AdventureTaco - turbodb's build and adventures

We have one of each and they are both after the two exhaust manifolds join at the "Y". The upstream (before the two CATs) is the Air/Fuel sensor and the downstream (after the CATs) is the O2 sensor.

 

There's only one from the perspective of the cylinder banks. And, IMO, what you say makes sense... unless there's some calculation going on in the ECU that somehow differentiates air from each bank. That's what I tried to capture above with this description and diagram:

It seems to me that it would be very hard to calc air from each bank correctly (there's a lot of combustion and air turbulence going on in that system, I'd think) but who knows? Those Toyota guys are pretty smart.

Swapping OBDII tools with someone will be helpful, I think. Will show if mine is just interpreting something weirdly and I'm actually in great shape now.

 

I think your truck is working fine. Mine shows only bank 1 values for short term and long term trim. Still can't get your app to recognize my dongle though. So just looking at torquepro.

LTFT1 goes up to about 2.75 on the hwy at 65.
STFT1 moves with the skinny pedal.

Hth.
B

 

Man you take awesome adventures!! Great pics and descriptions of everything along the way!

 

wow very well written and very interesting to read. Props on the effort you put into this!

 

WOW Where am I?

How did I get here...

 

Thanks guys, appreciate it. It's fun doing and writing up, so glad you can enjoy.

Still the same place, no need for confusion.

 

New word for my vocab!

 

Sway Bar Delete - Throwing Safety to the Wind
April 23, 2018.

A 2000 Toyota Tacoma only comes with so many safety features. Built two decades ago, there was no traction control; no forward, backward and side cameras; no blind spot radar; and definitely no Toyota Safety Sense™.

These were the days of kids riding in pickup beds for fun, seat belt warning chimes that buzzed twice and shut the hell up since they realized that if you were going to wear the belt, you'd have put it on already, and ABS-as-an-option.

These were the days before SMS; before we needed our cars to protect us from ourselves.

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Of course, there are still some safety systems on a first gen Tacoma - seat belts, air bags, a 3rd brake light, and bumpers to name a few. And hey, on my truck they threw in ABS "for free," even though I'd explicitly asked not to have it.

And for nearly 20 years, I didn't give these systems much thought - well, except for disabling the daytime running lights as the very first thing I did - since they mostly seemed to work, be relatively innocuous, and I didn't know much about them. So when I noticed a few rubber bushings wearing out, I replaced them - not really sure what I was doing.

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On the last several trips, one of the things I've noticed is that roads feel "rougher" to me than most people. Some might argue that I'm getting old; others might say that it's the result of the new load-E tires - but unanimously everyone agrees that having the sway bar isn't making anything better.

See, the sway bar removal is generally one of the first things that Tacoma owners do. By removing it, you remove the (literal) connection between the two front wheels, giving you more flexy-flexy on the rocks, and better bump absorption on those washboarded roads.

I could really use better bump absorption on washboarded roads. So, just a few weeks after buying new bushings, I finally decided to remove the sway bar. It's a straight forward process:

1. Disconnect the links.
   
2. Unbolt the sway bar bushings
   
3. Finagle the sway bar out of the skid plate you were too lazy to remove at the beginning.

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And with that I was done.

There are bound to be trade-offs with a mod like this. I'll need to learn to corner a bit differently, and be more aware of unevenness in the road. But that sounds like a great compromise for a smoother ride!

First Impressions (May 9, 2018)

Since removing the sway bar, I've put a couple hundred miles on the truck (but none off-road) and I can definitely tell the difference. The ride is smoother and cornering-at-speed is different (I have to pay a bit more attention), but in general the truck still drives like it's always driven - which is a good thing.

Lastly - I should note - the sway bar is a safety feature of our vehicles, so one should be careful in removing it. I've heard that having heavier-duty-than-stock front suspension can offset the lack of a sway bar to a great extent. That is, removing the sway bar introduces additional body roll when turning, but heavy-duty front coils resist that same body roll. This so far seems true in my experience as well - with 650lb coils in the front.

I'm looking forward to my next adventure, so I can exercise the new setup in a more taxing environment.

 

Timely writeup, I think I'm gonna pull mine this weekend. I'm unsure if the ome 880s (500#?) are strong enough to counter the body roll, but with the single cab being so light I think it's worth a shot.

 

I am doing this over the weekend. I just got an OME 3" lift with 883 coils up front and have an ARB bumper with Warn M8000/steel cable. I think this should help immensely

 

Me too, hopefully not too long before that happens!

Agreed - worth a shot for sure on a single. My guess is that as long as you're aware for the first bit, the worst case is you realize you want to put it back on OR get some stiffer springs.

Nice! You might be even heavier up front than me - steel cable adds a bunch of weight!

 

My plan is to get a synthetic line at the Northwest Overland Rally at the end of June. Every vendor there has some sort of sale or heavily discounted coupon code to use when you get home. Last year I should have bought a line from the guy at Winchline.com but I had other things to get first.

