2024 Iceborg the Trailhunter (Iceberg white) build and tracking thread

Purchased my Trailhunter in the beginning of July in middle Tennessee. I work away from home quite a bit, so don't have as much time as I would like to spend on it. I sold my 2004 Tacoma (behind in the top pic) to a family member for less than it was worth, but they are really excited to get into the tacoma life, and it makes me happy to see it go to someone who will really enjoy it.



I've managed to put 1000 miles on the new rig so far, and am really ambivalent about it. Coming from the old taco, and with a 2021 Rav4Prime in the family as well, I really appreciate all the road safety upgrades (aside from the slowing down in the curves on cruise control part, that drives me insane.) I like that the following distance on radar following has gotten smaller since 2021, and has more increments, letting you select an appropriate distance. I absolutely love the HUD, and am happy to find it works a little better than the Rav4 hud, in that it has a little more information.

My largest complaint is the gas mileage. I'm averaging right around 18 MPG, in ECO mode all the time, and I drive it like a grandma, never more than 73MPH on the highway, which is where I see the best gas mileage. I was really hoping for 21 MPG or better, but this thing is so obviously heavy, I don't think I'll see the gas mileage the less tricked out models are getting. Time will tell if it gets better with a little more driveline wear.

I'm not a super big fan of the overall size. It's significantly larger than the 1st gen, and feels like a full size F150 when you are driving it. Cool for in town, I guess, but there are a lot of Mexican trails where this is really gonna suck clinging onto the sides of mountains. The 1st gen was marginal out there, I have real concerns that there are places this won't fit with the increased dimensions. Tangent to this is the bad visibility. I have the seat all the way up and the view over the hood is much further from the bumper than the 1st gen. On the upside- the projected view button is very accessible (on the shifter button console) and with some practice you can drive the truck using this without having to see outside as much. I really like this feature, and the picture quality has improved since the 2021 Rav4 version, and the larger screen works very well for this.

Due to being an early adopter, I went from a 6 foot bed to a 5 foot bed. My friend has a 3rd gen 6 foot bed, and it's ridiculously long and gets high centered frequently. I don't need a double cab, but I didn't want the extra overall length, so I took the 5 foot bed, and will pull some of the back seats for Goose Gear seat deletes. Jury is out on this decision for my use case- which is cargo area maxed to the roof of the camper.

I've had most of the usual problems with electronics- the tire pressure won't remain as a screen option- I don't like that all of the critical temps and pressures only have dummy bars and no actual numbers, and the carplay randomly works or doesn't depending on how the truck decides to place the "use for carplay" slider for my device. Haven't figured out the magic procedure for that yet. I'm pretty sure that my tailgate button doesn't work inside the cab- and then sometimes randomly drops the tailgate- I've more than once found the tailgate down after driving, and then can't bring it up with that button. I'll likely have to take it into the dealership for a look at that.


I am a superfan of the bed rail lights- I've already found these very useful in the woods putting diving gear together, and generally gathering things in the bed. Really a fan of this add on.

Alright, from here, I'll add additional posts to document my add ons. Here's a pic of Iceborg at work.

 

I found that with the factory floor mats, I was already grinding dirt into the floor carpets. Swapped them this week with the Weathertech floor mats. Right now they only have the fronts for the hybrids available, but they fit very nicely. Sorry to let the cool little topo pattern go, but i had mats like this forever in the 1st gen, and the carpet looks new after 20 years.

https://www.weathertech.com/toyota/2024/tacoma-hybrid/floorliner-hp/

Here's the passenger side- no lifting along the edges, and it sits nice and flat. covers a good way up the sides.


And the Driver's Side:


Nice looking mats, don't expect any troubles.

 

I have similar pros and cons with mine. How you liking it since you’ve made these posts ? The next items for me:

- remove sport bar
- add bed cover
- replace tires with 285/70/18 (33.7”) which I hope fit with zero mods or removing anything .. seems like there’s enough room

 

Today, I added a Starlink mini to the Prinsu roof rack on the Trailhunter. The wife works remote, and when we travel cross country, can work from the truck if she has reliable internet. This works by cell in the south, but not so much as you travel out west. I got a deal from Home Depot, and paid $441 after taxes. Strangely, when I first searched it was retailing at $550, but came back a day later and it was at $400.


