My '01 SR5 Taco Build

Hello everyone, I will fill you in with a little back story first...
I had a '91 Ford Ranger I bought when I was 15 and drove it for 13 years before finally deciding on getting a new vehicle. I "discovered" Toyota's after driving my work vehicle (an 04 4Runner) both and on and offroad a lot and loving it. I found a stock 01 Tacoma SR5 in good shape (<80K miles!) for a reasonable price with decent tires.

I decided on a truck build that would maximize the off-road capabilities without sacrificing too much on-road performance (ie acceleration and gas mileage) as well as have as many practical accessories as I could cram in it. This is my first big post so it will probably take some time to post all the pics...

Thanks for viewing and if you have any ideas for a nickname for this truck let me know!

 

First pic is the truck completely stock

Second and Third pic are after my first mod, a 3" lift with OME shocks (883's on the front) and AAL

http://bilsteinlifts.com/shop/95-04-toyota-tacoma/old-man-emu-ome-tacoma-lift-suspension/

 

the Satoshi grill looks fantastic as I'm sure many of you agree. I wanted to make my own with very open mesh because I wanted to mount a LED light bar behind it. I found some aluminum hexagon Mesh on ebay with 70 percent light transmission, which seems to be about as good as I could find. I did the usual Satoshi mod with no major hang ups.

 

here are some more pics of the satoshi mod. I eventually also cut out the inlets on either side of the main grille and backed those with wire mesh as well, it looks a lot better that way.

 

I received the LED light bar from Illumination Supply on a group buy. It was the 20 inch dual row spot/flood light. I also bought the light bar mount sold by illumination supply but it turned out that it did not give me the proper clearance behind the Satoshi grill. I soon thereafter realized that clearance was going to be a major issue in mounting this light. The main obstacle was the support in front of the radiator which restricted how far back you could mount the light.
The best option I could think of was to carve out some space out of the aluminum cooling fins on the back of the lights. this was tedious work and also I was worried about damaging the LED's. I eventually carved out enough space that I was able to mount the Satoshi in front without too much interference. I ditched the Illumination supply mount and fabbed some new mounts out of some thin steel plate. it fit, but just barely. The finished product looks great IMHO but I would not recommend doing this mod the way I did it!

 

after the Grill was completed it was time to mount the Aluminess bumper that had shown up in a HUGE crate a week earlier. as much as I wanted to put the bumper on first it wouldn't have made sense to do it before the grill was installed because of the brush guard getting in the way.
I managed to get the bumper installed with just the help of one friend of mine ( it only weighs around 70lbs) but I couldn't get all the bolt holes to line up correctly. after a little persuasion with a dremel tool and then later, a large drill bit , I was able to enlarge the bolt holes in the bumper to allow the bolts to line up with the threading in the frame. I installed round LED turn signals into the new bumper and plug them in and the bumper was good to go!

 

Nice, good lookin truck with the bumper and all

 

How does it ride? I'm looking at doing that same suspension setup.

 

Its a stiff ride, you feel every little imperfection in the road. It corners fine though and absorbs the big bumps decent enough. I need to swap out the CV boots though bc the increased angle from the lift has the old ones leaking.