wi_taco 2015 TRD OffRoad build "The Gray Ghost"

Had some time to start processing photos after returning from my October road trip. Drove 5,183 miles in 23 days. WI -> SD -> NM -> OK -> back home. Dumping all the ones that have my Taco in them here.

Hawkeye Point, Iowa's highest point




Welcome to Minnesota sign just down the road from Hawkeye Point



Wall Drug 80ft dinosaur



Wall, SD - Dahl's Chainsaw Art - World's Largest Jackelope carving



Custer State Park, South Dakota - Wild donkey trying to shake me down for food



Legion Lake, South Dakota - Stop for snack & scenery



South Dakota - Needles Highway - Needle Eye Tunnel



Needles - Iron Creek Tunnel



Nebraska - Chimney Rock



Nebraska - Courthouse Rock



Nebraska road sign



Nebraska - Panorama Point, highest point in state




Nebraska - Scott's Bluff National Monument



Continued in next post to split it up a bit and not kill someone's dial-up modem...

 

Colorado - Florissant area dispersed camp




New Mexico - Capulin Volcano National Monument



New Mexico - Jemez Falls / Santa Fe National Forest campground



New Mexico - Quaking Aspen / Cibola National Forest campground



New Mexico - El Morro National Monument



New Mexico - Light offroading at Dinosaur National Monument and a view from that point of the Organ Mountains




New Mexico - FR 462 dispersed camp somewhere east of Albuquerque



Driving somewhere near Tucumcari, New Mexico - Flat boring land heading towards Texas, and my inner Instagram girlie enjoying the sunset




Texas - Modified 2G Taco size comparison to stock looking new Tundra. Them there Tundras are just big ol fockin chonkers by comparison to the svelte goat of a Taco.



Oklahoma - Chill camp at Natural Falls State Park



Oklahoma highway sign near Forth Smith



And lastly, during the trip I finally figured out a good use for my rear seat delete molle panel. I have a Big Agnes Sage Canyon plus shelter and screen walls + an Ironman folding camp table that are cumbersome to store. Using some 24" Gear Aid 3/4" utility straps that come in 2 packs for a pretty cheap price (cheaper than I could buy webbing and buckles separately so DIY isn't even worth my time). These worked perfectly to lash them to the molle and keep them secure for 5k miles. Plenty pleased with how it worked out, and continuing to refine and optimize gear storage.

 

Some miscellaneous updates to catch things up...Apparently the Illinois IPASS is changing from the bulky plastic box to a window sticker that has a passive RFID embedded inside which is nice to clear up space on my windshield.



Applied the new sticker on some Sticker Shield so it's removable and stuck it over on the lower passenger side along with my work parking pass.



Old Valeo brand beam wiper blades finally gave up the ghost after like 2-3 years. Driver side was cut from one end and making a big mess and actually making my viewing dangerous even in light rain.



No big deal, I've had these Trico Ultra beams that I ordered on a previous RockAuto batch order waiting around as spares. Huge savings over the local parts store if you can plan ahead like this, wipers ain't cheap nowadays.



New wipers have this big plastic "spoiler" built in which I'm assuming is to catch the wind at higher speeds so it keeps them from fluttering around. Never tried ones like this before but figure it's worth a shot. Early tests worked very well so we will see how long they last. Exciting stuff!



During my October trip I drove more than 5,000 miles in about 24 days so I needed to rotate the tires, lube the UCAs/u-joints, and change the oil after getting back (lube job and oil change not pictured, super boring). Tires were used from another TW member but still have great tread. Measured even now at right around 15/32. Considering they are E load I'd expect quite a few more miles out of them.



Had a little time for arts & crafts with the anti-seize on the rotor face and a dab on the lug studs just to make sure they come off nice and easy in the future. It's the little things like this that make life easier later especially here in the land of salty roads.



Gave my Autel MaxiTPMS another try at reading the tire sensors. Overall it has not worked out very well for me so far. I read somewhere that sometimes the Denso sensors like I have need to have 3 seconds of inflation/deflation to "wake them up" but not sure how much truth there is to that. But I will say this time they did read a tiny bit easier. The downside is that it always mis-reads the right rear tire as the spare. Didn't have time to take it down so have to live with it for now.



