SOAZ
Tim and Kelsey get lost..
Max,
he sold the truck a while back. The truck is owned and is now for sale by TrailMonkey (James) in the classifieds here. 255/85/16's are on it still.
Tim
Expeditions West 2004 Tacoma
- Thread starter Scott Brady
- Start date
Max,
he sold the truck a while back. The truck is owned and is now for sale by TrailMonkey (James) in the classifieds here. 255/85/16's are on it still.
Tim
Scott Brady
Founder
I did go with a 295/75 R16 for the Arctic trip and the Rubicon trail. I was happy with the performance, and that is about as big as I felt comfortable running with the 7.5" front differential.
I replaced the Tacoma with a Jeep Wrangler with an EarthRoamer conversion for the longer trips.
Interesting though, the Tacoma is back in Arizona, and parked at our shop for some post Central America work. It is fun to have it around again!
RSB
Adventurer
Scott, absolutely loved this truck. Thank-you for sharing your build to help inspire the design to my Tacoma! It has no doubt saved me years of trial and error experience off-road. Your attention to detail is superb. Thank-you. Maybe one day I can grow-up and get an EarthRoamer too! :sombrero:
mhiscox
Expedition Leader
What’s happened in the last 18 months . . .
I was getting ready to post up Scott Brady’s former Expedition’s West Tacoma for sale, and I realized that I’d let down the side by not posting any build thread on the modifications I’ve made to the truck since buying it a year and a half ago from Trail Monkey (James Roy).
There’s nothing too exciting been done, since the truck was already in pretty good shape and was outstandingly equipped. What’s more, the fabrication work James had done on the roof rack, bed setup and rear swingout was so beautiful and well-conceived, no one would think of messing with the overall setup. The modifications I did, many with the help of James Lombardo, were therefore more along the line of fine tuning than major changes.
Probably the gutsiest change was to replace the Expo-favored 255/85x16 BFG Mud Terrains that Scott and James swore by with 285/75x16 Hankook Dynapro ATM All Terrains. I live in a wet climate and the skinny mud terrains didn’t provide enough on-pavement handling to make me feel confident. I’d had Hankooks when I had the AdventureDuo’s Series 80 Landcruiser and liked them a lot, and the Dynapro ATMs have gotten excellent reviews in the off-road magazines and in the on-line review forums. So I ponied up to make the change and it’s been a great improvement. There’s more than adequate traction off-pavement and really great handling on a road. They’re quiet and comfortable, too. I think that he tire change, along with replacing or rebuilding all the worn suspension and steering parts, has turned this into about the best highway cruiser you could have on a truck with this much off-road capability. It’s outstanding at 70 mph on a curvy road and perfectly safe in the rain and snow. And they look pretty good on the truck as well. Highly recommended.
The fuel gauge for the auxiliary tank was originally just six LED lights, so there was never much precision. At the same time, I had problems with Scott’s red Cyberdyne A-pillar gauges being distractingly bright. So I switched out the original lower voltage gauge for an Autometer full-range fuel gauge that adapts to any sender resistance and lets you custom set the full and empty points. This works great, giving as good an indication of the amount in the aux tank as the factory gauge gives for the stock tank. And I put a standard fuel transfer pump switch into the same area, and then added a matching switch for the HID driving lights.
At the same time, I added a Xantrex Link Lite battery monitor as the second A-pillar gauge. The Link Lite displays voltage, charge and discharge amps and the remaining battery capacity. Also helpful is that it shows the amp hours consumed over a period and shows the remaining battery capacity. And it’ll also monitor a second battery, so you can see the camping battery and the chassis battery on the same display. It’s very easy to use and to read the LED figures. It is admittedly somewhat redundant with the LED readout from the National Luna display I have mounted down by the transfer case lever, but that display is hard to read, especially in sunlight, and the Link Lite digital readout is more precise and it’s easier to switch display modes.
