2004 Tacoma SAS

[8sixFabrication]

This long 5 day weekend, came with some decent progress, as well as some struggles. So updates will come across a couple posts.

Wednesday after work, I popped by my local DEQ to get the emissions testing done, and it passed as expected. The following morning, I got up early and went to DMV to get my VIN inspection, registration, and new plates. That was all a success, and now the truck is fully registered and back on the road proper again!

I believe it was Wednesday night, I extended the rear axle breather using an 80 series Land Cruiser fitting, some hose, and a little breather. I ran it up and executed it in the frame where the e-locker breather goes. The very end past the flare for the hose, on the fitting had to be trimmed off so I could thread it in without hitting the brackets for the wiring. Otherwise it was a simple upgrade and looks super OEM

Thursday afternoon, I spent a little time cleaning up my mess in the garage. Then I couldn't help myself, and decided to throw together the sub and amp setup. The wiring is already there from when it was previously on the road. I had this absolute unit of a speaker sitting around, but in a box with improper air space. So I ordered this affordable ported box, and a mono-block amp. I did a super basic install to get me some bass, and good Christ it's absolutely crazy haha. I do plan on installing some component speakers, an amp with a DSP, and sound treatment to go along with the rest. But for now, the ghetto setup will be nicer than a deck and stock speakers.

That evening I went to a buddies shop and had the AC re-charged with a little UV die to boot, so I can check later and see if there are any leaks. I think when I had it re-charged the summer before it was wrecked, the dude didn't put the right amount of refrigerant in it, because it's never been this cold.

With a shakedown run planned for Sunday, I set out to get the bump stops setup. I will spare the details of every little thing I did, because there was so much back and forth, it was unreal lol.

I landed on these delrin pucks(version 2) after a couple flex tests on a buddies fork lift. They were pretty simple to machine on my lathe.

For the rear I came up with this setup for a bump stop. It uses a cheap amazon GM replacement bump, and a custom made mount that ties into the u-bolts. The washers were to add height. I will go back and make my final adjustments and paint them this week.

Within that, I noticed the tie rod was contacting the radius arm really hard with full flex, and caused the steering to bind and not move. So I had to go back and forth between my friends train yard, and home to grind some clearance into the radius arm several times before getting it where things worked together. It still rubs a teeny bit, but its pretty close now.

With that un-expected tie-rod clearancing done, I had to move onto the front locker wiring. First thing I realized, is that I ordered the wrong switch. Instead of a momentary, I got a regular toggle. It works, but I will swap it out for the correct one. I first did a test to make sure I had my wiring schematic correct. Then I wired the harness and ran it into the cab. I did forget to get a picture of the switch location unfortunately. However, it all works well. I need to go back, swap the switch, wire in a wire for when the dash lights are on, and improve how I am getting the power. But this gets me by for a trip.

 

[8sixFabrication]

Sunday was the shakedown run at a local small area (LaDee Flats). The day was a pretty damn good success. I only rubbed 1 time, and will address that this week. The truck handled really well in the rocks. I definitely put it through its paces, and came away with a small wound, as well as lots of now rock rash on the sliders, radius arms, axles, and 3 of 4 wheels.

It was a short day on the trails, and we decided to run a long, super harsh forest service road for some views, and to test out the truck on washboards and big potholes.

All in all, it was a great day and I am impressed with how the truck handles. Most of these pictures are from my buddy. Thankfully one of us was taking pictures haha

 

[8sixFabrication]

Today was pretty mellow. I cleaned up the garage (again) and got to work.

I first dug up the rack I made for the roof top tent and awning from a while back to make sure it still will work. It clearly needs a bath haha.

One thing I have been wanting to address for a little bit was the remaining leaks from the forward T-case and Trans.

I whipped up this ghetto splash guard, and used Toyota FIPG to seal it all up. From what I can tell, the spinning from the gears flings gear oil up to the opening for the breather which is pointed out by the arrow, as well as leaking through the plastic bushing that the lever pivots on. I made this out of .020" stainless steel, and folded up the part from the center, to fully block the breather opening.