I know most people would say "why all the effort for the sensors if you aren't getting a warning on the dash?" Well, my next shenanigans include towing a big fatty U-Haul 6x12 trailer down to Knoxville, TN and then to Mississippi. Tire pressures and temperatures can become very important in those scenarios. Also, I do have the ability to monitor pressure and temperature via my Pioneer head unit's integration using the iDataLink Maestro module. It's not perfect but it is convenient and better than nothing. I still check things manually but more instrumentation to make decisions while on the road is handy. Especially for our 2nd gens that don't have much of this stuff natively.



During my last trip the gas shocks on the Leer camper shell also gave up the ghost and won't raise the glass fully any more. By the end of that trip they also wouldn't hold it up and over time would start slowly sagging. I found this other helpful thread on TW detailing some of the different lengths of shock for our cap model Leer 100XR and/or 100XL (mine is the XL). I ended up ordering a 16" replacement with 28lbs force. Quick side-by-side before installation and looks about right.



My old shocks were Stabilus Lift-O-Mat part number SG330119 and I couldn't find much about them in online cross-references. Now, after diving deeper I did find what I needed on Lift Supports Depot showing this part had a 16.14" extended length, 10.02" collapsed, and 29lbs force.



Parts I ordered from Truck Outfitters Plus. New shocks are Suspa brand, marked with part number 2402 as well as part number

$24 C16-08941 C1608941 16" Gas Prop, Quantity (2), Force 28 Lbs Per Prop, Force Per Set 56 Lbs, Camper Rear Window, Tonneau Cover Lift Supports, Window Lift Support, Struts, Made in USA

C16-08941. In hindsight I would have ordered something else had I known the specs but these are actually pretty darn close anyways and I would expect them to function nearly the same.



I also bought some "button stud with ball mount" parts, i.e. the ball that goes through the glass. Mine are rusty, crusty, and ugly. Boy oh boy did I underestimate the can of worms this would open. Looks like a 5 minute job, ended up having to cut it off with a small Dremel. I don't particularly care for the quality of the new units either, feels cheap and Chinese versus the OE Leer units. But now I have one new one and one old one because there wasn't time to install the other.



First impressions of the new shocks is that they suck ass. Nothing visual indicates any points of binding, but they have a point where the window is raised to about 4/5ths the full height and it binds up requiring you to push it up the rest of the way. Has nothing to do with the spec'd out extended length difference versus old Stabilus model. Since I'm posting this after my trip I can say this wasn't a "break-in period" and they didn't get any better. Definitely doubting the vendor I bought them through now, possible that they send inferior quality items. Oh well, for now they work well enough and I'll deal with it later. Bigger and better things to occupy my mind and wallet besides this for now.

 

Time to see how well the Taco tows over a long distance. Also a great test to see how the At The Helm Fabrication bumper's integrated receiver holds up to some abuse. Mounted up the 11" drop ball mount that I previously came up with. Couldn't really come up with a solution to protect the license plate or prevent it from flapping around, but writing this post now after I have completed the trip I can say that is a non-issue.



In previous post #296 I shared my bits & pieces to make all the connections. One thing I left out was the Bolt lock for the trailer that is keyed-alike for using your Toyota ignition key. Now I have the full set of trailer lock, hitch pin, and coupler pin lock. No more carrying around other mysterious small keys that get lost or confused. Just one key.



The entire point of this trip is moving things for my mom that previously belong to my deceased aunt (which are located here in my city), and also things that belonged to my deceased grandfather that are located in Knoxville, TN, and take them all down to Mississippi. When I was younger and my parents divorced we moved a lot and I swear it's always the worst possible weather day of the year. This time was no different as I awoke to 2" of lake effect snow blizzard followed by heavy rain the remainder of the day. Brilliant.



