Fully polished TuRD

Latest mod started today, power seats for the Tacoma!

My DD 99 Camry is going to the scrapper because I'm too lazy to fix all the shit wrong with it, and having meth head white trash trying to haggle me down is not my idea of a weekend well spent, so it's becoming a seat donor prior to hitting the crusher. So far only one of the camry feet line up with the Tacoma bolt holes, and the seats sit higher so my cage is being cut out, which is no big loss. Good part is I found out my truck is pre wired for power seats, sweet! Onto the pics, the Camry seats are grey and the comparison I used to explain to my wife why I'm doing thus is the stock taco seats are like a folding chair while the Camry seats are a recliner.



The goal is to be done by Friday. Welding/garage fire porn coming throughout the week.

 

Haven't messed with the truck this week, stupid work, hopefully I can bang this out this weekend.

 

You planning on wheeling soon?

 

Hopefully, no idea when though. I would love to hit up Harlan when it gets warmer, I haven't been there since the SAS.

Stretch goal would be sand hallow in the fall.

I just got a pretty big promotion at work and I have a bunch of direct reports so I need to focus on not fucking that up for a bit lol.

 

Cool. Was hoping that you might be going to Harlan this spring.

 

Roll cage delete mod complete.

No seat fire yet....

 

Tired of banging your head?

 

Camry seats sit higher. Honestly I would have been more injured in a crash/roll with it in there.

 

Exo time!

 

I'd much rather die in a rollover!!

 

Haha!! True

 

FINALLY I'm done with the seat swap. Truck was already pre wired for power seats so it was almost plug and play. 3 out of 4seat mounts needed to be cut off and welded back on, and I have to drill one hole and it will be totally done. It's in good enough for now status. Now I just need to get the rusting hulk of the donor car out of my driveway so I can drive the truck. The seats aren't as nasty as the pics make them look, it's the lighting

It's nice having an actual comfy seat, not a glorified folding chair like the stock tacoma seats.

 

Some tech:
Here's the factory harness, it's the lower most harness that's capped off under the drivers seat.

Cut the harness end off and attached the white wire to the blue with white wire off the Camry seat harness. If you can't figure out where the other two wires go, well god help you! Red wire goes to the seat belt alarm, I left that disconnected.



I only set pieces of plastic on fire 4 times while welding the feet to the seats, not bad!!

 

Finally replaced my clock spring this weekend. Curious to see the long term relaibility of the $53 Chinese Amazon clock spring. It's nice having my horn and cruise control back!

 

Next big project is hydro assist. Took apart my spare ford box today and try to see WTF is going on in there. Hard to find write ups or any tech on these things, and searching ford forums makes the 3rd gen guys look like mechanical prodigy's. So here is what I have so far...


Anyone know anything about these ford boxes?

 

Got the rest of the hydro assist parts orderd except for the mounting brackets and tube clamp for the tie rod. $147 bucks for the ram, fittings and hyrdo hoses shipped from surplus center, not too shabby!

 

Box-o-hydro parts! Just need some drill bits, taps and a tube clamp and it will be time to start building some shit!

 

Did some under the truck pondering yesterday and confirmed what I knew all along, I have ZERO space to mount a ram in the usual spots under there.


Coupled with I have to work around that big ass diff and the dumbass that built this thing inboarded the springs, so anywhere the ram does fit, it hits something else while extended. So time for plan D. I can fit the ram below the springs on 3 of the 4 sides of the truck, score! Problem the knuckle is made out of cast, shit! I found a stock steering arm in my garage, and I realized I can replace the lower trunion bearing caps with this arm flipped upside down. So I'm going to try to mount the ram under the spring on the driverside and hook the ram up to the steering arm, or behind the axle on the pax side, same type of setup. Orderd some new knuckle studs, and when they show up it will be Fab time.

The pros of this is I will be able to use 100% of the Rams power, when it's attached to the tie rod it will flop around losing some power.
The cons: if I mis measure or bind up bad enough, the failure can be pretty catastrophic from what I have read. The good part about this is I haven't really heard of anyone breaking like that, mostly internet hearsay. Hopefully it will just bend and mess the arm up. The other con is the ram will be much more vulnerable down low so I'll have to build some skids.

More pics of zero room: