Simple mods I did...fast and cheap!..YOU can too

So I have been reading the "Mods" section and decided to do a few (4 total). At first I thought the mods would be difficult and time consuming...I was wrong!
First I did the Tailgate theft deterrent (hose clamp mod).... It was quick and simple took no more than 10 min and cost .50¢
Since the first mod went so well I decided to try a second......
Next I tackled the Foglights on anytime mod. I thought this would have been difficult and take some time...but instead The fog light mod took me only 20 minutes total and cost me .15¢ I was amazed that it worked and I didn't screw it up
So, since I knocked 2 mods that I thought would take a few hours, in under a half hour I was looking for another when i stumbled on to the Disable Seatbelt Warning Chime mod...I thought "really??? this would be great cause my dog sits in front and the chime is always beeping and annoying me" I didn't think that it would work..but I gave it a shot and Voila! it worked...the quickest mod yet!
At this point i was 45 min into doing mods on my new truck and I got a little cocky and wanted to try something a bit more involved...
I thought to myself "I don't like the cloth arm rests and I would love leather arm rests...why not" So I dove in to the Leather Arm Rests mod.
The door panels were simple and quick to remove and I mean REALLY SIMPLE! The arm rest them selves took a little work and precision but no much harder than registering for this forum...ha ha ha. Once I had everything apart (it took about 45min total) I thoght i would go to a couple local upholsters (since they were on the way to the fabric store) and see what they would charge to put leather on the arm rests. The first place wouldn't touch them, the second wanted $70 (which I was considering), the third wanted 150$.. I said "150$ your crazy the place down the street wanted 70$"..so I moved on..the entire time thinking I would just buy the leather and do it myself. I decided to stop at 1 last place (since I was referred by a friend) and the guy told me "40$ and 1/2 hour" I said "OK lets do it"...At this point it was about 2 hours since I started the 1 or 2 mods that I set out to do. About 20 minutes and 40$ later my arm rest had leather on the (over the cloth to keep the padding as suggested by the upholster) Next i hurried home and started to reassemble my arm rest into the door panel. This is when I his a snag...I was 4 washers shy of what I needed to attach the last arm rest!!!! After a little digging through the misc. nuts and bolts jar I found 4 suitable washers. Next i put the door panels back on the truck, it was almost as simple as taking them off. Now, after only about 3 and 1/2 hours I was finished with all the mods I thought I would never complete...AND I had no problems or disasters
SO my point is , that there are a bunch of easy, do it yourself, cheap/ free mods that YOU can do!!!! Believe me, I always screw this kind of stuff up and I pulled all of these mods off without a hitch.

 

sounds great dude, glad it was easy for u

 

good job man, now post some pics of the mods!!!

 

yeah, where are da pix at?

 

X3...I'd like to see the pictures of your armrests.

Why does everyone dislike the cloth armrest? For those that off road, I can see how it would get dirty real easily but I think it's rather soft on my arm


For the fog light mod, did you splice in the wire with a quick connect and drill through the divider to run the wire? That is what I did and it was very easy. Though I don't see much need for this mod now that I have day time running lights. I still like to have the option and it didn't cost me anything.

 

Glad to see you had a productive day but you can't just post this story about the armrests and not post up a picture of how they turned out.

 

Sounds like somebody caught the "mod bug"

Nice to hear your enjoying your truck, there are still a lot of things to do LOL

 

Congrats on the upgrades man. I always love doing the littlest things to the taco. Makes me feel like i have a new truck again!

 

we need pics of the arm rest

 

as requested...here are some pictures
I did the arm rests in black leather to match my steering wheel and shift knob. I did not like the cloth due to the feel and knowing that it was always going to be dirty.
The foglight mod was done by using a quick splice into the green wire and running a wire to the relay tab through a small drilled hole (the red wire in the picture).
I love having th option to have my fog lights and highbeams on at the same time.

 

next I want to figure out how to turn the ABS on and off. The write ups if have seen so far are kind of vague and seem to be missing important info. I wanna try to incorporate the ABS on and off with my Trac control on and off switch...ANY ideas or info would be great

 

the inserts look pretty awesome

 

Nice job on the leather arm rests!

 

good to hear everything went smoothly for you

 

The arm rests look awesome. It really flows with the rest of the black in there.

I may have to give that a shot.

 

anybody do a fabric mods on the back rest on the access cabs ? 2006 ??


mine are looking nasty after using child seats in them.. no tears bbut they scuff up and look like POOP!

 

2 years later... lol.