Green Turd - 1997 Tacoma DLX 4x4

Well shit must have clicked the wrong part sorry. Ill take a look tommorow and see if I can dig up some used ones. I got a buddy that finds deals like its his job haha

 

Nothing local up here all the yotes at local junk yard have front end damage

 

Well hey I do appreciate you looking! There's a guy on here parting out a '96 that I'm trying to snag the corner lights off of.

 

No problem. Hope you snag them

 

I need them now for sure, I just purchased a set of H4 Conversion headlights today.

 

About 95% sure at least one of the head gaskets blew on me this morning. It was about -5° and I noticed the cab wasn't heating up. Then noticed the temp gauge was creeping up. Pulled into a business and shut it off and popped the hood when I noticed the coolant was bubbling.

Started it back up after it had sat for probably 10 minutes and it was blowing white smoke out of the exhaust.

If it is a bad HG that would account for the misfire it has on cold startup. I'm pretty pissed off though because my buddy I bought it from supposedly replaced everything from the head gaskets up maybe 15,000 miles ago.

 

Damn man sorry to hear that. No offense to your friend but did he check to make sure the deck was flat before he installed the new top end

 

Or was it just reassembled

 

I would imagine it was probably not resurfaced and the old head bolts were re-used.

 

Might have caused the fail then. Also improper torqued bolts coupled with already fatigued bolts could've been the culprit

 

I am really not looking forward to doing the head gaskets on this either. Shouldn't happen on a truck that supposedly had all this work done.

 

I got extremely lucky, turned out to be only the thermostat froze up. There's too much water in the coolant, so I'll probably be adding some full strength to it.

 

Whooo dodged a bullet on that one buddy. Atleast it was something simple

 

Although I lucked out, I'm still pretty sure the head gaskets are on their way out. So that may be a project for the summer. In the mean time I am going to be taking the lift off and going back to factory height. Then I'll be using the 5100s I ordered to level out the front. I can't deal with how terrible the truck rides with the add-a-leaf.

 

Summer time won't be bad to do it plus you'll be set for next winter. I'm not real big into lifted daily drivers. You will enjoy the 5100s a lot more and its easier on the component. While your at it might be a good time to replace bushing since it will already be apart

 

Which bushing are you talking about?

 

All the suspension ones like on the leaf packs

 

After doing some research, after I remove the AAL I may just do a toytec 1" shackle lift in the rear and set the front bilsteins to 1.5" of lift. That'll keep it lifted a bit plus it should ride much much better.

 

Yeah sounds good. That's basically what ill be doing in spring. Don't see the benefits of lifting my daily driver right now while going to school. I'm still running stock size tires

 

The truck is up for sale, unfortunately this was a failed experiment. There is just too much hacked together shit and things that weren't fixed right for me to feel comfortable owning it and driving it everyday.

Maybe some day I'll buy a second gen (which I do like a lot), but until then it looks like it's back to the Ranger for me.