San Antonio

Makes me wonder kids nowadays are lost all their common sense

 

Monday is a douche.
Tuesday is in cahoots with Monday so don't get comfortable.

 

Agreed. Once thursday comes around, things will be moving in the right direction. First half of the week is always crazy for me

 

Arrgh - Monday alright. Spent the evening trying to help the Chad with FB cover pics, and just made one worse and one better. Spent all night on the bad one.....
Anyway - SATX!

 

When's cnc Kurt

 

SATX should be SECOND Saturday = 9/14.

ATX should be the FOURTH Saturday = 9/28

HF Birthday adventure is THIRD Saturday - 9/21

As far as I know now.

 

Hello everyone. This thread moves way too fast to keep up with everything.

My first post was asking for any good shops in San Antonio, and I believe I can answer that now and hopefully have this information be useful to others like me who don't have the space, time, or skill to do major work on their trucks.


My clutch ended up dieing on me at work. I couldn't get the clutch to disengage and get the transmission into gear, so I had it towed to a nearby transmission shop, Certified Transmission (Timberhill and Grissom, owner is Juan) At first we thought it was a simple blown slave cylinder, as it was leaking fluid at the boot, but the piston coming out of the slave cylinder was also slightly bent, which was very odd. So the owner tested the fork, and he couldn't get it to move with a crow bar. So then he got a 6ft king kong bar to move the fork, and he was able to get it to move by using a lot of force with the king kong. So I told him to take the clutch apart while I ordered the Marlin Crawler clutch kit. After the teardown and inspection, he discovered that the throwout bearing was siezed and rusted, as well as the pressure plate. Everything was dried up as well, including the friction disc springs which had rust dust instead of grease. Needless to say, 11 years and 131K miles took its toll on my clutch (although the friction disc still had a lot of meat left on it). Once the Marlin Crawler clutch kit and Aisin slave/master clutch cylinders arrived, he finished his work two days later. He also replaced the rear main seal and serviced my transfer case. Cost came out to $1200, which is higher than other shops, but also lower than others. This was a middle of the road estimate I received, but I bet he was the only guy willing to take the time to lay out all of the old components on his work table and walk through exactly what failed and why. He knows a lot about transmissions.

After he was done, I took my truck right next door (literally drove about 200 feet) to Fast Toys automotive. I talked with the owner, Bradley, who knew a lot about the first gen Tacomas and 5VZ-FE engine. I worked with him for about a half hour putting together a list of everything my truck needed done, and he also reminded me of some other things that I had forgotten. His estimate came in at $2300 to do all of the work (I'll have a list for you at the end), which was $1500 less than Toyota of Boerne, and $800 less than Bikini Offroad (I wanted to take my truck to them, but they had a 1 month wait for appointments). Because of how much Bradley knew about Toyota trucks and engines, and the estimate price, I decided to go ahead and get all work done right then. This was on a Friday, and they were done with everything by Monday. What he did went above and beyond want any other shop has ever done for any of my vehicles.

One of the major problems was my truck was leaking and flinging oil everywhere. So everything on the bottom part of the engine bay was covered in a thick sludge of oil, including the lower control arms, CV axles, and oil pan (I was actually afraid the oil pan may have had a leak because of all of the oil on it). What Bradley ended up doing is cleaning up all of the oil so that you can actually see the metal now, making it a lot easier to identify an oil leak in the future. Previously whenever a seal or gasket was replaced due to an oil leak, the dealership never bothered to clean up the leaked oil, so the truck always looked like it had an oil leak, even when it didn't. The real cherry on top is that when they replaced my valve cover gaskets, they went ahead and repainted my valve cover and intake manifold at no extra cost. They look real purty now all nice and shiny with fresh paint.

Water pump, timing belt, tensioner, hydraulic tensioner, idler, gasket, o-ring. *
3x accessory belts
Camshaft Rear Seal Plug set
Crankshaft Front Seal
Camshaft Front Seals
Valve Cover Gaskets
Oil Cooler O-ring and gasket
Thermostat and Thermostat Housing Gasket
Replace Spark Plugs (Denso standard Nickel plugs)
Rear axle shaft seal replacement and repacking wheel bearings
New Front Brake Pads - Ceramic
New Front disc rotors
Replace brake fluid - Valvoline Dot3/4
Drain and replace gear oil in rear differential
Oil Change using Full synthetic

*Since they were going to have the crankshaft pulley off, I had him install the URD crankshaft pulley I ordered a few weeks before as the stock pulley had a chunk broken off of it from it being dropped the last time the timing belt was replaced.

The truck runs much better now, and is more willing to rev above 3K RPMs (Before it was not happy above 3K rpms). I believe that mostly has to do with the new plugs, but I want to believe its because of my fancy new racing red crankshaft pulley


Sometime in September, or whenever the weather starts to cool down below 100°F, I plan on heading to Hidden Falls one weekend with a couple Jeep guys from work who have a lot of experience with the trails there so that I can see how my truck performs with the stock suspension and tire size before I install a new suspension kit and get 33" tires.

 

33s to small its about Dem 37s

 

Don't listen until you do it @Chris311! Size is all relative to how you are going to use it. I must say CONGRATS on finding two good shops so close. Those are decent prices in my experience.

 

Different sign off tonight.
RIP our ATX member and friend from Lockhart.
@Firsttaco4x4 Jerry

We thank you for your service, and the time you shared with us.

 

Bad ass
Sounds like they breathed some life back into your taco! The next group run to HF is 9/20, see you there?

 

Sad to hear we lost one of the family.

Bow your heads and raise one for @Firsttaco4x4.

Til Valhalla.

 

Morning all

 

37s may be too big

 

Do you all normally do day trips? Ie, you arrive in the morning and leave in the evening, or do spend a night or two camping?

I may be able to make 9/20 depending on what I have scheduled for work that day.

 

Morning SA

I typically make a day trip out of it but I'm trying to camp out Friday/Saturday for that run.

Here's the thread

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/35s-are-the-new-265s-hidden-falls-birthday-bash-9-20-22.620007/

 

Morning SA Folks

 

Good morning everyone! Hope it is a great day in SATX or wherever!

 

Morning Maner