Here's how it looks after picking up the trailer later that afternoon where all the snow melted or got washed away by several inches of rain. Not the best photo but you can see it sits a little nose-high when fully empty. Trailer ball mount that I got was an 11" drop and the biggest one I could find locally but ideally would have liked a 12" drop for a bit more tongue weight.



Next photo is the start of my trip as taken at the Lake Forest Oasis on I-94 heading south. Ground is uneven and wonky, and trailer is less than half full but you can see it did pitch down a tiny bit on the tongue. Overall though the load here is very light and I wish it would have been heavier. Trailer tire pressures were kept at a constant 65psi per U-Haul. Truck tires were at something like 35-36psi which is "normal" because I wanted to see how that would ride/feel. For the most part it was just fine with the light load.



Here is the trailer fully loaded but it's not the full story. You can see some old-timey memorabilia in there but what you don't see is the monster riding lawnmower up front and other heavy nonsense packed around it. My grandpa was a Pepsi driver back in the 70's and he also kept tons of old glass bottles - which were enough to completely fill the area under my camper shell where my bed normally goes. Those fuckers are pretty heavy all together and fragile to boot.



For grins I decided to weigh things on the scale at the truck stop just outside of town. Total weight 9,360lbs. U-Haul quotes the empty trailer at 1,920lbs. My last scale weight without a trailer was 5,580lbs. U-Haul quotes GVW at 4,400lbs and doing some quick math I'm at 1,860lbs cargo coming in just under that. So looks like I sized the trailer about as well as I possibly could not having seen any of what I was hauling beforehand. I did notice that the truck was feeling a bit "floaty" and now that I have a true weight I decided to inflate to 50psi on the truck side for the extra load capacity. This definitely helped and felt much more planted, and the tire temps at highway speed were a few degrees cooler.



With the full load, I am finally seeing a bit of sag on the tongue as well which is a good thing. With no trailer hooked up I think the ball sits around 21" off the ground, now with the full load it's around 19". U-Haul quotes 18" as the desired target so again as I expected a 12" drop ball mount would have been perfect (though the 11" drop is just fine too).



Hard to take photos in the dark but here's the fully loaded setup at my hotel in Alabama. Pretty leveled out. What does show up a bit more is the lift on my truck which normally has a bit of rake because I've never finished dialing in the front preload is now almost perfectly level. Deaver U402 stage 2 leaf springs are perfect for my setup in every way so far, towing and hauling included.



Back in post #295 I shared my new OBDLink MX+ setup for monitoring temps and now it was time to put it to use. Ambient temps being cold definitely help on this journey. At normal highway cruising speeds in 4th gear around 60mph, all temps were perfectly normal and fine. Coolant a hair under 190°F as expected, A/T temps right around 150°F.



Going through the hilly terrain between Knoxville TN -> Huntsville AL -> Amory MS, temps did rise up especially on steep long inclines where I had to downshift to 3rd gear. However, I watched this closely in case I needed to modulate speed or gears and it never went into dangerous areas. In fact, after ascending the incline and either going downhill or flat for a few seconds it dropped quickly back to normal. Cooling system is good. A/T stock cooler is doing it's job. I do have plans to install a bigger cooler soon but really unless you tow a lot and in super hot temperatures this isn't something to worry about at all. At least now I have data to confirm it and peace of mind is worth all the cost to get here.



And that's it, no other dramas or oddities with towing. I haven't fully calculated fuel economy yet but I'd guess it's in the 10-12mpg range fluctuating on the terrain and ambient temperatures (Edit from the future: Now calculated, towed for about 1k miles and averaged 13.70mpgs in this range). Speeds were kept usually around 60mph on flat and like 50-55 in the hills. Did hit a couple of silly mileage milestones but the trip was completed without any dramas. Rest of the trip was COLD and I camped in below freezing temps like every night even down south. So much for sun and warmth, maybe next time.

 

Nice truck!

 

Thank you!

 

Blue Ridge Overland Gear was having some holiday sales. Picked up two of their MOLLE visor organizer panels. Not quite sure how useful they will really be, but giving them a try. Their gear is made in USA and seems to be very high quality and I'd like to pick up more later once I figure out what I'm doing with my rear seat delete area.



