like the stock rear storage bins both behind and underneath the seats and wanted to keep them in tact with full access. I also wanted the option to put the seats back in if I absolutely needed to. This whole system can be removed and the seats can be put back in about 30 minutes.



The divider is to keep the ramp from sliding around while driving. It just slides right out if you need to access the storage bins underneath. The platform is also held down using the two seatbelt bolts on the floor with d-rings and turnbuckles (not pictured) so it's all completely safe in case of an accident. Ignore the red circle, that is just to show where the ramp sits.





Lastly, in order to make it look a little more "finished" and also add a little flair, I made these snap on "curtains" with some fabric from the fabric store.



And to add a little of it somewhere else in the truck, I commissioned my dad to sew this for me:



And now we have the entire left side of the bed for luggage and dog food!



That's it for now! I'll be working on attaching some tie down points for the cooler back there - but other than that it'll just be taking some trips and seeing how it works out for my girlfriend, dog, and me.

 

Looking good!! Love that fabric you got.

 

Thanks, man! Appreciate the kind words.

 

Awesome build man! Super clean & functional. Your write ups on the Dakars was also really helpful. Looking forward to following along!