1999 Tacoma SR5 TRD Imperial Jade Build, Sweat and Tears

Made it.




Griffin at the retail entrance was awesome! Was super welcoming and helpful in deciding which lenses to get and helping me get the SS3 with broken connector back on track. I decided to go clear on the light bar and Im swaping over to fog lenses on the SS3's.




Thanks so much Griffin, this made the drive all the more worth while. Def gonna be looking at Diode Dynamics in the future when its time to get some other lights.

 

Hella traffic by the St Louis arch




Next couple of tanks arent nearly as good. Its weird I get the best mpg around Denver. Its happened 3 times. I wonder if it has to do with the elevation.

Main tank when the light came on solid.


Aux tank


Next tank. Main
Super low. I wonder if the highway side station are putting water in their gas.


No Aux tank data. It was bad, I was flooring it to just get there, was over driving at that point.

 

Made it.


Lens swapping and repairing






Back up and working!

 

On my way back I ordered that new USB 12v output to try and charge the Anker. It said 87watts.

Heres the old one


Its only putting out 19watts


The new 87watt one


Installed


Only 35watts. WTF. I guess all the outputs combined make 87?! Lame!

 

Putting Velcro on the patches from the past couple months.

Canyonlands was where I camped in Moab, Moab Garage was where I charged my Anker everyday and got a smoothie and a burrito, plus they were super nice. I went back to the Feral outdoor story again a couple times when I was in Denver/Boulder trying to find more used gear. Moorflower is a cool hippie grocery store in Moab that I was going to.


The state of the collection. I still need replacments for the Arcteryx ones Im not gonna use. I need Chicago and New york city.

 

Its time.




I think were gonna go here. There are times going through bad snow conditions at night where I was getting snow blind and prayed I had these. I feel kinda bad because it seems like a waste of really expensive SS3 Pro lights to turn into fogs but oh well. I have the other lenses so I can just swap out if i want. I want to go for a clean stockish look in this location.

 

Looks like Im going to need to move my turn signal up higher to the running light position. Im not sure if any has done it like this but when I took out the light housing the cable already reaches the running light. So Im gonna try and tap it in.





Used the calipers to get the inside dimension to cut a card board mock up. I used the sharpie to ink up the cut outs. Then I pressed the cardboard into it to get a print.


I then cut it out and tacked it on with a tiny bit of adhesive.


I meant to just mist it to get the outline but its like 30 degrees out and the can didnt want to spray, so its a little over kill.




I cut it with a step bit and used a file to cut the notches. Worked well.


And the cable doesnt hit up against anything when mounted. Success! The blink is bright enough to over come the running light too.

 

I just did a little test. This is with the iphone but its still a good enough example. This is why I feel bad about turning these SS3 Pros into fogs

Here is my headlights and my Hella grill mounted lights on


One SS3 Pro with the driving lens is brighter than all of that!! and this is with the Amber lens. With the clear lens it would pick up another 20-30% output! Oh well. Fogs it is for now.

 

Starting with a card board template. Im going to make a mount to fit the stock position.




Found 2 scrap pieces of aluminum that Im going to salvage. Just fits.

 

I dragged my dad away from watching dumb Ai voiced tic tok videos and saved him some brain cells.

Im not going to be able to reach the bolts to hold the bracket because the lights just fit. Im using aluminum so I cant weld a stud on. I decided to cut threads off stainless bolts and tap the aluminum for them to thread into then use red loctite to hold the studs.

 

Just tacked together for a test fit






Lining up the hole for the pigtails.


A hair big on the hole but itll do.

 

Fits perfect. Not much room at all. You really have to nail the dimensions on this one. Should of painted them black. Ill probably pull them tomorrow and paint them.
I still need to do the wiring, plus its extra wiring because have they have back light/ day time running lights in them.


I was using a bottle to try and see where the hot spots were landing by using the shadows. Dont know if it really helped. Eveyrthing is lined up good though and I have enough room in the bumper tilt.


Pretty ridiculously bright for fogs, not in a bad way, the cut off is good to not blind other drivers. They are just crazy bright and these arent even the Max's. These are even rated/stamped SAE. Crazy.

 

Just as a little side note, if you made it this far, my grammar sucks. Dyslexia is a b.

 

Thank you so much for all the daily log stuff.
We are watching and reading it.
Great post and very entertaining. The freedom and know how is addicting to consume.

