2011 Regular Cab

Brand new to Tacomas. I've always wanted to get back into a regular cab pickup and found this 2011 somewhat nearby. They aren't easy to find. This one has 150K miles, but is pretty clean and drives well. Just got it home last night and haven't started anything.

My first order of business is to remove the topper. It's just not my thing. I'll have it up on Craigslist shortly. I'm thinking about Line-X for it eventually instead of a liner.

Any suggestions on standard wear/replacement items I should look at? The engine oil looks very clear and clean, like they had an oil change very recently. I'll probably swap it out for synthetic pretty soon though, just on principle. Tran fluid looks red and clean, so I'll probably not mess with it. Gear oil, plugs, grease points?

Any particular bushings that wear out? I did notice a creak from the driver's front when going over speed bumps.

I'm considering the OME 2" lift kit. Any thoughts? I want to keep it totally daily driverable, but would also like a slightly more aggressive stance and "weekend warrior" capability.

Day 1 pics:

 

Nice! Pop the #4 coil out and see if it’s covered in oil; if it is, it’s time for a new valve cover and spark plug tube gaskets. Good luck!

 

For me, the first thing I ended up doing was adding the intermittent wiper stalk. If you get any amount of rain, you'll probably want that. There's a writeup on it here somewhere. Did you get a carfax with it and does it show maintenance records?

 

Good call on the Carfax. I actually paid for it myself before the sale but wasn't so focused on the maintenance details:



Looks like the tranny fluid was changed relatively recently. Oil looks newer than 10K miles, so probably isn't on here.

I'll definitely check out the intermittent wipers. It's a nice feature, though not as critical in AZ as most places.

 

I'll definitely check out the intermittent wipers. It's a nice feature, though not as critical in AZ as most places


If I can live without it you can live without it

 

Topper off, much cooler in my book:



Poking around under the hood... what is the plastic housing on top of the main engine? It appears to be inline to the throttle body from the air filter, like a secondary filter or something?

 

I think there is vacuum line on the back of it that goes to the map sensor (make sure the lines aren’t dry rotted and attached securely)

 

It's a pretty big thing for that, but perhaps it is required to smooth out the signal, like a vacuum capacitor.

 

Make sure all the fluids are good. Even though a service review says that it is done, some here have found out otherwise.
Once that's taken care of. Sit down and think about what you will be using the truck for and go from there. Its easy to get caught up in the medications thing. But then realizing that one had done something else first, or sooner.

 

As for the creak, place your hand on the fender above the wheel opening then push forward and pull back; my fender was loose and banging. Tighten it up

 

I pulled each wheel and inspected everything, checked the brakes, then crawled around to see what I could see underneath. It's apparent the truck has been off-roaded a bit. The skid plate is dented up nicely and held on by three bolts.





I think I'll go looking for aftermarket skid plates. If I can find something not too heavy, I'll go with that. Otherwise I'll bang this out and re-install.

I also discovered the truck had only one front and one rear mud flap, so I just removed the remaining two. I pulled a few handfuls of mud and leaves out from behind the front wheel well/flap area. I don't think there's any rust from it, but damp debris is a great catalyst for rust in hidden spots like that. Also found a few pine cones tucked under the skid plate. This pic shows the spot where stuff was accumulating. It's a hard to access spot behind the very bottom bolt visible in the pic.



Brakes are 75% done, but still okay. I'll put that off for now. Rear drums were a PITA to remove. I put a film of anti-seize on the face of the hub to avoid this next time.

Some of the plastic trim bits were not attached properly or held on with cable ties. I did the best I could to secure everything properly. Makes me want a real bumper instead of plastic. One wheel was missing a lug nut. Sort of hidden by the plastic decorative hub cab thingy, which I decided not to reinstall.

Here are some random pics. Let me know if you see anything amiss.

 

That's the main intake tubing. It has resonator chambers to help quiet down the engine noise. I just noticed that HPS makes a silicon intake tube that connects from the stock airbox to the throttle body getting rid of the resonator. It looks interesting because it maintains the stock airbox which pulls cooler air from the fender. The part # for the black one is 57-1827-BLK. Here's a picture of the blue one. One thing you may want to check is under the cowl panel where I circled in yellow is the intake for the AC and ventilation and a lot of debris/leaves get clogged up in there.

 

Neat. I wonder if there's noticeable performance gains. I was just looking at Airaid and other similar options. If you're gonna do it, go all in with the ugliness:

 

Save your money

 

I have the AFD intake and I'm definitely getting better gas mileage but it's only around .5 mpg. But that shows you the stock setup doesn't give the straightest airflow to the TB so the stock setup can be improved on. I think that HPC tube would stay cooler and using the stock airbox is better than the cone filter for cooler air. I put some spare heat wrap on mine so the temps aren't bad at all.

 

I got around to actually reading this sticker today. Remote start is not something I want or need and I'm not sure how I'd go about getting it working anyway. Previous owner didn't mention it or provide a remote.



I'd like to remove any extraneous components or wiring related to the remote start, if it's actually still in here. Anyone see any wires that aren't normally there from the factory?





On an unrelated note, anyone know why there are wire going into my tailgate?

 

Probably for a backup camera if you ever wanted to install one. My truck has the wiring in the tailgate as well but I have no intentions of adding a backup camera. Heck, I don't even turn on the radio.

 

Well, I've been going after minor maintenance things, replacing fluids, etc. One thing was the tailgate top protector was shot. Almost all the clips were broken out and the PO had used sheet metal screws to hold it down. This aftermarket replacement was under $50 and looks like the original. We'll see if it holds up in the sun:

$60 Dependable Direct Replacement Tailgate Molding Cap Compatible with 2005-2015 Toyota Tacoma TO1904100 (2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BB1RH8L/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00

Pretty boring stuff, but may help someone else down the line.

Old, clips shot:


New:

 

I installed some TRD off-road shocks and coilovers from a 2020 today. I didn't mess with the rear springs. The idea is that the 1.5-2" of lift will simply level it out. So far, this appears to be the case. Here's before and after:





About 1.5" taller in the front after the switch, pretty much what I was going for to make it just a bit more aggressive but still daily driver streetable. Could probably fit an inch or so bigger tire no problem.

Install was pretty easy once I got the tools I needed. I have Toyota instructions I can forward to anyone who needs them, but they recommended separating the lower ball joint and loosening the lower A arm to loosen it up. Then the strut literally just falls away. Loosening only the front bolt from the front of the A arm and the rear from the rear resulted in no change in alignment per my marks, but I have it in for a realignment anyway.

My advice is just to have the correct sockets and wrenches and a breaker bar since everything was tighter than expected.

The other thing: There is ambiguity on the forum about how to ID left vs right strut. Two options: Go off the paint markings on the spring, or align the end of the coil to the rear on the bottom. I found the latter more credible based on searching around and it seems to have worked out. These threads have info:

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/coilover-orientation-which-is-driver-passenger.651705/
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...n-trd-off-road-shock-strut-assemblies.618845/
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/strut-left-vs-right.702400/#post-24899759

Here are some before and after pics:

 

That looks like the right amount of lift you were looking for. How is the ride with those shocks/coils?