Airkewled's 2006 DCSB

Installed lower late model center console trim panel, joying radio that I bought in 2021, and USB C & A socket.
Took me a little while to find the USB port thing. Ended up with Waterproof PD Type-C QC3.0 USB Car Charger Socket Adapter 12V 24V with LED Voltmeter for Old Toyota that fit perfect.

 

Finished this off by replacing the hazard switch clock unit.

 

Replaced the window molding/scrappers.
These had the rubber all pealing off and such from the sun.

These are like 35$ each from Toyota. Found some aftermarket sold as a set on eBay https://www.ebay.com/itm/384936949560 user damondcar2019
They seem like good quality and match to OE that I removed.

Some shots of how these were




Old vs New


There's a notch thing that lines up with a notch thing in the molding


I marked the location with a little square and marker so I could get these lined up easier? Turned out not to be a big deal but I'm OCD











New installed. Looks 1000% times better. I know my paint is toast too but that'll come after I get the suspension done.

 

Worked on prepping for the front install.

• cut off the sliders (will interfere with cab mount relocate and 3 link)
• front winch and bumper
• fenders
• diff
• steering rack
• control arms axles and such

had to cut a few bolts, UCA (expected) DS steering rack bolt (unexpected) and one of the LCA adjusters was seized in so had to cut that out too. Else going as expected. Fun to see my cab mount relocate from red goat fab has a date on the invoice 2017. Sigh. Been planning for a little while.

 

Welded on the LCA frame braces. Bolted in the LCA first, made sure that was all good, tweaking the mounts as needed. (Amazed at how bendy the stock mounts are).



Clearanced the crossmember for the LC200 steering rack. Followed the directions. Worked out tits. Bolts slid right into place without any fiddling or wallowing out of holes. I used a 1.25 hole saw for my DS clearancing hole, then finessed that a touch with a carbide burr.





The stock Tacoma rack looks like a toy next to the LC200


Put in new engine mounts. I'm over 200k miles so thought maybe they were worn/saggy idk. Seem fine after taking them out but hey, now I know motor is where motor supposed to be


Went over to say "Hey" to @BigMike and had to park next to him of course. Two iconic rigs like that? Oh yeah!


Installed my @RedGoatFab cab mount relocate kit that I bought too long ago. There's some poor info and over thinking at https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/body-mount-relocate-kit-redgoatfab-haws.362489/ so here's the short of it.

Measure to the floor. Draw your measure to here line at a good even number to be easy on yourself.


Loosen bolts. You're going to jack up the cab so it needs to be able to go up a little bit




Jack up the cab. Slide in a piece of wood between the frame and the cab. This should be about 3/4". Try and get it close. You can see it here. Weight is now resting on the wood and frame, not the mount.


Get your big boy blade loaded into your sawzall and cut the mount off.




Now go in with a cut off wheel and finish off the rest. Air chisel helps here. You want to make sure you get a 5" wheel for your grinder... yes even if you have a 4 or 4.5 grinder.. you need the extra reach to get to the top weld.






Get your grinder out or switch to a hard rock and smooth out what's left. Go crazy. I went hard rock -> flap disc. Clean up around that big hole too. Weld needs to stick


This circle metal piece that came with the kit; that's for the hole in your frame. Trim it to size with a grinder or whatever. Your frame has a bend in it on this hole but the plug is flat.. bend in a vise a touch for a good fit.




bevel the edges and zipitdy zap that into place. Blend the welds smooth, fill in any gouges from cutting the old mount off that internet experts will say are stress risers and will cause your frame to explode.


Now loosely but not like your mom loose the rectangular plate with the carriage bolt to the OE hole.



Bolt your mount to the new body mount bracket and grab a transfer punch that's a good fit in the body mount. Should be very little slop.. like your sister. Use this to slide through the body mount, poke out the top side.




Hold the body mount bracket with the mount and the transfer punch up to the bottom side of the cab and poke the transfer punch into the only free hole in the rectangular plate. Wiggle the rectangle plate around till the mount bracket is tight to the frame. You're now located where the bracket needs to go. Whack the transfer punch with a hammer.







Use a nice long 1/4 that's 6.35 in not american drill bit, hold your drill plumb and drill through the bottom and the top right into the cab.


Use a step bit to drill out the bottom (underside) hole to big enough. IIRC 9/16 and on the inside of the cab, use a hole saw to drill out the floor board big enough to fit the OEM bolt + washer through.


Snug the bolts. All of them. Make sure mount is still tight to the frame. Tighten fully.


Get out your tape measure and check the height of the cab again. Right now the cab mount is only tightly bolted to the cab. It can still move up and down on the frame so you can set the height perfect.


If it's a little off, adjust with a jack till is right. Remove your temporary block of wood.


Zap that boy in. Set the weight of the cab back down on it. If you still love it. Send-er-home.

 

Clearanced the passenger side. A 12" blade on the sawzall was perfect for the firewall. Made it a single plane so was easy to trace and cut the new sheet metal. It's been said before but have a fire watch, the truck almost wants to combust. For the inner fenders, I put on wheel spacers and then jacked the tire up so it was outside the core support then traced the tire. After that, jack up, trim, turn trim a little, turn more, trim a little more. Think it went reasonably well but was time consuming for sure.














