Have You Ever Tried the Search Function Build Thread

I originally intended to leave my truck absolutely stock. A couple of years later, I have realized that I failed in that regard. I figured I would start a build thread to help me remember what I have done. I also thought it would be useful for others since my truck is not anything exotic, but I have had to answer all of the most common questions. The real difficulty in the common mods/questions about the truck is that you can't ask about it. As soon as you ask about a tire size or lift, people tell you to use the search function When you use the search function or google, you just get twenty pages of the same question with people telling you to use the search instead of answering the question. I believe I have answered most of the common questions while trying to improve my truck. I will try to give some sort of source for why I think something works.
I bought a 2019 Sport DCSB in old man tan. I immediately changed the grill to the Pro bro style. I didn't really like the pro style that much, but it was way cheaper than anything else and the stock chrome was gross. So gross, I can't find any pictures of it.

I got the grill from Mad Hornets. Despite the cheap price, it has lasted for about two years and looks brand new still. I will warn against buying their garnish for the sensor. It set off my light. I had to buy another one off Amazon. I just looked for one with good ratings and it worked great.

The next modification I did was the installation of wheel spacers. I spent the extra cash for the spidertrax spacers because some of the horror stories on the ebay spacers made me extra cautious. The spacers improved the looks of the stock wheels for sure. I believe the first picture is after the spacers also. I went about 5000 miles with no issues. I took the truck in for the toyota care tire rotation and then I developed a vibration at 75mph and higher. I'm sure I could have figured out the problem (probably retorque the spacers correctly) but I had already moved on to the wheels at that point.
I opted for the SCS wheels 17x8.5 with -10 offset. The offset was a major deal. There is severely inconsistent data about tire rubbing and what size fits. This is (I am almost positive) due to the variance in trucks combined with the fact that different offset will vastly change your fit. My original plan was to fit the biggest tire I could without any sort of lift or cutting. I originally picked up on the fact that you could easily fit 265/70r17 without trimming on stock suspension. The other option was a skinny. Something like 255/80r17. https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-skinny-on-skinny-tires.529656/
The stock rims were something like +20 offset. This allowed for both of those size tires. 0 offset is considered the sweet spot for most tires and certain people report fitting up to 285/70r17 with little to no rub with a mild level and no cutting. ( I don't really buy it but they say it's true so maybe it is). My wheels have that -10 offset. It gave me the poke I wanted, but now I realize that it will probably rub a bit with the 265/70r17 tires that were in my original plan for the truck. I'm still in the middle of planning that out, but this was a little background on what was going on when I put the wheels on.

When I changed the wheels, I really started thinking about tire size. This made me realize that the transmission never hit 6th gear and the shifting was done by a drunk computerized monkey. I bought into OV tune (now VF tuner). Even as I write this, I feel like the tuner is a vastly unfinished product. Customer support is garbage/insulting. All that being said, it was a vast improvement over the stock setup with version 2.0. After a few user developed tunes came out, it really changed the truck to something usable. I still don't get into 6th gear unless I'm going downhill with a tornado behind me, but at least the transmission will shift normally below that.

With the tune on board I was satisfied enough to decide to keep the truck despite the fact that the gearing was entirely too high. I decided to move on and add a truck topper/canopy. I was planning a trip to Utah with the family and it was a good excuse to get some usable space out of the short bed. There are a lot of choices in the $2000-2800 range but I really liked the construction of the RSI smart cap, so I spent an extra $1000 to get that. It is stainless steel construction with a static weight rating of over 700lbs along with the ability to access the bed from the sides. There is a thread that covers the pros and lots of cons (the premium price didn't eliminate some obvious quality control issues.) https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/rsi-smartcap-photo-heavy.683746/ Overall, I really like mine. I am still waiting for the correct brake light harness 2 months later, but I have no leaks and it is very solid.

The cap came with integrated roof rails. I didn't want to spend $800 bucks on a Prinsu rack and I didn't want it to look like a unistrut rack, so I went to tnutz.com and pieced together a Prinsu clone for around $300.

Once the rack was in place, I used it to mount my bike rack. (The canopy made it hard to fit the bike inside).


One last thing I did to make more usable space was a platform. The bed has spots to place two 2x6 boards across the bed. This just clears the wheel well. I cut 3/4" plywood to fit and placed it across those boards to make a platform. It works great for adding tons of organized space while camping or traveling.

 

I mentioned tire size earlier. Right now I am running the original 265/65r17 that cam with the truck. I am unsure at this point if I can get away without a CMC (cab mount chop) if I buy 265/70r17 tires due to the negative offset. This became a bit of a moot point once I went to Utah. I saw so many trucks with 33's that I had to have some for myself. I dare you at this point to do a search on "will 33's fit my tacoma". If you wade through all of the pages of unhelpful posts that berate the person asking the question, you will eventually come to three or four threads that actually address the issue. The problem is, they all contradict each other. One says you need a minimum two inch lift and a CMC. One says you just need a lift. One is just an argument on if a lift does anything. One says that you can put 285's on a stock truck with no cutting. Glad I asked right?
Here is what I came up with so far.
This guy explains why your average lift doesn't do a thing for a Taco as far as fitting tires.



