Betterbuckleup's 2000 taco build & BS

Current Status:





*Links will take you to that part of the build thread

Current list of upgrades:

Suspension

• OME nitrochargers w/ 881 coils
• OME Dakar leaf springs
• D43XL Add-a-leaf
• OME extended rear brake line
• Trailgear BPV bracket
• ES Poly cab bushings
• TC poly steering rack bushings
• Wheelers POLY sway bar & end link bushings (removed)
• Durobumps front bumpstops
• Durobumps rear 4.25" bumpstops w/ custom extended strike pads
• Total Chaos Fabrication UCA
• Whiteline LCA Bushings w53377a
• Fox 2.5 Ext travel CO's with DSC reservoirs
• Total Chaos Fabrication Spindle Gussets
• Solo Motorsports UCA double shear
• 555 LBJ's
• Solo Motorsports factory length LCA's
• Alcan leaf springs 550lb 3" lift
• Fox 2.0 factory race series 10in shocks with reservoirs
• Durobumps U-bolt flip kit

Engine/Electrical

• LCE 180F thermostat
• PCV oil catch can with custom bracket
• deckplate mod
• OEM Mini-header
• Magnaflow muffler
• Hayden power steering cooler
• Magnefine power steering filter
• Optima Red Top 35 (to be replaced with NSB-AGM 24F when it dies)
• HKG voltage boosting fuse (14.5-14.8 charging voltage)
• bartmaster ACDF horns
• 500 amp winch battery isolator
• Dakota Digital SGI-100BT for correcting speedo & tachometer
• Cruise control module & steering controller relocation
• LCE engineering supercharger w/ 58mm pulley
• Haltech Elite 750 with SNP adapter harness
• Snow performance water meth injection
• Homemade cold air intake

Drivetrain

• Trailtoys.net magnetic drain plugs in transmission & T-case
• 3/4" Front diff drop (removed)
• MC w59 shifter bushings
• 31x10.5R15 Corsa All-terrain XL tires (old)
• 15x8 steelie rims 3.75 BS (old)
• SCS 0mm offset F5 jet black (old)
• SCS -25mm offset F5 jet black
• 285/75r16 General Grabber X3
• 295/70r17 Yokohama M/T G003
• SCS 17x9 -38mm F5 jet black
• Marlin Crawler SS clutch line
• All-Pro Axle relocation plates
• 4.88 ECGS gears with ARB RD-90 front & ARB RD-129 rear
• Crawlbox: 4.7 MC gears, TG adapters (starts here)
• RCV Ultimate CV Axles

Interior

• Mastercraft Baja RS suspension seat w/ sliders, (2)
• Lexus IS500 steering wheel swap
• superbrightleds.com LED bulbs in instrument cluster, reverse lights, dome light, map light
• scangauge II mounted on top of steering column
• Paranoid fab din 6 switch plate

Body/other

• slotted & drilled front brake rotors
• Anzo clear lense headlight housings
• Clear Anzo side marker lenses
• Diode Dynamics SSC2 Sport Amber Pod Lights
• CBI offroad ditch light brackets
• Rago fabrication tailgate CB whip mount (removed for now)
• 4 ft Firestik CB antenna (removed for now)
• Uniden 510XL CB radio (removed for now)
• eBay flush mount LED flood pods in rear bumper (removed)
• Gear Tech Customs front fender splash guards
• Smittybilt XRC gen3 9.5k winch w/ synthetic line
• 01-04 TRD Fender Flares
• ARB CKMTA12 Air compressor & manifold
• Steering column tack weld mod
• OSRAM 100/90 watt H4 bulbs
• Headlight Services upgraded heavy duty headlight wiring harness
• 13WL Tundra Brakes OEM w/ Napa Eclipse Calipers
• Kyle Green Fabrication Side Mirrors
• ARE MX Topper w/ vented windoors
• Hella 500FF Driving Lamps

Armor

• All Pro Baja 2.0 Bumper w/ fill plates & stinger
• All Pro wrap around rear bumper
• All Pro front IFS skid plate
• All Pro trans skid plate (w/ homemade reinforcements)
• TG Gas Tank Skid plate
• 4xInnovations DOM sliders
• TG rear diff armor

Trips

• Colorado/Utah - 1, 2
• Rubicon 6/20/20 - 1, 2
• Slick rock - 1, 2, 3, 4
• Signal Peak - 1,
• Moonrocks - 1, 2
• Rubicon 6/1/22 - 1

Purchased my 2000 Tacoma 2.7L in May of 2017 in Lake Tahoe from some stoner who had very few records of any maintenance or history of the truck. The odometer said it had around 140k miles. I was really drawn to the truck because I had never owned a truck before, everything in it is manual, gets reasonable gas mileage, it was already lifted on black steel rims with 31" tires, and I have always had a thing for red trucks.
Upon my initial inspection before the purchase, I thought that there was an exhaust leak which I could easily fix. After driving it back to the bay area and having a mechanic check it over, I was hit with some news I was not expecting. It turns out that it was not an exhaust leak, but in fact was only running on 3 cylinders.

