Battleship Jones: 2015 Tacoma DCLB Build Thread

[Adventurous]

At some point in the past I alluded to my rear spring hangers being a little tweaked, not a ton, just a little, but it was only going to get worse from there. In the past the common response was to remove the OEM shackle and go with a shackle flip, but, there are a lot of additional issues that happens when you go that route, some of which are easy to correct, some of which are far more difficult.

Within the past few years a couple of companies have started working on OEM replacements for the inverted shackle configuration. The two that I am most familiar with, Archive Garage and Bay Area Metal Fab both released theirs near the end of last year. Both are both bolt on, made with plate steel, come with OEM length replacement shackles, utilize poly bushings, and have zerk fittings on the shackles to keep everything happy. I chose to go with the BAMF version for no particular reason other than they were running a killer Black Friday sale at the time.

I won't get into removing process for removing the stock shackles and hangers, suffice to say I am glad I had the fab shop burn out the rivets with a plasma torch when I was having other work done. With those out of the way we can begin preparing the BAMF kit for installation. Here are a few side by side shots to show how robust the kit is compared to the OEM.

Hangers:

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

Shackles:

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

Goodbye squeaky creaky loaded rubber bushing!

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

With the stockers removed the 4 frame holes need to be reamed out a little to accommodate the 1/2" grade 8 hardware. Upsizing to 1/2" would be fine, I chose to go with 9/16" to allow for tolerances and misalignment. The frame was a little rusty and gritty, so I wire wheeled, primered, and gloss black enamel painted it. While waiting for the paint to dry, Mother Nature gifted me a bit of an impediment.

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

What was once a beautiful day first yielded a little rain, then some pea sized hail, then came the big fat snowflakes. Knowing I had to get it all back together so I could be at work Monday morning meant embracing the cold and the wet and working through it. Install is pretty easy, bolt shackle onto leaf spring, bolt hanger onto frame, bolt shackle into hanger. In my case, the bolt holes lined up well. All provided nuts are either nylock or have a split washer, bolts going through the shackle were greased to prevent seizure and blue loctited as well. Shackle and shackle hanger bolt were both torque to 89 ft*lbs per OEM spec, the 1/2" bolts were tightened until I felt like they would not come off easily.

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

Shackle angle at ride height:

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

Shackle angle at full droop (shocks till connected and limiting travel):

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

Leaf spring shape at ride height. Fairly flat but still have a little bit of arch to them and shouldn't go negative at bump.

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

There's a little port on the bottom which I'm not sure if the intent was to easy access to the grease nipple or for drainage, but if the former, it's a little tough and would likely require a flexible needle tip or a 45* or 90* zerk fitting. This was one of the identified weaknesses with the kit.

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

The second, and it may be unfair to blame this on BAMF, is the bit of interference I get between the shackle and the end of one of my leafs on the Dakar pack. This could be the result of multiple factors, but for reference I have the Dakar pack plus the D29XL add-a-leaf, with all leaves drilled for isolator pads. It adds a bit of height between pads (probably wouldn't contact if the isolators weren't spacing things out, or if I wasn't using an add-a-leaf) but would probably be okay if the Dakar pack wasn't so shifty and stayed centered. The contact only occurs on compression and I would imagine will self clearance at some point if I don't decide to knock the corner of the offending leaf before then.

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

The last areas of improvement are the hardware (upper shackle bolt on mine is longer than ideal, as was the lower bolt) and the captive nut used on the hanger side of the lower bolt. I would have preferred a recess in the back of the hanger and a nut on the back side in case things were to get buggered up somehow. On the plus side, I like that you can add on an additional cross member between the two shackles to help prevent flexing or movement which should also have the upside of stiffening up the rear end a smidge.

How do they ride? Great! There is a difference, albeit slight, on small bump compliance. They also got rid of a large amount of the creaking and groaning I would get from the rear end during normal driving which I attribute to replacing the loaded rubber bushing with a greased poly one. I have noticed a clunk on compression that can be traced to the interference noted above, but that should go away if I modify the leaf, convince the Dakar pack not to move around so much, or knock the corners off of the offending leaf spring.

I've seen reports of a few of the kits, of which these are the first bunch, having a few issues but none with mine. I don't have any time on the Archive kit or any others so no compare and contrast can be provided there. We'll see how they perform long term, but initial impression is that I received a solid, well built replacement hanger.

