2nd Gen Prelander Build (Okie_LT_Taco)

I'm making this thread to document the build of my 2014 TRD Sport. This is my first thread so please bear with me, as my name implies I don't know what I'm doing.

A little about the truck in bought it early 2017 in Jacksonville NC, with about 32,000 miles on it. The truck has been great to me, other than regular maintenance I have only had to replace a bad A/C compressor and a fuse. I have had the truck all the way from "JVagas" to Artesia New Mexico. I have had it through the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee to the Guadeloupe Mountains south of Caralsbad. It has made the trip from Jacksonville NC to Broken Arrow OK three separate times.

For the mods on the truck pervious to starting this build are vary mild.
-any time fog lights.
-any time converter.
-ditch lights.
-slight bigger than factory tires.
-bed cover
-added door seals to eliminate wind buffering.

THE BUILD:
To start we did a McNeils Racing +2in fiberglass fenders and bedsides. McNeils got me the fiberglass in about half the qoute ld lead time but one of the fenders did come damaged. A small chuck was missing from the driver fenders under where the A-piller is.

My body shop guy, Bell Auto Body (Broken Arrow, Ok) has been hard at work the last week getting the fenders, bedsides fitted and fixing the fiberglass damage. During the fitting we learned that the stock front bumper will not work with the McNeils fenders. The rear bumper lines up perfect. I have ordered a Relentless Fabrication Hybrid front bumper.

As of Friday (10/11/24) Bell has the fiberglass off the truck and in paint. He is fixing some small dents and fixing the infamous Toyota Super White paint defect. To rant a little Toyota had a recall for the paint on my year of truck. Toyota USA said they will had the recall open when I talked to the. But my VIN was not affected even though my paint was doing the same thing as the recall was for. Do better Toyota, ok rant over.

Once the paint is finished Bell is polishing any paint that wasn't resprayed. Side not i know that this is over kill for a truck that I'm going to take down trails. But most of the extras is Bells doing. He has taken this build under his wing and insists it's going to be perfect. If your in the Tulsa area I can't recommend Bell enough for body work.

For the suspension I have gone with JD Fabrication. JD Fab as been absolutely great to deal with, super knowledgeable and helpful. For the front I ordered the +2.25 LT kit paired with thier lower control arms pivot kit. The front will be finished off with King 2.5in shocks, double shear uper control arm tabs, and spindle gussets.

For the rear suspension I ordered thier spring under framebrace kit with King 2.5in single bypass shocks. I have started receiving my suspension parts as of Friday. I have all the front parts except for the control arms. Once they arrive I will be installing the front kit. JD Fab said the rear will take about two weeks to ship because the frame brace needs to be powered coated before shipping.

For wheels I have Method Racing 17×8.5 0 offset on order. I will be rapping them in 295×70×17 Goodyear Duratrac RT's. Little frustrating but the wheels went on back order right after I ordered them. I should recive them mid November.

My plan is to update this thread as we continue to work on the truck. I will add pictures when I figure out how, remember "I don't know what I'm doing!" Feel free to reach out for questions or to discuss the build. If you would like to follow the process closer you can follow my Instagram at Okie_LT_Taco.

 

Pre build:

 

Body and paint as of 10/11/24

 

nice truck. I heard you are supposed to spray bed liner on the inside of the fiberglass fenders, so rocks wont chip/crack your fiberglass

 

I don't know if it is absolutely necessary to bed line the inside of the glass, but we are for ease of cleaning.

 

Much to think about.

My wider tires fling on me due to flare delete. I was eyeing bushwacker flares to solve that. Fiberglass could do the same thing.

I don’t know what Archive relocate costs. Not to mention labor and if finding a competent welder is even possible.

whereas the JD brace may give both a relocation AND support at the same time as a bolt on affair with no welding needed

versus welding a relocate
And welding a brace
That after parts alone that older way before the JD product was invented I imagine would cost much more in comparison.

makes sense.

a liner can be rubberized. That would have some material thickness and absorption give to dampen rock strikes.

or other things. Like C4 high clearance liners. Aftermarket or custom liners. Some may or may not be compatible.

 

Fiberglass would help cover the tire depending how wide they are. If your going to do fiberglass watch these videos. https://youtu.be/qh1I34DT3JA?si=7GQnXIr68UI9r09e
https://youtu.be/E3K4eK1y9_I?si=57d2Oey902ysF1BF
After watching these I decided to let my body shop fit them, it would have taken me way longer to do and his hourly rate was worth not doing it my self.

The JD frame brace is bolt on but the spring under kit does require welding. I'm still waiting to recive my rear setup from JD Fab. Once we get it and do the install I'll post about how it went, any issues we had, or thing to be aware of before hand.

 

Small update and photo dump. Fenders and bedsides are painted. Bedsides still need black on the bed caps, we're sending it to have the bed caps bed lined. Grill is taped up just waiting to be sprayed. Suspension parts are still slowly showing up.