I swapped out the Roadless Gear cockpit winch controller for an Outback Hardware winch controller identical to the one I liked so well in my XV-JP. At the same time, since the Cyberdyne gauges by the glovebox annoyed the passenger at night (in the same way the A-pillar gauges bothered the driver), so a switch was added to turn them off.
When I got the truck, the view out the rear (blocked by the RTT) was through a display on the A/V head end low in the dash and you had to switch back to it every time you did something to the audio. I wanted to add a full-time display in an easier-to-see location, so a Total Vision monitor was hooked up to the rear camera input and mounted below the 2-meter radio.
At the same time, I changed over to a fancy JVC 7 inch widescreen KW-AVX720 DVD/SAT/CD/AM/FM/USB/AV head end receiver that was flush-mounted into the factory double DIN space. I added the iPod/USB input cable and the XM Direct tuner. You can also add a CD changer and, interestingly, it also has an available camera input, which means that you could have, with the full-time TotalVision monitor, two camera views available full time.
The new head end was sufficiently worthy that I also added some reasonably high end Infinity speakers--a door-mount woofer/tweeter/crossover system for the front and full-range door mount speakers in the rear. Nothing to see here, though, since it all fits behind the stock SR5 speaker grills.
I may be the only person still big on coco mats (the floor covering of choice for old British sports cars), but I think they’re brilliant. Obviously carpets have offroading shortcomings, but I’ve also not been happy with the average fix of putting in dished rubber liners. They make a big deal of how the liners hold the water and, yep, that’s what they do, so the dirt and water sits there for you to stick your feet into. The coco mats are absorbent enough to suck up the water and thick enough to keep it from getting to the carpet. Similarly, the dirt mostly falls down between the fibers; in fact, you can clean your boots reasonably well by wiping them on the mats, which you can’t do on the rubber liners. Well, enough editorial . . . suffice to say I got a set for the Taco.
When I had the AdvDuo’s Cruiser, I loved the African Outback drawers and so I wanted drawers in my bed. However, with the Engle back there using up the driver’s side and the water tank limiting the bed depth, no stock drawers would fit right. So I made a set out of fiberglass tubs, undermount drawer slides and Baltic birch plywood. I used Kreg pocket joinery and glue to put it together, so it’s particularly solid. Also particularly heavy as it turned out, so I ended up cutting out big holes on the sides and top, which made it lighter without having any effect on its sturdiness. The drawers rest on a bed base I made from plywood covered with carpet, so you can remove the drawers by unscrewing them from the base. I only used up half the available bed width with the drawers, as there were still a lot of things to go into the bed that weren’t good candidates for going in the tub. The drawers mostly hold cooking gear, food and personal stuff. Each drawer’s slides can hold 70 pounds.
The only other significant change was replacing the “seen better days” Eezi-Awn mattress with a “luxury series” Therm-a-Rest self-inflating pad. Initially, the pad was just going to be used until I got a new mattress ordered, but it turned out to be a better approach for me. The Eezi-Awn 1200 is 48” wide, so it sleeps two only if they are real friendly, pretty small or preferably both. That didn’t apply; I sleep alone up there. It turns out that when sleeping on the 30 inch wide pad, it became obvious that it was a big advantage to have better than a foot of solid wood floor space to the side. It gives a solid place to set a lantern, tent heater, fan, bottles, cookstove, whatever, as opposed to having to set things on the wobbly surface of the full width mattress. And it’s also easy to just flip the pad on its side along the edge of the tent and have virtually the whole four feet of solid width available. The best use I found to make of this space was that you can sit in a chair (a reasonably low chair) inside the tent, which was nice when you wanted to read or work on a laptop.
An ax and shovel got added to the swingout, and I put a Boomerang Joey Pack on the spare to store hoses and cables and some other stuff. I then promptly made it hard to get to by putting a Trasharoo over it. No great loss, however, since the ‘Roo stores ten times as much and is very useful for things you want to get to quickly.
