Need help customizing 2013 Tacoma

Hello forum members. I ran across you guys while searching the web looking for ideas for a truly custom Tacoma. I really need your wisdom and experience for this build. My son will be turning 18 on 2/24/2013 and I am trying to build his dream truck. PLEASE HELP!!! For the last few years my son has been driving an old hand me down F150. Myself and my wife have told him that if he did well in school we would get him a nice truck for college. Well to our surprise he graduated high school one semester early (December 2012) with a 4.0 and has been accepted to SMU on a full academic scholarship. So we have decided to build him a bad ass tacoma to send him off to school with. This is where you guys come in. PLEASE HELP!! We just purchased a 2013 SR5 Pre Runner Black in color then had it lifted 3" and installed Black 18" FUEL HOSTAGE wheels with 285/65/18 NITTO Trail Grabber tires. We are currently having a 2 tone Katzkin leather interior installed as well as a Rockford Fosgate sound system installed. Can you guys please give me some input on additional things to add to this truck to give it that over the top bad ass look ( running boards, skid plates, exterior mods, interior mods, etc.) Any ideas you have to make this thing over the top would be so appreciated. Photos and vendors names and numbers or web sites would be sooooo appreciated. I really hope you experts can help me with this build. THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH IN ADVANCE!!!!

 

can you adopt me?

 

SportyH / trying to get the 4 I have now raised and out of the house, Sorry

 

Tint those windows. N-Fab steps, some light bars (Ridged Light bars or similar product), bed cover if hes into that sorta thing.
Any off road use? might want to get some bumpers, skids and sliders. a winch.
CB radio, on board air compressor.

 

Pro force / truck is at the shop right now getting interior and stereo but will stop by tomorrow and take some pics with my phone and post them so you guys can see what we are working with and what you guys think we can or should do to it to make it over the top

 

OOO, supercharger! mm that sounds good.
intake and exhaust

 

its the little details that always count and i look for in "dream trucks"

if it were me-
-Craven speed stubby antenna (for looks) takes away that tall ugly factory antenna

-some nice floor mats, weathertech and or husky

-LED tail lights/ headlights HID's

-custom grill / maybe some eye lids on the headlights

 

Holy Christ! Dang there Dad, kid really wanted the truck eh? Congrats, mine is third-year chem major and he's only 20, makes me real proud fer sure.
IDK, some items I can think of off the top of my head:
In channel vent visors from Weathertech
Maybe a Westin Bullbar with a couple of Hella lights on it
Running boards or what's called rock sliders, but if he's a academic monster i would assume he's not gonna have a ton of free time to take the truck off road, maybe the running boards would be better.
These engines are good, don't let anyone talk you into an after-market intake, the truck doesn't need it. Maybe a cat-back exhaust from Ernie Banks or Magnaflow, gives it that rumble the kids love.

Good luck to your son!

 

Oh yeah, and make sure he becomes a TW member, that way he can be properly motivated to get the best job possible to afford more modifications to his truck and all the other toys he'll want.

 

SportH/ the truck is 2 wheel drive really just going for a bad ass aggressive look for him. I was thinking about skid plates as well in brushed aluminum and wondering how nerf bars would look, but I can't seam to find skid plates online and that's why I am looking for you guys on the forums help. When he was 16 we gave him one of our old f150 work trucks and every time we gave him a check for working for me he spent it on blacking out the ford and adding brushed aluminum looking stuff. What about nerf bars. Do they look ok on the tacoma???? Getting into the Tacoma is a bitch for me but I am 59 and he is a young buck. Don't want to add stuff to make it look like and old man drives it. He is young and can still pull his ass up into it. We just want it to look like a custom truck an 18 year old would be proud to have because we are proud of him

 

On the blue bar on this site that reads control panel, forum list...etc, click on forum list and all the way to the right of that drop down menu you will find the vendors, many of those guys have the things you are looking for. They have generally been pretty good folks to deal with and sometimes a mention of TW can get you a discount too

 

Tacodarados/ where did you get your black badges from? That's one thing I know my son wants is an all blacked out truck. The one we bough was an sr5 and it is all black except the rear bumper and the front chrome grill. Can I get a black rear bumper and front grill?

 

The black badges we do ourselves. The bumper and grill could be ordered through Toyota, they wouldn't be cheap but that would be the quickest way I can think of getting new parts on the truck.

 

Acdornin/ you know what is like to have a hard working kid!!!! Exhaust sounds like a good addition I know he did that to his old truck thanks for the idea and the info on the vendor list? Got to ask what is a westin bull bar?

 

wut

 

pulled this off the internet, it's the bar in the front

 

Id skip the bull bar. Some people like the looks but it tends to get bashed on pretty hard around here. Also will end up doing more damage to the truck in a small frontal collision than without.

Out of all the ideas listed, and being a young hard working guy myself, Id say the following:

Exhaust (TRD Catback for OEM quality and great sound or just a replacement muffler and tip for a budget - both give basically same performance - I have a magnaflow 14" muffler and LOVE IT!)

Window Tint (a must! doesnt need to be crazy dark, id say 15% all around looks great)

Black out the badges (do a search for "plasti-dip" you will find a cheap way to do this, or for a permanent solution, just use spray paint. Look up the How-to for more info on this)

WeatherTech digital fit floor liners in Black as recommended.

Definitely have the grill and rear bumper color matched!!!

Possibly off-raod lighting, but that you might leave upto him since its a lot of personal preference there

 

Guys you are bad ass!!!! Thank you for all the info!!!!! Keep the info and your ideas coming but remember I only have a few weeks left before the unvail on his bday. I will post pics tomorrow of what we are working with now and thru out the next couple weeks so you guys can see how ur ideas turn out. Then photo of him when we give it to him. So next is body shop to have badges, rear bumper and grill blacked out, then add exhaust system. Now I have been googling our input should I do nerf bars or rock sliders??? Also does any one have photos of off road lights that pro force mentioned?

 

Well, the nerf bars are generally a lighter duty item and are always bolt-on affairs whereas rock sliders do come as bolt ons but are generally welded onto the frame for strength. Guess it depends, does he like to go offroading? If so then yeah, sliders are the bad-ass way to go. However, some companies may not be able to get them to you in your time frame so if you do go that route, make sure they can ship them out immediately so you have time to get them installed. If he is not really into off-roading then nerf bars look pretty nice and are generally a lot easier to install.
With the bullbars, opinions differ about them, i'm not a fan myself but they are pretty easy to hang on the truck, and the ones with a brushed look pan might be something he likes.
The other reason I mentioned bullbars is that it's then easy to install some lights on them. The other route is to install them behind the grill which is an added level of expense and complexity, mainly because doing them behind the grill requires replacing the stock grill with a custom grill that allows light to shine through.
As far as lights themselves, there are three types: Halogen, HID and LED. Costs vary widely as does performance. Basic 55w or 100w halogens would be the low end, next up would be HID's which are much brighter in general than halogens. The following companies would be the ones that produce their lights in both halogen and HID: Hella, PIAA, Baja Designs and LightForce. Those four are probably the best. Now the more recent rage is to install LED lights on the truck, of which there are several manufacturers of those as well but probably the high end would be Rigid Industries, pricey but good.
Here's a few ideas,
Westin bull bar with either two of these:
http://search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0oG...hvadid%3d1696612392%26ref%3dpd_sl_daqiwnww6_e

or one 10 inch one of these lightbars:

http://search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0oG...rigidindustries.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=136