 

[Adventurous]

Through the first full tank with 4.88s; returned ~15 MPG which is about 2 MPG less than with 3.73s. That’s 100% city driving (with some warming up in there) and I assume MPGs might go up a wee bit once the gears are fully bedded in. Got about 400 miles on them so far and will be performing the first oil change and heading off to Moab!

 

[WickedSharp]

Surprised. 15mpg doesn’t sound bad to me

 

[Adventurous]

Surprised. 15mpg doesn’t sound bad to me

It's not the full size MPGs that get me, more the lack of range you get at 15 MPG due to the 21 gallon gas tank. I wish there was the option for a 38 gallon tank like the Tundra so we had a 500 mile range.

 

[Adventurous]

As I put the finishing touches on preparing the truck for Moab (MTB trip, mebbe a little truck stuff in there, mebbe not), I have a few small updates.

First, I hit the 500 mile mark this past weekend that signifies the end of my new gear break-in and an oil change was warranted. I was pleasantly surprised at the color of the oil, it had definitely been used but was not as black as I might have expected.

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

Plug had collected a lot of small particulate, but outside of a single larger piece (grain of sand size) piece of metal everything was clean. Similar story on the front, although it was all small particulate up there. Changed out the fluid with Lucas non-synthetic 85W-140 per ECGS recommendation. Now I can actually see how much of an improvement on the ride these gears have!

Been putting this one off for a while, but on several trips when it rained I noticed water dripping into the shell through the bolt holes that hold the topper tracks down. It was quite dirty under there!

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

The factory waterproofing consists of a rubber gasket that snaps into the bottom of the aluminum rail, a thin strip of paper tape covering the bolt holes, and a small dab of some sealant underneath the bolt heads. Over time it lost its effectiveness, the sealant was dry, crumbly, and most definitely leaked as evidenced by rust circles on the washers inside at all 10 locations.

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

I cleaned it all up and put down a strip of butyl tape along the length of the track covering all of the bolt holes. Thicker than the OEM stuff, but when warm it squeezes out and remains pliable for a long, long time. This was one of those jobs that I don't want to repeat, so I made sure to get sealed up nice and good.

Bolts were replaced with stainless M5 x 0.8 x 30mm and nylock nuts on the inside; as nice as the plastic caps they have look, trying to get things tight with that nut surround is a giant PITA. Bolts and holes received a generous application of black RTV adhesive sealant before being installed.

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

I made sure there was 360 degree squeeze out around the bolt head then put some more RTV on top. May not be pretty, but a) nobody is seeing this and b) did I mention I don't want this to leak?

Lastly, the backseat platform (https://www.expeditionportal.com/fo...dclb-build-thread.132721/page-24#post-2081771) needed a little bit of love. After using it for 1.5 years in the current incarnation, I noticed a couple of things that needed improvement. The first was that the aluminum edge trim wasn't well adhered in spots and was lifting. I corrected this by drilling countersunk holes every ~6" and screwing it down with some flathead torx screws. Now it won't go anywhere.

The second improvement, and this was the biggie, was that the polyurethane surface was just too fragile and slippery. Poor doggos would slide around back there and their nails started to gouge up the surface. I searched high and low for something more durable and less slippery and landed on Herculiner. While I would have loved to retain a clear finish to show off the wood, something akin to a sanded polyurethane, I scrapped that idea and just went with bedliner. I chose Herculiner due to rubber chunks in the paint that lend additional grip, the majority of the other bedliners are textured but the surface may not necessarily be "grippy". Anyway, after a ******** ton of sanding with the random orbit sander I managed to remove all of the poly. The platform was wiped down with Xylenol per Herculiners recommendation and all of the little nooks and crannies were taped off with painters tape.

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

First coat went on pretty easily, Herculiner's recommendation is to use the included brush to dab the bedliner into the corners and I employed this method to ensure that the aluminum-wood interface got adequate coverage. In retrospect I would have skipped this and just hit it with the roller, the dab technique deposited a thicker layer of bedliner along the edges that didn't smooth out quite as I was hoping. Anyway, the first coat laid down nicely and was mostly full coverage, but there were a few voids that would get covered with coat #2.

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

Herculiner dries through a combination of humidity and heat, in my case, it was in the 40s when I laid this down but decently humid (at least for CO). I waited ~12 hours before laying down coat #2 due to this, coat #1 was still a bit tacky at that point but didn't leave any residue when I would touch it. Coat #2 went down a little bit thicker and full coverage was achieved. I used the included rollers and came away with this texture.

