ATX_Taco’s access cab & Long boi builds! Battle of the 6ft beds!

Welcome!

I’ve loved the 3rd gen Tacoma’s since I first saw them, my father and I both would talk about how we both wanted to pick one up once we were in the market for new trucks.

A little backstory:

Back in July of 2020, the pandemic was in full swing and I was itching to go out and buy a truck, specifically a 3rd gen Tacoma. I had a 2018 Camaro 2SS 1LE that I was daily driving at the time, and it was not practical.



I began my search for a truck. After looking around and countless dealers I settled on a grandpa spec 2018 SR5 access cab 4x4 finished in Quicksand. QS wasn’t my first color choice, but this was a 1 owner truck with 19k miles for $29,500 (I miss those prices ) this truck had the really cool orange-tanish colored interior that I hadn’t seen before.



Anyways I take get the truck over to my parents house so I can go show my dad now that it’s his time to go and get a 3G now. Didn’t take much convincing, he called our local Toyota dealer and placed an order as soon as I left his house. (We’ll circle back to this)




I had no idea what I wanted to do with this truck, at this time I had mostly had JDM or American muscle cars. I started looking around here on TW at recommendations for different suspension brands and set ups, it was overwhelming but given my budget and limited knowledge Icon seemed like a safe bet. I ended up ordering the Icon 2.5 shock kit with the RR.


The kit showed up in a few days, I went ahead and pulled the truck into the garage and started removing the shocks. Haven’t never worked on one of these trucks before I was intimidated at first but then quickly realized these are so well engineered and easy to work on. I had a blast.




Shocks installed, called a few shops in the area to see if anyone could get me on an alignment rack before the end of the day. Luckily for me, I was able to get it taken care.

Next was deciding what wheel/tire package I wanted to go with. The stock SR5 wheels were an eyesore against the quicksand paint. I didn’t want to do a black wheel, and I also wanted something lightweight. I had owned several sets of Enkei RPF1s on previous vehicles I’ve owned. They’re light, fairly subtle and in my opinion, look good on just about everything. I was so excited when I found out they offered the RPT1. I was considering some Volks but the Enkeis were cheaper and honestly I liked the look better.

Alright, wheels are ordered so let’s figure out a nice tire to pair it with. I should mention I worked for Discount Tire in my late ‘teens and early twenties so I was a bit of a tire nerd. I wanted good fitment but I also wanted to go as extreme as I could with limited modifications. The 295/70r17 seemed to fit the bill. Super aggressive tire options in that size, and I think it looks great on these trucks with a mostly stock suspension. You don’t have to do crazy modifications to get them to fit either. I went with the Cooper STT pro. One of my former DT colleagues strongly recommended it.

Cool, now the tires are ordered. I went ahead and ordered a CMC plate set from Relentless fabrication for good measure. I didn’t want any rubbing. I wanted the truck to ride as stock as it possibly could on this set up.

Conviently the CMC plates showed up the same day as my wheels and tires. I had a buddy of mine who is a welder go ahead and knock out the CMC for me while I ran down to DT to pick up my wheels and tires.



Got everything all mounted up, CMC done. Bolted the wheels up in my buddies driveway and was pleasantly surprised to see that there was zero rubbing at full lock either way with this new wheel/tire set up. The truck drove great as well! Definitely noticed the lack of torque going up to such an aggressive size but hey.. it’s not meant to be fast so I wasn’t bothered.

This was pretty much how the truck sat for the rest of my ownership. I did the obligatory TRD Pro style grille with the raptor lights because why not. It tied everything together! Went ahead and had another good friend of mine do a full paint correction and 5 year ceramic coat on the truck. It looked insane when I got it home! It was a 48hr detail but absolutely worth it. I was in love with this truck.



I went ahead and slapped the MBRP exhaust and a K&N cold air on the truck while I was it. It sounded mean for a minivan engine (lol)

Just as I was really getting this build kicked off, I went and sold my Camaro and bought a MKV Supra. That’s where things went downhill.



The Supra from there on out pretty much took up 100% of my attention and build $$. The poor Taco got pushed to the side. I won’t get into it too much, but I did a pretty cool build on that Supra and ended up making decent power (740whp). But I was constantly having to tow the car between Dallas and Austin. The Tacoma was not the truck for the job. I could deal with the lack of power of the 295s brought, but when you have a trailer with a car on it down I-35 and it’s screaming in 4th gear.. yeah that’s when I decided to let it go.

I traded it in for something that had a better towing capacity and that could handle towing the Supra around more efficiently. Picked up a 2021 Dodge Durango RT Tow n Go. (Huge mistake) but that’s a different story for another day. At the very least I did pull the wheels and tires off along with the TRD skid plate before trading it in. So someone got lucky and got a Tacoma in the Dallas area with a 5 year ceramic coat and brand new Icons. (Bonus points if we find the current owner on here)

It didn’t take long (maybe a month or so) and I was deeply regretting letting go of my Tacoma.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2023 and I am daily driving a 2022 Hyundai Kona N which was a great little sporty commuter car that served its purpose but I no longer needed a commuter anymore. I knew it was finally time. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on another 3rd gen Tacoma.