Installed JD Fabs Howe T/C power steering pump kit. Of course that'd would have been like a 2hr job, but I made it all day because brackets. Made 4 or 5 brackets to hold the hoses in position. Overkill? maybe. #binkystyle for sure!










With the inner fender taking up engine bay now, my washer fluid tank/bottle was too big, so I cut 5" out of it and plastic "welded" it back together with a soldering pencil. A few leak checks and repairs later, seems to be okay. It's cute now!






And that's where we're at. Kinda time to move on to the driver side.

 

Frame plated and mounts in for the reservoir. I ended up switching out the hose connection on the resi from a 90 to a 45. Again crawpedia / Filthy for the win here. Thanks Ben for helping me out on the phone. Pretty easy to do after watching his video.



Sleeved the clamps with 3/8" shrink tube for that pro look. Hot tip from crawpedia.



Here's how my bump can and limit strap turned out. I ended up going with a 10" strap. This was sorta the only way I could come up with where I could get weld on it without having to do something with stick welding. IDK. I have 12.25" of wheel travel setup this way and I think I've got just a tiny bit of down travel left in the shock.

Compressed.


Extended


With leaving the straps on with wheel and everything the limit straps stretched maybe 3/16 - 1/4 over 2 weeks of hanging...



Then it was time for final assembly, so took things apart and made sure I greased, lock-tighted, anti-seized where needed and torqued.






Pretty excited to get this far. With all the random things solved and learning how, I think driver side should be a breeze.

 

Clearanced the fender. To get in the ballpark I drew a 40" half cirlce on cardboard and then traced that to the fender. That, as you can guess makes a circle. With turning the wheel though, we end up with an oval type deal so for that I just turned the wheel till it hit, then eyeballed a new cut and did that till I had even clearance lock to lock. To smooth things out, the final trim I used 1/16 tig rod to make smooth arcs, then ground to the line with flap disc.

Before


With initial cut line


Trimming the cut edge with 3/16 solid rod. Got this tip from @BigMike and it worked great. Besides making the fender stiff again after getting all floppy from the cut, I think it gives it a nice pro look.





Patched up the square fender flare mount holes. I think with some filler this should turn out nice.

 

sub
hope the black M3 is still around too

 

epic
had a that escalated quickly when the drive home or first mod was a trailer full of quality armor

 

Really appreciate you posting these photos! Came in super handy doing my power steering install this weekend.

 

Started clearancing the driver side. Lot of back and forth between PS and DS sides trying to make them same and also copy over cut lines so I can do it all in one whack vs whittling away at it.

First the firewall. Having done the old cut, fold and bash of the pinch weld, this is honestly easier than that. More intimidating for sure, but it's not hard.


Patched it up. Tack tack tack. This Toyota sheet metal is so dang thin. I slotted my patch panel in places where there were various layers/sections of the sheet metal under it so I could rosette weld those. IDK, it makes my mind feel like it's so stronger. lol


Then I used the tape trick to copy over my cut line on the inner fender. (in the black sharpie, the blue was me ball parking it)


The front grill / headlight support bracket has to get cut into, so made up some additional support brackets for that to hold it in space.

 

With the PS fender off, templated the cut line with tape and transferred that over to the DS side fender.




Started cutting on the DS side inner fender. Even with template and knowledge from the PS side, this is still such a tedious process. Got it clearanced for straight and right turn full bump. To be continued...

 

Great build going on. How would you rate the install of the Howe PS pump? Heard the instructions are a little confusing. Might be purchasing one myself next week.

 

Installing the pump was easy. Yeah, the instructions are meh, but when you use them in combination with fitting things actually in place it all makes sense. Also it's a real American company that a real person who's actually knowledgable that will pick up the phone when you call them if you get stuck.

 

Here's a few more shots of the clearancing




This is what full uptravel is limited by. I suppose you could just eliminate the inner fenders if racecar, but for this average every day joe, uptravel is limited by the upper control arm hitting the bottom side of the inner fender.




And got it clearnanced for full left turn too now. So lock to lock at full stuff we're clearanced. Barely, but clearance is clearnance clarence. And.. again, this is a 40" but I'm going to be running 39" so an interference fit with the 40" is a-ok by me.




Before calling it for the day, I got a few pieces welded back in. Just bent by hand and eyeballed it. I think I'll do this then fill in the other gaps with the tricky cut/bend bits. IDK... figure it ooot.

 

Cool. Did you end up completely draining out your PS fluid to install. Wait, you installed a whole new rack. Just curious of how important it is to completely flush out your current ps fluid to put what they recommend.

 

Comes with all sorts of warnings to only use the recommended fluid. Warranty void, chance of babies dying and nuclear fallout. So.. I just followed the directions.

 

Ok. I just get mixed feedback. Everyone says the product is great. It’s just the install instructions are a little confusing and you have to drill out the pump to mount. Bolt size is larger..

 

To be clear, you shouldn't have to drill. Mine was apparently just forgotten.