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

It's certainly abrasive, but hopefully the lack of skidding won't make that a problem. I peeled the tape off right after the second coat was applied which left clean lines and no embedded tape. I gave it 3 full days of drying time in the garage before getting in there to touch up the recesses where the bolts and tracks live.

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

With that done I polished the aluminum edging up and got it back into the truck. It blends nicely with the aluminum back wall panel and makes the back seat area look more complete. Long term I'm curious to see how the bedliner holds up in this application, one thing's for sure though, it's gonna collect all of my dogs white hair. All of it.

Untitled by Tim Souza, on Flickr

 

[Adventurous]

Nice job with the Herculiner. I used it on an earlier project, but was never able to get the texture you did. Mine was way rougher with considerably larger chunks, but I also did the job in the cold "winter" months, on my balcony, and I suspect those conditions negatively contributed to the process.

Home Depot sells rolls of thin rubber material (2mm and 3mm thickness) which is fantastic for dog areas. It is very grippy, but is also incredibly easy to vacuum and even wipe down with a wet paper towel. I've got that sitting in the dog's crate (which is on a nearly identical storage platform in the rear) and it's a breeze to clean up.

No kidding. I searched high and low for a thin rubber like for a while to no avail. All I could track down was diamond tread rubber that was a bajillion dollars for a shipping containers worth. I'll have to file that away in the mental bank for later.

 

[Watt maker]

I definitely need to do gears on both my 4runners. Debating 4.56 or 4.88 since we do drive on the highway a lot.

 

[Adventurous]

I definitely need to do gears on both my 4runners. Debating 4.56 or 4.88 since we do drive on the highway a lot.

For reference, 4.88s and 255/85s spin ~2,500 rpm at 65 mph. That was good for 16 mpg in my truck loaded with 2 adults, 5 days worth of camping gear, and 2 bikes off the back. So not the best, not the worst, better than the 13 mpg I got heading up I70 towards the Eisenhower tunnel into a 40 mph head wind. That was brutal.

 

[Adventurous]

Well, back from 4 solid days in Moab. Outside of bombing up and down Sand Flats Road and the road to the Klondike Bluffs trailhead, there was very little truck play; it was all about the MTB (preferred mode of offroad transport).

Things to report:
1. ABS & traction control light came on randomly after filling up at a gas station. Disappeared a 300 or so miles and 2 fill-ups later. Stayed off for a few days before returning on the drive home, right before we hit heavy rain and heavy snow traversing Vail pass. Thoughts? I didn't fiddle with anything before it came on, so I'm thinking it's a failed or fouled wheel speed sensor. OBDII scan showed no fault codes, but I don't think that kind of fault, nevermind which wheel it occurred at, can be accessed through the OBDII.
2. Have a weird clunk going on around turns, both left and right, almost as if the steering rack bushings are loose and the rack is shifting back and forth. Didn't have this pre-gear swap, but can't see how swapping a diff would cause this.
3. Dometic fridge = nice, but power hungry. Had the freezer section set on -5C, the voltage cutoff at the medium range, and even with the insulating cover could only get 1/2 to 3/4 of a days worth of cooling power without having to fire up the truck. Was a bit surprising considering I heard people talk about ARB coolers lasting days under 90* heat without having to start the vehicle. Guess that dual battery setup will come in handy...
4. Kings reigned supreme on the dirt roads. Ate up the washboard, floated over the embedded rocks, and didn't jostle us around too much, even when set up a little stiffer to compensate for being loaded down. Definitely more comfortable than any of my prior setups and allowed me to go faster through the same stuffs with little feedback. Also felt good for the little bit of Fins n' Things I found myself on, and I'm sure they would have felt even more stellar if the tires were aired down.
5. Monitored transmission temps to establish a baseline prior to the new cooler installation. Fully loaded, I peaked at 217* heading uphill at highway speeds in 50* temps. So it gets pretty toasty even without a trailer back there.

Too busy having fun to take many pictures, but this was my favorite from the trip. The 1 sunset we got from the top of the rock spine above our campsite looking out over the first section of Fins n' Things.

DSC_3904 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

 

[Watt maker]

Well, back from 4 solid days in Moab. Outside of bombing up and down Sand Flats Road and the road to the Klondike Bluffs trailhead, there was very little truck play; it was all about the MTB (preferred mode of offroad transport).

