2009 Tacoma 5 lug owner here

Greetings from Georgia!

We bought our 2009 5-lug in early 2010 with 17,000 miles on it. Nice little black 5 speed SR5 access cab with the flux capacitor.

My wife drove it for the first 100,000 miles (high mileage driver), and she is notoriously hard on vehicles, and treated it like a truck (Wisconson gal, dad was contractor and it rubbed off on her).

We traded my F150 to get a new van for the family hauler (kids outgrew the access cab, F150 was murder on gas), and I took over the taco.

I decided to overhaul the sound system, so while I was at it I did some major cleaning. Seats, console, carpet, doors - all came out. Cleaned and pressure washed the carpet, cleaned the seats with foaming seat cleaner, detailed the interior, door jams, etc (Mother's back to black worked great on the door seals). After running all the power and speaker wires and finishing the install, it all came back together nicely and now the interior looks like a truck with 20,000 miles on it instead of 120,000 miles.

Attached is a pic of it mostly stripped...doors were back on by this time.

Anyway, great little truck, and I expect it to provide many more years of service, and it will likely go to our son (who just turned 14) when it's time for him to drive.

 

Welcome to TW!

 

Welcome! That's what I need to do, the sound system...

 

That's certainly an advantage to access cabs!! Could you tell us what you did to make the interior look newer? Was there any permanent damage like scratches? Do you think you could have done as well without taking everything apart? I may need to do this.

 

Thanks for the welcome guys!

The sound system was a must-upgrade for me. I think that stock system was one of the worst I have heard in a modern vehicle of that price range.

I went with Kenwood Excelon HU, Polk separates in the doors, and I built a custom box to go where the flux capacitor and rear center console were. That box houses an Alpine Type R 10" sub, a pair of Kicker 5" 2-way speakers, and my amps.

It was really a combination of my desire to upgrade my sound and my desire to deep clean the truck that drove me to disassemble - the wife doesn't keep an immaculate vehicle, and she and the kids ate in there all the time...spilled soda, etc. With the amps in the rear and separates in the front door, I needed to run power and RCA's to the rear and speaker wire back to the front. MUCH easier to do with no trim, seats, or carpet.

Cleaning details:

Chopper - to answer your question, I do think it's worthwhile to at least take out the trim, console, and seats. You could do the carpet in place if you had a carpet cleaner or if it's not bad, but the cleaning of the trim and console with a heavy degreaser/cleaner and rinsing with the water hose was a big winner, and you can get all that out in under an hour. Seats are also much easier to clean all over when they are sitting on the tailgate at a comfortable work height instead of being in the truck.

Just do all your water based steps first and leave the parts in the sun (turning over occasionally as required) while you do the rest. That way everything has time to dry...just wait till the parts cool off in the shade before applying the protectant (Meguiar's, in my case).

Outcome with this process

• Seats look brand new
• Carpet looks barely worn
• Minor wear and tear scratches persist, but otherwise trim looks great (mostly due to the heavy washing with simple green)

Materials used (disclaimer - I am not a fan of Turtle Wax products, but these two cleaners worked well. All this is readily available at Wal-Mart, Pep Boys, Autozone, etc.)

• Turtle Wax power out carpet cleaner
• Turtle Wax power out upholstery cleaner
• Simple green (diluted)
• Mother's Back To Black
• Meguiar's Natural Shine protectant
• Pressure washer (carpet)

Since I needed the carpet out, everything else went too. Kick panels, jam trim, seats, center console, carpet, doors.

All the hard plastic parts got scrubbed with a terrycloth rag and simple green, and rinsed with the water hose - you would not believe how much grime came off those parts that didn't really look that dirty, especially the center console.

The carpet got spot-cleaned with the carpet cleaner, followed by an all-over soaking and general scrub down (the can has a brush on it, but a cheap stiff bristle brush is easier to manage). I then draped the carpet over a ladder on its side, and pressure washed the carpet. This got out all the soda, dirt, grime, and also got rid of the overpowering "supposed to smell good" scent of the carpet cleaner.

The seats got an all-over scrub down with the upholstery cleaner - this stuff I liked a lot. Worked great, smelled nice (and subtle), and was a "scrub on, let dry, vacuum off" deal. Made the lite gray seats look brand new.

Door jambs, boots, and exposed door parts (like the painted part on the bottom of the door below where your door panel sits) all got cleaned with the Simple Green solution...another advantage to full disassembly - you can rinse with the water hose on low power with no worries about getting the carpet and seats soaked.

Once dry, the door seals and boots all got a double application of Mother's back to black - worked great.

Remainder of interior (dash, rear trim, pillar trim, etc.) all got cleaned with the Meguiar's, as did all the trim pieces that were scrubbed with Simple Green earlier.

Biggest caveat I would say is to make sure your carpet and padding is 100% dry before you put it back, otherwise you will wind up with a musty smell that will be near impossible to get rid of. I left mine out in the 90 degree + sun over 3 days while I built the enclosure and installed the stereo components (I took my time...it was HOT out).