 

Thanks, much appreciated. Ive been playing catch up with all the content. It took awhile to go through all the Moab stuff. Especially since Im using 2 different cameras plus my phone and its not easy to remember what was where. I just wanted to make sure that I didnt miss putting anything up.

Its definitely been an adventure.

 

I finished the fogs today. I wasnt really planning on spending 2 full days on these. I have a lot of stuff I have to focus and catch up on.

Ordered some headlight bulbs that are brighter. Gonna test and see if they are gonna blind on coming drivers. I need a little bit of a boost. My housings have a full on layer of sand in the bottom of them. I really need to pull them and clean them, but if I figure Im going to do that much work I should just do a retrofit kit at that point, but for now I need a little extra. They pretty much arent even doing much right now.

I also order a USB C splitter cable to turn and see if I can get more charging power out of the 12v USB for the Anker.

And Im also going to change my corner lights to amber. That way it will help differentiate from the turn signal bulb since the turn signal bulb is clear. Also I prefer amber in the running lights anyways and I want them to match the running lights in the DD SS3's.



Testing the splitter cable helps


Nope. No charging at all.


Ambers

 

For the SS3 fogs I started making a harness from the botched DD harness the guy gave me. I soldered everything and used shrink wrap.




I wired the running light/back light in the SS3's into the passenger side. That what when I turn on the parking lamps or headlights the SS3 running lights come on. Right after wire this up I seen that one of the lights wasnt coming on for the running light. Something must of happened when I made the repair.


Pulled it all apart. The running light trace broke on the board. I guess I accidentally tightened the bolts connector after it was soldered on and it popped the trace off the board. I desolder it and of the broken trace off the board. I scratched all around the board and couldnt find the right trace so solder on to. I took the working light apart and used a meter to continuity/beep mode to test and find where the first connection was. I was able to find it. I took 2 strands of wire and made a jumper/bridge to make the connection. I tried as hard as I could, I didnt want to give up and I wanted to make these work without bugging Diode about it. Plus I hate wasting things that fan be fixed. I dont want to be wasteful. The board looks a littles messy from me. I was running my solder iron too hot. Keep in mind this is all very tiny.


The jumper went from the AUX pin, up over CS1 and CS2 to FB3.


Bad photo from the phone but heres the jumper.


Now working


Tested it one more time on the truck before wire it all up permanently.


Fogs completed.

 

Just to follow up on these bulb since I put them in. I didnt get any photos of it. I was too burned from trying to finish the fogs.

I tried both the

$8 H4P50 +50 Performance Bulb, 12V, 60/55W

H4P50 +50s and the

$8 H4 100/80w High Wattage Bulb, 12V

H4 100/80w. Oddly enough the 100/80w are just slightly brighter than the +50s. I went with the 100/80w. The cut off isnt bad at all. Its still pretty clean. I wouldnt run them if they were bad. I absolutely hate people that run LED and HID in regular housings. Jeep drivers being the worst.

I went driving to test them and the positioning is the same as stock just a little brighter. I adjusted them down just a bump just in case. So far though, its pretty good. I was looking into on coming cars and none of the light was hitting them. I guess these will do until I can get a retro kit. Im gonna keep the +50s on board because I think the rated hours for the 100/80s are crazy low.

 

Might take a little break, I have a lot of stuff to catch up on and Im behind since I put about 3-4 days in getting all this content edited and up.

Oddly enough Im actually fine with my Hella grills spots, I like the retro look. So Im most likely going to take a pause before putting the DD 18 light bar on. Maybe I will do it but I have a bunch of stuff to do.

I need an alignment.

Gonna need 2 rear tires really soon.

Really need to do a master and slave for the clutch.

Still need to run a whole new parking brake cable. I havent even used it in at least 2 years or more.

One of the rear drum brakes keeps getting stuck on randomly. Could be part of the parking brake cable issue.

Need to clean the whole truck out.

Need another oil change.

Need to make some type of curtains for the back rear windows for camping.

Need to add more light in the rear shell for camping. Might do something funky with a battery and solar panel to recharge.

Need to rebuild front brake calipers.

Need to flush both clutch and brake fluids.

Need some kind of water tank for camping. Maybe a shower setup on the rack.

Need anther gang box for more lights. The fogs just filled up my 6 pod.

Theres more but this is a good start.

 

I forgot. If anyone has an extra real toyota 4x4 passenger running light let me know. This one isn't original and it fits terrible. Im tired of the wind ripping it out and breaking the mount.

I keep trying to find one at the junkyards but no luck.