Things to report:
1. ABS & traction control light came on randomly after filling up at a gas station. Disappeared a 300 or so miles and 2 fill-ups later. Stayed off for a few days before returning on the drive home, right before we hit heavy rain and heavy snow traversing Vail pass. Thoughts? I didn't fiddle with anything before it came on, so I'm thinking it's a failed or fouled wheel speed sensor. OBDII scan showed no fault codes, but I don't think that kind of fault, nevermind which wheel it occurred at, can be accessed through the OBDII.
2. Have a weird clunk going on around turns, both left and right, almost as if the steering rack bushings are loose and the rack is shifting back and forth. Didn't have this pre-gear swap, but can't see how swapping a diff would cause this.
3. Dometic fridge = nice, but power hungry. Had the freezer section set on -5C, the voltage cutoff at the medium range, and even with the insulating cover could only get 1/2 to 3/4 of a days worth of cooling power without having to fire up the truck. Was a bit surprising considering I heard people talk about ARB coolers lasting days under 90* heat without having to start the vehicle. Guess that dual battery setup will come in handy...
4. Kings reigned supreme on the dirt roads. Ate up the washboard, floated over the embedded rocks, and didn't jostle us around too much, even when set up a little stiffer to compensate for being loaded down. Definitely more comfortable than any of my prior setups and allowed me to go faster through the same stuffs with little feedback. Also felt good for the little bit of Fins n' Things I found myself on, and I'm sure they would have felt even more stellar if the tires were aired down.

Too busy having fun to take many pictures, but this was my favorite from the trip. The 1 sunset we got from the top of the rock spine above our campsite looking out over the first section of Fins n' Things.

DSC_3904 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

You should be able to see the ABS code through TIS. If you don’t have it, find someone that does. I’m guessing a bad wheel sensor or intermittent short on one of the wires. They seem to be the most fragile wires on the entire vehicle. As for the pop, I would double check the LCA cam bolts. The ones on my 4th gen 4runner back off over time, especially if I’m off-roading. I actually have to torque them down about 20 ft/lbs over spec to get them to hold longer.

 

[Adventurous]

You should be able to see the ABS code through TIS. If you don’t have it, find someone that does. I’m guessing a bad wheel sensor or intermittent short on one of the wires. They seem to be the most fragile wires on the entire vehicle. As for the pop, I would double check the LCA cam bolts. The ones on my 4th gen 4runner back off over time, especially if I’m off-roading. I actually have to torque them down about 20 ft/lbs over spec to get them to hold longer.

Perhaps I'll give those LCA bolts a little bit extra then. I made sure to torque them to spec after the most recent alignment, but the noise is still there. Crawled under the vehicle and put a torque wrench on every bolt I could reach, but all were within spec and paint marks show they hadn't shifted at all. A bit perplexing, but I suppose the noise only seems like it's coming from the front, which we all know means it could just be transferring up through the frame from damn near anywhere.

 

[Adventurous]

Ruh roh, trouble in paradise. Went and test drove a F350 Powerstroke and 3500 Cummins this evening. Been doing a bit of self reflection this past week and wondering if we are better served going on an extended road trip in a larger truck with a slide-in camper instead of the Tacoma towing a built out cargo trailer...

 

[tjalward]

That is a big decision. Good luck with it! Arguments to be made both ways I suppose.

 

[Scott B.]

Ruh roh, trouble in paradise. Went and test drove a F350 Powerstroke and 3500 Cummins this evening. Been doing a bit of self reflection this past week and wondering if we are better served going on an extended road trip in a larger truck with a slide-in camper instead of the Tacoma towing a built out cargo trailer...

That's a totally different ball game!

I will say I have been down roads, both paved and dirt, that an F350 with slide-in camper would not fit on.

Think about where you want to go, and where the majority of your driving will be. There is no "right" answer!

Good luck!

 

[Watt maker]

I can see why you would want to move that direction but I don't think I'd want to own a newer gen diesel, especially for back country exploring. Just so much to go wrong with them and leave you stranded. A buddy of mine was stranded on a dirt road with his 5th wheel trailer when his duramax decided to fry a sensor. Crazy thing was, GM would not tow him out of there. He had to have someone else tow him to a paved road and unhook the 5th wheel before the GM tow truck would hook up to it. I could see moving up to a 3/4 or 1 ton truck but I'd probably stick with gas.