What have you done to your Tacoma today? 1st Gen Edition

I know you have to lock them on the Duratec V6 when you remove a chain to do the waterpump or it'll snap em

 

just be grateful toyota makes some of the easiest to work on cars out of all the major car brands

 

Oh. guess what im doing when i get home from cali... my mothers ford flex timing chain and water pump..

 

Eh it's not that bad, at least both those engines make big power easily. You learn good skills working on them

 

i think the fiestas and focus use a belt still.. those are the ones you have to lock down

 

ps belt isnt bad.. the 3.4 is one of the harder starters too. but still beats the 4.7 starter under the intake manifold

 

That's becoming a common 90 degree engine trend, just fucking put the starter in the center under everything. Good news is you get fresh intake seals if you have to do that job, basically makes you do preventative maintenance haha

 

new 5.7 is where the 3.4 one is. have to remove the exhaust manifold though. you also have to take the starter out to reach the torque converter bolts. there is no inspection cover because of the sub pan on the engine

 

stubby ratcheting wrenchs. best investment ever

 

I see you got a few answers, maybe that will fix it, if not keep looking

 

I’m not talking about a truck under water.

All I’m saying is the newer Tacoma trucks have a ton of electrical components unlike
the older trucks. If you look at the newer trucks here on TW there are lots of people having electrical issues too even in small water crossings. It’s not something that the 1st gen people have to deal with ot think of.
Electrical issues can be nightmares because you have to have special equipment and schooling.

The ECU that was replaced on my brothers Tacoma had to be specific programmed for his specific truck.

My brother bought a new Tacoma in 2008, Then 3 years ago it started to have problems
with not starting. Sometimes would start sometimes would not. It got worse and would not start
after filling up with gas or at he store and after numerous tows home he was done.
Long story short the truck went to 3 different toyota
dealers and none of them could fix the truck.
It was tied into the immobilizer. Every electrical component of the system was replaced
from keys to antenna to computer including the main ECU. Truck was at 3 different dealers for over
3 months and was changed over 4000.00 and still the truck would start and then leave you
high and dry whenever it decided not to start. Toyota wanted to replace the entire wiring harness
of the truck next after charging 4000.00, hahah, that was thousands more to do,
Truck was out of warranty
He had to get rid of the truck and it had only 65,000 on the Tacoma.

All I’m saying is get a really good warranty as the new Tacoma trucks have a ton of electrical components

 

Only use OEM shower curtains. Everything else is junk.

 

So true. I just replaced the starter on my stick 3.4 a few weeks ago- took me 3 hours to try to get the bolts out, all the while I'm worrying I'm going to break them. 5 feet of extensions- yes, *5 feet of extensions* and an impact-grade swivel socket was required. I wrung off a 3/8 universal with my hand ratchet trying to get the bolts to break loose. Then, when I finally got the 3 bolts (one of which was the battery terminal) off, it took me another hour or so to figure out what had to be removed and exactly how the starter had to come out.

Contrast this to my S10, which has had a V8 shoehorned into it.... 15 minutes, the same number of bolts, and it drops right out the bottom. Done in an hour, half of which is cleanup.

 

What is a "sub pan"?

 

No thanks. I'll stick to the simple Toyota inline 4's and 6's.

 

And this kind of crap right here is why I don't buy new vehicles.
Ironically, I'm a computer network engineer, so I am definitely comfortable with the technology and such... but they're making vehicles needlessly complicated.

"Body control module"? PLEASE. What the hell is wrong with a few relays and some wire? There is no good reason to multiplex a signal onto one wire to control the blinkers and headlights.
A WLAN connection in the vehicle so it squawks what ails it whenever it sees a network? That's what an ALDL and a scanner is for.
a wired network of 5 CPUs handling brakes, airbag, throttle, engine management, lighting, etc? Ridiculous.
An "infotainment center" that when it breaks, disables the vehicle, or requires thousands of dollars to (maybe) address so your vehicle continues to get you to work? <begins spouting obscenities)

Seriously, there's entirely too many engineers involved in vehicle design and production now. This is a groundside conveyance, not an aircraft and certainly not a spacecraft. There is more processing power involved in an economy car now, than was required to do all the prelaunch calculations AND run all the systems (to include the triple redundancies) in the space shuttle. Some of this is inevetable- Moore's Law. But mostly it's a matter of overcomplication. The required CPU infrastructure (brakes, ECU, airbags) should have shrunk to the size of an altoids tin (housing ALL of the systems), instead they let Feature Bloat rule.

And don't even get me started on autodriving tech. That's just a horrible idea. The new BMW coming out in a few years will actually retract the steering wheel from the driver's position and drive you there completely autonomously. So who do you sue when (not if. WHEN) the system malfunctions and kills someone?

The average new car price for light vehicles in September was nearly $36K. 20 years ago, it was $20k. Yes inflation is a thing, but adjusted for today's currency valuation, that's still only $29K.

 

Also, wow. I am gone for a week or so and you guys are 163 pages ahead of me? Yeah, not gonna read all that. ;P

 

146 of them are people giving Tyler shit about not adjusting his own UCAs.

 

Oh, well carry on, and allow me to add to the din.

 

You can get to it from the wheel well with a long extension. Makes it super easy to loosen the adjuster.