StevenP’s 37s + IFS ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ build

Thanks for pointers @theesotericone

Happy to see I’m not the only one out here with “fool proof” plans

I’ll pick up the things you mentioned for sure, not the first time I’ve seen quik steel recommended.

My welder can do gas and take smaller wire, I just don’t have a reasonable place to do it, my only option is outside and the wind is always doing it’s thing, so I haven’t bothered getting gas or all the other necessities. I don’t care all that much about how pretty it is, it’ll all get cleaned up, sealed, and covered anyways.

I’d love to see some photos of yours, the more information I have the better

 

I cleared for 35" PitBull rocker radials. They are 35.25" aired up with the weight of the rig on them. I don't have a body lift and also tried to clear enough to fit 37's in the future without one. Photo's are from cycling(without front bumps) to finished before the undercoating. I didn't take any of that for some reason but it makes all those crap welds vanish. Between that and the quick stell it almost looks like I knew what the hell I was doing. lol

 

I got my work cut out for me!

 

Well my morning errands ran a bit later than I thought they would, ended up running across the bay for a good deal on an Ultra Gauge from @Dan8906. Decided instead of starting all my cutting and tubbing today I’d inspect my supercharger and try to determine a few things.

I posted this in the supercharger thread as well hoping it’ll get some experienced thoughts, but I figured I’d post it here as well since it is build related lol.

My recently acquired Gen 1 supercharger supposedly was rebuilt and only has about 25 miles on it. Here are my findings.

Let me know what you all think in regards to condition and whether or not you would run it or send it off for a rebuild.

I first started by looking closer at the pulley, when I did I noticed there was some oil build up from a slight seep around the seal. I stupidly didn’t take a photo before I gave it a wipe down, but here is what the seal looked like. It appears to be the updated seal, which tells me it HAS had a rebuild, but tells me little more than that..


Then I took the nosecone section off and got eyes on the oil. One would suspect if it only had 25 miles on it that the oil would be pristine. It was not. It wasn’t terrible, but it was definitely brown, and had a bit of metallic flickering going on. Certainly didn’t look like just 25 miles on it to me. (Take the pan shot with a grain of salt, I’ve done quite a few fluid changes lately, it was wiped out, but not completely cleaned with solvent or anything).


I then pulled the rotor pack out. I was happy to find a good solid coating still covering the rotors, which further confused me on whether or not this unit did indeed have a fresh rebuild.



Then I cleaned everything up so I could get a better look at surfaces. I must admit, I don’t really know what constitutes acceptable or not; hopefully some of your eyes can guide me here.



I put it all back together just hand tight and with no oil, sat it down level and spun it a bit slowly, nothing seemed out of order to me, spun freely without any inconsistencies.

So in summary. Seal, newer type, but slightly seeping. Oil, not fresh. Rotors good and coated. Surfaces ???. I’m no closer to knowing how fresh this rebuild is other than thinking it was NOT done 25 miles ago (would the oil look like that if it was simply sitting for a long time?).

What do you all think? Is there something else I should look at in there and get pictures of that would help make a better decision to run this or send it off? Would you run it, or would you send it in?

 

Id copy this into the what you have done to your tacoma today in the first gen section, you will get some good response there I’m sure.

 

Going to send the supercharger off to have it rebuilt, it looks OK, but there are a few areas that are less than ideal and I don’t want to put it on and wonder how long it’ll be ok for. Much like I did with the truck when I got it and freshened everything up, I want to know for certain that the supercharger is in top shape and ready for a full service interval.

With that update out of the way, I’ll post on what I did this weekend. The previous owner of the supercharger had it painted, or maybe did it himself, in a gunmetal. I wasn’t too thrilled with it, didn’t match anything else on the truck or in the engine bay, and it wasn’t fully covered, so it was likely just sprayed while fully assembled. I’m kind of a stickler for details, so I couldn’t hang with that. Here’s what it looked like.

I had considered having it powder coated while it was being rebuilt, but at 400 dollars and with a push in the right direction from @1997tacomav6 , I decided to refinish it myself.

I started off with disassembling things and taping off internals and other components I wanted to keep out of harms way.


Once I had everything ready to go I went at it with some paint stripper. Pretty fun to watch what this stuff does.


After waiting a good while for the chemicals to put in work I took everything to my local DIY car wash and used the pressure washer to blast away as much as possible. The paint stripper and pressure washer combination absolutely rocked! I’d say about 95% clean after one round. I also blasted my arm by accident, only took a split second to do this


I then used the dryer and made sure everything was bone dry, and came back home to continue prepping. I re-taped everything and smoothed out the remaining areas with some 220grit sand paper.


After everything was ready I took it outside to lay down some primer. I used VHT products for this due to their heat tolerances. A couple layers of primer had things looking like this


About 30 minutes later I started laying down some VHT Wrinkle Plus in black. It’s a pretty cool product, you have to lay it down thick with at least three coats in a cross hatch pattern (first coat vertical, second coat horizontal, etc), it looks somewhat regular at first, but as it starts to dry it begins to “wrinkle” and the final outcome is similar to the appearance of powder coat. Here is a picture of what it looks like freshly applied


It is a very slow drying product, 24-48 hours, so it should continue to wrinkle and become more uniform as the day moves along, but here are some pictures of what it looks like about an hour or two after application.


