No frills, No thrills. Taco Roofer's sensible daily driver moneypit and guide to life thread.

Wow Noah, hang in there lots of curve balls. Be safe, take your time and use your head, you’ll get through the bumps. Remember to take care of yourself, it’s more important now than ever.

Luckily my rig doesn’t have much rust, that mixed with patience and a liberal dosing of AeroKroil gets me through most issues. It’s a great penetrating oil. The name is Kano Labs Aero-Kroil, orange can.

I don’t know if you can get it Ore or not but that stuff is the bomb. I came a cross a thread where someone made their own but don’t remember the recipe. It will literally crawl up the threads of a bolt. Spray let it soak overnight and viola’ .

Yeah, the JBAs are going in pretty soon, just plowing through a substantial honey do list. Glad you got it sorted out. Cheers

 

Back from the dead? Feels like it anyways lol!

Hope everyones been well, my lifes back to some kind of normalcy if there is such a thing during all this cr*p we're going through.

Anywho, what's been going on with my rig? Really notta a lotta, I did upgrade the stereo finally. I got tired of hitting highway speeds and not being able to hear it over the humm of my 33's , my lumber rack and canopy!
So I did what they said couldn't be done (at least that's what the local stereo shop said haha) I added 2 10's behind the back seats and threw 1600 watts on a 2 ohm setup at them!
Yes, i can hear you now and feel you now lol... loud and f*cking clear

 

Heres a few pix... if anyone wants the specs to build their own, let me know.

The guy at the local stereo shop helped me set up the deck frequencys and when he cranked it he said "holy shit! This sounds incredible!" So I guess I did good figuring out my air specs and what not.

Start by gutting everything behind your rear seat. Theres no room in these 1st gen double cabs.


Next, throw in some mass backing to make sure your truck doesnt rattle like some riced out crackhead Honda lol.




You'll have to remove the plastic backs on your rear seats... Oh the sacrifices we make.

Build your box, put in some cheap 10's and enjoy!




I ran the amp under the drivers seat. A little shim of plywood helped lift it off the carpet so that air could circulate around it better and help keep it cool. Plus I didnt want any moisture getting to it, our 1st gens have a weird thing with collecting water in the winter just under the front seats.



That's it!
Took a day to build, a little trial and error and yahtzee! Now I can actually hear what I want when driving down the freeway.

 

Here's the my main squeeze right now. I picked it up in May and started stripping it down.
It was a sh*t show basket case but the price was right.



When I say stripped it down, I meant it.



Heres where it sits last weekend. Still waiting on a few more parts to finish the mock up before it gets disassembled and painted.



I'd say it's almost done but I'm gonna be putting it on the back burner for a bit as hunting season and a few Tacoma projects are going to be taking priority pretty soon.

Next up on the Taco will be a somewhat hidden Warn 10s winch. Yeah, it's time for a winch, it's been time for awhile now.

 

Warn Evo 10S installed ...

 

Truck looks great. Love the winch position.

 

Alright, I drove around last week with the winch mounted to see what wiring was going to rub and to think about adding additional bracing on the mount.

End result, all the wiring rubs on these trucks lol, so everything got wrapped in loom.

Additional bracing and the end product. 10 bolts total, 5 on each side. Should hold, we'll see.

 

Love the winch mount, looks very clean. Since I’m running the ARB, I plan to go with the standard Warm M-8000(?) I believe that’s the best fit and I plan to set up a couple snatch blocks for more mechanical advantage if needed. But that’s a ways down the road.

 

I dont think you can go wrong with any Warn product. Spend the money and have the piece of mind that it will work when you really need it to!
Also, just a side note but the free spool pull out on my Warn is so incredibly easy and smooth! A few of my buddies have Badlands and Smittybuilts and they are a challenge to pull out the line on.
You should be really happy with the M8000!

 

On another note...
I have noticed after running the finished winch setup on the front that the OME suspension has settled in about 1/2" lower.
Not sure yet if I'm going to just spacer the suspension, do a slight body lift or replace the spring with the heavy duty version.

The only thing with doing a body lift is that it would be nice to have an overall, slight 1" lift on the truck and it would keep the center of gravity lower than a suspension lift. I just hate they way they look though lol.

 

Hey, great build! I like that it's super functional.

I'm curious about this alternator, is it a direct bolt in option? Looks like it makes 105 amps compared to the stock 80, which is a nice little upgrade.

 

Its pretty much a direct bolt on, yes. What it does is basically clock the alternator to a different position, which is not a big deal.

I haven't done this upgrade yet, its kinda low on the priority list haha but if you do I would recommend doing the big 3 wiring upgrade at th same time.

My temp solution was to just go buy a badass battery. I have done a few pulls with the winch, headlights on, stereo blasting etc and haven't had a single issue.

My main thought on doing the battery first was that yeah, I can make more amps but I need somewhere to store them and I wanted more cc amps and reserve run time on my battery to begin with. Basically, get a bigger badder storage unit for your power, before you crank up the power being fed into it.

 

So whats next. Here's the tentative punchlist to get done sooner than later...

•Replace the lower ball joints (preventative maintenance. Just got done doing the cv's)
•Icon Rebound 17x8.5 bronze wheels (I'm done waiting on SCS)
•Yokohama Geolandar mt G003 285/75r17 (34.1"h x11.1"w)
•Whatever lift / trimming /cutting and welding is necessary to get the 34" tires to clear
•Tundra brake upgrade
•Eaton e-locker front and rear (The factory locker is to temperamental)
•Re-gear to 4:56 while its all apart (still debating on this as its not super necessary)
•Aftermarket rear bumper
•80" sliders for the sides(simple tube style)
•Fab up a new skid plate tied into the winch mount
•Armor up the underside of the truck
•Find or fab a bigger or extra fuel tank (where the factory spare sits would be a super easy solution but... then where the hell do you put the spare haha) Note: Currently I'm getting 210 miles per tank (pretty bad imo)

Obviously the lockers and re-gear will be the big $ items, so those will probably be done last. The truck is very capable right now but I kinda want to take it to the edge of still being a good daily with being extremely capable offroad without crossing that line of sas swapped with 40's lol. I'm sure there more but thats the general direction I'm headed.

 

Lots happening around the garage this weekend. Here's a sneak peek. No there not mounted on the truck yet.

Go big or go home.

 

Its been an incredibly busy last 3 weeks but more progress on the truck!

*Installed new Lower Ball Joints
*New Center Support Bearing (carrier bearing)
*Installed a 1/2" top plate spacer on the front coils and longer studs on the coils
*1/2" spacer on the rear leaf pack and longer U-bolts.
*installed 1-1/4" Spidertrax wheel spacers on the front and rear
*New wheels and tires.
-Icon Rebounds (bronze) 17x8.5
-Yokahama Geolandar G003 mt 285/75/17
-Had to trim the plastic front bumper a hair and then do some more grinding to the cab side
*Fabricated a new antenna/ditch light bracket
*installed a new 6db Midland gmrs antenna

Measuring before and after, the truck went up another 2" overall. It now has a breakover angle of 31 which is better than it was. The truck already had a 3" lift on it but after it settled in I would say it was closer to 2.5 or a little less.

And pix...