James had a cool setup for the roof rack whereby he could put four Pelican 1550 cases on the roof rack in a 2x2 grid and then lock them solid. I neither had four Pelican cases nor that much organization, so I found it better to mount a single big container into which I could put sleeping bags, tents, foul-weather gear, pads, chairs, etc. I picked the Thule Ranger 90. It has a nifty mounting system that makes it easy to attach securely to the grid of the roof rack; you can take it on or off in about two minutes. I intentionally mounted it off-center to the driver’s side so there is space on the passenger’s side of the rack to put long stuff like a canopy.
There were a few other fixes. Yet another Optima battery went bad, so I replaced it with an Odyssey. I had the driveshaft redone to eliminate a slight ticking noise heard when accelerating from a stop. Mounted a ScanGauge on the console on a RAM mount. Used another RAM mount to put the Motorola street nav on the dash. Had the suspension and steering components that were worn replaced. Looped a grab handle around the front passenger’s headrest, making it easier for shorter people to get into the back seat. Et cetera.
All in all, not much compared to the effort Scott and his colleagues put into designing and building the truck in the first place, nor to the incredible upgrading James did with his roof rack, bed mods, and rear tire/bumper fabrication. But at least all the modifications I made have turned out to be improvements, however slight, and the truck is in really top specification now. I’ll be sorry to see it go if someone buys it, but it really deserves to be with an overlander who will make better use of it; more like Scott and James did than I have.
I was getting ready to post up Scott Brady’s former Expedition’s West Tacoma for sale, and I realized that I’d let down the side by not posting any build thread on the modifications I’ve made to the truck since buying it a year and a half ago from Trail Monkey (James Roy).
There’s nothing too exciting been done, since the truck was already in pretty good shape and was outstandingly equipped. What’s more, the fabrication work James had done on the roof rack, bed setup and rear swingout was so beautiful and well-conceived, no one would think of messing with the overall setup. The modifications I did, many with the help of James Lombardo, were therefore more along the line of fine tuning than major changes.
Probably the gutsiest change was to replace the Expo-favored 255/85x16 BFG Mud Terrains that Scott and James swore by with 285/75x16 Hankook Dynapro ATM All Terrains. I live in a wet climate and the skinny mud terrains didn’t provide enough on-pavement handling to make me feel confident. I’d had Hankooks when I had the AdventureDuo’s Series 80 Landcruiser and liked them a lot, and the Dynapro ATMs have gotten excellent reviews in the off-road magazines and in the on-line review forums. So I ponied up to make the change and it’s been a great improvement. There’s more than adequate traction off-pavement and really great handling on a road. They’re quiet and comfortable, too. I think that he tire change, along with replacing or rebuilding all the worn suspension and steering parts, has turned this into about the best highway cruiser you could have on a truck with this much off-road capability. It’s outstanding at 70 mph on a curvy road and perfectly safe in the rain and snow. And they look pretty good on the truck as well. Highly recommended.
The fuel gauge for the auxiliary tank was originally just six LED lights, so there was never much precision. At the same time, I had problems with Scott’s red Cyberdyne A-pillar gauges being distractingly bright. So I switched out the original lower voltage gauge for an Autometer full-range fuel gauge that adapts to any sender resistance and lets you custom set the full and empty points. This works great, giving as good an indication of the amount in the aux tank as the factory gauge gives for the stock tank. And I put a standard fuel transfer pump switch into the same area, and then added a matching switch for the HID driving lights.
At the same time, I added a Xantrex Link Lite battery monitor as the second A-pillar gauge. The Link Lite displays voltage, charge and discharge amps and the remaining battery capacity. Also helpful is that it shows the amp hours consumed over a period and shows the remaining battery capacity. And it’ll also monitor a second battery, so you can see the camping battery and the chassis battery on the same display. It’s very easy to use and to read the LED figures. It is admittedly somewhat redundant with the LED readout from the National Luna display I have mounted down by the transfer case lever, but that display is hard to read, especially in sunlight, and the Link Lite digital readout is more precise and it’s easier to switch display modes.