I wasn't sure where the trans leak was coming from, so I pulled the shifter and saw right away what I did wrong. I should have put the splash guard on top of the spacer for the short throw kit. Then I put it all back together with Toyota FIPG to ensure it stays sealed. After that, I cleaned up all the residual gear oil enough to verify if I got the leaks resolved. If so, I will do a more thorough cleaning later on.

I will put some miles on it and check again later in the week.

That's all for now. Hopefully some more updates this weekend.

 

[8sixFabrication]

Small update this week.

Not much progress, due to some long overdue yardwork time.

I crawled under the truck the other day to check and see if the transfer case, and trans leaks were resolved, and those 2 that I fixed, seem to be dry. HOWEVER... now the rear case is leaking again from the output flange and the shifter... kind of frustrating, but I'm trying to not let it get to me. I just hate leaky trucks.

This evening I wanted to accomplish something. First thing I did was pull out all the standard hex head hardware holding the fender flares on, and replaced it with these button head like screws from a tailgate. The idea is that if the tire stuffs hard enough, it won't be catching a sharp edge. I did rub one time on the trip last weekend, but after looking closer, I think it was on the lower side of the fender. So I bent that back into shape.

A buddy had a good idea for my gas filler neck trim. Since 3 of the 4 fasteners were broken off, I drilled them out and re-tapped for 6mm, and got the trim put back together. So that's nice to not have the door held shut with duck tape haha.

That's all this week. I have been driving it everywhere. It's got about 1100 miles on it now, which is great. I usually like to put at least 1000 miles on my trucks after major work, before taking it on a long trip.

I think next weekend should bring some more progress.

 

[8sixFabrication]

Update time.

Life is throwing more curve balls, but I'm still pushing forward. With our trip to Moab quickly approaching, I've been slowly wrapping up little things.

The week before last, I got my rack modified for our current tent, and awning. I wanted to see how it rode with the weight, and how things would nest in the bed for such a long trip. I since have removed the awning because it makes getting into the tool box a pain in the ass.

This weekend I wrapped up the rear bump stops. I cut off the square tube, and formed some 3/16 flat bar to be welded on and painted.

Next I made a skid plate to protect the bottom of the radiator/power steering hoses. I don't have the ability to form this width of material, so I just made it out of a few pieced of 1/4" flat bar. It shouldn't see the abuse a skid plate or rock slider will, so it doesn't need to be as bulletproof.

Lastly, I got my new fairlead installed, and license plate put on better. I need to re-tie the rope, but currently don't have much time to mess with it. So this will work fine for now.

Fortunately I'm pretty close to the end of my prep for our trip, so there won't be many updates that often, for a while.

 

[grizzlypath]

Radiator guard looks nice. The 1st gen radiators drop so low! I've wondered if there's a comparable radiator out there that's slightly thicker, but shorter or something that I could swap in so that the radiator is tucked more up.

 

[8sixFabrication]

Life's been hectic, so here are some overdue updates. This will come in 2 posts.

About a week before we were supposed to leave for Moab, my co worker noticed a coolant leak while we were chatting after work. I was pretty frustrated, but I was thankful that we noticed it when we did, and not on the road to Moab. I was able to get parts coming from Toyota pretty quick, and get it sorted.


It ended up being the intake seal. I had the same problem with my wife's old 3rd gen 4runner. So I replaced the knock sensor harness, valve cover seals, plenum seals, PCV, and had the injectors serviced. I was a little nervous that it was something else based on my luck lately, but it seems to be happy all the way to Moab and back, which is about 3000 miles.

With that sorted, I moved onto some last minute things. I got a basic plastic reservoir for the windshield wash fluid, and mounted the stock pump in it. The bracket is made of some leftover stainless and tied into the bracket for the ABS module. It's a tight fit, but does the job nicely.

I needed to install a GMRS radio too, so I did a real simple, temp setup to get me through this trip.

And the last little thing I wrapped up, was straightening out the damage on the pass side radius arm mount and trimming the low hanging fruit off both sides.

 

[8sixFabrication]

Now its time for the unfortunate details from our Moab trip.

We left Oregon early in the morning on Oct 2nd. We took the trip in 2 days, and on Friday the 4th, we started into one of our favorite trails, Lockhart Basin. It's a perfect mixture of challenging obstacles and scenery, with a little bit of an "overlandy" vibe. We usually take 2 days to run it, with a stop midway to campout. Most of the challenging stuff is towards the beginning.