There are definitely pros and cons to these. Downside is that you lose access to the built-in visor mirrors, and on the driver side the operation instructions for using 4WD and locker (if you don't know them already). Upside is that you get MOLLE and a zipper pouch on one side and velcro on the other. For now I'm using them to hold pens/markers in the MOLLE loops and zipper pouches for receipts and loose papers. Will keep looking for other uses going forward.



PS - Almost forgot, Jordan Love did it best as shown below but wishing everyone a Merry Toyotathon and Happy Holidays. Go Pack Go!

 

I got a ton of BROG stuff and it’s all pretty awesome. Headrest ifak kits was one of the first things I got from them, follows by the big tool bag. I used the taco attic quite a bit, I’ve actually got a leftover one from dads old truck if you want one cheap

 

Good to hear, I remember reading some of y'all had BROG gear but couldn't remember who. Seems like good kit. Appreciate the offer on the attic but I already have an overhead MOLLE panel which is where I put my IFAK and so far I really like how that works to keep things out of the way.

 

Finalized my MPG tracking for 2024. See previous year stats here: '20, '21, '22, '23. Biggest takeaway: Growing up to 33's isn't necessarily the end of good MPGs?

• Drove ~10k miles on the 265/70/17 Grabber ATX tires, then moved up to Kenda Klever R/T 33/10.5/17 and drove another ~10k miles. 20k total which is double last year. Most of that can be attributed to two road trips.
  
• Spent about $3,600 on fuel. It is what it is. Road trips cost more in gas but overall cheaper than airfare and hotels so I'm not mad.
  
• Average MPGs on 31" tires = 17.75. Average on 33" tires = 16.86. Does that mean you lose ~1MPG with bigger tires? Inconclusive but probably.
• Best single tank on 31" tires = 19.18. This was just a normal tank doing my normal work commute.
  
• Best single tank on 33" tires = 22.13. This was on a western US road trip while I was near Gallup, New Mexico. Seems illogical but it's real.
• Most of the lowest tanks in November were towing a 6x12 UHaul trailer loaded up pretty full and driving in the hills. Surprised I maintained around 12-13mpg for those tanks, not terrible.
  
• I still never got around to cleaning the throttle body or MAF or any of that maintenance. Guaranteed to be done in 2025. Also going to cowl intake.

With the General Grabber ATX 265/70/17:


With the Kenda Klever RT 33/10.5/17:


(Ignore the horizontal lines - these delimit my trips/vacations and don't have any meaning. I'm just to lazy to remove them from the photo)

 

some of my best fuel economies were out west. I agree it's weird.

 

Been wondering where ya been the last couple of months...guess you've been busy.

 

What's even more confusing is that setting cruise control at 70mph (GPS speed, not the gauge which is off now due to tires) resulted in worse fuel economy than going 80mph when it was the posted limit. I'd have figured the higher RPM would have sucked down the economy but it was the opposite out there in the desert. Makes no sense whatsoever because if I do the same thing in the Midwest it drops off a cliff. Must have something to do with the dry air and how that changes stoichiometric ratios or something. Hell if I care though, I'll take anything over 20mpg any day, any place.

Yep, been a little busy. Taking a break from the main Wisco thread because there is enough chatter there already without me but I still spy on things from time to time. 2025 is shaping up to be quite a strange year, hopefully I can actually make it to some of the gatherings like I planned to. Hope all is well with you, I'm sure you are very bored due to the retirement and dreaming about going back to work?

 

Yup, that's all I think about. In fact, it's what I'm thinking about now. Hope you're wearing good boots...the bullshit's gettin' deep!