I swapped out the Roadless Gear cockpit winch controller for an Outback Hardware winch controller identical to the one I liked so well in my XV-JP. At the same time, since the Cyberdyne gauges by the glovebox annoyed the passenger at night (in the same way the A-pillar gauges bothered the driver), so a switch was added to turn them off.
When I got the truck, the view out the rear (blocked by the RTT) was through a display on the A/V head end low in the dash and you had to switch back to it every time you did something to the audio. I wanted to add a full-time display in an easier-to-see location, so a Total Vision monitor was hooked up to the rear camera input and mounted below the 2-meter radio.
At the same time, I changed over to a fancy JVC 7 inch widescreen KW-AVX720 DVD/SAT/CD/AM/FM/USB/AV head end receiver that was flush-mounted into the factory double DIN space. I added the iPod/USB input cable and the XM Direct tuner. You can also add a CD changer and, interestingly, it also has an available camera input, which means that you could have, with the full-time TotalVision monitor, two camera views available full time.
The new head end was sufficiently worthy that I also added some reasonably high end Infinity speakers--a door-mount woofer/tweeter/crossover system for the front and full-range door mount speakers in the rear. Nothing to see here, though, since it all fits behind the stock SR5 speaker grills.
I may be the only person still big on coco mats (the floor covering of choice for old British sports cars), but I think they’re brilliant. Obviously carpets have offroading shortcomings, but I’ve also not been happy with the average fix of putting in dished rubber liners. They make a big deal of how the liners hold the water and, yep, that’s what they do, so the dirt and water sits there for you to stick your feet into. The coco mats are absorbent enough to suck up the water and thick enough to keep it from getting to the carpet. Similarly, the dirt mostly falls down between the fibers; in fact, you can clean your boots reasonably well by wiping them on the mats, which you can’t do on the rubber liners. Well, enough editorial . . . suffice to say I got a set for the Taco.
When I had the AdvDuo’s Cruiser, I loved the African Outback drawers and so I wanted drawers in my bed. However, with the Engle back there using up the driver’s side and the water tank limiting the bed depth, no stock drawers would fit right. So I made a set out of fiberglass tubs, undermount drawer slides and Baltic birch plywood. I used Kreg pocket joinery and glue to put it together, so it’s particularly solid. Also particularly heavy as it turned out, so I ended up cutting out big holes on the sides and top, which made it lighter without having any effect on its sturdiness. The drawers rest on a bed base I made from plywood covered with carpet, so you can remove the drawers by unscrewing them from the base. I only used up half the available bed width with the drawers, as there were still a lot of things to go into the bed that weren’t good candidates for going in the tub. The drawers mostly hold cooking gear, food and personal stuff. Each drawer’s slides can hold 70 pounds.
The only other significant change was replacing the “seen better days” Eezi-Awn mattress with a “luxury series” Therm-a-Rest self-inflating pad. Initially, the pad was just going to be used until I got a new mattress ordered, but it turned out to be a better approach for me. The Eezi-Awn 1200 is 48” wide, so it sleeps two only if they are real friendly, pretty small or preferably both. That didn’t apply; I sleep alone up there. It turns out that when sleeping on the 30 inch wide pad, it became obvious that it was a big advantage to have better than a foot of solid wood floor space to the side. It gives a solid place to set a lantern, tent heater, fan, bottles, cookstove, whatever, as opposed to having to set things on the wobbly surface of the full width mattress. And it’s also easy to just flip the pad on its side along the edge of the tent and have virtually the whole four feet of solid width available. The best use I found to make of this space was that you can sit in a chair (a reasonably low chair) inside the tent, which was nice when you wanted to read or work on a laptop.
An ax and shovel got added to the swingout, and I put a Boomerang Joey Pack on the spare to store hoses and cables and some other stuff. I then promptly made it hard to get to by putting a Trasharoo over it. No great loss, however, since the ‘Roo stores ten times as much and is very useful for things you want to get to quickly.
