Cleaned out your frame recently?

Hey guys, so I have a 97 taco that I love to wheel through everything, mud, sand, rocks, really anything that challenges the truck.

This last weekend I spent a few hours under it rebuilding my leaf packs, adding another leaf to a custom leaf pack to get another inch of lift-- to get back to zero rake (just did a tundra bilstein 5100 lift in the front, replacing coil spacers).

Noticed something I haven't seen before- I had a solid inch to 1.5 inches of silt and dirt INSIDE my frame rails. I ended up getting my truck on a steep hill near the house, drilling a 1/4" hole in the lowest part of the frame and washing it out for a solid hour (don't worry, I already plan on re-enforcing my frame, and plugging existing holes).

I bet 20 lbs of dirt came out. Has anyone seen this before? Good idea to do this commonly?

Thanks,

-Tom

 

And has anyone welded all the holes in your frame closed, leaving only a few pressure relief holes left to prevent such a dirt/silt build up?

 

Oh yeah I was cleaning up my 03 before I sold it, couldn't believe the crap that came out, in addition to a couple inches of dirt/silt but leafs and small rocks. No wonder these frames have problems

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/sluice-mod.445350/

this one was post just not to long ago.

 

SO much crap came out of mine… seriously think I might want to seal her up… working on a flatbed project, so I might do this at the same time

 

Huh, that's exactly what I did, just got it on a slope so the dirt ran downhill to the exit hole easier. Some rust flakes came out too.

 

Beat me to it

 

I just do the opposite I drill bigger holes in the frame.

The drains from the factory are way to small and get plugged up.

If you really want to seal the frame do it completely put a valve in and pull a vacuum insuring it is really sealed

 

Yea, I mis-spoke originally, I drilled a 1/2" hole, just like you did.

After further thought, not sure if I will seal the whole frame, maybe just the window directly behind my front wheels. I think that is where the majority of the dirt gets in as I don't run mud flaps. But, seems like people that don't wheel much also have this problem though, so who knows?