2002 Love Hate Build

Alright so I bought this tacoma back in 2015 as a poor college kid to use as my hunting truck. When I bought it, it pretty much looked like all it had did was drive back and forth on the freeway from home to work for 190,000 miles. Anyways not anymore . 1st thing was a lift and tires had to go on. Well poor college kid it got a cheap spacer lift and thunderer 235 85 16 and ran it like that for a while. Then I got a job at a power plant moved to wyoming got rid of the cheap spacer lift and put on a toytec boss lift and a arb bumper with a smitty built winch. So far everything has stayed the same in that aspect besides I've went through 2 sets of toytec struts, I don't even remember how many rear shocks, broken about every part in the front end a couple times and now it has Old man emu all the way around.

So 2021 I think it started having motor issues. After dumping a #### ton of unnecessary money into it found out the engine was just worn out at 280,000 miles. Decided to have it rebuilt. Got all that done and woohoo nothing changed.... So we did all the tests again and magically my compression was still the same as before I had sent the motor off. So again pulled the motor and sent it back this time which I wasn't all that friendly and now it's been running great. And am at 316,000 miles.

I figured I'd make this thread because it's never ending with what I'm doing to this truck (hints the title Love/hate).

Right now I'm getting everything ordered to raptor line the whole truck, going to build some retrofit head lights and hopefully get a locker put in the rear before hunting season starts this year. Thought it would be entertaining to have this to look back at everything.

 

Here are some pictures of the truck from over the years.

 

Alright I'm bringing this back. 1st off the truck was awesome and at 278,000 miles I had the motor rebuilt. Long story short the company i had do the rebuild was horrible. After sending them the engine twice they never got it right. I contemplated scrapping the truck but with everything I've done to it I can't. I have way to much money into it and basically everything is brand new on it just the engine isn't good. Which after spending 5k on a bad rebuild it will knock the wind out of your sails pretty quick. Anyways after looking at 2nd gens and lower mileage 1st gens I decided I'm not spending the ridiculous amount they are going for. So I got in contact with Yota1 Performance and I'm going to have them build a engine for it. Its an 8 month wait time but i think theyll do a good job. While im waiting ill probably try to do some of the interior mods ive been wanting to so ill update this as i do. Ps after pulling the motor this many times i can have it pulled and torn down in less than 6 hours which I'm not happy about that means I've done it to many times haha .