Oh boy, let me tell ya 'bout my 1995 Toyota Tacoma

Sounds like you definitely split a body seem apart. This is a common area for water leaks on 1st gen Tacoma even when they haven't been beat on. Look up high near the cowl/wiper motor/hood hinge area and just seal them all. With the fender off, it should be pretty easy to find.

 

okay so the wheels are on i can breathe. Looks good so now what? The first and main problem was rubbing, really bad rubbing. I need to purchase spacers as my tires do rub frame at full lock but that rubbing is manageable. The first few days i felt like i was driving a lowrider because every small bump my tires rubbed. I had to start researching different lifts commonly put on other trucks and couldn't find anything that seemed like a definite fix to my problem so i had to start experimenting. I bought and returned several coil spacers trying to figure out a way to get my front end to go up even a little bit but none fit or were even close to working. I am new to all of this so i really didn't know what to do i was stumped again. I painted all of the exposed area from where the fender was with undercoating and it turned out very clean (picture w lawn chairs).

Now this is not a proud moment for me, and will most likely be the cringiest thing i could of done, but to raise the front end up ~2.5" ish i used pvc pipe adapter piece. I believe to remember it to be 3" to 4.5" and it fit perfectly on top of my spring. I rented a spring compressor from autozone and had a horrible time with that. (wasn't the tool that was bad but my coil spring was so small and had such little room to work with that it took a lot of wrestling and involved grinding the center of my LCA where the shock mounted to even fit). I needed to grind it down to fit the fabtech shocks anyways so it worked out okay but could be done a lot better. You can see the spring compressor in the second picture just all twisted and stuck inside my spring causing several headaches and lots of attempts to get out. Now The pvc piece has been in for about 9 months and i have had 0 issues. no cracking no nothing. I drive this truck hard and it has been sturdy all the way through. It even rubs on my UCA as i need to install the fabtech one that will give me more clearance but i just need to take the time to do it. (I purchased new UCA ball joints that will allow me to fit them now). This is not a permanent solution but it works. I'll attach a video of all of the pieces in motion. Also removed rubber bump stops to allow suspension to droop farther.

Now this setup is second to none awful. Definitely need ideas and help to get more lift along with a safer more solid setup than this.


(^before i touched anything, stock setup)

 

This is the fender loosely mounted, lots of trimming


add a leaf in the rear brought the back up but it is WAYYYY too stiff so i have to ride around with weight in the back to not feel like im riding on bricks

 

just want to say this should be interesting but its sounds like you should've taken 2k for tires and spent it on a beater '80's model 4wd (found one down from me running for $1300) and DD the 95 but hey we all learn in different ways right...enjoy the learning and good luck man

 

10 steps back 5 steps forwards!! lol welcome to my struggle i have learned a lot and know exactly what i want the next time around

 

God this makes me miss being a teenager hahaha! You have your whole life to drive boring, safe, reliable vehicles. Keep it up lol

 

Damn, dem springs are, crazy

 

Lights! So the original plan was to do the angry eyes on the stock headlights but i managed to drop and shatter one of the glass housings so that brought about the purchase of the LED lights. While i was waiting for the new lights i used clear packing tape to cover the housing and added an X in electrical tape for aesthetics. Didn't burn the two days i had it this way and worked for the time being. I bought the led lights off Amazon and are honestly way too bright for the road but you get use to being flashed every time you drive at night so i guess its okay. Just taped off and plasti dipped each side, turned out great from a distance

These pics were taken before my lil spacer lift and look at how low it sat!!!!!


housings just had two screws on the top and it was easy to unplug lights and plug in the new ones even tho the led lights i got dont really have brights or dims its either blinding or DRL's (tried rewiring them every way possible and couldn't fix)


picture without the grill on

 

So let's backtrack, remember when i mentioned i cut my muffler off? well i lost my exhaust hanger by my cat from it rusting off so the next hanger was back behind the muffler which worked perfectly fine; it didn't mess anything up. Well, cutting the muffler off eliminated the only other hanger i had so i had nothing supporting my exhaust (was unaware of at the time). you can see where this is going.... it started out as a bad exhaust leak in the middle of my downpipe. This leak, as i never took time to fix, got worse..who woulda known! One day pulling up my girlfriends driveway i was at the top of first gear (it is long and steep) i heard a very loud pop then thump. and i gout out to see my exhaust hanging on the ground by my O2 sensors. So moral of the story: When modifying something on your vehicle try to think of everything 'said thing' can affect after you change it because daily driving a truck with open headers may seem fun at first but gets old fast

 

So now we're up to current time!!! Here's a little transformation post to look at

school parking lot mobbin lol Also not my parking spot*****

 

sayin...

 

I can see where the inspiration of the rim and tires package came from

 

Got a healthy dose of mud the other day then a nice wash. Keeps the paint healthy

 

bringin' down property values

 

Misc photos

 

Let's get to cutting them fenders and install them

 

I was goofing off and put my old hubcaps from the steelies on my rims, makes you wonder

 

Donies

 

I think I just came up with an update for your profile: "Rev limiters are for pu$$ies!"