Never again will I buy a used vehicle without having a mechanic check it out before handing over my money. I learned this the hard way unfortunately, although learned SO much in the process and am glad it all ended up working out.

 

After doing a leak down test on the engine at my buddies place, I was able to determine that the exhaust valve on cylinder 3 was wasted. I bought a new 8-port cylinder hear from King Cylinder Heads and got it shipped to me the next day for around $780.

Take notice to the oval shaped exhaust valve. The guy I bought it from must have been driving it like that for quite some time in order to burn away that much material from the valve.


A friend and I replaced the head in a couple days out of my garage along with changing all the fluids and some other things (not to mention with limited tools).
I also added some bling to my valve cover, exhaust mani, and heat shield since I worked at a powder coating shop at the time.



The Piston heads had very little carbon buildup and looked pretty clean!









Got around to replacing the carrier bearing since I noticed it was pretty worn at the time I purchased it.




I also replaced the front pads and rotors with some slotted and drilled ones.

 

Looks good man! I too gambled buying a used truck with questionable past but still enjoy it. I would change out that fuel filter while the head is off. From what I've read, it's a royal pain to change with everything installed. On my v6 it was 19mm for the filter, and 14mm flare nuts.

 

Yea my truck turns out is quite the Frankenstein of a vehicle. I still love it though. I did the head a while ago and definitely should had changed it at the time. I got around to doing it about 4 months ago though. It definitely was a pain to change, but taking the driver side front wheel off and accessing it through the fender did help a lot.

 

Changed out instrument cluster bulbs to white LED ones from superbrightleds.com

Also put in some super bright reverse LED bulbs from them as well.

I dont have any pictures of the install, but I also installed some cheap flush mount LED pod lights into my rear bumper and wired them to the reverse lights. I had to use thick rubber matting material to close the gap between the contours in the bumper and the pods so that they would stay bolted on and lay as flat as possible.

Here are some pics of the first wheeling trip I went on with the truck. We left the day after we went to pickup a $500 Suzuki DR250 that my friend bought on Craigslist. There was a pretty sweet canyon drive out to the wheeling spot (Frank Reigns Park). Wishing I was driving my buddies Focus RS instead of a fully loaded 18 year old truck with a dirt bike in the bed for that part of the drive.

 

The truck needed some work before I was going to be able to bring it up to Montana for school.
Installed a new clutch, pressure plate, rear main seal, pilot bearing, throwout bearing, resurfaced the flywheel, and made a custom cover for the bottom of the bell housing that stuck out from the bottom of the engine to protect from rocks or anything that might want to ruin the party.
I also got some new rubber at some point before doing the clutch. Nothing special, just some 31x10.50R15 Corsa All-terrain XL. I was on a budget and needed something with more grip than the bald all-terrains that were installed when I bought it. I got them for a steal! Around $400 for 4 tires mounted and balanced.

old pressure plate

old clutch disc


new clutch disc

 

The truck made it to Montana!
Took advantage of the good weather and repainted my gross looking front bumper and coated the underside of of my rear bumper since it had a good amount of surface rust.

I replaced all of the bolts that held the rear bumper and hitch on since they were all rusted pretty bad. I really should have hit them with some PBlaster and let them soak overnight because I really had to work over my 25" 1/2" breaker bar to break some of them loose. It was not fun.
It took a while to cleanup all the rust. I used a two different wire brush attachments for my drill along with some steel wool. The steel wool didnt work as well as I thought. It would just get caught and didnt do much cleaning. The wire wheels did the most work and worked well. It was tricky trying to clean some of the tight spots and hard angles with my m18 drill.
I don't have any pictures of the finished product, but i think its safe to say that I wont have to worry about rusting out this bumper until I get a new high clearance offroad bumper

 

Went wheeling and lost the top bolt that held in one of my rear shocks. Funny part is that I didn't even notice until someone flagged me down to tell me that I was dragging a shock.
Nothing a late night trip to home depot can't fix until the dealership get the bolt!

 

the internals look really clean on that engine... at least he changed the oil and filter. I sure hope you replaced that fuel filter while it was easy to get to.

 

Looks good. Nice work.

Tell me about those backup lights. I'd really like to do that. If you can point me to write up I'd really appreciate it.

