A non-enthusiast's Tacoma build

See, hard cases come back into production unexpectedly and BAM!, you are back in the mod game!

 

Quick shots I took tonight comparing output at the varying “levels” I have available.






My only gripe with the Morimoto ditch lights thus far is the weird spill emitting perpendicular to the direction they’re aimed. Not distracting or anything, just sloppy design.

 

Well, it finally happened. Something on my truck broke. Okay, something on my truck broke that had nothing to do with mods.



I caught some sort of debris while bebopping down the highway the morning of this past Saturday, 02 SEP. I didn't even notice the damage until nearly 12 hours later. As you can see above, the crack was spreading pretty steadily, so the only option was to replace the windshield.

In the interest of brevity (since this post is more for my own reference than anything else), I did a little poking around. Safelite installs crap-quality windshields, and the wait time to get an appointment with them was way too long. Glass America had an immediate availability, but they don't do what they say they'll do. I specifically requested quality, non-Chinese glass to be installed on three separate phone calls with three separate people. Apparently that word didn't get passed on to the people actually doing the work.



Note the DOT 563 marking, which indicates that the windshield was manufactured by Shenzen Automotive Glass in China. Compare this to my stock windshield:



DOT 177 corresponds with LN Safety Glass out of Ohio. Source here:

https://www.carwindshields.info/dot_db

I'll stick with the crappy off-brand windshield for now, but when it breaks, I'll go to Glass King out of Norfolk. Despite the painfully slow comms with their people, their installer is clearly a knowledgeable guy who understands what it means to do it right the first time. I imagine that's why a couple local dealerships recommended them, since they also handle the dealership's glass replacement work.

 

If you want to come to Maine I am good friends with the local glass shop manager.....

 

Well that sucks that after all that, you still got some shitty glass installed.

 

I wish I was surprised, but I’m not. The lack of competence displayed by most local companies I’ve dealt with is alarming. Glass America, Bert’s Alignment, Checkered Flag Toyota…

I know doing all this stuff myself isn’t a feasible option, but still.

 

Dropping a quick note to myself for future reference: don't wash your truck if the weather is too cool for the wash water to evaporate.

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Okay, details. It's a holiday weekend for us fedbois, so I figured I'd make the most of it by knocking out some time-intensive maintenance ahead of its scheduled interval. Doing the whole clay bar + sealant thing is a mighty sucky task due to the time and effort required, so that's what I elected to do.

I cleaned the interior in about 3 hours, which wasn't too awful. I then did a thorough wash of the outside, including rinsing it down a bunch (3 separate times, because claying be like that). This took another 4 hours, and ran me right up to sundown. I figured I'd park the truck in the garage and let it air-dry overnight, instead of putting even more work into towel-drying. I'd get to sealant application and waxing the next day.

The next morning, I started the truck to run out and grab something before kicking off the second day of work. This is when I noticed something weird with my headlights. With the headlight selector on the stalk...

- Set to "off": the passenger side headlight was on, low beam.
- Set to "DRL": the passenger side headlight was on, low beam. DRLs functioned as intended.
- Set to "running lights": the passenger side headlight was on, low beam. Running lights functioned as intended.
- Set to "headlights": both headlights were on, high beams only. I was not able to get the high beams to disengage, no matter what I tried.

Well that's not great. Didn't change the fact that I had to drive somewhere, so off I went. I drove on the highway for about 15 minutes before getting to my destination.

After wrapping up what I had to do, I started the truck to head back home. I did a quick check to see if the weird headlight issue was still present. Much to my surprise, it had vanished. Everything was functioning as it should. Hmmmmmmm.

Now I've never had anything like this happen before, and I think I know why. I usually skip washing the truck when it's 55 degrees or lower, especially if that temperature is accompanied by cloudy weather. That's the sort of weather we've had in VA Beach for the past few days. I'd wager that the wash water couldn't evaporate due to the environmental conditions, so it had time to work its way into my headlight connectors and cause some sort of short or feedback in the system. Driving on the highway for a short period of time probably forced this water out of its troublesome little spot, restoring normal function.

I schwacked some additional dielectric grease in the connectors, just to be safe. Crisis averted. Oh, and my truck is very shiny now.

 

Rolled 100,000 miles on the odometer yesterday. Nothing especially noteworthy has occurred since my last update, other than working through the laundry list of maintenance tasks that come due at the 100k mile mark:

Coolant drain and fill: was a pain in the ass, mostly because I’ve never done it before. I didn’t drain the engine block due to concerns with “air locking” the coolant lines/pump; just draining and refilling the ~4 qts out of the radiator and reservoir made plenty enough mess for me.

PCV valve swap: I do this every 50k miles. Straightforward, other than me fretting about the new valve not going into the engine block flush. I always forget that the threads on the valve are tapered, so flush isn’t possible.

Power steering fluid flush: another 50k mile item. Kinda tedious, but not overly difficult. The hardest part was figuring out where to dispose of the old fluid, which turned out to be the Hazardous Household Waste depot at my city dump.

I also checked my idler pulleys, wheel bearings, and carrier bearings for squeakiness and lateral play (respectively). Everything looks pretty solid.

400,000 miles to go before she’s scheduled for retirement.

 

I, too, just rolled over 100k miles in my 4R. She's not getting the Austin treatment though.

 

Let's talk about your flair... er, your maintenance binder.