1997 Frame Rehab Thread

Here is an image of the piece I need....it has the three bolts in it that hold the front of the skid plate and gas tank. It bolts to the frame next to the e-brake lever arm. Thanks!

 

I see rust free...

 

Legit? Just a test fit.

 

I'v seen worse.

 

Raptor Line This Bitch!

Lol nice job guy!

 

damn crazy turnaround

 

Thanks. Tank is fully in now. Just need to bleed the brakes and install exhaust.

 

Done!

Well 98% anyhow. Still need to put the bumper on. Bleed the brakes again. Clean up a few welds.

 

Yay! Congratulations and a job well done!

 

Holy shit. Nice

 

Thanks It was fun. I like challenging projects. Without a decently equipped garage it would have been much harder but still doable. Hopefully someone else can save a 1st gen from a salvage yard by seeing this rehab.

 

Tacoma has his hat on!

 

you are missing the 1 piece of wheel well trim I dont have. The truck looks Great.

 

I'm having a bugger of a time getting the brakes on this things. Can't seem to get a good pedal. I've bled it everywhere....master cylinder, prop valve, started at the rear pass side and progressed forward in the usual sequence. The master ran dry when I had the lines cut while working on the back end.

I've also researched on TW. Good fluid flow comes from everywhere. Any tips?

 

I started passenger rear, driver rear, prop valve, passenger front driver front. Then repeat

 

Four days into commuting the Tacoma (still not calling it a Taco....kids named it Otis). This runs great! After 400 miles of commuting it's getting darn near 23mpg with several mountains (eastern, not Rocky Mt's) to cross and the A/C running. I'm impressed.

Brakes are still spongey but I needed it to drive since my DD Subaru went down for the count....could be fixed but I have a spare Forester with 100k less miles almost ready to roll.

 

Two weeks and nearly 1k miles on the odometer since getting Otis on the road. Last night I swapped all the front brake components for new parts...rotors, caliper and pads. Seems that I had one piston frozen and the other was doing all of the braking. I also adjusted up the rear brakes. Now this thing will darn near put you through the windshield!! Spongy pedal is gone.

There is a high idle issue that will need dealt with. Cold idle is fine. I'll look into this next.

 

Time for an update.

Been driving the truck for a while near. Odometer is up to nearly 51k miles...probably hit that this weekend. That's about 4k since I took possession and rebuilt the entire back end of the truck. It's served flawlessly as a general run around truck for everything that I don't need the F150 and trailer to accomplish. That includes everything hunting related, firewood, general farm work, pulling my small trailer and even some DD driving. There were a few road trips along the way, the longest was 600 miles round trip. Never a problem...but that would be expected from one that hadn't yet cracked 50k miles and no one would ever know that 9 months ago it was destined for the scrap heap due a bad frame.

By cruising CL I was able to find a nice set of FJ wheels and tires ($125 including lug nuts). I trimmed the centers to allow access to the manual hubs.



The bed rust is quite bad but I was able to stumble on a color matching bed in near perfect condition with not a spot of rust on it. Some places that may be common, not in PA. It was trucked in by a company that transports clean auto parts up north. The red on the bottom of the bed is dust from down south...I pressure washed it and stripped off the nasty pin stripes. Prepping it now for a good coat of black equipment paint and I'm waiting for winter to pass before I install it.



Anyhow...that's the latest.

 

Looks amazing!!! you do good work.

 

Thanks! I'm looking for flares if you have a set.