What have you done to your tacoma today? 5lug edition

Finished rehabbing my new to me Snug Lid tonneau cover. Went from a beat up tonneau with rails and racks back to a nice slick top piece. Complete repaint, replaced most of the nuts and bolts, resprayed all the mounting rail with trim black and replaced all the gaskets and carpeting under the lid.

 

Rebuilt rear drum brakes… I remember how much I dislike drums. New shoes, springs, and drums today. I had a near miss though. I took wheels off to readjust the shoes and found a star key not seated properly on the shoe itself. Glad I checked my work.

 

Changed out the single horn to something a bit more substantial last night. Helps that it is color matched as well.

 

Getting her ready for a competition in November. Still lots to do...

 

What do you compete at?

 

Going to compete in the custom paint category. Small competition here on island. Was going to go for best truck but a buddy of mine is going to be in that category and we didn't want to compete against each other.

 

Tweaker wrecked my pickup and destroyed the mail box.

Finally decided to take the truck my garage Taco body shop. Not the best, but I'm happy with it..lol

Can't seem to load up the video, but you get the point.

 

What the wheel setup

 

Here's my DD with 342K miles and still going strong. Decided to add a 1" spacer to lower the rear a little. Not much of a difference, but it should offset the stagger of the tires. I'm running 225/45r17 up front and 245/45r17 in the back.



After:


Then I added 200# of gravel because it's winter time and snow surprises us occasionally. Unfortunately it looks a little squatted.

 

installed the sway aways in the rear and did some flexin on a access road the other day. just got some heavy duty leaf packs in too. says they are for 05-11 but i think theyll fit up to a 15, ill let you know forsure when i install em

 

I actually took the time to create a spreadsheet with a list of all the mods I want to do, links to the parts online, and estimated costs. Very insightful.

 

i installed the heavy duty leaf springs from general springs last week, drove 375 miles with no ladder rack, jsut tool box and some material, maybe 400lbs, def stiffer then the add a leaf but not unbearable, i put my ladder rack back on for additional weight and ive only taken it around the property/dirt roads so far but it feels much better. before the ladder rack if i just stood on the bumper the rear end wouldnt lower, now it drops under my weight with the ladder rack on. driving it down the mountain today ill see how well it handles the moutian highway. i did regain my factory rake before i had the ladder rack on, it looks almost level now, with maybe a little rake. (truck is parked on a hill slope in the pic)

inm

 

Installed a ball joint flip kit from SD yota.

 

HD leaf packs are the way, looks good. I tried an aal when my stock leaves failed at 80,000, helped for almost exactly 3 months but never really fixed the problem. Swapped in an HD pack with an extra leaf and now it rides like an actual truck. Same experience you describe, practically skipped on bumps unloaded but handles much better with my cap and tools in the back.

 

oh dude ive been driving it around loaded down lately (the f350 work truck is temporarily down) so ive really beat on this little truck lately and its been great so far. rides great

 

Finally got around to dropping the front end... I've got 1 inch blocks and 200# of gravel out back until I can bring it down too.

 

It's amazing how much of a difference it makes not having the rear sagging all over the place when you've got gear in the back. The stock leaves are a joke, put <half the trucks capacity in the back and look like a NC squat truck. I'm just mad I didn't swap them sooner.

 

just bought this 2004 5 lug. getting it picked up and delivered to me should be here monday. been sitting for a while and needs and little tlc but its a deluxe model with AC and less then 90k miles and has the total chaos long travel. looks like lower ball joint blow out with a diy fix though, same as the other set of LCAs i got. bummer msutve been a common occurance for the total chaos LCA

 

¿Quieres actualizar la cerradura de la puerta abierta?


https://a.aliexpress.com/_mLCizqb

 

¿Qué tallas para y?r bed iam has a 2003 tacoma 4 cyl 2.4l and im not see nothing to me