Now I’ll wait a day or two, send off the main unit to have it rebuilt, and when everything comes back I’ll be able to slap in a nice looking supercharger that I don’t have to worry about for the next 100,000 miles or so

 

I like that texture look. It gives it an industrial feeling.

 

The paint definitely looks great, hopefully it doesn’t get damaged when it’s rebuilt.

Did you buy the Doug Thorley Headers and install them yet?

If you haven’t installed them my advice is to install a new OEM DENSO starter before the headers.

If the stater goes out you will have to remove the headers to get to the starter as it’s boxed in there.
I didn’t realize this till after the fact.
Also if your getting the supercharger rebuilt nows you’re time to port it.
Your gain will be about the same as headers maybe a little more and cheaper

 

Who are you having rebuild the supercharger? Mine could go for a full and proper rebuild.

 

Thanks, it came out pretty good. If it does get dinged it should be pretty easy to touch up, not too worried.

I haven’t installed the headers yet, they are actually delayed about 6 weeks, so I’m still waiting on them. My truck is a baby, only 80k miles, so I think my starter has lots of life left, but I’ll look into it for sure. If its cost effective I may just go for it.

Unfortunately their porting service (and rotor bore coating service) is unavailable at the moment due to COVID. They said if it becomes available while they have the supercharger they’ll send it off, but as things stand presently those options are unavailable

I’m using The High Speed Lab to do the work. I really contemplated doing it myself, but I just don’t have the right tools or space at the moment to do this sort of thing. Hopefully by the time the next rebuild comes around I’ll have a real shop and the right stuff to do it myself, but after reading about the options and discussing things with a couple different members I decided The High Speed Lab was the best place to send it. They also have a TON of different pricing options for various levels of work, so you can pick and choose what you want and keep costs down.

 

ok great,

Working on mine now.
Hopefully running in a day or so

 

Hot damn I love how that crinkle coat came out.

 

This truck is sickkkkk...

 

Sub a dub

 

same boat here. just grabbed a welder now need to figure out how to use it.

 

Thanks @BlackSportD @bradleg @Fernando , appreciate the comments and the subs

@nudavinci64 I see your location says San Mateo/Cayucos.. I’m just up the peninsula from San Mateo, in South San Francisco. I really need to get started on practicing with welding, definitely holding my truck back. Holler if you want to meet up and try making some ugly welds without burning down the neighborhood, not sure if it applies to our situation, but maybe two heads are better than one lol.

Been a while since I’ve done anything to the truck, BUT, I got my valve body back from IPT yesterday, and going to drive down to Trail Gear tomorrow and pick up my crawl box so I should have some cool updates soon, hopefully I can turn some wrenches this weekend.

I also got word from Corbeau that my Trailcats should be shipping out this week, so that initial review will be up soon as well.

And if the new assistant for The High Speed Lab can get it together I’ll be shipping out my supercharger.. it has been a serious struggle getting things sorted out with them through her.. she is new and seems to be going through a rough patch so I don’t have the heart to lay into her and demand better service, but two weeks of sorting out details that I’m sure could’ve been done in 5 minutes with the shop owners has been trying. Good thing my truck is nowhere near ready to rock and roll lol.

Anyways, if nothing else I’ll try and get some photos of the new shinnies up tomorrow.

 

yah your right up the street. They do say 2 heads are better than one. But figure like you said just need to get some ugly welds on our belts and figure this shit out. I have yet to mess with transmission stuff but I do have the the kit for the valve body job that pretty much does the same thing as the IPT job. Part of me thinks I'll lose the chuck valve or some of those small springs. But let me know I need to break the seal on this welding stuff...

Not the same but the S/C is going to help big time moving those tires. Just went through S/C build myself.

 

Picked up some scrap today from trail gear when I was getting my crawl box, Lincoln is awesome I may get in to it this weekend. And I wouldn’t worry too much about losing any of those springs or the chuck valve, they’ll plop out when you drop the pan and the valve body, but they won’t go far and they’re not so minuscule you wouldn’t be able to find them. If you want or need an extra hand with anything let me know, always nice to have a wrenching buddy around.

 

Def you can say that again. Everyone made it sound like they were super tiny so i have been hold off on that. I need to do that and swap in a new fuel pump.

 

Working on my dual case set up, got a late start yesterday so I didn’t get too far into it, just kind of got things off the truck and ready to work on today.



I am doing triple sticks from RAD Designs, and trying to find some information. I know I have to grind the nub down on the driver side shift rail, but I can’t seem to find anything definitive on wether or not there is an interlock pin/pill between the two rails that needs to come out as well. Most of the information I come across is about the FJ case and I’m not sure if its the same or not for the 1st gen taco case. Feel free to chime in if you’ve done this before or know about it, I’m going to get back out there and into it soon, if I don’t have to rip to far into it that’d be great.