The Elk Taco - krm11's Hunting & Camping Tacoma Build

Finally getting around to starting a build thread to document my upgrades this year to get the Tacoma ready for hunting season.

2011 Double Cab Long Bed, I bought it in 2023 with ~195k on it and it's at about 225k now and going strong. I wasn't initially looking for a topper but after 2 summers of use, the long bed and topper combo is perfect for my use case. I can pump up my backpacking air mattress and lay it out and fully stretch out and sleep in the bed, out of the elements. It's all the convenience of a rooftop tent plus storage space. It's mostly stock right now but I'm going to pull the trigger on some suspension and offroad upgrades this summer to get it ready to tackle the fall. I've done a good bit of work on it already, mostly just preventative maintenance and upgrading stuff as it wears out but I'm excited to start tearing into it more. The end goal for me is to have this thing be a hunting rig for any season, mud, snow, high clearance FS roads, tackle it all. (It already does this really well, but there's always more to upgrade....)

I'll post some short posts on some of the work I've already done with what pics i have to get things caught up, but for now here's some pics of the truck in it's natural habitat.

 

First post, hoping to catch up with what I've already done. Most of this work was done last summer, around the 200k mark, and I was just looking to get it up to where I wanted it for the upcoming fall. More reliability and preventative maintenance and less fun stuff to start...

When i bought the truck (or shortly after i drove home...) the airbag AND TPMS light came on, so I spent way too much time and lost way too many years off my life from stress dealing with the dealer to get the airbag light fixed. Ultimately I ended up tearing it apart in my driveway and discovering that the shorting bar on the connector was broken... I made a couple threads about the airbag saga here and here.

The connector shorting tab (broken on the left, good one on the right.

Looking back and laughing at the problem staring me right in the face for hours before i figured it out...


The TPMS light was a bit easier and I just elected to disable it and not deal with it, I check my tires often enough that I didn't see the value added. The wiring fix that was posted here worked great for me, turned the light off and haven't seen it since.

Another annoying thing that just needed to get fixed is my window would grind and slow down when i rolled it up or down so I tore into the door and found the culprit, my scissor mechanism was bent and rubbing together. A quick little bend back straight and it was good to go. Writeup and pics of the removal here.

Next up, replaced the idler pulleys to quiet down the idle and threw a new belt on while i was at it. It's amazing how much quieter it got and how used to that whine I was. It was such a relief to hear it idle quiet again.

Then, the vibrations started...

 

Finally getting back to this. Still catching up with older stuff I've done on the truck.

When I bought the truck it had a torn CV boot on the drivers side, nothing that was whipping grease everywhere, but it needed fixed. At the time I didn't really have the space or resources to tackle a job that I might not finish in a couple hrs so I drove it for a while like that with no issues. Eventually I started feeling some vibrations that were new/changing so I finally bought a reboot kit and figured i'd start with the CV reboot and I could check out the condition of the axle and everything while I was in there.

I took it over to a buddy's garage and after 2-3 hrs of beating on it, we couldn't get the CV axle out of the diff. Hours of frustration (and a few beers) led to us just cutting the inner boot off while it was on the truck, and pulling it out. Feeling pretty ingenious we thought we'd just found a way around removing the axle, until we realized we can't get the new boot on...Out came the hammer, punch, and the torch. We heated up the tripod bearing and beat it off so that we could fish the new boot on and then hammered the bearing back on, again with heat. At this point I was already bracing to have done more damage than we fixed, but at least we got it all back together and off I went. All that work and, no change to the vibrations...

Fast forward a few months and I've finally moved to a place with a little more space. I crawled under the truck and noticed my carrier bearing was pretty much shot, so I replaced that and the u joints.

Vibes were definitely better, but not fixed. Time to pay for whatever sins were committed in the axle reboot. I bought a new axle from CVJ with plans to just completely replace the axle. (plug for CVJ, living in Denver it was super quick turnaround to go pick up the axle and it was great working with them).

Teardown went pretty quick, until i got to removing the axle from the diff. Got stuck at the exact same point and no amount of leverage or tooling seemed to help. Ultimately we ended up getting some steel cable from home depot and didn't have a sledge but an axe works just as well!

I've done this multiple times since, and it worked like a charm when we did my buddy's Tundra CVs. There's no relief like getting past something that has you stuck for hours on what should be a simple job.


I highly recommend this method, with the caveat to use care with where you wrap the steel cable and how aggressive you go with it. I guess I got a little carried away in my frustration and busted up my diff seal, came out the next morning to an empty diff...sooo I also got a diff fluid change out of the deal. lol

The method i ultimately recommend is to still use the steel cable and axe (or sledge) but also have a helper on the axle putting some leverage on with a pry bar. The axe will just help pop that circlip out of the groove and the leverage being applied will just make it a little quicker. It's never taken more than 2-3 hits this way to get an axle free.


Update on vibes, they still weren't fixed. At that point I didn't have a 100% "oh yeah this is it" feeling about the CV being the problem, but I was confident enough based on the torn boot for unknown mileage as well as our redneck re-boot that some damage was done that I could at least tell myself i wasn't just throwing parts at it.

I spent a couple days forum crawling trying to figure it out and was finding a lot of threads about the diff bearing failing and the ECGS bushing solving that issue. I went out in the garage just to take a look at my axle to visualize where that sits and noticed some witness marks on my axle.

Ok, ECGS bushing it is. I just put a new axle in and didn't want to ruin that one.

 

ECGS bushing install went pretty smoothly, the tool they make for it made the job a piece of cake, I can't imagine doing it without it. I froze my bushing for a few hrs and even after that with some lube it still took some persuading with a hammer and a 3 ft extension on the install tool.


Got it all put back together in an evening with new seals, topped up the diff and went for a test drive. The vibes were STILL there.

I had already tied the vibes to road speed, not engine speed so I knew it was in the driveline, and at this point I had pretty much replaced the entire driveline with no luck. At this point I hadn't even thought about the wheel bearings until one day merging off the highway I noticed that the vibes went away when i turned...Finally some new information, went home and (again) was fairly confident I was one step above just throwing parts at it so I ordered a pair of hubs from a member on TW.

The new hubs showed up looking great and in pretty quick turnaround as well, and I'm always excited to slap shiny new parts on the taco, so back out in to the garage I went.


Driver side swap was pretty uneventful, everything came off and went back on without fuss. (one of the reasons i bought this truck despite a few warning signs, it was basicallly rust free). Test drove it, no luck, but I wasn't disheartened yet, i've heard hubs are a crap shoot on which one it actually is so I had already planned to do the passenger side.

I got into the passenger side and much to my relief, it looked like there was some pretty significant water intrusion and rust, and the bearing itself had a lot more resistance.


Feeling optimistic, I threw it all back together with new seals and went for a test drive.

SILENCE!!

I forget which way turning made it go away but tbh for anyone researching, if it goes away when turning, just do both.

Maybe now I'd get to do some fun stuff to the truck! Maybe...

 

Next up was suspension, my old shocks were looking pretty worn out so I decided it was time to pony up for a new set. I wasn't ready to fully commit on a new suspension although i did toss the idea around for a while. Ultimately I ended up with Bilstien 4600s all around, they'll probably get an upgrade this year but they're better than what was on there.

I decided to go no spring compressor on the front, after doing some homework and taking some precautions of my own i felt pretty confident that this wasn't unsafe. For the most part it went well, had one snag on the passenger side where the stud was so rusted in place that it actually held the spring in compression so that was a bit scary once i realized what was going on...More details in this thread.


Other than that, it was smooth sailing and i'd absolutely do no compressor method again. My old shocks were definitely worn out and due for a replacement, here's the old vs new.

Also, I can't find the thread where i stumbled on the PNs but I would also always get a single loud metal click every time i hit a bump in the front and somebody recommended replacing the bottom shock mount bold with this yellow chrome version, something to do with the shank differences, so I replaced that also. See the red arrow below. That quieted my click down and i haven't heard it since.


After screwing around with the fronts for so long I didn't waste any time (or snap any pics) of the rears. I cut the plastic sheath off and hit the shaft with an angle grinder just enough to grind in a flat spot to grab with vise grips. That made untorque-ing it a piece of cake. took maybe 15 mins per side and didn't even have to jack the truck up.

Other than that, the truck has been pretty solid for the last year or so with nothing more than 5k mile oil changes needed. Just the other week I finally had a reason to get back out and wrench on it. I took it up in the mtns and got it all wet and dirty for memorial day and then brought it home and parked it for a week. I think that finally got to my lower steering u joint as that seized up on me and made my steering pretty unpleasant. All in all, that replacement wasn't bad, took me a couple hrs but i don't profess to go at lightning speed. basic handtools, some pb blaster, and some patience got the job done.


That was the last of the major work I've done so far, I've gotten it to a place where it's a pretty damn reliable truck given it's age/mileage and also pretty hands off. It's been up in the mtns of Colorado getting beat up on FS roads every weekend and jumps back on 70 and cruises back home no problem. One of the many reasons I love this truck.

Now to start looking at the fun stuff (with some maintenance sprinkled in between i'm sure).