2000 Extended Cab Tacoma, mild, long-term overland build

[mbrewer]

Well... sometimes we screw up.

I attempted to install the lift, and got the front installed, and when I moved to the rear the springs wouldn't come off. So I had to put the rear back together and crank the front down for now. Since we're about to hit the road Angie (my girlfriend) just sold her car to her parents and started commuting in my rig. Yesterday as she was getting off the freeway the truck started wobbling, and as she pulled over the wheel fell off, along with the brake drum. Weeeellll ****. She called a tow-truck, and they hammered the disk that protects the drum back to shape so the truck would drive (took two visits actually... thanks to my friend for loaning me her truck today so we could pick mine up).

The moral of the story is always double-check your lugnuts after dropping the rig... I was in a hurry and apparently forgot. VERY glad Angie was okay. Tow + banging the part out + actually replacing the part shouldn't be too bad.

Angie's uncle (who's a mechanic) also took a look at the truck (just a couple days before the wheel fell off actually) and said the tires were too rotted, the belts were shot, and the lower radiator hose needed replacement. He recommended PB blaster to get the springs off. So we've got our weekend's work cut out for us. My 33x10.5R15 BFG KO2s just arrived from amazon. They weren't my first choice. I had BFG KOs and they were good, except for tracked badly on highways with dents from big trucks... but I really wanted that size, and they're definitely a solid option. I'll have those balanced and installed professionally of course, along with new valve stems, and an alignment once the lift is fully installed.

We've got 2 weekends left before we're supposed to hit the road. We are going to swing by my parent's place in a couple weeks though, so if the rig isn't perfect yet we can get it patched up then.

Angie has the truck right now, so no pictures of the damage or suspension, sorry... eventually I'll get more pics up here.

 

[mbrewer]

We're now on the road!

Here's the Jack in action at a primitive skills gathering in Georgia
DSC01161 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr

33" BFG AT2s, 3" All-pro suspension are finally installed. We also swapped the belts. We have a new lower radiator hose but haven't gotten to that yet.

DSC01152 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr
DSC01157 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr

So, now for the whole story. After the incident above we took another shot at taking the springs off. We PB blasted them for 2 days, and went at it... no dice. We finally gave up and took it to a shop on saturday. They gave us an estimate of 5 man-hours, but they'd throw 2 guys on it and have it done in 3. We went to a coffee shop for a while. When we got back 3 hours later they were grinding on the thing. We chatted and they said they were having some problems, so we went to dinner. An hour later we came back, it was their closing time and they were still working on it. An hour after THAT they finally finished up. 5 hours with 3 guys working on it to get those things off. They said it was by far the worst they'd ever seen. I've no idea how it got that frozen, but it's good now at least.

They also put on the 33" tires for us... so now the truck was finally safe to drive, it didn't bounce around the road and the tires weren't going to suddenly blow out on us. Awesome! The tires basically fit, I need to do a little cutting on the front fenders, but it only rubs when the wheel is turned almost to lock and then the suspension flexes... So, although I'd like to fix it, it's not an emergency. I'll get to it eventually.

We just handed over the keys to our old apartment today, so as of now we are living in the truck full-time. Next stop is Angie's friends, then some boondocking and rock-climbing around for virginia for a couple of weeks before we pull the trailer up to my parent's place to drop off the last of my junk that we're not bringing.

Oh. to get the spare in place we also did the standard trick of cutting the rear tines of the spare tire holder. It worked great. We used a dremel with a metal cut wheel and a decent amount of patience, and it came off fine. A bit more dremeling to smooth it out and then a file to finish it off and it was nice and smooth and safe for the tire sidewall.

DSC01154 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr
DSC01155 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr

I glued a thermometer to the side of the cap, just for fun so we'd have some idea of the temperature (modulo sun of course).
DSC01158 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr

And here's the drop hitch I got so I can pull that trailer with the truck and not have it at a jokingly unsafe angle.
DSC01159 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr

So, we're off on our expedition! We have no idea how long it'll last .

 

[mbrewer]

Oh, and here's a fun trick... if you can avoid ripping your fender off.
This is how I got the shock to fit without having to disassemble any of the ball joints:
IMG_20160318_123347 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr

 

[mbrewer]

I just extended my bumpstops, here's the writup on my blog: http://www.blog.smalladventures.net/2016/05/extended-bumpstops.html

Basically I cleaned the junk off the bumpstop landing pad, sanding and using mineral spirits
IMG_20160526_152139 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr

Then I JB welded on some hockey-pucks
IMG_20160526_155817 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr

After it set I backfilled the gaps a little to give it a little more support. Not sure if it'll hold up, but it seemed worth a try.