 

Thanks. There isn't much to what I did to install the reverse lights.
I haven't seen my rear bumper on any other first gen before, so i'm pretty sure its an aftermarket one that someone installed at one point.
I believe that the factory ones do not have the ridges like mine does so you most likely wouldn't need to add the rubber to fill the gaps like I did to make them mount properly.
Here is the link to the ones I bought. https://www.ebay.com/itm/2X-Flush-M...=item363c07bfb1:g:03kAAOSwropbpBTD:rk:32:pf:0
Cut a square-ish hole the size of the recessed part of the pods. It was tricky to get the cut started. I think I used a dremel to get it started and then used a sawzall to make it bigger. I then went back to the dremel to get it to the shape I wanted where the pods would sit how I wanted.
Honestly the hardest part was drilling the mounting holes since some of them were right on those ridges and I had to go in at an angle with the drill. The whole process definitely took some patience and finessing, but worked out in the end.
If you have a stock bumper without the ridges like mine, it will be MILES easier than it was for me.
As for the wiring, basically just trace the two reverse bulb wires out from the back of the housing and probe with a multimeter to determine which is positive and negative. Then just splice the pod wires into those two reverse wires.

 

Installed the anti-sway kit from wheelers offroad along with poly bushings for the whole cab. It definitely needed it since the old ones were cracked and worn. After installing them, they actually seemed to help a bit with impacts and dampening forces that would normally translate into the cab before.
I also installed poly steering rack bushings from total chaos fab.
Although when I went to install the bump stops that were included with one of the kits from wheelers, I broke off one of the front driver side bumpstop
There was still a bit of the stud poking out of the control arm, but I ended up really screwing myself and broke off 4 drill bits, an easy out, and part of my Leatherman in trying to get it out. No way in hell its coming out now. To this day I am still missing a front bumpstop.
I purchased a replacement LCA from one of the forum members to swap it out with. I also got a poly LCA bushing kit to do while im at it. It's going to be one hell of a job and I haven't gotten around to it yet since I have been in school.
I would love to replace my bumpstops with these ones https://www.toyotabumpstops.com/index.php/product/1st-gen-toyota-tacoma-front-bump-stops/
but im scared to try and take out the passenger side ones and the one on my replacement LCA. I dont want to break another one and be in the same situation. I might just take it to a shop and have them deal with it for the peace of mind.

 

Got all the components for my CB radio install.

$61 Uniden Pro 510xl Pro Series 40-Channel CB Radio. Compact Design. Backlit LCD Display. Public Address. ANL Switch and 7 Watts of Audio Output. Unique PLL Circuit. S/RF LED Meter. , Black

Uniden Pro 510xl
4' firestik whip
Light spring
firestik stud
Rago fabrication whip mount
18' coax cable
90 degree coax connector for the back of the radio


Rented a canoe to float down the madison river with some friends for the 4th of July.
Dont worry, I secured it a lot better and with like 4 more ratchet straps before driving to the put in.

 

The big day rolled around and I bought the bullet and purchased a full OME suspension package from wheeler's.
When I installed it, I pulled the bed off to coat the frame and make the rear leak pack install easier. In hindsight I should have taken off my mudflaps so that I wouldn't bend them or anything, but whats done is done.
I am really happy with the OME kit it really helped with the ride quality and handling of the truck. It's crazy how much flex I can get out of my Tacoma with those rear Dakar leaf packs. It really loves to just articulate and crawl over everything. Even with open differentials and all terrain tires!

Out with the old

Hover mode activated

In with the new!

A bit before getting the suspension, I also purchase some new front fender rubber splash guards from geartechcustoms.com
I did not have any splash guards before and was tired of dirtying my engine bay every time I went wheeling. I would definitely recommend picking up a set if you are in need.
https://geartechcustoms.com/shop?olsPage=products/1st-generation-tacoma-engine-splash-guards-95-04

 

My axles had been pretty gross and grease appeared to leak of the of the small ends of the boots so I went ahead and ordered a replacement set from summitracing. They worked just fine, I just didn't want to chance breaking one later down the line. Not to mention slinging grease everywhere when the front hubs were engaged. I should probably at some point re-boot one of the old ones so that I have a nice clear spare, but better a spare than no spare. I usually carry one of the old ones with me when wheeling just in case.

Gross Old

New new

 

Went on a wheeling trip up to Blue lake via Boulder River Road. Truck did great and got up through some tight narrow spots pretty easily. Couldn't say the same for my buddy with his first gen Tundra.

 

Most recently, I got some replacement locking lug nuts since the ones that were on there appeared to be pretty mangled and shot. A bunch of the caps were missing off of a few from blasting them with my impact. The last thing I want to deal with is a failed lug nut or my wheel moving around on my studs. Definitely go with buying this online instead of in-store unless they can match or beat the price. No local auto parts store will be able to beat their price. They typically want like 6 bucks a nut (or at least they did when I checked).
These are the ones I got. I wish they were black, but these were the most affordable ones that were in stock.
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/gor-21134ht

The seat was like this or worse on a good amount of the front lug nuts. Chunks were missing and a lot of the internal threads seemed to be warped or worn out (they took a good amount of force to thread onto the studs).

