95 Tacoma SX

Picked this up about a month ago. 255k miles, all stock except the funky bumper. Had an 87 Yota truck back in high school (I'm 36 now), but otherwise this is my first Toyota since. Most recent vehicles are an '05 Outback, '86 W150, and 95 Grand Cherokee. I may pick up another highway car, but for the foreseeable this truck will be my one and only - daily driver and adventure-mobile. I'm working my way through the truck bit by bit as I can afford. When it makes sense to upgrade parts I will do it. So far I've just done fluids and the front bumper.

Here's the truck as I got it. The bumper was homebrew and attached terribly.


Dropped some coin to get what I thought was a good option from trailgear. This is what it looks like now.




Front suspension is way past worn (bottom mount bushings are completely gone), and with the added weight of the winch sags quite a bit in the front. Got some cheap new oem-style struts coming from rockauto, hopefully they'll do until I decide on a more complete suspension upgrade.
Engine (2.7) needs both exhaust sensors, right now it smells quite rich at idle and doesn't seem to have the power that it should. That'll be next. For a vehicle of this age in NC I just need a safety inspection (tires brakes seat belts lights pretty much) and a visual inspection of the cat, so I'm looking for solutions that delete or replace unnecessary sensors.

Thanks for all the information on this site y'all, it's a great resource, glad to be a part of it.

 

Give your lower ball joints a check before driving it around too much.

 

They are tight, and there's actually a receipt in the glove box from when they were replaced ~10k miles ago. This truck was a commuter and then second vehicle for previous owner, doesn't appear that he ever took it off road or used the winch (thankfully considering that bumper..)

So, what exactly is stock ride height, and where/how is this measured? I want stock height and rake with the ability to carry a bit heavier load.

 

I think somewhere around 20- 21" from hub to fender is stock in the front.

 

Mine is about 20.5" from center of hub to the lip of the fender, but it looks like more rake than stock to me, even with the camper shell. Hard to tell but we'll see what the new struts do on their own. Probably get the OME/Bilstein thing eventually as that seems to be the most popular.

 

Did both o2 sensors today, I was all set with the pb blaster and torch ready to fight with some nuts. They literally crumbled in my fingers and I could just pull the sensors off with a little prying. Cool. Check engine light's gone, at least for now.

 

Well, my struts came in so I jacked up the truck and pulled off the old ones. Pb blaster, mini sledge, finally a sawzall for a top bolt whose stud came loose in the strut. Since I don't have a spring compressor and this is my only vehicle... eh it worked. Don't know when the last time they were changed was, the bushings at the bottom were completely gone, and the metal part inside looked like it would pop out any day now.

Didn't bother to open the boxes for the new struts before I took the old ones off, not sure if I wish I had or not. I ordered two matching FCS struts on "manufacturer closeout" from RockAuto, it was $70 for the pair. They sent me two different GSP struts... one fit fine, I put that on the driver's side. The other one I had to use the Toyota jack trick (upside down jack against the fender/uca) to push the control arms down pretty far to get the bottom bolt through. Turns out that side sits a little bit lower... wtf, whatever, it'll bide me time to get a real deal suspension setup going. That was a PITA but it rides and looks a lot better now, photos soon.

 

Got the rears done today too. Dunno if you can see the difference, but you can definitely feel it!