pushingthepedals
New member
This is my first thread on the EP forum, but I wanted to share my new truck and the plans for it.
I first got bitten by the Toyota truck bug back in 2012 when I bought a sweet 2001 Tacoma Xtracab TRD 4x4 5 speed. I drove that truck for 4 years, doing all of my first 4wd camping trips including a week in Death Valley over New Years with the woman who would become my girlfriend and eventually my wife. I'm always reading about trucks, and started seeing some articles about the 1st gen Tundras. I'm 6'4" and only ever barely fit in the Tacoma, my head would brush the headliner and I had thought about doing a seat swap for some lower seats.
My brother had been bugging me to buy my Tacoma for a couple of years, so that made it a lot easier to jump on the right Tundra when I found one, and I did in March of 2017, I flew up to Portland to buy "Pearl", my 2005 Access Cab 4x4 Tundra. The amount of extra room inside the cab was incredible, as well as the boatloads of extra power and torque of the 4.7l V8 compared to the 3.4l V6 of the Tacoma.
I took Pearl back to Death Valley and on a road trip through Colorado, driving up Engineer Pass in fully stock form, and it did great. The only thing that really bugged me was the fact that I couldn't quite sleep comfortably in the bed. Things like that really eat at me, so I had been looking around for a 2005-6 regular cab Tundra 4x4, which are super hard to find and which I wasn't sure I would even fit in. It seems the only ones for sale were in the rust belt. I happened to randomly come across a maroon one last week from a man who lived out in rural eastern Oregon (I moved to Boise about 6 months ago), and it looked like it was in good shape and had the same amount of miles as Pearl. We met up, and I took it for a spin and knew pretty quickly that it would be my new rig. It has the same wheelbase and overall length as Pearl, it just has extra bed length instead of the useless half back seats in the Access Cab and weighs a couple hundred pounds less. I can really feel the lighter weight of this truck.
I bought the new Tundra which I have named Buck and am now planning the build of this new truck. I have a couple of people interested in Pearl, and as soon as she is sold will be starting to order parts. Buck is a base model truck, it's got vinyl flooring, but has all of the options that you could get for a regular cab truck including power windows and locks, tow package, tilt wheel, cruise control and heated side mirrors. I think 80% of the regular cab trucks I had seen for sale had crank windows and a fixed steering wheel.
I love how plain and humble this new truck looks, it draws no looks or attention, it's completely function oriented. I love the lack of oversized fender flares, the basic steel wheels, I won't feel bad pushing it through some tough trails. My current ideas are to order an aluminum commercial shell for it and install a roof fan for ventilation, install a custom Radflo suspension setup with the Archive Garage Shackle Flip Kit that I ordered for Pearl but never installed, a set of basic rock sliders, 33" AT tires on the stock steel wheels, and probably an ARB locker in the rear with one of their medium size compressors installed under the hood for airing up and down. I'll be transferring the ARB fridge and CB radio over from Pearl as well. Not very many regular cab builds on this forum so I'm excited to contribute over the next couple of months!
I first got bitten by the Toyota truck bug back in 2012 when I bought a sweet 2001 Tacoma Xtracab TRD 4x4 5 speed. I drove that truck for 4 years, doing all of my first 4wd camping trips including a week in Death Valley over New Years with the woman who would become my girlfriend and eventually my wife. I'm always reading about trucks, and started seeing some articles about the 1st gen Tundras. I'm 6'4" and only ever barely fit in the Tacoma, my head would brush the headliner and I had thought about doing a seat swap for some lower seats.
My brother had been bugging me to buy my Tacoma for a couple of years, so that made it a lot easier to jump on the right Tundra when I found one, and I did in March of 2017, I flew up to Portland to buy "Pearl", my 2005 Access Cab 4x4 Tundra. The amount of extra room inside the cab was incredible, as well as the boatloads of extra power and torque of the 4.7l V8 compared to the 3.4l V6 of the Tacoma.I took Pearl back to Death Valley and on a road trip through Colorado, driving up Engineer Pass in fully stock form, and it did great. The only thing that really bugged me was the fact that I couldn't quite sleep comfortably in the bed. Things like that really eat at me, so I had been looking around for a 2005-6 regular cab Tundra 4x4, which are super hard to find and which I wasn't sure I would even fit in. It seems the only ones for sale were in the rust belt. I happened to randomly come across a maroon one last week from a man who lived out in rural eastern Oregon (I moved to Boise about 6 months ago), and it looked like it was in good shape and had the same amount of miles as Pearl. We met up, and I took it for a spin and knew pretty quickly that it would be my new rig. It has the same wheelbase and overall length as Pearl, it just has extra bed length instead of the useless half back seats in the Access Cab and weighs a couple hundred pounds less. I can really feel the lighter weight of this truck.
I bought the new Tundra which I have named Buck and am now planning the build of this new truck. I have a couple of people interested in Pearl, and as soon as she is sold will be starting to order parts. Buck is a base model truck, it's got vinyl flooring, but has all of the options that you could get for a regular cab truck including power windows and locks, tow package, tilt wheel, cruise control and heated side mirrors. I think 80% of the regular cab trucks I had seen for sale had crank windows and a fixed steering wheel.
I love how plain and humble this new truck looks, it draws no looks or attention, it's completely function oriented. I love the lack of oversized fender flares, the basic steel wheels, I won't feel bad pushing it through some tough trails. My current ideas are to order an aluminum commercial shell for it and install a roof fan for ventilation, install a custom Radflo suspension setup with the Archive Garage Shackle Flip Kit that I ordered for Pearl but never installed, a set of basic rock sliders, 33" AT tires on the stock steel wheels, and probably an ARB locker in the rear with one of their medium size compressors installed under the hood for airing up and down. I'll be transferring the ARB fridge and CB radio over from Pearl as well. Not very many regular cab builds on this forum so I'm excited to contribute over the next couple of months!
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