Be gentle its my first time;P

Hi everyone!

I've had my Red 96 Tacoma 2.7 M/T 4WD a good six months now and I have already put a substantial amount of time and money into it. Yet there are a few things that i'm going to need help with. I find it fascinating to see what each person has done to there truck whether its a free or dirt cheap mod all the way to throwing on superchargers and insane lifts. My goal with this truck is to be a well rounded truck capable of getting through the trails and dirt while still keeping it drivable on the road. One thing to keep in mind this is my first truck, i've only worked on cars previous to this but find myself catching on quickly. So thanks in advance for ur time and I'll look forward to learning more about these trucks with u all.

 

Soo... what is it you are trying to improve? As you mentioned there is a vast range of modifications that people choose to do to their trucks depending on what they want to use the truck for. It would help to mention specifically what works/doesnt work for you about it I.E., you want a more comfortable ride and a suspension lift, you wanna be able to go over rocks and not break stuff, you want to be able to go fast over whoops, etc etc it all depends on what you need the truck to be able to do and then from there we can all help you figure out how to do what you want to do

 

Curious of what you've put into it so far....

 

Welcome! I had a 97 2.7 and loved it. Great little truck. Take care of your frame!!

 

Welcome! To really help, what are you hoping to do with the truck?

 

Welcome to TW!

 

Welcome to TW!!

 

Welcome to TW Bee

 

Welcome to TW

 

Thank you all for the warm welcome. Now for the fun part. Most of you asked what I have already done to modify the truck and what I hope to achieve with it. So I'll start off by letting you know that I am fairly new to this whole truck thing, I'm 31 and ever since I was 16 I've always had a car. A 94 Honda Civic, that is what I learned all my mechanics on, I can tear the car apart and put it back together again fairly easy and I've done it numerous times. Examples being I've swapped the engine, replaced the clutch, brakes, shocks, coilovers, replaced almost every bushing in the car with energy suspension, silicon hoses, etc. And no mechanic, besides myself, has ever touched my car, aside from the shop doing a wheel alignment, and I've had it for almost 15 years. This has been invaluable experience moving along and choosing a Toyota to drive/maintain/upgrade. I love the little Jap motors. I find them very simplistic and with the exception of a few they are most efficient and have a decent amount of power while still providing that good gas mileage. It's all about the power to weight ratio Since I bought my truck last summer, I've had it almost a year now, I've been the only one to work on it, and I've self taught myself everything I know about it. It has been an awesome truck so far and I only see it getting better. As much as I love it there have been a couple set backs that to this day have me scratching my head and wondering what the hell could be wrong, but we will get to those later. So, the long awaited list of mods. (I will post some before and after pics of when I first got it compared to what it looks like today)

In no certain order:

Every light on the truck has been converted to LED with the exception of the front blinkers. (I know i just need a resistor or a LED relay) This includes the interior dash lights converted to red LED's, I added a couple extra dome lights. As well as all of my exterior LED lights:LED headlight conversion, LED light bar on front bumper, flush mount spot lights in the front bumper, ditch lights mounted on the hood and removed the antenna and mounted one light in the antenna mount. I have a CARR roof bar with 6 5X7 LED headlights custom mounted(I had to fabricate the gutter mount and the actual light to bar mounts. I could light up a football field with all of my LED lights on, and I have them all conveniently wired to a couple rocker switches.
I have an ultra gauge plugged into my OBDII port, I love it, I can read all the fuel trim values, intake and coolant temps, voltage, MPG, mass airflow, throttle position, 02 sensor voltage, etc.
I have a 3" Toytec/Eibach coilover suspension lift with 2" extended Boss shocks in the rear and a toytec add-a-leaf. As well as a 3" body lift. So a total of 6" of lift in the front and 5" in the rear, I plan on getting some 1" extended shackles in the rear to even it out but the diff is not noticeable. I have a diff drop kit and extended brake proportioning valve in the rear. And I upgraded to Total Chaos upper control arms with a uniball. It's sitting on some 32" BFG Goodrich All Terrain KO tires with offset 15" rims.
Under the hood, it is the 2.7L with a manual tranny. I have a KandN cool air intake, aFe throttle body spacer, flowmaster headers and a flowmaster 40 exhaust with the cat removed and a test pipe welded in. I have a URD short throw shifter. I removed the AC lines and condenser as well as did an EGR delete to simplify and clean up all the vacuum hoses, I've replaced almost every hose with silicon and it has a brand new duralast gold battery with gold plated terminal connectors. I have a high output 140A alternator.
I have a alpine cd/bluetooth/usb/aux receiver with kicker CS 6 1/2" speakers and a 1200W Kicker amp and a 10" L5 Solo Baric in a truck box behind the seat. Also a 2 farad capacitor.
It has little random things like hood pins, a truck box, bed liner spray, and I blacked out all the chrome on it with truck bed liner spray. I have a rear view mirror that goes across the whole front window, and some red LED's and neon's inside and tinted windows.
That's all the upgrades I can think of but on top of that I have replaced the lower ball joints, alternator belt, fan belt, spark plugs, plug wires, distributor cap and rotor, cleaned and re oiled my KandN, ran a Gum out can through the fuel and oil as well as cleaned the throttle body( wait till you see the pics of that) I habitually wash and wax it and have only took it mudding a few times, it's soo much fun but the worst part is the two weeks I spend washing mud from ever crack and crevice on the truck.

A couple things I have on the To Do list are:
a dual battery setup, I've researched this and the isolator that I want is in the 600 range, but they don't give off heat and are completely sealed and waterproof.
A trailgear rock assualt front and rear bumper with trailgear rock sliders. And of course with a Warn winch on the front.
Would like some 35's on it. (I think they would fit with the setup I have.)

I like the big jacked up look, but I like it looking clean too. I stress efficiency with everything I do to it. I like it to have plentiful power but to retain the good gas mileage. And I like it to be able to go hit some mud and dirt off road with out breaking down or getting stuck. Which the few times I've took it to the mountains I didn't feel like I got anywhere near getting it stuck. For the most part as long as I had clearance it would take me over or through it.

I have to say...I love my yota!

In the next few days I will write up a couple threads with a couple of the issues I am having and what I've done so far to diagnose and fix the problems. So thank you for taking the time to read about my yota and I look forward to getting more in detail with it in the future.