I also purchased some clear lens headlight housings off of ebay for around $68. They even came with bulbs which is sweet. For some reason the listing went up in price to $169 when I just checked. You should still be able to find some for around that price on ebay from a different seller.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/For-1997-1...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649
They work really well and I think they make my truck look waaay better. I paired those with some Philips Xtreme vision +130% bulbs and I can see a lot better than I could with the fogged lenses I had on before.


I need to change out my LED side markers at some point so that they match the headlights

 

Just picked up the inner seal, outer seal, and nut to replace on the rear output of my transfer case. For the longest time I noticed that on long drives, my rear axle and drivetrain components behind the transfer case would show signs of something being splashed on them. I realized that gear oil has been slowly leaking out of the output side of the t-case and hitting the road which would then splash onto the components down the line from it.

I picked up the large nut that gets staked over (PN: 90179-22016) $5.50, the larger outer seal (PN: 90312-23001) $14.45, and the smaller inner seal (PN:

$16 90311-41007 Toyota Genuine Type T Oil Seal for Transfer Extension Housing

90311-41007) $5.66.
Total cost was $25.61 all from my local Toyota dealer. They had all the seals in stock except for the nut.

I plan on putting them in this weekend and will try to get some pictures during the job to post here for those who need to do the same thing.
From everything I have read online and checking the FSM, it should be relatively straight forward and shouldn't take too long.
Im curious to see how low my transfer case is on fluid given that it has been slowly leaking out for who knows how long.

 

So I got around to replacing the output seal on my transfer case today. I will do my best to do a write up of some of the steps involved.
This is applicable for 5 speed 4x4 first gen tacomas.

I first marked the alignment of the intermediate driveshaft and the rear companion flange so that they went back together exactly as they came apart.
Use either a 14mm open end wrench or a 14mm socket with an extension attached to a ratchet to remove the 4 bolts that hold the driveshaft on.
After the nuts are removed, remove the two 14mm bolts that secure the carrier bearing to the frame. It may be useful to support the bearing before removing the bolts so that the driveshaft does not fall on you. After it is removed, you can slide the intermediate drive shaft off of the rear companion flange studs.
Here is what it should look like after the driveshaft is removed

You can see where the gear oil has been leaking out of the oil seal

To get to the seals, you next need to remove the flange. To do this you need to remove the staked over 30mm nut. Some people say that you need to "un-stake" the nut before removing it, but when I kept on breaking screwdrivers when I tried to bend the metal back. What I ended up doing was picking up a 1/2in 30mm socket from Ace Hardware. Although I wasn't able to get the nut to budge with my 25 inch 1/2" drive breaker bar. After multiple failed attempts, I went to my local Harbor freight and purchased the Bauer 1/2in. Heavy Duty Extreme Torque Impact Wrench. Since I do not have an air compressor or any air tools, this was the next best thing. It is a corded electric impact wrench with a claimed max breakaway torque of 1050 ft lbs. which should be plenty. Make sure your transfer case is shifted into 4-low before trying to take the nut off. Otherwise the flange will just spin.
It seemed that there was some sort of sealer or glue behind the nut that was also working against me trying to remove it.
Here is what it looked like after removing the 30mm nut.

Once the nut is off, the flange should slide right off of the splined output shaft.
Here is the smaller inner oil seal on the companion flange that I replaced. To remove it, just take a flathead screwdriver and pry it out. The new one should slip in relatively easily with your fingers after some oil is applied to the outer rim of the seal that contacts the flange.

As for the larger seal behind the flange, I had a hard time removing it. I really messed it up in the process, but it's not that big of a deal as long as you don't score the seating surface. I used a combination of flat head screwdrivers, pliers, and punches to get it pry out.

The mangled seal after removal

The Transfer case with the seal removed

To install the new output seal, you can do this a variety of ways. I would recommend finding a socket or something similar that fits the outer edge of the seal well to help in seating it flush. I didn't have a socket large enough to accomplish this so I ended up taking the butt end of my ratchet and working each side all the way around until it sat flush. I was careful in the process to not mess up the lip of the seal. This is by no means the best way to go about doing this, but I was in a time crunch and figured this was my best option. If it ends up leaking anytime soon, I can just get a new seal for cheap and replace it much quicker now that I have done it before (also with the right tools perhaps).
The assembly is the opposite of the disassembly process. Torque the 30mm nut to 87 ft lbs and then stake it over with a punch or chisel. Put the transfer case in neutral to rotate the flange for an easier position to stake over the nut.
That's about it. With the right tools, it shouldn't take more than 2 hours at most if I were to guess.