 

[mbrewer]

curtains

Angie also added curtains:
IMG_20160526_155847 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr

These were a bit of a pain, they're mounted with magnets, but the window-frames are aluminum, thus non-ferrious. So, to solve that we picked up some sheet metal, and Angie cut it with tin-snips, rounded the edges with a file, and epoxied them to the frames.
IMG_20160526_155859 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr

She went direct to the glass on the back, this way you can open the truck with the curtains in place.

The feeling of the magnet snapping to the metal is very satisfying. Some other bonsuses are that if you roll and pull it off it won't break anything, and that you can slide them a bit to get perfect coverage. We tested the curtains and night and almost no light escapes, which should be useful if we're stealthing.

 

[JLee]

Nicely done!

When I installed the lift on my NH Tacoma, I cut the leaf spring bolts off entirely and put new bolts in. I don't remember for sure, but I may have cut them on my AZ truck as well...for some reason they get really, really stuck.

 

[mbrewer]

Oh, I forgot, I also cut the boots off.
The shocks were installed upside-down (if you read bilstein's site, they say they should be mounted with the writing right-side-up). This is the downside of not doing work yourself... oh well, they were nice and got it done. Anyway Tte boots are designed to drain out the bottom, so they filled with water. I didn't want to go through flipping the shocks, so instead I just cut the boots off. Water poured out when I did, so I'm glad I did.

 

[mbrewer]

Nicely done!

When I installed the lift on my NH Tacoma, I cut the leaf spring bolts off entirely and put new bolts in. I don't remember for sure, but I may have cut them on my AZ truck as well...for some reason they get really, really stuck.

Thanks, and Interesting! I keep wondering if it indicates my truck is going to have trouble elsewhere, but so far it's all been fine. I just swapped all the fluids, and all the drain/fill holes opened up with a breaker bar... *shrug*.

 

[mbrewer]

Newer photos

Here's a more recent photo while camping out near Seneca Rocks in WV. Long dirt roads, but any car could've gotten here

DSC01163 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr

It was a smooth ride to this campsite, so no exercise for the rig, just long dirt roads run at speed (classic overlanding really). Generally I use the 4-wheel abilities to get in to campsites and such, while most of my travel is on pavement or reasonably maintained dirt roads at relatively high speeds.

That said, we were looking for a boondocking site a little while ago. Angie is newer to offroading and boondocking and such and drove a little fast off the side of the road up in to a possible campsite. The truck bottomed out and slammed the skidplate into some not so soft mud... Because it was lifted the hit did no damage, and pulling out was trivial, but if it hadn't been then it would've hit full on the plate without the suspension doing anything, probably breaking something... so, I think the lift and tire-size increase already payed for itself. Angie learned to drive slower through the gutter area on an unknown road , truck no worse for the wear.

I did do a quick trim of the front fenders based on wear after a thousand miles or so (it only rubbed on certain turns), but that's all that was required to get BFG AT KO2 33x10.5x15's to work well. It's a little sad that my rear suspension can't stuff all the way in to the fender, due to the shock length, but the downtravel I get lets the axle pivot on the bump-stop anyway and still get huge flex when I need it (assuming my bumpstop holds, it's been pivoting on the shock I guess). It's not *as* important with a rear-locker, but it sure does help.

 

[mbrewer]

We just spent 2 weeks in the green mountains and about a month in the white mountains, boondocking, backpacking, hiking, and rock-climbing.

Overall the rig did great. I *love* the tires, the 33" BFGs are quiet on the road, and leave me enough power to make me very happy. While fully packed it pulled a trailer full of crup to my parent's house. I don't worry a bit about pulling through a mud-hole to get to a good campsite.

The suspension isn't ideal. The rear shock-bodies are too long for the final ride-height. After bumpstopping I only have maybe 2" of down-travel fully loaded, which means I do bottom out sometimes if I'm running down dirt roads at 40mph (something I do really like to do). The shock-bodies just need to be shorter. I can't believe anyone combines these shocks with a shock-mount relocation... that would just be a joke, no downtravel at all. That said... it's good enough, and I plan to use it 'til it wears out. The fronts work great, and the ride is good enough for me.

Here's a photo from the green mountains. Looks like we were sharpening knives that day:
IMG_20160606_104557 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr

Since that photo was taken we found some good sticks, and we've been pitching the tarp freestanding using the sticks (and not hiking poles). That way we can leave it behind to reserve a spot in free campgrounds, along with the table, bucket, and water container.