At this point I’m enganged, my living situation is very different than it was in 2020 when I had my SR5 and my fiance and I are wanting to buy some land. I absolutely loved having the 6ft bed in my AC and knew that another 6ft bed was a must. Unfortunately having the limited cab space of the AC was out of the question at this point, so I knew that it was time to find me a long boi.

After a quick cars.com search I found a CPO 2022 DCLB Trd Sport finished in magnetic gray metallic just down the street at my local dealership. This truck only had 2,000 miles on it. Not sure what the backstory was there, but i immediately drove down there and checked it out.



Everything looked great, I got what I wanted on my trade and we made the deal happen! I was sooooo so so so excited to have another 3G Taco. Getting into it and driving it home instantly took me back to good memories of building my
AC.



I knew I wanted to take this build in a similar direction. I got home and ordered up the same suspension I had for the SR5, and lucky for me I still had my TRD skid plate in the garage. I pulled the air dam off, bolted the skid plate on and was really happy that a part of my old truck was now on this one!



My suspension showed up, this time around I didn’t have the time to do it myself. Took it to a local guy who is a guru with 4x4 Toyotas and had him do the CMC and suspension install. I rocked the stock wheels with the icons for a while too. I couldn’t decide on what wheel/tire package to go with.



I had considered doing the same exact wheel and tire combo as my AC but couldn’t justify spending that much again. The Enkeis are just so pricey IMO. I did however go with the same exact tire, the 295/70r17 Cooper STT pro! Once again, I didn’t want to throw a black wheel on the truck. It looks good, don’t get me wrong but I wanted something else. I wanted a machined or polished faced wheel. Ended up going with the KMC GRS in a 17x9 -12. This was slightly more aggressive than my last set up (RPT1s were 17x9 +0) little did I know that -12mm would make such a big difference.



Wheels and tires show up, the truck is already lifted and CMC’d at this point so I’m expecting the same as last time. Bolt everything up and send it, nope! Crazy rubbing on the front bumper this time.



I got the truck home and decided to do a viper cut since bumpers are not in my budget at this point. I also adjusted the preload on the front shocks. This did wonders. Now there is absolutely no rubbing whatsoever.



The truck looked great! I was so happy with this look. Clean and simple yet aggressive. I also love the stock ‘22 TRD sport grille so I decided to leave it too. I did however throw some raptor lights in as a homage to my SR5. (The didn’t last long I ended up pulling them back out after like a week) lol



I rocked this look for a few months quite happily until my fiance and I finally found some property that we decided to pull the trigger on. The land is completely raw and you have to do a bit of rock crawling to get to it but that’s half the fun. With that being said, I decided to start doing a bit more overland style mods to the truck so we could go camp on our property and be able to bring materials out there to build a cabin or what have you.

I’ve never been a huge overland guy, the trucks are cool but not really something I had ever planned on getting into. I figured most of these mods would be fairly temporary until we don’t need to rely on our truck at the property as means to sleep and shower, etc..

Because of this, I went fairly cheap on a few things. I couldn’t justify spending prinsu money if I was only going to have the rack on for maybe a year at most. I found some no name brand for $299 and pretty much did the same thing with the bed rack. They were both cheap but seemed to be of decent quality. I went with a mid height bed rack so a RTT would sit about flush with the top of the cab. This ended up working out really well. Once my tent got here I got everything all mounted up.



I also wanted to protect the OEM seats as best S I could. With us being out on the land, we’ll be clearing trees and building and digging so I expect the interior to see grime. I try to keep my vehicles as clean as I can though. I found a cheap set of red faux leather seat covers off of Amazon for like $250. I was impressed when they showed up. The wrinkles are just from the shipping, they ended up smoothing out after a few days of sitting in the sun. The red is nice pop against the MGM and my OEM seats are nice and protected!



This is pretty much how the truck sits today. I have some parts in the garage that still need installed (bed stiffeners, fog lights, ditch lights, etc) but I will continue to update this thread as the build continues!



Oh and I mentioned I’d circle back to my dads 3G order:

He ended up getting a 2021 TRD OR in Barcelona Red. He loved it and pretty much kept it stock until an old lady in a Kia Soul rear ended him and my mom at a stoplight. Truck was totaled sadly and he wanted to wait for a 4th gen Tacoma
But the timing wasn’t right and now he has a 2023 Jeep Gladiator Mojave. Pretty sweet truck but not my thing. To each their own lol

 

Sad to hear about your dads Barcelona Red, hard to believe they totaled it for a back end hit, must have been frame damage?