New to Toyota

My first Toyota. Picked up an '02 Taco XC 2.4 5spd 2wd 350k+ miles. Needs a lot of work, but it runs, drives, AC blows cold, and it was cheap. Pics are on my phone, so I'll stick them up later. At the moment, it is strictly my beater truck to make trash runs, trips to lowes, parts getter, and my backup vehicle for when I screw something up on my daily driver project car.

My dad has been off-roading his 3rd gen 4-runner for about a year now I guess and not too long ago my brother got into his own 3rd gen 4-runner. I don't believe he's had it on the trail yet.

A little history:
Grew up racing go karts with my two brothers.

First car was a 305ci '85 Camaro. Did a GMPP 350 swap with Edelbrock intake and hooker shorty headers.

Moved up to racing Legends cars with my younger brother. Older brother was off in the military.

Off to local 4-year college.

Sold Camaro for parts because the front subframe was falling apart after years of thrashing it at AutoX. Engine went to a Jeep.

Bought an '88 RX7 Turbo. More AutoX. Cranked up the boost to 20psi. Full intake, full exhaust, ported. Running MegaSquirt, but didn't have a clue how to tune. 1/4 mile best was 13.467 @ 105.44. After 3 engine rebuilds and many traffic violations, it was time to move on. Sold to an RX7 restoration guru.

During that time, got into a '79 RX7 for racing SCCA. Did that for a little while.

My dad bought a Factory5 Cobra spec racer kit. We got it built, sold the '79 RX7, sold the Legends car, and started racing the Cobra at NASA events.

By now, brother is in college with me. Racing fell to the wayside.

After selling the turbo RX7, I got an Oldsmobile Alero. This is the last I'll speak of it.

The next several years were a blur. Graduated, got a job, got a house, got married, had a beautiful daughter, got divorced.

About 18 months ago, I picked up a different daily. Mazdaspeed6 (Turbo-4, 6spd, AWD for those that don't know). Put a decent amount of money into it already. As mentioned above, this is my daily driver project car. My goals are considered mild. Aiming for about 350whp. At around 280whp now. Stock whp is about 210-220 I guess. Self tuning again, like with my RX7, but I'm quite a bit more intelligent this round. When this project is done (they never are), I'll switch focus to the Taco.

Taco will never be off-road. I just want to clean it up, fix broken stuff, remove hacked up mods, and make it look more like a truck than a toy. Although I can't rule out an engine swap at some point. This old 2.4 runs smooth but it's terribly weak. I don't mean weak compared to my daily. This thing can't get out of its own way. Need to check compression/leak-down and freshen up what I can to see how much power I can restore.

If you read all that, congratulations. You'll never get those 5 minutes of your life back.

 

Sup

 

Welcome to TW. And don't worry, after reading "A little history", I skipped the the end.

 

Welcome, sounds like a good project in the making.

 

I'm back with pics. Ya, it's a project all right.

 

You listed it as an S-runner under your name, which it clearly is not. It would've had a 3.4, lower body skirts, and colored matched.

However what in the actual fuck is that exhaust...
Good luck on the project.

 

Thanks. Fixed. When I was trying to dig up info on this thing, there were several places where there wasn't a check box for anything less than an s-runner, so I started to think that was the base model for the year. The guy I bought it from said it was an SE, but I didn't see that listed on any website I looked at.

I have a lot of reading to do.

The exhaust. Ya. So it was tight up near the rear bumper when I picked it up. By the time I got home, the hangers broke and it was resting on the rear axle. Obviously I can't go anywhere until it's raised back up. Stress like that is sure to break something...like the exh manifold that is already prone to cracking.

 

For the 01-04 sub generation the trims aren't listed as typical Toyota "LE,SE" etc.
It pretty much goes base model, SR5, TRD, Limited. S-Runner is just a special package like a performance model.

If I can count correctly it looks like it's a 5 lug therefore it would appear to be a base model 2wd.

 

Yes, 5-lug...as I believe all 2.4L models are. But I could have read that wrong. I've only been reading about this truck since Wednesday, so I'm as green as they come.

 

Welcome to TW!

 

Welcome To Tacoma World

 

Welcome to TW Craig

 

Thanks for the welcomes. I'm somewhat disappointed that this project can't really get rolling until my current project gets "done".

 

took less than 5 minute but aw autoX and scca. miss those times. Use to run with the guys at All American Road Racing Federation (AARRF) in 2003 with my 2000 subaru 2.5rs and continued here in cali with their autoX until 2006ish when I crash her into the mountain side. welcome btw

 

Just remember, you eat an elephant one bite at a time! Have fun!

 

Ghetto fog lights removed.
Saggy exhaust temporarily tied up with clothes hangers.
New battery.
Leaky ghetto intake is now less leaky.
Vacuumed out all the broken glass and temporarily filled the sliding window hole with foam board.
Got codes read, need a primary O2...that's it! I thought this thing would have a list of codes.
Bought a set of OE NGK plugs. Will put them in soon.

Things still to do:
It needs an alignment pretty bad.
STILL need to do a compression check.
Need to plan on changing all the fluids.
Suspension evaluation all the way around.

On an unrelated note, I have a several gallons of plasti-dip coming. I have to get this thing in 1 color. Sadly its remaining white, but with a bit of mica and pearl thrown in for the hell of it.

 

Put in new NGK plugs yesterday. Old plugs (E3) were pretty worn out. Still runs like crap....as expected with the faulty O2.

Finally did a compression check tonight. (all plugs removed, throttle wide open, cranked until needle stopped moving)
1: 215
2: 210
3: 205
4: 215

353k miles

 

Last week, put 2 new tires on the rear, moved the rears to the front, all 4 balanced. Much much much smoother ride now. Before, 60mph was sketchy. Everything was shaking. Now, 80 is smooth...if the road is smooth. Im thinking the blown shocks are allowing some uncontrolled oscillating if the road is a bit bumpy.

FINALLY got around to replacing O2 the other day. Runs much better after resetting the ECU.

While under the truck, located the exhaust leak. The cat back it only being held on by 1 bolt that is rusted to heck and back and nearly completely unthreaded. Got 2 regular zinc M10 bolts (x40mm), nuts, washers from lowes. Will try to get them on tomorrow...after I pick up a gasket from somewhere.

 

New upstream O2 in on Saturday. CEL this morning. Now I need a downstream O2. Thinking I can plug in an O2 simulator and call it a day.

Forgot to mention yesterday the reason I'm suddenly putting money into this thing...I broke my daily fun toy a few weeks ago and still waiting on parts to arrive (due this Thursday). So this truck gets to serve its purpose as the backup vehicle.

Quite frankly, I enjoy driving it. It's not fast, by a large margin compared to my car, but it's my first truck and it's an entirely different kind of enjoyment.

Also, crawled under there this evening to fix that, more or less, disconnected exhaust pipe after the front cat.