Nova Scotia BS Thread

Gonna be coming to NS for the first time in my life mid august, any good wheeling out there? Forgive my Ontario ignorance, lol. Going to visit GFs family, will have a few free days.

 

What part of the province will you be visiting? There are tons of options for off road driving but it depends on what kind of trails/scenery/destinations you want to visit and what part of the province you are staying in.

Chad

 

Halifax area. Truck is mostly stock with skids and a snorkel. Just looking for some fun adventure tbh. Open to driving around to find trails.

 

If you just want to drive some back roads type of driving you could go to the Bowater lands, there are roads through it all that have tons of trails off the sides and there's a bunch of camping sites but I've never found any challenging off-roading in there... you can get into the Bowater trails here: Google Maps or here: Google Maps On the first one follow 'hiking trail road' on the second follow that access road that comes off of Williams road and goes along the side of the highway - both of these open up the entire area from Halifax to Panuke lake and most of the lands in between. You can literally drive around in here for hours checking out lakes and camp sites... not sure if that's what you are looking for or not. If you want more challenging trails around Halifax I'm not your guy but if you want to spend a day in the valley and go off-roading I could give you some trails etc around this way, but the valley is an hour and half from the city and then you'd be going on trails... totally up to you what you are looking to drive around on really.

Chad

 

Awesome, thank you! Any things that you would personally recommend seeing in the province?

 

Depends on what you are into... down here in the valley we have a lot of vineyards, if you are into wines there's lots of great quality wines down this way. If you're into history, the Maritime museum of the Atlantic is right in downtown Halifax, they have a permanent Titanic exhibit that is quite neat if you are into that. The South shore is all about Tourist type stuff, there's Peggy's Cove, the Ovens (sp?) if you are into golf theres lots of good courses around the province. Not knowing you or what you are in to it's really hard to recommend places to go.

Chad

 

Hi,

I have SPC UCAs, and live in Cole Harbour.

Last place that did an alignment for me was Eastern Autowerks on Lakecrest Drive. They will likely tell you they'll have to charge hourly rate and not the flat rate rate for our UCAs, which I totally understand. They did my alignment totally with the UCAs and got it to the specs I asked for. The next time I go back there for another alignment I'll tell the guy I need him to adjust off the UCA first and then fine tune with the LCA because I need my wheels moved forward.

 

Wheeling, that's something I haven't done yet this year. Last time I went it cost me a wheel bearing. Sadly, I think a part out is coming soon My ambitions have turned a corner, big garage next year, then another toy later on.

 

Bummer!
that sucks, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

I'd be up for some valley wheeling, make my lazy butt put on that skid plate I painted up ( I'm only slacking because my mounting hardware is not corrosion resistant, but rather some plain bolts... I know once I mount it I'll forget about the crappy bolts and they be a real bugger to get out )

 

Alright, I figured out my blower motor issue.

I had this real nice write up with pictures etc.... but then something happened and I lost it, so here's the coles notes version.

@k.strong you are welcome to my extra resistor pack ( solid state ) for the price of some coffee... Give me your mailing address via PM and I'll ship it to ya. I'll collect my "fee" next time we see each other


so....
Blower only worked on high, common issue, original resistor packs are known for wearing out due to excessive heat in the wires and connections getting burned.
I replaced the old resistor pack with the Doorman solid state resistor pack and it worked for 3+ years, then I started having the same issue. only worked on high, then it stopped working all together. I jumped the gun and bought another doorman solid state resistor pack thinking it was just a "cheap part" and how it must have failed. Swapped in the new part after checking the connections ( they were all good and not corroded, pinched or burned/charred ) but no dice, only worked on "Hi" intermittently.

Super Quick explination of the resistor pack and blower motor setup:
the reason the blowers only work on "HI" when the resistor pack wears out is due to "hi" bypassing the resistor pack and giving the fan the full beans ( full 12v from the battery) all the other settings, low, med, med_hi are just different resistors limiting the voltage to the motor making it spin at different speeds


the diagnosis:
turned out that while my 1st replacement resistor pack ( solid state doorman part from Amazon ) was still good but the electriacal wires going to the fan motor were not. they burned. while un-clear WHY they were burned ( some TW.com peeps say the wires are too small and can't handle the current ) I suspected that my motor was perhaps in need of a good cleaning and the "dirt" was causing excessive drag making the motor work harder and draw more current making the wires hot and eventually corrode / burn.

here is a picture of the blower motor connector, and a better pic of the wire.


