Lux's '01 Build

Guess Ill start with some background.. I bought this truck a couple years ago from my dad, who bought a new car and decided to sell it to me.
How she sits today:



When I got it:


Notice that there is no pin striping...

In october of 2014 my truck was starved of oil because I was an idiot and put off an oil change, and blew a connecting rod bearing . I drove the truck for 2 days before parking it in my driveway for what seemed to be years. It was pretty brutal not driving it for months.

In May of 2015 I picked up a motor for $1900 with 95k miles from an auto salvage place. Took awhile for me to get the funds thats why it sat so long. Then the work began on swapping it in. The project wasn't bad a few bumps here and there but in June we got it all together and working nicely . Here is the thread on some of that: Engine Swap


Now to the mods

Engine:
- bone stock 2.7l
- deckplate mod
want:
- LCE header
- flowmaster 40

Interior:
- LED footwell lighting
- LED soft white dome light
want:
- Better CB

Exterior:
- 4x LED ebay spot lights
- removed fender flares
- plastidipped front bumper plastic
- TrailGear Low Profile front bumper
- Wilson Flex antenna 4'
- painted grille duplicolor gunmetal gray
- mpulse ARE cap
- Wheelers stainless rear brake line
- 4xinnovations weld on DOM sliders with square main tube and kickout
Want:
- All Pro rear tube bumper
- Retrofit HID's

Suspension:
- Old Man Emu 881 front coils and shocks
- 1/2" Top plate spacer
- Old Man Emu rear shocks
- Toytec rear single aal
- Total Chaos Uniball UCA's
- OME Dakars CS046
- Greasable OME stock length shackles
- Daystar greasable main eye bolts
- total of about 2.5" lift (F:24" R:25")
want:
- possibly 1" body lift
- deaver leaf pack
- rear shock relocation
- 10" shocks

Wheels/Tires:
- 285/75r16 General Grabber AT2's
- 16" Vision D windows
- Gunmetal gray painted stock wheels
- 1.25" Spidertrax spacers
want:
- either SCS f5's, FN 5 star's, Level 8 MK6's, or possibly cheap black rock bullet holes

Random Pics:

After Engine Swap, Nice and clean

The Lift


Wheels painted with Duplicolor Gunmetal gray before lift



Trips:

One of the first few trips to the Pine Barrens


Jackson, NJ


No clue where this was but cool place


First trip to stokes and first trip with the lift also blew up my tire here

Gonna update this thread when I can but Im a broke college student so updates will be few and far between as far as major upgrades.
- lux

 

-before lift
-before tires after lift
-after tires after lift

More Pics:

 

Good lookin truck man! I know how it feels to be on that college budget... Aka having no money.

 

thanks! yea it sucks, every spare dime I can get goes into this thing

 

Subbing, looking forward to wheeling with/meeting ya.

 

Ha then you start seriously wheeling the thing and then half the money goes towards repairs down the road

 

haha guess Ill have to take it easy until I have an emergency fund

 

Yea. I had the same mentality as you when I first started my build lol Now I'm going 50/50. 50% for the truck. 50% in the bank for savings/truck repairs

 

Luckily these trucks are incredibly reliable when it comes to being a wheeling rig. Definitely not trailer queens. It's great beating the piss out of the weekend and still driving home Sunday, and into work Monday with it.

 

Alright so I posted most of this on the "what have you done to your tacoma today" thread since someone asked about it but anyway, finally got around to repairing the hole in my bed above the wheel well:
heres are some pics of the hole, not sure how it started but my guess is water got under the rubber seal between the two bed pieces and rotted it out then road salt got through the hole in the wheel well and just progressively made it worse.

Took the whole bed off because working on top of the frame like that just wasnt going to work the rust was in a pretty annoying spot

cut out the rust spots, the rust was underneath that rubber coating in the wheel well too so I had to cut more than I originally intended to. The bed is put together in several pieces and the rust was at the joint between two of them. there were two pieces I cut out separately from each "panel" of the bed. The plan was to assemble it as it would have been in the factory by doing two pieces and overlapping them and kinda spot welding them together but the steel I ended up using was way too thick and overlapping them wouldnt have worked so we just cut two separate pieces and butt welded them together.

I then made two separate pieces out of 16 awg steel I had lying around, they both needed bends one for the curves of the bed ridges and the other for the curve into the wheel well.
The steel was bent in a vice between two pieces of thick steel tubing to keep the bend consistent and even.
I only have a picture of one of the pieces unfortunately. The other piece was bent around a piece of 1.5" iron pipe I believe it was.

then welded it in, its difficult to run beads with a flux core welder on this thin steel so you have to do tacks one after the other to keep from blowing holes through it like I did. again only a pic of this piece

After I got everything welded in I used a bit of bondo because between some of the tacks were very tiny holes that you could hardly see without a light behind them. also filled in some of the small dips in the steel with it, the wheel well piece could have been better but it looks alright to me.

