Diet Taco... trying to keep things light

WOW, great adventures/pics/thread!


With your rear suspension. You knew you would need 3* Shims with the All-pro Expos ?


All-Pro told me i wouldn't need any shims. But i do have a few driveline vibes.

 

Will the planned modifications to the A/C make it blow colder or make it more powerful?

 

I'm only on page 2 and have a LOT of catching up to do, so forgive me if this has already been addressed. The "Tacoma Kazoo" as I experienced it is caused by the passenger side mirror. We determined this because the mirror would vibrate wildly when looking at it. I fixed the issue by adding some weather stripping around the inside of the mirror housing. It blends in perfectly and prevents wind from getting behind the mirror. I left the bottom open so that any water could drain out. This is one of those "mods" that I forget about until I read it in someone else's post.

Also, about to attempt camping for the first time with a 3 year old.

 

Welcome to the thread!

There are multiple things that can create Kazoo sounds which makes it difficult to figure out what exactly is happening on any given truck. The three common ones I know about are the door seal, a bad windshield seal and the side-view mirror. There is a TSB for the door seal one because it is so common but the other two happen for sure just less frequently. In my particular case it was the driver side door seal that was making the kazoo sound. I didn't waste time at the dealer for the TSB and just used some additional weather stripping in the door seal to get it better compressed. This solution was found by a TW member and then amusingly the eventual TSB from Toyota pretty much copied his solution!

Best of luck! My advice is to be very flexible about schedule/itinerary and apply marshmallows liberally as necessary.

 

I didn't know but I read through lots of other threads and asked specifically in a post as well. As best I could tell no one had ever needed to remove a 3* shim. A number of people needed to add them after they did the lift. Certainly a number of folks didn't use a shim and were fine.

Since the shim is cheap and easy to install when swapping the leafs and a pain to do later I decided the lowest risk option was to just put the 3* shim in right from the start. I'd rather install it and not need it than not install it and later discover I needed it.

Nope. One A/C mod is to let me set recirculate while in defrost mode - which really has nothing to do with the A/C itself but rather the obnoxious "car is smarter than you" design of the climate controls. The other A/C mod is more about OCD than anything else - wanting to have the hot/cold damper set all the way to cold (which is the MAX A/C setting) without it turning on the A/C. I'm pretty sure this mod is of zero actual utility but if I'm already going to dork around with the climate controls for the defrost setting then, eh, I might as well I guess.

And apologies to both of you on the really slow response. I have no idea how I missed the posts since I did responsd to a post after both of yours!

 

I’ve done both A/C mods, takes little time and you’ll be glad you did.

 

No Spring Break Trip...

Well despite it being the perfect time to go isolate oneself in the desert there is the small wrinkle of us needing to get on an airplane to go do that and then potentially finding it difficult to make our way back should draconian restrictions be put in place. Decided to cancel our family trip to CA planned for next week.

So it's going to be reading and daydreaming about the desert from home instead. I picked up what so far is a great book recommended by @ETAV8R in another thread and will spend some of the time curled up in my favorite blanket reading that.

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So glad to see you picked up a copy. It is a great book for those of us who love that region. I see you also have a nice blanket. I've almost bought that blanket several times.

 

...bummer on no spring brakes! I just got back from the springs. rained. all the seams leaked. beautiful clouds. gnatty.
...hope you get another oppy

 

I have a DV map bandanna. After a few washes, I wouldn’t count on it as my sole means of navigation.

 

Hey Ken, hope you're doing well on the east coast while we enjoy the great outdoors out here (I kid, I kid)

Truck got totaled so I have a new adventure vehicle now....lots to work on but capable enough for most adventures. Just working on creature comforts. Can't wait to get some good photos!

 

LOL. Thanks! Glad someone is able to get out there and enjoy it!

We are holding up fine on this end. While I'm considered "essential" and am allowed to go the office I've scaled back my work quite a bit to manage the whole "distance learning" thing at home. Wife is able to do essentially all her work remotely and still has endless telecons and such. Eating out less and exercising more than usual. Sorting through various long intended projects around the home in between my daughter's school work.

Yikes! I hadn't heard that. Dang sleeping drivers. Hope you are all OK.

Slick looking ride. Hopefully I can see it in person sometime this fall. This past season's trips I've been getting into Vegas late and rushing around getting the truck tucked back into storage without any time to check in.