I removed the motor, found a youtube on how to clean it and went to town. Only took 30 min to clean it. My only recommendation would be to take pictures during disassembly to help you put it back together. I mixed up the brush installation at first and wasted some time scratching my head figuring out how to put it back together.

I used a combo of brake cleaner and electrical contact cleaner to remove all the "smoo" that was in there. I then gave the bushing a little shot of some lube ( pink rust check spray ) and re-assembled.



The Blower Motor connector:
so this was toast, and the contacts on the blower motor looked a little "dull" so I got a small flat screwdriver wrapped some sand paper on it and made them shiny again. I then cut off all the burned wire which for me ended up being about a good 3+ inches of wire. I then stripped the original wires back and soldered on some new ones leaving me plenty of extra to connect back to the blower motor. ( Pretty sure I used 12ga wire )
since the connector itself was toast I searched for another solution. Turns out female spade connectors slide over the blower motor connections very well. I used a multimeter to figure out which wire was + & - and then matched that up with the original connector then used a sharpie to mark on the motor which terminal was which. I mentioned that the female spade connectors worked, there is one small catch. They are too close together when put on the motor contacts, there is a risk of them touching, I got around this by using 1 normal "naked" spade connector, and 1 covered one. it was snug, but worked great.

now I have all of my fan speeds and a long enough wire that If this were to happen again I should not have to re-solder anything, just cut, re-crimp and go.

 

And that is how it's done!

 

Gotta pass on the good vibes! some day I may need them sent back in my direction

 

I ended up doing most of the work myself. I centered the wheel (pushed forward) by maxing out the lower cams and setting the UCA caster to “E”. I than made a few adjustments to the camber and toe to get them close. I took it to a shop to dial in only the camber and toe, I got them to adjust camber by only sliding the UCA ball joint in/out (don’t touch the LCA).

 

May I ask where you got that done? This sounds awesome!

 

It is a bummer, and I had such plans for it too, however, planning to do things and having a PLACE to do things are worlds apart. Now that I have my 'new to me' vehicle, I can start pulling things off of the truck.

 

Any buddy yota tunes ?
A guy on Facebook in the true North Tacomas from Nova Scotia is looking
I sent him here to look

 

Yup, there is a guy(s) on TW.com here that can tune a 2nd gen. Last I checked they could only tune the ECU's of the V6, the I4's ECU was not "un-locked" yet...
Send them here and I can point them to the thread about it.

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/2013-tacoma-6-speed-short-box.773162/

Mine's for sale fellas. Flick me a DM if you wanna text me.

 

looks nice!
GLWS!

 

Holy mackerel has this place ever been dead this summer! Hopefully everyone has had a good summer with lots of wheeling and or camping trips!? I haven't done much at all, got a lead on a new job earlier this summer and was quite stressed out waiting to hear something and then I got it and started the new job on Sept 1st. Now I just have to wait for my first pay and medical benefits to kick in which won't be until March (medical benefits) but at least now I'm a civil servant making more money then I used to though the learning curve of the new job is quite steep. How has everyone been doing? Anything exciting going on?

I'm in search of a good quality set of steel skid plates for my truck, anyone know any place in Canada that sells good quality steel skid plates, preferably a place in NS but I'm open to anything... might even go with one of the bigger manufacturers that overland outfitters sells if I can't find something more economically friendly though I would much prefer to support a Canadian company and if I could find one in NS or at least the Maritimes I'd prefer that.

I'm always down for a good wheeling trip, even if it's just cruising fire roads, I love to explore new to me areas! So if you are in need of a second vehicle send me a message, I'm open to trips anywhere in the Maritimes for wheeling so keep me in mind if you are planning something!

Other then that not much going on for me, still working on getting the gear I already have for the taco powder coated and installed but I still need to order more parts and spending money while I have no income (at least until Pheonix gets sorted and I start to get paid anyway) seems like a bad idea so I've been putting it off. How has everyone else been doing? How are peoples trucks doing? anyone done any exciting taco adventures this year?

Chad