I had to move the middle cross bar forward from the standard mounting position, which requires a couple of extra bolts for the camp lights/handles (shown ziptied here.) I'm using a 3d printed mounting system from Striker Fab. The mount kit was $99. Sure, I could have printed it myself for half that, but the kit is nice, and he's done a good job with the setup, and it's worth the money for the time saved.

https://www.strikerfab.com/products...jSWWrZ4a7Vx3P2r03ANGtcUpVH027ouebhm8bN7ERZBwb


Even though the kit is 3d printed, it comes with stainless hardware, and the mounts are plenty sturdy feeling and the mini-dishy almost snaps into the mounts once you have the crossbar and mounts positioned correctly. I was concerned about the height above the roof and the back of the dishy touching the roof, but I ordered the 1" version, and the mini-dishy tilt mount does not touch the roof. I suppose you could remove the tilt mount, but I know I would lose it, and so far it doesn't cause any problems zip tied closed. The mounts stick up about 1/4" above the top of the crossrails, but that won't be a problem as I obviously don't want to mount anything above the antenna.
As for the power supply, for now, I have the cord run down to the gap between the doors and run inside the rear door. This is temporary.

It's actually very tidy, but I plan to run a 30v boost converter up on the rack, and then run the 12v down the windshield with the rest of the roof rack wiring.
This is the boost converter I ordered. It's coming from China, so didn't get here in time for this trip.




Ultimately I'll mount this on the roof rack as well.

From the ground, you can't even tell it's mounted on the truck, which may keep it from getting stolen.

 

So, I drove all the way to Manhattan, MT to pick up my GFC topper. More to that story in a bit. I haven't had a whole lot of time to fiddle with the topper, but I do have 3000 miles of cross country notes.


The beginning: I ordered from them with full intent to pick the topper up in Denver. My paperwork said Denver. As I am a little anal, I called about a month out from install date to just get an address for the installer, as it had never been provided, to find that someone at GFC had dropped the ball and my topper was not in Denver. There had been confusion on their end about where the topper was going, and if I had been charged for the transport fee to Denver. (I had not, despite my original invoice saying Denver.) I was not impressed, as this made an uncomfortable time crunch for me, and required a 16 hour drive day for me to get to an install date in Montana, and get back to work in time. Add to this- a normal winter in Montana/Wyoming.


The middle: Fortunately, I had months ago, seen fit to purchase some studded snow tires (illegal at home in Tennessee) as I have had to cross Kansas/Nebraska in the winter before, and knew they might be necessary. If I never installed them, I could return them to Walmart for a full refund. So I packed the tires in the back and started the long drive from the deep south.


The End: We made it to Manhattan with no issues aside from some sketchy after dark highway driving on unplowed highways, but with studded snows. We pulled up 15 minutes prior to our install time, and the crew was obviously surprised to see we made it. The install was without drama, and less than an hour- that part of the crew is definitely well rehearsed.


Notes:

1. The GFC clamping arrangement does not work well with the Trailhunter bed light bed rails. When clamped down, it causes the plastic bed rail to flex above the bed lights, and leave a large gap above the light. I don't see this as a GFC failure, as much as the bed rails are really soft plastic garbage from Toyota. The gap is about 1/8 of an inch wide, directly above each light, and will probably have to get some silicone to prevent it packing with dirt or water/ice.

2. The weird bump on the top of the tailgate on the trailhunter also does not play well with the GFC sealing strip on the rear door. You have to close the upper door after closing the tailgate to keep the seal from being bent up, and the shape of the GFC door seals tightly enough that the electric opening will not open the tailgate with the upper door down, you have to help it with your hand.

3. The tilt of the side panels matches the shape of the cab well, and does not add additional wind load behind the back doors.

4. The front of the GFC has about 3/4 inch between the duck bill on the cab and the front of the topper- meaning I will still be able to get the fin off to move the rear facing cameras without having to move the topper.

5. The new latch covers on the GFC worked well in single digit (F) degrees, and kept all the road grime out of the lock and latch mechanisms, highly recommend. (I'm new to GFC, but I think they come standard on all the new tops/campers.) Time will tell if they retain their grip in the southern heat.

6. The top rails I added to the GFC on my order are within 1/4 inch of the top of the Prinsu cross rails- so I will be able to get a cargo carrier up top and have it bridge from the GFC to the Prinsu rack.

7. The topper looks good, and finally I have a cover for all my stuff. More to report as we use it more.

Edit: (A few weeks later.) And it leaks. And not an insignificant amount.