 

I have to admit that I've thought about removing the sway bar also. I spend quality time on logging roads and I'm pretty sure this would help considerably. My problem is I'm the person that thinks if I get in a wreak that insurance is going to say, well sucks to be you we're not going to cover this because you removed a safety item.

 

I'd say the biggest difference is age. I recommend not getting older. hahahahaha

But yeah, airing down is #1 for sure as far as truck "settings." I'd say #2 is staying with C-load tires as long as possible. Then, #3 is sway bar delete.

 

I'll air down if the roads are bad enough, but on a daily basis I just don't want to take the time in the morning to air down and then air back up in the afternoon four to five days a week. Usually keep the tires right around 30 psi or so for a happy medium.

As for the age thing, yah it sucks. I don't take the bumps as well at 40 as I did when I was 25.

 

Shop Day - A Bit of Everything at Mike's
May 5, 2018.

It wasn't long ago that Dan (@drr), Mike (@Digiratus), Zane (@Speedytech7) and I got together at Dan's shop to do some work on Mike's steering rack and LCA's. That didn't go exactly as planned, but we all had a great time and when we hear Zane was going to be in town again, we knew right away that we should get together again - even if just to hang out.

Of course, we all had a few little things we wanted to do to our trucks (isn't that always the case?) so we decided to meet up at Mike's this time and give each other a hand. Our list included:

• Dan (me) - remove the bed (to allow rear frame access) and compare fuel trims across trucks to continue troubleshooting of my P0171 code.
• Dan (@drr) - rip out a bunch of spaghetti under the hood and install a Bussmann RTMR
• Mike - reinforce the rear mounting tabs for the IFS skid (similarly to how I'd recently welded them to the frame)
• Zane - re-weld one of the exhaust hangers on the Land Cruiser, which had worked itself loose on his way to Seattle.

We all rolled in as Mike was making coffee and we chatted for a while before getting started - you know, about important truck stuff. Eventually though, it was time to get going and we decided to start by removing the bed from my truck so I'd have better access to the frame. With that access, I planned to reinforce the frame with plates to support the weight of the new CBI Outback bumper hanging off the back.

The first step of course was to remove the bumper itself, and then the tail lights and bolts holding on the bed. These came out easily (I hear this is either easy or you're breaking out the cut-off wheel to remove rusty bolts) and the bed was off in no time, leaving the truck in a Mad Max state - "like a filleted fish," according to @mrs.turbodb.

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That meant that within about 20 minutes we were working on Zane's Land Cruiser. Zane was able to pretty quickly evaluate the situation (a previous patch job to the exhaust hanger had failed), and then we set about the hardest part of the repair - finding a piece of scrap steel in Mike's garage. Eventually we found a suitable piece - in that it was totally overkill - of 3/16-inch thick plate that looked like it'd been cut out of one of Mike's skids. Dan hit it with the flap disk as Zane squirmed his way under the Cruiser - there's a lot more under there than our Tacoma's, clearly the reason Cruisers cost more.

A few minutes and some thin-rusty-metal-to-thick-new-metal-welding later, and Zane had finished his repair. Two trucks down; two to go.

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Zane having warmed up the welder, it seemed like a good time to tackle Mike's skid mounts - and, since I'd recently done the same to my truck, it made sense that I'd do the honors. Some quick work with a flap disk to expose bare metal and a few minutes with the welder and the mounts were secured forever - whether Mike wants them on there or not - and ready for Mike to prime and paint. And with that, three trucks were done.

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It was around this point that Zane had to take off - turns out he wasn't in town just to see us (what?!?) - and it being Cinco de Mayo, the rest of us decided that we'd go grab some Mexican for lunch. (Actually, Cinco de Mayo had nothing to do with it - we just love Mexican.)

Lunch hit the spot and we headed back to Mike's to work on Dan's electrical. With several accessories previously wired direct to the battery, there were quite a few wires to keep track of and ensure that we got connected up correctly. We each tackled various aspects of the job but wiring never goes fast and it was late afternoon by the time we wrapped up everything (that we could do that day). That didn't leave much though - Dan just needed to drill a new hole in the mount and plug in all the fuses to be done.

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Our last order of business was a comparison of fuel trims between Mike and my truck. I'd been using a Kiwi3 OBDII scanner, and he'd been using a ScanGauge, and we wanted to see if they were relatively consistent readings across trucks or if they were "interpreting things differently." As it turned out, they read relatively consistently across trucks which meant (to us) that my P0171 code was resolved - the numbers I'd been reading for bank 1 were solid and well within spec, and the numbers labeled "bank 3" were likely not actually fuel trim numbers.

All-in-all, it was a great success and a fun day all around. And, of course, we're already planning our next get together... likely to involve timing belts, water pumps, and the like!

 

What was the skid mount reinforcement? Just more welds on that little strap in the back of the IFS instead of the sad two tack's it's got?

 

Yep, exactly. (Fixing the IFS Skid Mounts)