 

Can't help but think how much stuff I could get done on the truck while stuck in lockdown. But the truck is a couple thousand miles away...

So different COVID project!

It's just a boring closet in my office:

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Oh but wait! It's actually a super secret ham shack... (cue sound of Morse or RTTY in the background):

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Not shown, a bunch of copper wire all through the attic.

 

Did you hide the antenna in the attic?

 

Neat! Consider posting that in this thread, some HF guys may appreciate that.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...callsign-thread.260643/page-360#post-23183454

Super clean stealth ham shack.

 

Yep. I don't have any sort of HOA to worry about so I can put up outdoor antennas if I want, but for now I just put dipoles in the attic. I put in a pair of "fan dipoles". A fan dipole is just multiple wires cut to different wavelengths all tied together. It allows you to transmit efficiently on multiple bands as long as the bands aren't too close together or harmonically related. I put in two oriented in different directions so that I can switch as appropriate to avoid the null in the dipole.

Attic antennas are always a compromise so eventually I hope to get something outside the attic. For now though it is just so much easier (and safer) to experiment in the attic. And with the very efficient digital modes available now even compromise antennas can work the world (I've both sent and received on 10,000 mile paths already).

Here's one side of one fan dipole strung into one corner of the attic:

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In this photo the fan has four lengths on it (for 30m, 20m, 17m and 15m bands) but in the end I left the 15m legs disconnected because in the attic there was just too much interaction with the 17m leg.

The nice thing about working in the attic is you don't need to worry about weather so I could put up a simple board to terminate everything to making experimentation and tuning much easier:

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The toroids are baluns to couple the coax feeds to the dipoles. You can see the disconnected ends of the 15m legs here. I might rearrange them into a single 15m/12m fan dipole later. Also want to get something up for 40m but that will be longer than the attic.

Tuning a fan dipole is a hassle and again this was much easier in the attic where I could measure it in place right at the feed and only need to cut once. Also made it really easy to figure out interactions which lead me quickly to realize the 15m legs were going to be trouble. I ran a simulation of the four leg dipole which looked good but once running wires in the attic it was hard to keep all the legs separated enough to keep them from interacting.

Final VSWR plot (low number means efficient to transmit):



So this compromised setup should be enough to get me going for awhile and better understand what I might want to do outside someday. Presuming post COVID that I still have the time and desire to pursue that!

 

Is the antenna wire a special made wire or will any copper wire work? Multi stand or solid?

 

This is just plain old 14 gauge copper stranded THHN from Home Depot. For an indoor antenna like this you could use pretty much anything. I've used speaker wire before. Stranded preferred since it runs easier and doesn't fatigue with repeated flexing the way solid does. Outside you want to consider what would weather the best if you want something to last years. For longer runs outside (longer wave dipoles get over 100 ft long) you need to consider the weight of wire and anything attached to it (baluns, traps, etc) and the load that wind or ice might place on it. In those cases copper by itself might not be strong enough and so copper clad steel wire is a good alternative.

People successfully use just about anything. Steel cable, galvanized electric fence wire, Romex, CAT-5, speaker wire. Insulated or not is fine as long as you insulate where needed (e.g. at the ends). Extremely thin "stealth wire" is often used by folks dealing with HOAs or complainy neighbors. Rarely is antenna performance really impacted by the wire used unless the choice is extremely inappropriate. At higher transmitting powers indeed currents and voltages can get quite high and some more thought and care is necessary. But for receive and powers below 100W in general almost anything will work and work just as well as expensive specialized wire. For low powers (<10W) you can use surprisingly thin wire. Most standard transceivers have transmit power of up to 100W while many efficient digital modes can work well at 10W or less. So for most folks wire doesn't matter much. The power limit for amateurs is 1000W and folks that run that kind of power using external amplifiers have to worry about every part of the antenna system.

 

Genius! Do you have a certain bit size that you would recommend, or would you just cut the handle off a ream tool and clamp the drill chuck down around it?

 

I fortunately haven’t had to do it myself yet but I had planned on just using a standard bit the same diameter as the reaming tool. I happen to have a bit set in the truck all the time so a bit of an appropriate size would already be available. I’d imagine putting the reamer in the chuck would work too.

I do know standard bits should work fine since I did drill holes in some old tread as a nonslip base for my jacks.