Spoonman’s Little Tacoma

All this talk of SAS has me drooling.

Any of you have opinions on air struts? That would be my current stretch goal after another 5 years...but time changes things.

I have plenty of work to do to improve my fab skills before then. I got a swing out bumper in the works to help practice, I'll have to see how it turns out I guess

 

Coilovers>air shocks

 

That's the plan. My dad might help out as well since I'm going to be doing this all at my parent's place. Going get behind the welder whenever I can to practice some more before then. Probably going to learn to TIG as well whenever I get bored of MIG.

I also live 10 minutes from a steel mill that I can take a 5 gallon bucket there and walk away with a ton a scrap steel for like $20.

Coilovers > Air Shocks

I like having a lot of control over my stuff, so the infinite adjustability of coilovers with spring rates, valving, oil viscosity, and nitrogen pressure is very nice.

 

C/O FTW!

 

I guess what attracted me to the air shocks is the ease of adjustability. I wouldn't need to swap springs to get different rates. Also I have read they help eliminate the need for a sway bar because of slow extension (i think?) . I also think the look amazing for some reason. Thanks for the input!

 

They’re basically only for rock crawling as far as I know. If you have a small light weight buggy they’re a good fit. But for us coilovers are better

 

Leaking crawl boxes are a fact of life. My lefty/Crawl box combo hates any amount of gear lube 1.5qts. It pisses vents out until it gets down to around that and stops. All the literature says 2qts.. oh well. My old dual setup was the same way with the stock taco case, vented out fluid until it hit what it liked and stopped.

 

My cab always has a little gear oil smell wafting up from sticks.

 

Mines the same way. Doesn't help that the RAdesign shifter plate has tiny o-rings and a good amount of play in it. I need to buy a 90° 1/8" pipe fitting to a barbed end so I can run a hose for the breather up to engine bay and hopefully fix most of the leaking that way. Worse case scenario, I buy an Atlas 4 speed to fix it.

 

I didn’t have any trouble with my inchworm crawlbox or my trailgear box leaking

 

My crawl box isn't leaking. My t-case leaks. It probably wouldn't leak if I ran the stock shifters or had the t case twin sticked.

 

Case dont leak, the poorly designed Rad base is leaking on mine.

 

That's what I meant to say

 

Hmm that's weird. I have his mini truck kit on mine and it doesn't leak, the stock shifter on the crawl box does. I plugged that hole with a hose plug and am just using the front case as a vent ad they are all one unit on the old gear drive stuff. When I had the stock taco case I just ran it's own vent hose off the stock one into the engine bay.

 

I can only assume the Tacoma and mini truck kits are different. I'm using inchworm triple sticks on the crawler so there's no vent up there. I ran a pipe plug at first and my t case puked oil on the first outing. Going to a normal breather helped with that and I also replaced the standard o rings with slightly thicker o rings and I bought some bigger o rings for the outside edge of the shifter forks. Leaking has definitely been reduced, but I'm hoping with relocating the breather it will become non-existent.

 

If it's use as intended, then leaking is normal. Part of the sacrifice. Lol

 

Ha! You're not wrong. Maybe if the truck wasn't my daily, I wouldn't worry about it so much.

 

Added tube over my tube. My buddy and I bumped the other day and I got a dent. My tube is only 120 wall though. So it’s a bit thicker now.

 

You have a good looking truck!

 

Nice little night run. We need way more snow




Tree reached out and grabbed the bed


Wheel reached out and grabbed some rock
https://youtu.be/5qUfw2HSiYc

I got stuck in the mud
https://youtu.be/S6qAV7NlMX8

My buddy in his 4runner had a better approach but the ice was bad
https://youtu.be/pA7Tiov__nk