05 Tacoma SAC and 4.7 V8 Swap

For the first time ever this new frame is off jack-stands, not held up by springs but some blocks of wood because the coil mounts are just tacked in. Brought my lifted 4Runner in to give a little scale to the truck. It's close to ride height with the blocks but will go down an inch or so.

 

Now it was time to see how everything truly cleared with full droop, and full flex. I put a single coil in place on the coil overs to check for frame clearance at full flex. Everything clears and can be fully welded in once I get back to put the hydraulic bump stops in and clearance a couple of spots, but no more major revamps of brackets. Feels great to finally be consistently be making forward progress instead of the back and forth of test fitting and redo. Here are the pics of flex. Lowest part of the tire inside edge was 26".

 

Here is the clearance pictures. The coil-overs clear nicely without any issue.





The lower links by my already chopped up cross member still need a little more clearancing but not bad. The cross member will definitely be getting a lot more material added.





Will have to cut a little more out of the fiberglass fenders and the LH inner fender and then everything should be good there.

 

That's it for now. Will update more when I make some more progress when I'm back from work. My plan for brake lines is to run some brake lines through some small angle iron I weld on top of the lower links and just run a straight line down the links to each wheel. Will use 4 flex lines that are way shorter instead of 2 very long flex lines that would get caught up in everything. Going to see what I can come up with for hydraulic steering lines as well that aren't out looking for a way to get pinched and caught up in stuff.

 

Looking sweet, keep up the good work.

 

Got a knock that's developed in my 4.0 after having my blown headgasket repaired...might consider this 4.7 swap if the motor goes

 

Incredible thread! I’ve got a 2005 4.7 motor with 101k miles bought it for $1100. Slowly collecting things for my truck to do an engine swap into my 2012 tacoma. The only question I have is about the engine swap and has to with the wiring. I’ve pretty much got about everything I need for the swap and then some for sas later down the road. But how much modifications was done to the ecu? That’s the only thing I’ve had yet to mess with in my tacoma and want to know what I’ll run into. Thanks in advance

 

Well this thread deserves a bump.. You did mention daily driving it, you'll certainly draw some attention with this rig. I'd be staring at it for sure if I seen you on the QE2

 

Damn. I'm looking into doing this myself here in Alberta. Definitely need more information lol

 

So just a bit of an update. Since my last post I installed my tacobox for shifter fitment and pulled apart the interior. I however but the project on the backburner big time since with a closed border there is honestly very few places in Canada to use a truck like this. So the 4runner has just been getting wheeled because for the most part that's all a person needs here maybe a touch more capability but not to the level of this truck.

I've always been a little skeptical of the Marlin Tacobox in an application of this size. Great product and absolutely beautiful to look at for something that hides under the truck. I've decided to go a different route for gearing so I'm going to sell it. It's unused other than being test fitted so if anyone is interested let me know. At this time I'd prefer it to stay in Canada so I can deliver as I don't trust shipping such a hard to get product. PM if interested.

And in the near future I'll be getting back to working hard on this project to finally get it finished up and ready for next year's southern wheeling adventures.

You'll have to use the ecm from the 4.7, the body connections however are the same to the Tacoma but may have to move some pins around to line up for the Tacoma, this has yet to be done.

Well not exactly daily driving, but I'll definitely be driving it on big wheeling trips. Was supposed to be on the tail end of a big trip right now with some American friends to Trail Hero and a bunch of other locations in various states. But with the border closed it didn't happen for me at least.

Where are you located? It is an exceptional amount of work to do this haha.

 

Any updates on your truck? Pretty interested in the 4.7 swap. I have a second taco with a blown HG so trying to sort out what I should do with it. You've likely sold your tacobox, but if not, I would buy that off you! I'm in BC.