The strange shape of the 2024 tacoma bed (with the drop between the side and front parts) was commented on by the installer at the time, and sure enough- it doesn't seal well. Ended up with 1/2" of water in the bed from an overnight Georgia rainstorm. The side panels also look to be leaking from the top front. I've addressed it with GFC, more to come...

 

Nice setup so far looking forward to hearing more about it

 

Today's project: Goose Gear 60% Seat removal kit.

We don't have kids, or friends, so who needs back seats? Actually this was planned from the beginning, as a remedy for not getting the 6'bed, so that we would have space for putting equipment. The wait was not short- Ordered on September 30th (when they first announced they were available) and received it on the 15th of December. Shorter wait than the GFC topper for sure. Unfortunately, there were some problems, both with the hardware provided, and the kit in total. None were show stoppers, but I certainly expected better for the price.

View from the passenger side (40% seat remaining.)

View from the door side.
The instructions found on the website have some strange errors- wrong wrench sizes called out, a wrong drill size for the riv-nut (fortunately, the callout is smaller than the required drill, which is printed on the riv-nut instruction included with the tool itself.) Some wording that is confusing, and a couple of pictures which make sense for the non-hybrid, but not for the trailhunter models. In fact, there is one major problem with the kit, which was obviously designed without having a hybrid in hand. (More on this later.)

The 60% kit comes with three aluminum spacers- to raise the panel to the height above the center seatbelt brackets. One shorter one for the back, and two longer ones for the front. I don't know what happened to mine, but mine were exactly one inch too long. The bolt shown screws into the riv-nut when installed- obviously this spacer wasn't going to work. Once I got it all mocked up, I took the spacers to the chop saw and lopped an inch off them. Oddly, they seemed to be exactly one inch too long. In the same hardware vein, two oddly sized fender washers were supposed to be included, but instead I got 2 extra flat washers. The hardware is an odd combination of metric and non-metric. All of the hex pan head screws that hold the panels into the base channels are SAE, as well as the long bolts for the riv-nuts, but the large bolts that fit into the bracket in the back are metric. I have no idea why. None of their hardware attaches to Toyota threads, where you would expect metric, so you would expect either one or the other, not both.

These are the brackets in the back against the rear wall. Those are the Toyota factory seat bolts. No idea why they made the hole so large that the bolt and washers just fall right through it. Ultimately, you have to position the bracket so it is clamped on the top and one side of the bracket, since the hole is so large. I suspect, like the aluminum spacers, these are made for a different vehicle.

Another peculiarity- The front panel sits about 1/16th above the carpet on the center tunnel. The shape seems to be generally correct (once I cut the aluminum spacers to fit.) However this other side part (hidden by the 40% passenger seat) doesn't s eem to match. It sits about half an inch above the front lip created by the battery well. Not sure why it looks like this. Again, it seems like a design error- if you bother to notch the board, seems like it should probably fit a bit closer than that.

Another poor design aspect that was obviously built without a hybrid. These vents cool/vent the hybrid battery and associated electronics under the seat. The vent grill pops off and the filter is to be replaced periodically. Unfortunately, the access tab to remove the vent is hidden behind the panel now. To remove it, I will have to remove the entire seat replacement panel. Very irritating. I suspect if I had done both seats, it would be the same on the other side as well.
I don't have a picture to show it, but the seat replacement panel sits about 3 inches above the top of the battery well lip. This makes for an awkward sized space, with all of the electric components below it. I suspect I will find a sheet of plastic to place over the battery so I can use this space to store things without the risk of a fire. But I really would have preferred that the panel be notched for the seat belts (allowing use of the existing belt to retain cargo) and have it sit much lower onto the battery compartment.
Overall, 5/10 in my book. Between the instructions, wrong hardware and poorly thought out fitment, I wouldn't buy this product again, instead give a shot at building what I want for myself. I expect that I will do exactly that with this set eventually, and cut things down to where I want them.

 

Installed the GFC pro light kit last night. I didn't go with the locations the instructions wanted, as I wanted the lights to illuminate outside the cab as well when the panels are open. Top is view with the sides closed (lots of light inside) and lower is the panels open. It provides a huge amount of light around the body of the topper, and will be really nice for working on gear after the sun sets. My only complaint is they went with a substandard 12V cigarette lighter plug, I've had issues with the spring in the tip getting stuck and not keeping contact with the socket. Easy fix for me, would be a pain to have it done through warranty.