98 tacoma cab swap, help please

Alright boys, Montana, Blackdawg. Here we go again. Rolled my black 98 3.4L 4x4 Auto taco. Crimped in the roof just enough to jam the passenger door shut. Body shops want 2K to attempt to smash the roof out and replace the door or 3.5K to swap the cab. If I can find a cab for as cheap as you did and you are willing to coach me through this I'm totally down to do the swap myself. Looking for a cab now, but I wanted to put you boys on deck. I might do a manual conversion as well if I'm going to all this trouble, that was my only complaint when I bought it.

 

Blackdawg, can you link to your rebuild gallery and any other helpful posts you know of?

 

You have another car, the tools and the space? If so I say go for it. I did it. I borrowed a HF 12 ft tall shop crane from a coworker to lift it off, worked great. But like other said, if the engine doesn't match it can be more cumbersome. I didn't really document it. It's basically disconnect the brake lines, ebrake cables and anything that connects the frame to the cab then lift it off. For me, mechanical was relatively easy but between 99 and 01 there were some differences in ebrake line and fuel lines. Again, electrical was the worst.

 

Ps use your trucks factory bottle jack and a few chunks of wood, you can push some roof dents out better than you may (or at least I...) expect. Just put a chunk of metal or 2x10 under the bottom of the jack to distribute the force on the cab floor. Won't be perfect but will be better. Not sure how successful you will be on the door frame though.

 

I wouldn't be so worried about the difference in years on the cab, the wiring is so minimal in these things that to strip it all out and replace it is not a huge job. Besides, pulling the dash would be an excellent time to replace that heater core and clean everything up nicely

 

In my build thread.

If you have the time then yea swap it yourself. It's fairly easy and straight forward to do.

Id do one thing at a time though. A manual conversion in the middle of it may make it confusing.

Find a single cab for cheap is going to be very hard though