This guy claims to have fit 33's with no lift and -10 offset



My takeaway is that I can do a CMC and leave my suspension stock. I plan to try this when I mount my 285/70r17 later this year. I'm not about to ask anyone if this will work or if they have done it, because that would ruin the entire point of a forum. If you have made this work, I wouldn't mind hearing about it......if you just can't help spilling illegal information.

 

Beautiful truck

I prefer to call it sand storm instead Of beige or tan . Owned since new. Wish had a 2021 quicksand matching taco - but they stopped making it

 

Good idea and a great way to give useful content back to the community!

 

I'm hoping my sarcasm doesn't scare off input. This is my first truck build and 80"s sports cars don't always translate to practical knowledge.

 

I test drove a 2017 long bed with 10 ply 33"s and a 3 inch lift. It has 4.88 gears and that made it run significantly better than mine. I can't believe the difference. He claims to get better mileage on his 33's with the gears than he did stock. I knew I wanted gears but now it's gonna happen. Now to decide between 4.88 and 5.29


https://spicerparts.com/calculators/tire-height-calculator
https://spicerparts.com/calculators/transmission-ratio-rpm-calculator

 

I've decided on 4.88. I just put the order in with east coast gear supply.
The real update right now is the fuel pump recall. I just got my truck back and it runs noticably better. My mileage seemed to have dropped off by around 1-2mpg. On the highway at 75mph I did some logging and KCLV had been dropping to 17-18. ( I'm running the kdmax tune for 87 octane) It is now back to around 22. I guess the pump was in bad shape and I didn't fully realize the problem.

 

Now if you could only keep people from filling up this thread with junk posts...

Thanks for the post! Your methodology is great. If you ever want to waste your life go into the OVTune threads. 400 pages before you actually find something you need.

 

I like the input. Not on the tuner thread though. That has cancer in it

 

Gear day today! Got my 4.88 rear gears in. Took about 5 hours with the "help" of my ten year old son. We were having fun and I forgot to take a single picture. I did spring for the Harrop elocker. I'll have to figure out how to wire that another day. Tomorrow the gasket maker will be dry and hopefully I can refill the diff and start the break in

 

Good video on the rear differential swap. He makes it look clean. My brake lines drained for an hour, even with plastic bags taped on the ends. I had to bleed the air out of the entire system.

 

Finally got around to the front differential. Well I have it all out. I gotta work tonight so I'm calling it. It went smoother than I thought. There are more steps but I don't have to bleed the brakes so I'm thinking the front isn't really any worse than the rear. It will be nice to have four wheel drive again. My boy was really excited to see how the steering worked. He figured it out while unbolting the steering and started explaining it to me. That was cool.
As an update, I have about 1000 miles on the rear gears. I have a low key howl above 55. Deceleration is still loud. I've noticed it's worse when it's cold. If I had tires that made noise, I probably wouldn't hear it except on deceleration.

 

Took me a while to get my locker wired up. For the main harness, I just basically followed the stock wires that follow down the driver side frame. It was a little hard to thread it through but it is very clean looking and won't take damage unless the stock wires are also hit.
Instead of the Eaton switch, I used one from ch4x4 so it would fit the factory location. I don't know the first thing about electricity but I figured it out first try. New button to old harness is green to blue, red/yellow to yellow/red, the second red/yellow can be tapped into a tan wire on one of the other switches to give you dash light. Last wires are black to black.

 

Finally time for bigger tires. I finally settled on some Maxis RAZR AT811 in 285/70/17. Reviews are good and I love their MTB tires. This size means some trimming though. I took the plunge and took an angle grinder to the truck.

There wasn't much clearance up front either. I took off the air dam and then trimmed the corner off the plastic. Then I used a heat gun to remold the liner.

 

Finally got the tires on. Did some more plastic trimming with a razor. My neighbors probably think I'm crazy because I kept going in and out of my driveway. I think I killed the rubbing though. I'll have to test that theory when I get some time. I'll be pretty excited if I end up fitting 285/70/17 with no lift and no rub.

 

I also have the mad hornets grille. My only complaint is the visible gap between the grille and grille housing. I think it is a little too noticeable compared the the OEM grille. Nonetheless it’s still good for a Chinese knock off lol

 

That looks awesome!
How much did you cut and trim? What offset are the wheels?

 

Wheels are the SCS with -10 offset.
I'll take some pictures but I'm waiting a bit to make sure I eliminated the rub first. Basically the wheel well liner over the pinch weld below the first attachment point needed to be cut to eliminate the part that bows out. Then I just kept trimming the back of the wheel well at the fender flare bottom portion. Not really anything crazy. My wife couldn't tell what I was talking about until I spelled it out

 

I ended up trimming a little more around the pinch weld and I moved the front liner forward by relocating the attachment point. I used a heat gun to get the liner to relax a bit after that. On a full left turn at maximum compression, I hear a slight noise but I can't find anywhere that is rubbing. I guess time will tell but I imagine my version of no rubbing is more strict than what some others may say is no rubbing. I think I can safely say that you do not need a lift for 285/70/17 with -10 offset.

 

I've driven around 4000 miles since I got the 33's. The only rub is from the top of the driver's side front wheel liner on absolutely full compression. I attempted to mold the liner with a heat gun, but there is metal behind the bulge of plastic. The rub is almost non-existent and it's not hurting anything so I'm unwilling to take a sledgehammer to it at this point.