 

Only a real one knows about JVegas

 

Here is a quick synopsis of what we learned during the installation if you don’t want to read my lengthy rant. First, use power tools early and often. Don’t worry about being super gentle on teardown. Double and triple-check that you have every last thing you’re going to need. We had an unnecessary loss of time making parts runs. Use the instructions from JD, we first started using the article from https://***************/2nd-gen/jd-fabrication-long-travel-kit-install-tacoma/ as a guide, then transitioned to JD’s instructions. This caused some confusion as certain things were done in different orders between the article and the instructions. The article is a must-read if you want to install the JD LCA and LT kits, but when it comes time to install them, just use JD’s instructions.


This post will be followed by a very large photo dump. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.


This one is going to be a big update. On Friday, January 31st, I started the front-end build around 7 pm with the help of my brother. Set back one came in the form of losing help. I had a friend who was supposed to help but had to back out at the last minute for family reasons. We planned to get the front end of the truck torn down and the lower control arm mounting tabs cut off so that we could start the welding on Saturday morning and be completely finished by Sunday evening. Let's just say that dream quickly flew out the window. We had many minor setbacks that ate up a lot of time. Our setbacks were not due to a lack of mechanical knowledge as I was formerly a mechanic on Ospreys in the Marines, and my brother was a car mechanic and now works as a civilian repair tech on an Air Force base.


Our lost time towards the beginning contributed to us being way too gentle during the disassembly, trying not to damage parts that were inevitably getting scrapped. We also lost time searching for tools as we were unfamiliar with the shop we were working in. This also leads me to give a huge shout-out to Bell Auto Body ( https://www.bellautobody.net/ ) for letting us use their shop and tools. We finished the disassembly around 1:30 in the morning. We only had the factory suspension off and left, and we still needed to cut off the lower control arm tabs. The lesson we learned would have made things faster, and my recommendation is to use power tools (specifically air tools) early and often.


When we came back in on Saturday morning, we went to work attacking the lower control arm tabs. These aren’t difficult to remove but time-consuming with a cut-off wheel and a grinder. We got both front tabs off, and then Bell came in to check on us and made the suggestion that we cut the rear tabs using an acetylene torch. We quickly ran out of acetylene and had to run to Atwoods to get a new bottle. With a new bottle, Bell made quick work cutting off the rear tabs, but not without some funny mishaps. First, we neglected to remove the paper towels on the floor that we used to soak up the diff fluid that leaked out; those quickly went up in flames. Once the literal fire was put out, we cleaned up our workspace and hung Nomex fire blankets around the truck. The second torch incident came when a glob of molten metal flew off the passenger side tab and burned through Bell’s pans, trying to become his third testicle. I felt bad for him, but it was hilarious watching Bell do everything he could to stop the burning without stripping his pants off.


Once all the tabs were cut off it took a good bit of time to grind the engine cradle smooth. When we finally mounted the JD Fab lower control arm kit in the locating holes, the driver side was perfect, but the passenger side gave us some trouble. We thought that the rear locating tab may have been bent during shipping. We ever so slightly bent the tab, and it fit way better but not entirely perfect. I later spoke with Jesse from JD Fab, and he believes that we did not remove enough metal from the passenger side, which caused it to not line up perfectly on that side. We were ready to start welding at about 4:30 pm, approximately 8 hours behind schedule. Bell’s friend Manuel came to the shop to do the welding. Manuel is the owner of MFab Race in Broken Arrow, OK, and he builds everything from roll cages and tube chassis to custom turbo kits. If you want to check out his work, you can find him on Instagram at mfab_race.


While he got started on the welds, I left to pick up two upper control arm bolts from the Toyota dealership. I don’t know why I thought that the kit from JD came with new upper control arm bolts, but it does not. If you have not already had the pleasure of removing the factory upper arm bolts or have a truck that has had them removed, you will find it impossible to remove the way they came from the factory without cutting them or removing the cab from the frame. Manuel completed the LCA kit, upper control arm double shear kit, spindle gussets, and tie rod double shear kit in less than 4 hours. After all the welds cooled, we sprayed all the bear metal with Rust-Oleum Farm equipment gloss black. After painting, we called it a night.


Sunday morning, we returned to the shop to respray the paint where it was needed. While the paint dried, we left to return some items we bought extra of and no longer needed. When we came back, we removed the needle bearing from the driver's side of the front diff and replaced it with the East Cost Gear Supply bushing. We then replaced both the driver and passenger side seals on the diff. Warning: The passenger side of the diff, where the seal goes, has straight walls that go all the way back to a race of ball bearings. I may have slightly over-installed the passenger side seal, but I am unsure. The driver-side seal is easy; it presses to a shelf and cannot be over-installed.


With all the new seals, we began installing the Long Travel kit. At some point, we decided to test fit the 934 CV axels. That is when we discovered that the inner CV of the 934’s is larger than the factory CV and makes contact with the engine cradle. That is, we realized JD Fab had sent us filler plates and that we were supposed to cut back that part of the cradle and weld in the filler plates for clearance. Now, off the top of my head, I do not remember the LT kit instructions mentioning that the cradle needed to be cut back. If it does not, it is because you can run the JD LT kit with stock CVs with a longer axle, which would not cause this clearance issue. I chose to use the 934 axles to allow for the full use of down travel the JD kit provides.


