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

One towel in each intake runner. Eight towels total.



Half of the towel in the second row, second from the right is stuck in Cylinder 3.

 

ah yes the fuel soaked rag induction system, popular with pirates who won't surrender their matchlock pistols and russians about to overthrow parliamentary establishments

 

i know what will make you feel better about this
guy at work dropped his pocket screwdriver down in a cylinder when he was putting a head on.... didnt notice it. he sure did when he tried to start it!

 

Ouch.

What happened, guessing it blew a hole in the cylinder wall?

 

This is why we always bar the engine over by hand first!

 

destroyed the piston and the head. didnt hurt the cylinder the way it poked.

 

i work with some hacks.. seriously. i would never recommend people take their cars to the dealer unless you know the tech working on it..

i mean i make mistakes.. but im not careless. out of 18 of us theres only 3 id trust with my cars.

 

Okay, they are in, I am using a upgraded headlight harness so they run directly off of the battery and not through the stock harness. These are bright!
Here is the low beam on the street. It has more of a flood light look to it. I had one guy flash me because it was too bright for him.


This is the high beam, more focus and of course aimed higher.



Low beam on the garage door.



High beam on the garage door.



I will see how things go, if I piss too many people off I may have to hunt down another Hella housing since I broke one of mine.

 

Here is the link to the bulbs from Lasfit Auto Lighting, https://www.lasfit.com/collections/...eadlights-kits-high-low-beam-72w-7600lm-6000k
You can get the rectangular h4 housings from Octane Lighting on ebay and to be honest with you the headlamp harness I have had in my Taco has been there for about 15 years and I do not remember the brand name, but I am sure that you can locate one on ebay or Amazon.

 

Looks like you may need to adjust them down some. Hard to tell from photos, but there is a method to measure and adjust.

 

Berryman Chemtool Parts Cleaner followed up with Brake Parts Cleaner and parts brushes from Harbor Freight.

 

dammit, i know what you mean, but wow only three! that is not good news and its probably like that all across the country!
@Empty_Lord do you have an in-house body shop?

my truck has more or less been 100 per cent dealer maintained (minus batteries,tires, body shop work to nip a couple corrosive panel spots before getting worse, and an air filter I replaced myself once with genuine Toyota filter)
for the first 10 years (upto 2oo7 when the timing belt was done) I felt I was getting good trustworthy service at a good value with nothing more than preventative maintenance to keep it in tipTop condition.

Then in 2oo8 all the dealers here STOPPED the bundled maintenance packages (5k,15k,30k intervals) that I was accustomed to since 1995! Everything was nice,neat and orderly.
Now everything has been piecemeal services for a dozen years and very disorganised. do this now do this later, no longer need that Toyota says its lifetime part, yadayadayada...

now when i feel my truck is in most need of underbody de-weathering/climate maintenance to survive another 20yrs i feel that these dealer fcks could give a bloody ratzass about pointing me into the right and proper direction, and it is totally suckingshit and bewildering to the point i am losing hope and near to the point of giving up onit
this is not to mention a few services paid for that I feel have been halfassed and a broken engine part still dealing to get it rectified. plus one dealer had no friggn clue where my front turn signal was at?!? told me the plastic lens cover was broken but their parts dept. did not stock that so he wasn't sure how to fix it...

getting back to 'what have you done to your tacoma today'....
had my driver seat get picked up by the 'seat doctor' to see about fixing a couple of very pesky squeaks that developed over the past couple of months that made it very hazardous to drive safely
... first time I have ever had an unobstructed view of what's been going on under the seat over the past 2 decades
the strict 'no food, covered drinks only' policy has paid dividends, there were only a few very small brown spots on the carpet that I cleaned up with some Folex that @Luv my yota recommended as the best no-hassle spot remover
hopefully the 'seat doctor' will figure out what's going on, he said it didn't appear to be a frame problem and perhaps is only some aged dried foam cushioning

 

Dude the more I read and hear about that radiator.... I get some folks champ rad works fine. But certainly quite a bit more of those rads than would be considered normal are failed or borderline defective out of the box... That sucks man

 

Fuel rail and injector o-ring leak test results.

I got up this morning and found my Harbor Freight fuel pressure testing kit was missing. I think somebody borrowed it.
From past tests, I know the fuel supply car (Q45) delivers 55-60 PSI during the initial "pump on" cycle without running the engine. It was time to improvise because I didn't want to make a trip to HF and buy another for this test. I'm up doing this at 6 AM. So I used a fuel filter I have in the workshop to connect up the supply line to the Tacoma fuel line. This would normally be covered in the HF testing kit.

Note that I'm able to do this because the replacement engine came with a high-pressure fuel supply hose that had been cut during engine removal.

Don't try this at home without adult supervision.

5/16 Fuel injector hose hooked up to the output side of fuel supply car's fuel filter.



Fuel supply line hooked up to the Tacoma's rail while the fuel pump is on with the line pressurized. I let it sit for 30 minutes. No leaks!

I now feel comfortable going forward with these new injectors and rail setup.

Be very careful when releasing the supply hose. In my case, it was still holding the fuel under pressure.

 

I know I'm Denso extra fan boi but that's disappointing. I've run into a few times on different Yotas that the plugs are 'pre-gapped' and I had to gap them after measuring after installing. Now I always check them before install, I've found more than you'd expect need adjustment even new out of the box

 

Lmao just sounded funny 'lever to choose between feet or balls.' lolol

 

Got the driver seat back from the upholstery shop. Added 2" of high-density automotive foam under the molded foam cushion. Hopefully, this will keep me from having a "sinking feeling" in the driver seat. I'm looking for some seat covers that will work with these 60/40 seats.

 

i did not know you were also in process of getting a seat reconditioned too!

 

No body shop in ours. Not common around here anymore, there are good dealers out there with great techs. But not of these places are owned by bigger companies now just worried about $. Quality works don’t work fast enough to produce the cash they want. So hacks usually end up being kept.

 

I got them adjusted as low as they will go without the adjustment screws falling out and the driver headlamp is turned in to the max so it doesn't shine into oncoming traffic. The housings are from ebay, not the best. I'm going to put the Hella's back in.
I am becoming an expert at taking my grille off and on without breaking any clips!