What Have You Done To Your 3rd Gen Today?

I might do the same, but I'm amazed at how much salt and dirt the air damn blocks from getting on the undercarriage.

 

I don't mean to be the barrer of bad news, but l'm almost certain there's enough salt and dirt out there to cover that air damn and the undercarriage of your truck.

 

Somebody, somewhere, send me your air dam with hardware. I got an idea. You won't regret it.

 

34 degrees out this morning so I also sprayed down the truck. Non undercarriage for me as I had FF applied this year.

 

Ground effects! Gather enough of them and make a Taco-Hovercraft! Just where my brain went...Coffee's kicking in!

 

Do not give anyone "yet another idea for a mod", please!

 

Installed Spiker Engineering Hood Struts using the well-written included instructions and the video below.

https://youtu.be/IDNj3ha3Sbs

FYI, those steel rivets will require a very significant amount of strength even with a new 11" rivet gun. A great investment.

 

every 10k. I had just hit the 120k mark

 

Hi Bob

 

I installed the factory style door sill protectors, meso taillight kit, and drivers seat jackers. I am still trying to find a comfortable seating position. I am having troubles with either back issues (previous herniated disk) or legs going numb after driving for more than 20 minutes.

 

may want to invest in a custom setup or convert over to a power seat.

 

Awesome, I have those in the box in the garage. Just need to find the time to install them.

 

Hello Dino

 

Things I've done that I wish I didn't do to my 3rd-gen...

There may be smarter ways to approach all this, I'm sure the hardcore Tacomaworld folks will poke holes in it all (thats the price to posting anything ), but for the avg. person who just likes to try doing things themselves trial by error, youtube, reading online, I wanted to share them.

1. Any aluminum, metal, chrome tire valve air caps. They look nice and say they don't rust. There are none who can survive the elements. One time I had to spend 2 hours with vice grips, WD-40, lubricants, and muscle just to get one off. Always use cheap plastic, buy in bulk if need be.

2. Oil drain improvements. I used the Fumuto oil drain valve with a hose for a while. Its a good product, but unless you have a lift, there isn't a lot of space between the oil drain, yourself, the oil pan, and the ground. The hose drain process ends up taking too long, and you still need to clean up the hose. I've switched back to normal drain plug and ended up grabbing one of these mesh inserts to avoid splatter in my oil pan.

$30 Lisle 38780 22" Square No-Splatter Pad, Black

https://www.amazon.com/Lisle-38780-Square-No-Splatter-Pad/dp/B002AENGOG

3. Water proofing your Tacoma storage compartments and drains. I took them off, used silicone, tried making little plugs, everything in between. At the end of the day my solutions took way too long and were never air tight. My Dad is a plumber and what ended up working was just plugging every hole I could find with gray plumbers putty. https://www.lowes.com/pd/Oatey-Brown-Plumbers-Putty/1001864262 Just crawled on all fours to find all the holes under my rubber bed cover and never had a leak since. Wish I didn't waste all that time taking this apart.

4. Any adhesive based accessories for the interior. They all fall off after a couple days of 90 degree plus heat in New England summer.

5. Taking a year off from Fluid Film / Woolwax or any similar undercarriage coating/rust prevention. Skipped only one year and immediately saw the impact from beach offroading, salty winter roads. If you think you can just do it once in a while your wrong. Found a garage that does it around here and they are great, offer discounts for returning, shame on me for skipping a year.

6. Not getting these cheap back seat covers before I had kids. They are amazing. So much dirt, sand, dust, etc. when little ones crawl into your back seats. With child car seats, their little feet kick them all the time. I didn't put them in until my first kid was 2, they have been a life saver for those messy days.

$14 lebogner Back Seat Cover for Kids, 2 Pack X-Large Waterproof Kick Mats Backseat Protector, Durable Car Seat Back Protectors for Vehicles to Protect from Dirt, Mud & Scratches, Fits Most SUVs and Vans

https://www.amazon.com/Car-Seat-Back-Protectors-Lebogner/dp/B01F443Y9K?smid=A1L64248LMVFE5. Can't wait to get rid of child car seats though!

7. Retorquing or double checking torque frequently. I had a wheel fall off and most signs are pointing to over or under torquing of a lug nut 6 months ago. Luckily no one was hurt. Was a very difficult process to go through and ultimately there isn't 100% certain evidence what happened. I did have after market wheels (hub centric/lug centric debates, etc.) but ended up having to go back to Toyota OEM for peace of mind. I will always be double checking at home with my torque wrench going forward. Read more about the nightmare here! I hijacked someone elses post since they also had broken wheel shaft threads. https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/361-miles-on-odo-broken-lug-stud-wth.786292/page-5. Hoping to sell my Venomrex (3 wheels, 1 probably not safe now) but don't have enough message count on Tacomaworld - resorting to Facebook Marketplace.

 

Thanks very much for the info! Going to give them a try soon.

 

Interesting post. Only thing I’ll say is don’t be in too big of a hurry to watch kids grow up. As someone with a 16 year old daughter that can now drive herself around, I miss those days in the car.

 

Taking note of this.

 

Amen. I didn't know it at the time but recognize it now. The best time for me and many I've talked about is when your kids are pre 16.

 

I need to get one of those mesh inserts. On my first time doing an oil change I left a huge mess in the garage and it was not fun to clean. I also retorque my wheels periodically and always find one or two lugs getting loose. There are a lot of folks out there that will disagree and say you never need to check your wheels lugs.

 

I’d like to find that cubby mount without the jellyfish launcher switch since I don’t have that in my access cab. It’s the only thing keeping me from pulling the trigger on the auxbeam. Can’t seem to find one without!

Looks great!