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

It is from my son's 3rd generation Taco. I had to trim the back side of the mount a little for it to fit.

 

I looked at the Tundra upgrade, you lose your brake dust shield. I went with the 4runner upgrade because you retain the dust shield.

I highly recommend the 4runner upgrade, took half a morning to install hardest part was getting the axel nuts loose.

 

Yeah, I can wrap up a Saturday without even meaning to. At 7 am I'm "just going to tinker a bit on the truck". At noon my wife is like "do you need anything while I'm out?" and then at 7:45 pm I'm begging her to go to O'Reilly's and facetime me when she gets so I can tell the guy exactly what I need before they close!

 

Sooooooooooo we are all cleaning up our drums?
Did this a couple nights ago. I will do the front caliper black this weekend after the Elka install.

Also did the exhaust (muffler and on) in a high heat flat black. I was tired of staring at the rusted tailpipe...

 

Saw your post on the Elka set up arriving. in the US @HeadStrong Off-Road is a vendor and huge TW supporter. I'll be waiting for your ride report on that set up. Nice job on the drums. This fall is gonna see my truck getting lots of attention along those lines, Motors only got 54K but the undercarriage is showing it's age. Need to slow things down a bit.

 

I used a 5/16" (M8) bolt. Have to be careful.
I hammer the outside of the drum to loosen everything up then drill in the bolt.

 

Leaving the block lift lifestyle = priceless

Also, weather will destroy other brands (other than OME).

 

I can't wait to try them out. I have been wanting to move to a better suspy setup for a while but I don't trust Icon or others in our harsh cold and salty climate. Lots of guys at Krave Automotive ran the Icons and did a ton of maintenance on them. They have recently almost all moved to Elka and have been loving it.
I will report how it rides!


I saw HeadStrong was a vendor but I can get the same product for the same price in CAD. So I pay CAD$1,800 (from Krave) instead of USD$1,800 (HeadSrtong).
Currently USD$1,800 = CAD$2,357
Not sure why you guys don't buy Canadian... it's almost 25% off. Excluding shipping prices.
Now I've seen lots of HeadStrong posts and they are very helpful and huge TW supporters. So I get the whole "shop local" thing haha. But for me, it's not feasible with our dollar.
And Elka is a Canadian company, so getting them shipping from the States is doubling the shipping cost. Truckers will love it though

 

I get that. The intl shipping is no joke. I saw that Krave was CAD as were you. All makes sense. My point is they're a solid vendor rep'ping the product, so there's a source! I'm a New Englander so I know salt and that's part of the appeal for me as well. In the midwest currently and they may even be worse with the salt! they get scared shitless at the forecast of snow and all the roads are salt/gravel for the following week.

Part of what I've read is that Elka says they provide a good hwy ride, and this is key for this truck.

 

Yeah I beat them with a hammer, then used the bolt technique which is to just wrench the bolt in a little at a time on each side. I would go until I saw the drum start to move a bit, then switch to the other hole.

Bolt is M8x1.25.

I found this video useful..

https://youtu.be/eG-qb7uysSY

 

I do lots of hwy too. Can't wait to try them out!
If winter sports weren't so fun, I could do without winter... haha
We only get winter for 7-8 months... or that's what it feels like

 

Any recommendations on buying brake pads? website or something..

 

I just bought my TRD pads on Amazon.

If you're looking for info on different types of pads and pad selection - I found this thread useful..

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/brake-upgrade-stoptech-rotors-trd-performance-pads.523829/

 

Yeah man I read that . Looks like good quality!

 

Im looking to switch out the TRD ones.. They were awesome at first but theyre so fucking noisy its unbearable.

 

Hmm good to know.

 

Indeed. Mine are starting to squeal to a stop. I just tell passengers they are Uber performance pads. Mine makes noise the same way porches do lolol

 

After a 3 month wait for my frame replacement I got used to having Bluetooth and satellite radio in the 2019 loaner, so at the beginning of the week I picked up a low end Alpine radio. Now I've got it all- text to voice receiving, voice to text sending, Apple Car play, etc.. Big improvement over the stock radio that was in my 08.

 

Not sure you're comparing apples to apples - the ~1800 kit at Krave doesn't include add-a-leafs or UCA's. The ~2k kit at Headstrong includes both.

 

Is there a write up for doing this swap?