I'm back at my parent's house now (they're recieving mail for us while we're on our trip) before setting off again. On the way down the check-engine light ticked on. I pulled the code and it was 0171 "System too lean, Bank 1". After some research the best first diagnostic step seemed to be to look at sensor data. The "Fuel Trim" at the time was around 35... that's no good. When I looked at the long-term trim at idle it was more like -15. At 2500 it was near zero. Oookay, so that means probably not a vacuum leak, or jammed injectors. More likely it's sensors. Great, cleaning the MAF is an easy first thing to try, so I picked up MAF cleaner, pulled it out, cleaned it, and stuck it back in. It was remembering it's old learned values, so I cleared the code and thus the fuel trim memory. After watching it a bit it was hovering at more like 1.6 at idle, and same range at 2500 RPM... YAY! Quick oil change since it's been enough milage, and we're ready to roll again.

Of course, while loading up the truck one of the cables holding up the tailgate snapped. It had rusted through. So, I'll have to pick up a new one. Love the truck and it's still working great.

I've got two Kermit chairs on the way (just shipped, should be here in a couple of days) to make things a bit more comfy. The system is coming together.

 

[blueSTX]

Awesome write up!! Awesome pics!!

 

[MandAtaco]

Nice write up, looking forward to following your trip!

 

[laneyloose]

Can't wait for these trip updates. Dont beat yourself up too bad about the lug nut thing, i once drove without bolts on my lower ball joint after installing a 1500 dollar suspension for a photo shoot. You can buy some pretty cheap shock mounts on a site like ruff stuff and play around with the angles if the bottoming out really begins to bother you

 

[mbrewer]

Well, since the last post we spent 1 month in the white mountains. Then 1 month in the Adirondacks. We've been trail running, rock climbing, working on interesting projects, backpacking, even did a little canoeing.
IMG_20160826_174523 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr
IMG_20160826_192930 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr

Then swung back by my parent's house in MA for my brother's wedding.

On the way here I hit the brake and the ABS started firing when I was just slowing down in normal traffic... Well ****. I pulled over fast as I could.
I quickly inspected the brake system, looked intact nothing funky or obviously broken... okay. I did a little research online and learned I should pull the fuse to disable ABS so it's safe to drive for now.
After a few minutes trying to get it out, I gave up. I didn't want to break out all my wrenches and stuff since we were almost here anyway. It did it to me one more time before I got here.

After I got to my parent's house I did a pile of research and found that frequently pulling the sensors, wiping them off, and putting them back in solves the problem. I tried that. Well... I'm dislexic, and like an idiot I turned one of the sensor bolts the wrong way and sheared it (with 2 people watching me no less). 2 screw extractors and about 4 hours later I had both sensors out. If you didn't know, those sensors do not come out like they show on you-tube. One of them I had to use locking pliers and all my force to pull out, my dad and I kept swapping off as over a couple of hours we slowly worked it out, finally jamming a screw-driver under the side and prying. Once I got it apart I found there was grit and grease on the front left tone ring, and just grease in the front right. Anyway, I wiped the sensors off and put it back together (give or take... one seal got a little mucked up).

I took it for a test drive and it seemed better, but I tried an emergency stop and just kept my foot on the brake after it came to a full stop... the ABS kept going for another 5-10 seconds!

After that I decided I'm done here, and took the care to my dad's trusted mechanic. ~$2000 later the truck is fixed. It was $100 for the ABS diagnosis, $250 for a new front left sensor. The rest is because apparently my brake pads were almost on the metal (I hadn't checked them in a while, and had no squeal), and all my bearing seals were shot, leaking grease out on to the pads!

Previously we'd had Angie's uncle (a mechanic) take a look at the truck, but it's never actually been to a shop for work since I got it. Overall I'm actually really happy that we found out about it all and got it fixed. The brakes work WAY better than when I got the truck now as well. It also looks like the previous owner broke a rear axle and replaced it with a slightly funny one. The mechanic said the bearings were non-standard in the back.

Anyway, now we're about to head west. The vague plan is a few days of climbing in PA, then off to Missouri to hang out with a friend on his wild-flower seed and medicinal farm. Our current plan is to stay on the road through this winter and a ways in to spring. I'm excited to play with the truck out west where there are more rough roads to really isolated places ;-).

 

[mbrewer]

Here's some random non-truck-related photos from our travels:
Fwd: Photos by smalladventures photos, on Flickr
Angie Repelling after completing a climb

IMG_20160712_104401 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr
Me while doing a 1-day Presidential traverse in the white mountains

IMG_20160810_153009 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr
A lean-to shelter we built just as an experiment/practice

IMG_20160824_110812 by smalladventures photos, on Flickr
Gear I carried on a recent backpacking trip in the Adirondaks