Wisconsin Tacomas and bad financial advice

Speaking of…





I am going to fully respect my kids ownership of this car. He saved up fair and square. I will also respect his right to repair it as needed without me, or my money, getting in the way. Particularly the leaking recirculating ball steering.

If I want to drive it, I’ll ask him if I can borrow the keys, and ask if it has a full tank before I go.

He did good on this one. Listened to his old man’s advice with respect, and did his homework before buying (I think he’s got a good influence from his autos teacher in school). It looks like a decent barely touched survivor, and absolutely everything on it works. Had it up on the rack before buying and it has zero rust. It’s actually incredible. Little sad that the base 305 didn’t come with a tape player in the head unit though, not gonna lie.

 

That's pretty clean looking F body. You going to buy him a jean jacket and maybe a Guns N Roses CD for Christmas? Going to do some great donuts once the snow starts to fly wheeeeeeee!

 

Why yes, yes I did!
She merely looked at me as if I was insane.

 

I was thinking tape deck, but you’re absolutely right! This is the time where the rich kids all had CD players and maybe even a brick phone with a conspicuous shoulder strap.

Alas, this is base model, so no chance it ever experienced being in the presence of a CD walkman. It was probably owned by a responsible, but slightly adventurous accountant that chose to hum his tunes while driving, because he already knew the songs, so why pay extra money for a tape player.

I need to go see if I can dig up a jean jacket for him lol

 

Almost forgot...for everyone getting all jazzed up about steering...

As someone with an XJ who has experienced the death weebles, the general cause as I believe was mentioned is worn out parts. Bushings, tie rod ends, U joints, etc. But the biggest cause on Heeps is due to the extremely shitty geometry of the drag link and tie rods. The general fix is upgrading to beefier over the knuckle + WJ parts which flattens things out into the same plane and gets rid of the silly "Y" junction on stock geometry. Big ol Bro Dozer Fords and Chevys do this to but I don't know enough about those turds to know if it's the same cause (though I'd venture a guess that making it into a Bro Dozer in the first place is the cause itself).

For Tacoma steering unless you have 35's it probably isn't worth worrying about. Look at all the guys here who have beat the piss outta their trucks and it's fine. If it goes out at 150k miles so what, replace with stock and drive that sumbitch. Want bigger just because, or because you actually have monster truck tires? Tundra/LC200 rack, JDFab slide rack + a Howe pump, or SAS and something else. If you get to any of those points it's only a couple grand more which in the grand scheme isn't much by comparison. But until then don't worry about it. Worry more about doing routine maintenance to your stock Taco parts. Flush the power steering fluid religiously, modify the fluid circuit to add filtration and a cooler, all that fun stuff.

In other words, for all platforms, the most important thing is routine maintenance. People make big deals of this stuff, it's not much to worry about. Save your energy and worry about other mods.

 

Exactly.

Although in the upgrade Department I'm a fan of the lc/tundra racks just because they're easy to bolt in. Don't really require a lot of modification and they're still OEM parts from Toyota. So you can still do regular maintenance on them without having to get weird

 

Just tell her you were premowing them so that you can turn them into the best natural grass fertilizer once you install a mulch blade. Seriously though…worlds best yard maintainance invention of you ask me.


How old is your machine? It’s possible yours has a mulch blade on it already.

 

Yes, they make mowing, mulching and high lift blades for bagging.
There's also thatching blades but I'm skeptical on those.

That blade in the photo is a 3-in-1 blade. (same as I use)
They're good for mowing, mulching and bagging.
They do a good job with all 3 too.

 

Proud Dad moment.

Edit: I might be able to dig up some old cassettes if he decides to "upgrade"

 

"The word"

I don't think it's financially irresponsible when I have ( ) to purchase bed bars to mount it to.

 

Decals received. BEASTS! They are huge in comparison to my Dobisons. Some fabrication needs to happen as the reservoirs are bigger diameter than the Dobis and the shaft is much bigger, so the frame mount needs a bigger hole. Only one decals for a $1100 purchase... If they work I am a very happy boy!

 

1100 bucks for a pair of resis doesn’t seem bad.

 

am-autoparts is having a halloween sale up to 65% off.

 

I'm supposed to be doing online course work.....

And now I'm looking at suspension.....

 

Do you work for them now?

 

I’ll help distract you further! Look at ATH bumpers, they are on sale!!

 

Congrats on the fun new parts! Big shafts do usually make for happy boys! Wait…

 

Oh you're.... Evil.








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