 

with all the time I spent on the road, there was a lot of odd things I found.

like when I towed my camper out to phoenix, it was actually better to go 75 mph because I could get a little higher in the rev range, make more power and not need to downshift ever. if I went slower, it would bog and I would have to goto 4th and bleed off all my speed trying to climb hills across nm and az

 

I found a little bit of the same in some locations. Like if I set it at 80 it would cruise at like 2500rpm but wouldn't have to downshift/rev like crazy at every little hill due to the tires/gearing now being wonky. But it wasn't always that way. Normal driving in my day-to-day shows more impact from ambient temperature than anything assuming your driving style stays relatively consistent (i.e. don't drive like a road raging arsehole all the time and it's pretty average). I'm still a bit puzzled at the results but I don't sweat it much. Bigger tires = mainly measure in smiles per gallon now because I'd be a fool to expect all the mods to increase mpgs lol.

 

nice build, i went through all of it i think
why do you carry grease/gun with ya in your kit?
surprised by the mpg too, i have a 2015 trd offroad, 89,000 miles, 265 70 16 wildpeaks
and oem suspension and im getting about 16mpg. 90% town though, and winter grade fuel perhaps

 

Hey thanks, appreciate the comments! Grease gun is mainly for the longer expeditions as I have taken some month-long trips that have gone 5-8K miles, and if I encounter any big water crossings or if my ball joints/U joints start making noise I want to be able to grease them so they stay happy. I find the JD Fab UCA joints generally need a little grease before the 5K mile mark (or even more often, they are better when kept full of grease). So it's not something normally needed but I just know how my parts operate and the grease gun keeps everything working to my standards.

MPGs I am a little surprised as well. This particular truck has generally always been good on fuel since day one. I don't know what to say other than keeping it maintained, keeping tires properly inflated and chalk tested, and then driving normally (and not an angry gorilla) all help. Biggest factor aside from limiting aggressive driving is outdoor ambient temperature which of course can't be controlled so you just do the best you can. I'm not sad about the mileage I get!

 

Winter is starting to fool us with hints of springtime. I've been mostly hibernating and stockpiling parts and hoping that 2025 doesn't have goofy life events like 2024 did. If things go right I may finally get to do some work in 2025. Anyways I ordered up my usual stockpile of Amsoil fluids and going to give the "high mileage" variant a shot this time because it has more detergents and wouldn't hurt to clean the insides at around 150k miles now.



Had a warm day at the start of March and did a change. Maybe I'll finally get around to cleaning/detailing the engine bay so I can look like a real pavement princess.



I think I'm finally ready to do some mods on the side mirrors. Might be nice to have the turn signals, but what really has me excited is to swap out the standard glass for something with anti-glare. Still have to source more parts. Found these at a local-ish junkyard for a song so at least getting closer. Plenty of other wacky things I have stashed away too. Which brings me to possibly the most important recent "mod" that I just picked up...



Last year (Jan 2024) I sold my Honda CR-V backup vehicle because it had a recall/fatal flaw in the rear trailing arms and I didn't see any further future. Up until now my plan was to continue fixing my old 2001 Jeep XJ but turns out it's going to take more of an overhaul than I can bang out quickly. It has been sitting for about 7 years now, how time flies. Anyways, the market for used EVs has finally reached a point where battery range is on par with a gasser and price is reasonable enough. Introducing my new backup vehicle a 2017 Chevy Bolt LT.



I'm taking a bit of a gamble but this one just got a brand new battery pack after all the Chevy recall woes, it has 45k miles, and was originally a California car with zero rust anywhere. I really didn't plan for this and I went in with expectations it would be a real shitbox, but all it took was a 10 minute test drive and I am morally corrupted by the torque and zippy acceleration. Plus I don't have to change any oil or really do any maintenance besides putting on tires every so often. It's like a little electric golf cart on steroids.



The only major imperfections are some faded paint on the roof and hood due to California sun but I really don't care. Maybe someday I'll have those panels re-sprayed, oh well. Final piece to this puzzle was installing a 240V level 2 charger at home. Not really too difficult considering my garage sub-panel is easily accessible and my planned circuit for a bigger welder is not currently in use. (Ignore the missing drywall it's covered back up again now)



Best part is charging this thing literally costs pennies versus filling up the Taco. More money for mods. Ability to take Taco offline more than a day for mods without missing work. So far so good, hopefully more productive updates coming soon.

Edit: Screenshot from fuel economy site, yeah just gonna leave this here for comparison lol.