Then sanded it all down some more, used alcohol to clean it all up and applied several coats of paint, wasnt too worried about what paint to use in the bed since I'm gonna bed line it eventually. The wheel well portion however I applied several coats and sprayed TONS inside that little rail running along the underside because getting to the steel in there and under the piece is kinda hard. After that I applied two coats of the rustoleum bed liner stuff. I may also pick up some of that rubber paint stuff too. also probably gonna go back and sand the bondo down some more because its still uneven. Don't mind the mud went wheeling right after I finished it.

Overall looks good and turned out better than I thought it would. I also got to paint the frame a bit while I had the bed off but no pics of that unfortunately.
Also got a deck plate in the mail today so Ill update later tonight probably

 

Got the deck plate in today:

Cost me $8 for the deck plate and $7 for the silicone
Can't say I noticed a sound difference but I think I felt a slight Hp increase, I'll have to see what it does to mpg but I think it turned out nice

 

Sub'd. But in the OP, it says your dad bought it for $600?!? Are you sure it's not supposed to be $6000?

 

Nah. He definitely got it for the deal of a lifetime lol

 

nice truck, making me wish i got the 285s now lol

 

Oh I knew there'd be confusion over that haha, he bought it new for whatever the sticker price was and I bought it from him for $600

 

Thanks, Yea I like em so far and shockingly I haven't even wheeled with them yet what do you run?

 

265 75 ko2s , its a good tire, just a little small

 

Lots to add here...
So...
On June 18 I was rear ended by my friend at a yield sign, the bed, tailgate, drivers side tail light, and bumper were all crushed and the bed kicked up and hit the cab chipping some paint on the drivers side. He kinda just gunned it straight into me because he thought I was going or something, anyway, Insurance totaled it and cut me a check and I kept it. No frame damage as far as insurance, body shop, and I could see so that was a big plus. Guess my rust repair was for no reason . Heres what she looked like:

you can see how the bed is buckled on the drivers side

Also buckled inside pretty good.

This happened only a few days before our 2 week vacation when we got back about a week later we went up to get a bed in Pennsylvania about 4 hours away. I paid a relatively high $2250 for it but its from down south with hardly any rust, only a few dings, and it looks brand new inside so I got over the price.


didn't come with the tailgate or mudflaps either which bothered me but oh well
Also ordered tail light and some clear corners just cuz
Last weekend I started tearing it apart I took off the bumper and everything and discovered some minor frame damage

I don't have a bumper yet but Ill just have to beat this back or something if I can't make it fit.
Also discovered that sometime in our 4 hour trip to PA I tore a CV boot, not sure if any damage was done to the axle and I'm praying there is none but I ordered new boots and that'll be my project this weekend if its not rainy



After tearing everything down I decided to do some rust prevention while I had the bed off. Sanded and chipped away most of the rust I could reach and took off any grease that was on there. Went with the Holy mother of rust preventatives on tw: POR15.
Originally I only wanted to do the rear portion just behind the axle but then I realized how much such a small can of the stuff can cover so i just went all out. I felt kinda bad taking off the toyota grease, not sure why, just felt like I should've left it on.. Heres part of the frame some prepped some isnt don't have a pic of it all prepped:

I let the first coat of por15 sit overnight then another coat sit another night, didnt finish the whole frame the second time around so I finished it up today. Got 2 coats on most of the frame and 3 on the rear half.

I read somewhere that the spots of POR15 sitting in the sun tend to fade or something so I covered the entire frame in my favorite paint, high heat matte black rustoleum, dries in about a minute too. I was really on the fence about doing this only because it looked sooo good with just the POR but I knew it wouldn't last long anyway..

Coated the entire frame in marine grease to top it off.

got the bed on today all thats left is that CV boot that I'm waiting on

Also need to get this painted which Im still unsure about:

I would really like to make my own custom bumper, I have an idea for one I just don't have a welder that can do 1/4 inch so I may just get a used stock one. Ill have to reuse my dented tail gate as well but thats not too big an issue, it still looks square. I may just paint that spot myself for now until I figure something out. Thats about it as far as updates go, Ill be posting about the cv boot (and maybe add in diff drop and steering rack bushings) soon.

 

1/4" is complete overkill. You'll be fine with 3/16". I'd also recommend either doing a rear bumper with some sort of bedside protection just do you have it. Wouldn't want you spend the money to get a new bed, just to get it dented while wheeling. Also does protection from random people who just slam open their doors into your vehicle.

 

yea thats what i was planning, and I just assumed most bumpers were 1/4" plus Id need to do the recovery points in over 1/4" right? maybe I could do some kind of bolt ons