We got through the majority of the hard stuff, and I just dropped through an obstacle we chose to bypass last time in my wife's Land Cruiser and noticed a leak. After spotting my buddy through it, I discovered that the input shaft seal on the steering box developed a pinhole and was losing fluid pretty fast. I topped it off but it eventually started sucking air. So I pulled the power steering belt and finished the day without power steering.

We got to camp at our favorite spot so it wasn't a complete fail.

The following day, we finished the remaining aprox 40 miles of trail, and 60ish miles on the highway into town. The slow crawling wasn't so bad with the dual cases, to steer. But the easier section of trail that we were able to travel faster on, was more sketch due to the small stones wanting to jerk the wheel.

Once we got into town and had cell service again, I started calling everywhere in town to see about getting parts to fix this issue. Unfortunately no one could get anything until the following Tuesday, and we were fixin' to move onto the San Rafael Swell on Monday. I eventually found a reman box 3.5 hours north in Lehi.

The following morning the wife and I headed north to Lehi. We popped into a hobo-freight for a couple small items, and over to the O'Rileys to buy the box and swap it in the parking lot. I'm really glad I brought all the tools I did, otherwise this would have been a pain.

After getting the box on, I started to bleed the system. I noticed the box would bind with any drivers steering, but I figured the box was adjusted too tight when it was rebuilt and didn't thing anything of it. During the drive back to Moab, it was a little sketchy. It would bind a little while steering to the drivers side, and was a bit challenging to get back straight. The following morning I tried to adjust the screw for the sector shaft to loosen it up some, before running the next trail.

With that I assumed was a viable repair, we set out to run the Top of the World trail. It had been a long time since we ran this one, so we wanted to run it again. Unfortunately, we didn't get far. We were just getting into the good stuff, when the reman box totally ******** the bed, and broke on the trail. Something internally broke while driving straight. I went to make a turn to the drivers side, everything bound up and then it failed.

My buddy ran back to town to get the steering box I pulled off, and rent a pitman arm puller for me to swap back on, to get us off the trail. Start to finish, we sat there 8 hours before having it moving again and turning around. I was so mad it was unreal. But after I cooled off, I realized how much worse it could have been. If that box failed on the highway, we could have been in big trouble.

A little silver lining however, was the wife noticing the northern lights!

The following day, we returned the junk reman box to the O'Rileys in Moab(never buy Master Pro brand). While sitting on the trail waiting for my buddy, we were lucky enough to have cell phone service. I made some calls and had a parts truck lined up to pull a steering box off of.

That was a bit of a nightmare unfortunately. It took over an hour to get the damn steering shaft off, just to make sure the box was smooth. Then the rental pitman arm puller broke while attempting to pull the stock pitman arm. At that point I decided it was the universe telling me to throw in the towel and move on. So I buttoned the truck back up, texted the owner, and headed back to camp so my wife could use the bathroom.

While sitting in my camp chair deciding whether to pack up and leave then, or in the morning, I got a call from a local I reached out to earlier. He had a good box for me. We ran into town, purchased another pitman arm puller, and met the dude to pick up the box he had. At this point I was just trying to get power steering back on the truck to safely get back home. We got everything back to camp and I started to work on preparing it.

Unfortunately, the cheap pitman arm puller I bought from Napa ALSO broke. I was super nice to it and didn't even use my impact on it. That was beyond annoying. My buddy ran me into town, to buy a 3rd puller. This time I bought a much nicer one, and was able to get the arm off. From there, the swap went smoothly.

I was beyond disappointed with how everything went down. 1 simple seal failing was the Achilles heal to this whole trip. However, I was very thankful that that junk reman box didn't kill us on the highway, and we got home safely. The truck performed so amazingly on the rocks, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it works in the future.

We managed to salvage the rest of the trip, taking 4 days/3 nights camping out and slowly working our way back home without issue. It wasn't all bad, but the sole reason for the trip was a fail.

We've been back for a little more than a week, and the truck still seems to have no issues, besides something in the steering column. Now its time for little prep, and getting ready for snow wheelin' season.

 

[ITTOG]

What a pain. It is always nice to have the skill to repair it on your own. Glad you were able to finally find one that worked and enjoy part of the trip.