After discovering the clearance issue, we cut the cradle and ground it back. This was more difficult with the LCA kit welded into place. It took us about three hours to cut the cradle and weld the filler plates in. We finished up Sunday by installing the upper and lower arms and notching the shock tower so that the upper arm would clear at full droop.


I returned on Monday and Tuesday mornings after I got off work to finish the truck. Luckily, I had help from Bell and some of his employees, which made things so much easier not having to hunt for tools. By the end of the day on Tuesday, we had the truck on the ground and ready for alignment. The only thing we did not do is install the limit straps; we are going to do that when we install the rear kit.

 

Which grill is that with the raptor lights?

 

It's from NP Motorsports.

 

FYI, you CAN remove the upper control arm bolts without cutting them. I just bent the sheet metal out of the way.

 

That would have been great to know. At that point we just said fuck it and took a cut off wheel to the old one. Good thing I got lucky that toyota had the bolts in stock.

 

I will try to keep these photos in order but there is no guarantee.

Friday night teardown.


Saturday: Cutting of stock LCA tabs, fitting JD Fab LCA kit, welding, and paint.


Sunday: pics after paint dried, and beginning of LT install.


This is where we realized we needed to cut the cradle back and weld in filler plates.


Where we ended on sunday


Monday/Tuesday

 

Small update and some lessons learned. When we initially installed the lower control arms, we placed all three of the quarter-inch spacers to the rear of the arm. I took it to Tate Boys to get aligned; I only took it there because it is less than a quarter mile from Payton’s shop and in the same business complex. We ran into an issue with the rear passenger alignment bolt rounding off inside the eccentric plate. So, we had to order new hardware to get the alignment completed. We left the shop with these alignment numbers.



I drove the truck probably 10 miles over two days after the alignment. I could hear noise coming from the front end at about quarter turn left and right. There were also noises just before full lock in both directions. I called JD Fab and spoke with Jesse; he said that the sounds could be steering-related or I could be rubbing somewhere. When I told him that all three spacers were in the rear, he told me to check the clearance of the tie rods and the lower spring perch. Sure enough, the tie rods were hitting the shocks. Jesse said with a 33” tire; he recommended two spacers in front of the arm and one behind. I also asked Jesse about the alignment numbers because my caster was outside what was in the instructions of the kit. He told me not to worry about it because the caster would never be perfect. He said to set the camber as close to 0 as possible and to get the caster as low as it will go, but try to keep both sides within half a degree of each other.



We got the spacers moved, and I took the truck back to the same Tate Boys to be realigned. I don’t know how, but they managed to again round off an alignment bolt. At least this time, we had extra hardware from when we had to replace the first one. We left with a bit better caster numbers than the first time. The caster was .3 degrees lower on the passenger side and 1.2 degrees lower on the driver side, with exactly a .5-degree difference between each side. With the spacers moved, the noise at full lock is gone, and the tie rods no longer hit the shocks. The noise at a quarter turn is still there; I have looked to see if anything is rubbing that steering angle but cannot find anything. I believe that it's either the steering rack or pump making noise due to the larger and heavier tires.



Next up is an OTT tune on Friday, hope is that will be enough to hold off on regearing for at least the short term. Have had two short highway drives on the new tires, and I couldn’t really tell a difference in acceleration, nor did I notice the truck gear hunting. But I do live at about 700ft in elevation and have not taken the truck up anything steep yet. For the rear suspension, I have all the parts; I’m just trying to find the time that I can get everyone together to do the installation.

 

Just going to get straight into it, we got the OTT tune last week done by AY Tunning, he’s out of Fort Smith, Arkansas, and travels monthly to tune vehicles in other states. The process was super quick, he updated my ECU and installed the tune in under 15 minutes. To be honest, the engine tune isn’t super noticeable but the transmission tune and pedal adjustment is worth it. I couldn’t tell how slow the bigger tires made the truck feel till I drove it after getting the tune.


So, for the noise while turning I was able to narrow it down to the steering linkage rubbing the larger 934 CV’s. I talked with Jesse about it and he said that he didn't even think to tell me to check that because he has only had 2 or 3 people call him with that issue. He told me to use a 1/8in washer and place it between the frame and arms that mount the front diff. Once I got the make-shift diff drop kit installed, the rubbing completely went away.



After getting the rubbing issue cleared up, I installed the Hypertech in-line speedometer calibrator. As for how I set the calibration, I first drove the truck without the Hypertech. I used GPS to see what my actual speed was vs what the speedometer displayed. I logged what the actual speed was compared to the indicated speed from 20mph to 85mph at 5mph increments. I then went into the Hypertech software and inputted the indicated speed vs GPS speed for each one I logged, but did not program the unit, I logged what the % offset was. I then averaged all the offsets, the averaged number was 1.071, which was the offset given for my indicated speed of 85, but GPS speed of 91. I then programmed the Hypertech with that offset and went for a test drive. From 25mph to 95mph the speedometer matches GPS speed. Anything under 15mph the speedometer reads 1mph high.