James had a cool setup for the roof rack whereby he could put four Pelican 1550 cases on the roof rack in a 2x2 grid and then lock them solid. I neither had four Pelican cases nor that much organization, so I found it better to mount a single big container into which I could put sleeping bags, tents, foul-weather gear, pads, chairs, etc. I picked the Thule Ranger 90. It has a nifty mounting system that makes it easy to attach securely to the grid of the roof rack; you can take it on or off in about two minutes. I intentionally mounted it off-center to the driver’s side so there is space on the passenger’s side of the rack to put long stuff like a canopy.
There were a few other fixes. Yet another Optima battery went bad, so I replaced it with an Odyssey. I had the driveshaft redone to eliminate a slight ticking noise heard when accelerating from a stop. Mounted a ScanGauge on the console on a RAM mount. Used another RAM mount to put the Motorola street nav on the dash. Had the suspension and steering components that were worn replaced. Looped a grab handle around the front passenger’s headrest, making it easier for shorter people to get into the back seat. Et cetera.
All in all, not much compared to the effort Scott and his colleagues put into designing and building the truck in the first place, nor to the incredible upgrading James did with his roof rack, bed mods, and rear tire/bumper fabrication. But at least all the modifications I made have turned out to be improvements, however slight, and the truck is in really top specification now. I’ll be sorry to see it go if someone buys it, but it really deserves to be with an overlander who will make better use of it; more like Scott and James did than I have.
Scott Brady
Founder
Love the adjustments Mike and thanks for taking the time to fill us all in. It has been such a great truck
I dig the new guage!
I dig the new guage!
mhiscox
Expedition Leader
It is a great truck, Scott, and you and the other guys who helped out in the early days deserve most all the credit. In particular, the decision to use the 5.29 gears and the configuration of the suspension are two design decisions you made that turned out perfect. I can't imagine any truck could be better off-road while still working so well on pavement.
:bowdown:
adventureduo
Dave Druck [KI6LBB]
The changes Mike and James made to the Taco are nice. I had a chance to drive it a few weeks ago in the Sierras and it's as good as new in my eyes. Everything on the rig is either new, or has been swapped out for beefier/better components. It also pulled our SoCal Teardrop really well with the v6.
mhiscox
Expedition Leader
Yeah, but we still couldn't get him to give up his Landcruiser for it. :sombrero:
washington taco
Explorer
What is the total milage on the truck now and what did you do to refurbish the suspension/steering? I have 270,000 and I am about to start this process myself. WOW 5.29 gears! I was thinking 4.88s were going to be low for 315/70/17. Mine is a DD as well.
thejafe
Adventurer
Back from the dead!
Scott, I don't know if this has been brought up somewhere in this thread BUT... I was just looking into Tacoma wheel/tire/gearing setups and I see that the 255/85 R16's are an E rated tire. Meanwhile, the 33x10.50's are C rated. Wouldn't the 33x10.50's offer an improved ride over the heavier, taller 255/85 R16 tire? Or do the load ratings not make much of a difference?
I'm looking into potentially running a 265/75R16 BFG All Terrain on a future Tacoma setup but the E rating of the tire concerns me.
Scott, I don't know if this has been brought up somewhere in this thread BUT... I was just looking into Tacoma wheel/tire/gearing setups and I see that the 255/85 R16's are an E rated tire. Meanwhile, the 33x10.50's are C rated. Wouldn't the 33x10.50's offer an improved ride over the heavier, taller 255/85 R16 tire? Or do the load ratings not make much of a difference?
I'm looking into potentially running a 265/75R16 BFG All Terrain on a future Tacoma setup but the E rating of the tire concerns me.
Thejafe - I opted for 'c' rated tires. I ran 'e' on my landrover, but even laden with gear the 'c' is more than sufficient. I do have a neighbor with the 10 ply 'e' tires on his new gen 5 4runner and even when aired down he doesn't have great tire flex. He is working with discount tire right now to exchange tires to a 'c' rated tire.