GraveYard Shift BS

Howdy howdy.
Finally down to my 8s.

 

Nice. I'm on my last one for the week

 

Nice. I'm smooth sailing these last two nights.
8 tonight then I'm gonna hook up our new modem in the morning.
8 tomorrow then I'll pay the truck off and have two nights off before I come get some OT.

 

Can't beat that.

 

Hell ya.
Been a quiet week so hopefully it stays that way and I can watch Psych in peace.
Buy anything new lately?

 

Nah. I'm too broke to buy anything for a bit
My next big purchases in order will be the 6112's, trailer tongue welded up, trailer axle, T4R wheels, then tires for the trailer. I don't know if I'll have the camper ready for Moab. Just gotta see how things go.

 

Gotcha. I thought about using part of the tax return to get a new head unit and all of that but I'd rather just get rid of the truck payment now and get all that stuff later. (yay, adulting) Maybe this summer when I can install it without freezing my nuts off.

 

No truck payment will be super nice.

 

Yeah, it'll be paid off almost exactly 10 months early, too.

 

That's gotta be nice. If I keep up with what I've been doing, I'll have mine paid off 14 months earlier than if I had made the minimum payment.

 

I could've had it paid off earlier but considering how I managed my money when I was in the Army, I'm doing much better now so I'll take it.

 

A win is a win either way you get it

 

Now you can start saving for the 4wd conversion

 

Yeah, I need to get a house with a garage to store the parts/do the conversion in, too

 

Keep'em in the bed and lock the DB

 

The moment I do that is the moment some tweaker breaks into it and walks off with a transmission

 

I paid mine off last September which was a great feeling!!

But four days later I noticed it wouldn't shift into 4x4. Well that was the t-case actuator but on the way to finding that out I spent 3 weeks of mucking around trying to fix it myself. In the truck goes to Toyota since I never take vehicles into a mechanic I figure the dealer will know what's going on? $2100 later for the t-case actuator/case split and a $950 stupid tax resulting from a long story of me trying to fix it myself (I win some, I lose some) and it's working again. If I take the repair bill and divide out my monthly payments that I was paying on the truck loan before this happened it'll be about March when I break even.

Note to others: these actuators aren't designed to be serviced; they are meant to be replaced if they aren't working. Trying to open them up and doing anything other then the motor solder fix in the front ADD is a recipe for frustration and failure. Next time I'd go with an FJ t-case swap with manual levers but I was moving 900 miles away in the winter time and couldn't wait for the case swap to be ready.

 

Yikes. Now that mine's paid off, I want to take it in to the stealership or somewhere for a full inspection. I normally do everything myself but I'm sure there's some stuff I've missed or haven't been as good about maintaining as I should've been.

Y'know let a "professional" check out all the funny noises I've been ignoring..

 

This is the first payment I've ever had on a vehicle...……….it sucks

 

I went through everything short of dropping the t-case out of the truck and changing that myself. I truly couldn't figure out what was going on.

I checked out the front ADD first and it looked fine (no corrosion), I soldered the contacts and when that didn't fix it I then looked at the t-case actuator. I wiggled that off, opened it up (vent hose had lots of cracks) and no corrosion, great! Took the electric motor out to inspect and brushes were fine, lots of life) Powered it forward and backward worked fine. Put it back in then realized the actuators don't self time/align so it took forever to figure out the proper way to put the clock gears back in correctly. Finally after a week I got that back in correctly and still NO dice. I take the ADD off again thinking I might've reassembled that wrong. I get incorrect results when testing the limit switches with a multi-meter so I replace the front ADD with a new one. I go back to the t-case actuator and powered it back and fourth with a motorcycle battery and it shifted 2H->4H->4L and back to 2H no problem when powered manually. So I move on to the 4x4 ECU under the glovebox. I take the multimeter to the wiring harness connector and get funny results. Then the relays in the ECU seem to be only working when the ECU is in a different orientation. I take the cover off the ECU and think one section of the board looks a little "well done" So I buy a junkyard ECU and still same problem, take the cover off of that and the same heat mark is on the 2nd ECU PCB (so it's a manufacturing thing I figure, or I'm shorting out ECU's repeatedly). Figuring it's a wiring issue between the ECU and the actuators I say fuck tearing the dash apart and take it into Toyota because wiring issues are tough. This all occurs over the course of a month. I ride the motorcycle to work and occasionally just drive the truck in 2WD without the 4x4 ECU plugged in (makes for fun warning lights on the dash) when it's not up on jack stands in the garage.

Well come to find out when I was multi-metering the 4x4 ECU connector I dislodged the female grounding pin in the wire harness side of the 4x4 ECU connector so it would only make intermittent contact (in certain orientations) that triggered the relays to click when it finally had a complete circuit and then they would unclick when the orientation on the ECU changed. In order to figure that out Toyota tore the dash completely apart and tested the wiring harness $950 in labor later they figure that out.

Then they said the t-case actuator was bad even though it worked fine for me... but they replaced it and sure enough it started working again. So yeah that $950 is from me being an idiot but $1000 for the t-case actuator and $900 in labor to drop, split, and reassemble/install the t-case seems pretty shit for 101k miles.