Ripcord's Spruce Mica Build

|March 31, 2020|


Seat Spacers:

Most Tacoma owners can agree that the seating position in the Tacoma sucks! The distance from the seat bottom to the floor is too short and it can cause a lot of discomfort on longer drives/road trips.

The fix is to raise the seats up, but this wasn’t always easy to do. The rear mounting points of the front seats are simple to add spacers and longer bolts but there was never a solution for the front mounting points, until now! Desert Does It sells billet machined brackets for lifting the front mounting points of the seats about 1.25”. Link to @EasyDoesIt thread HERE.

Or the website where you can buy them HERE.


Parts (per seat):
Front Seat Jackers
Rear Seat Jackers
Front Multi-Mount Panel


Tools:
14mm & 15mm sockets


Time:
30 minutes


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I’ll be showing the install on my passenger seat, but it is the same for both front seats.


Here are the brackets for the seats:






Covers off




Here are the parts!




The front Seat Jackers re-use the factory bolt to fasten the bracket down




Then you use the supplied new bolts to fasten the seat mounts.








For the rears, just a simple spacer install.




The covers still fit on the rear mounting points as well!




And now for the Multi-Mount Panel. This will be great to have, I may put a fire extinguisher there or move some of my radio stuff there. Gotta decide!







This has been one of the best improvements I have made to the entire truck. The comfort has increased significantly. I was considering expensive aftermarket seats before I did this.

If you want a taste of what this is like, just try putting a pillow on the seat and see how you like the raised seating position.

 

@Ripcord You can also cut a hockey puck for the rear spacer. They are cheap and will have a better surface area. You could end up putting a hole in your floor when hitting a bump and putting that much force on less than a half inch surface area.

 

EDIT: I have since changed out the cheap rear spacers I used, edited the above post with good stuff from Desert Does It.

 

I read through most of the build. Very nice thread, well written, great pictures, and a well thought out build. It's nice to see somebody who thinks about what step he wants to make as much or more than I do.

 

Thanks for the compliments! Glad you enjoyed the read

 

One of the coolest build threads on TW. Also one of the sickest colors Toyota ever made.

 

Would you be able to post another angle of the exhaust reroute?

 

|March 12, 2020|


Roof Rack:


Over the last few months of the camper build, I was working with the guys at Sherpa Equipment Company to design a short rack for trucks with campers. They do intend to release these to market soon but since my camper is a different length than the GFC or Vagabond campers, they need to make specific versions for those.

Tacomas have 3 factory mounting points on each side; one at the front, middle & back. This short rack was to use just the front and middle points, but even the middle mounting point was underneath the camper. So they made this mounting bracket that reaches under the camper to grab that middle mounting point.

It is similar to their standard method of mounting directly to the crossbars, which is very sturdy!

9A0A9865 by alex fleming, on Flickr


Once those mounting brackets are on, the rest of the rack is an easy assembly and install.

_WPO6150 by Will Oliver, on Flickr

9A0A9903 by alex fleming, on Flickr

9A0A9943 by alex fleming, on Flickr

_WPO6170 by Will Oliver, on Flickr





They make a double cab & access Cab racks as well! This is an old shot of my truck with their Grand Teton double cab rack.

FLEM9934 by alex fleming, on Flickr


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The shop that did mine did a shit job. You'll find better pics from others in this thread:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/exhaust-reroute-pics.169293/page-2

 

Huh, never knew those multi-mount panels existed, looks like it could be very useful.

So tiny!! I love it

 

I’m gonna need to see a build thread otherwise I can’t trust what you say here

 

^ I concur

 

It's coming, I promise! I've been writing it up for a few days now

 

So I picked up some of that leaf spacer material because I am done with all these squeaks much like you were.. How have they held up? and what metal spacers did you take out..? I haven’t ripped my pack apart yet.. And did you spray any kind of silicone or anything in there when you did this or did you just wash and clean the leafs and put the plastic material in there...? No grease or anything.?

 

Great looking truck!

 

What kind of MPG is this beauty getting ?

 

17 average, was getting 18-19 before the camper.

 

Saw you got a new C4 front bumper, did you get it on yet ?

 

Alright folks, lots of updates to post so buckle up. Trip pics (and vids) and mods!

See next page

 

|April 18, 2020|

It has been a good long year of using the camper, starting off with a snow camping trip!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/gsgXuIxRz1A














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|May 8, 2020|

The next one was a trip up the Clohesy Lake trail. I was breaking trail through snow drifts most of the way up, and right before I got to the end my winch failed on me after getting me unstuck many times that day.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/pUZYWsUJ0EE








The cause of the winch failure was that I did not have a large enough washer on it and the bolts just pulled through the bumper. I decided to get a replacement bumper along with a new winch (scroll down to see)




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|June 20, 2020|

And other trips throughout the year.

 

And my annual summer trip with the usual bunch.