2004 Tacoma SAS

This winter has been really crazy, hopefully it will get better. We definitely need more snow down here, not sure what your snow pack looks like.

 

Oh it’s super low snow pack around here. Lower than I’ve seen in 10 years or so

 

Last weekend buddy brought his big camera out. Left with some cab corner and bed damage

 

Sweet build,

 

Winter showed up.

 

Snow wheeling is just about to get good, but the roads are pretty dry and I had to throw the coopers on and see how it looked. Can’t wait to daily drive it again! I’m going to have to repaint everything on the frame, bumpers and sliders once snow wheeling is over, winter here is not kind to bare metal.

 

Spent a few days cleaning up the sliders, front bumper and adding a leaf in the back to raise it up a touch. Gonna have to pull the bed and fix all the paint back there next.

Ditched the factory air box and just added a cone filter. Now I can cut out the rest of my inner fender on the passenger side. Having a narrower front axle is making it tough to stay out of everything up there, and I’m still missing out on inches of up travel. Wondering if I should just engine cage it and potentially not have these issues.

 

Engine cage is the way, takes time to tab it all out but its worth it for the uptravel

 

Tabbing it out is exactly what’s holding me back, but I know it would be well worth it

 

Its not terrible just takes a long time, the fuse box was the biggest pain in the ass for me

 

Last two weekends have been a solid season ender for snow.

 

Started the quest of getting more up travel. Not looking like I’ll have to engine cage it yet. Cut out most of the inner fenders, lots of the rad support. Turns out I hit steering box before anything now.

Moved the axle back an inch and that solved most of the problems. But now I have to cut the bump cans off and move them as well since my coilovers are contacting during the axle cycling.

also fixed a crack that showed up in the frame, didn’t expect that!

 

Built some inner fenders out of some plastic sheeting and finally built a permanent coolant reservoir mount/battery bus bar mount. Happy with how it all turned out

Gained 1” more uptravel too while still keeping it at 22” frame height.

 

Also some catch up to do. Installed an ARB locker in the rear. I was never happy with the driveline slack and the drivability of the grizzly I initially installed after coming from dual arb’s in my jeep. Only driven it a few times since installing but it’s night and day. It will also help in snow wheeling when trying to keep the back end from sliding.


Got out camping with a couple buddies

 

Rebuilt the rear bumper, added a hitch receiver, fresh paint and re trimmed the rear fenders. Shouldn’t rub tires anymore!

Might remove a leaf from the rear as it’s a bit stiff since I added one and just do a longer shackle to raise it a touch. Also considering switching rear shocks to a fox that I can play with some valving on.

 

Steering’s been feeling pretty loose lately even after installing new tie rod ends. Found the steering shaft joint was binding enough on the end of the input shaft that it worked the set screw loose. I figured the set screw should be in the factory groove so I filed down the outer edge of the input shaft until it cleared. I’ve read you can’t trim the end off so hopefully no problems there.

Removed the add a leaf I installed this spring, rides great again but it’s a little low in the back, probably do slightly longer shackles. The shocks seem to work much better with a 3 leaf set up.

Biggest problem right now is the rear brakes. Since im using an older pickup axle housing, I used a “trail tough” disc swap kit which uses front 4 piston calipers, and non vented rotors. The issue with these is the semi floating axle pushes the caliper pistons back when offroad and you need to pump the pedal. So - I want to switch the brake setup to a floating caliper type. Looking around I’m seeing no good options, just older Chevy calipers. Not interested in that route, I’d like to find a smaller piston metric caliper so I don’t need to change my master. I found an old discontinued bracket kit that used to be sold to run 4th gen 4Runner rear calipers(pictured). Lots of the new cars on the road run small metric calipers in the rear, so probably lots of options. If anyone has any suggestions.

 

A bit of cost, but I think this would make a great setup. I have something similar, but instead of an adapter set, I already have a full float housing.

Start with converting that axle over to full float (removes the run out). - https://frontrangeoffroadfab.com/full-floater-conversion/
And then switch over to 4th gen and up rear caliper/vented rotor.
NON-parking brake option - https://frontrangeoffroadfab.com/4runner-non-ebrake-kit/
Parking brake option - https://frontrangeoffroadfab.com/drotor-backing-plate-kit/

I run the 231mm Tundra fronts and 4th gen 4runner rear calipers with my factory MC and a whole system proportion valve.
Has enough brake power to stop the tires with the crawlbox in compound low.

 

Appreciate the suggestion, but I’m not going to do a ff kit on this axle. I don’t see a massive benefit to it and it just makes sourcing replacement parts harder where I am. Nothings caused me problems yet but I have some 609s on my mind these days.

In the meantime, I was shown this. Likely the route I’ll take. 2wd pickup calipers, Tacoma front rotors.

 

The common old small caliper people used to go for are 240sx ones, they have a parking brake lever as well that makes them ideal for a conversion.