brettf's Third Gen Taco Build, Adventure, and BS Log

[Deleted member 1276]

Finally getting around to putting together a build thread! There are some amazing builds going on here that have inspired me.
Hopefully some info I share inspires someone to build some cool things into their truck.

Third gen Tacoma time!
2016 4x4 v6, Double Cab, 6-speed manual, TRD OR model.

I'll update some of the details as I go on, but here are some of the highlights:
Suspension: Bilstein 6112 Coilover and the rear Bilstein 5165s. OME Dakar leafs.
Gears: Nitro 4.88 F&R. Excellent upgrade over the (already lowish 4.30:1 for manual trans) OEM gears.
Locker: OEM rear e-locker, front ARB air
Toys: ARB dual compressor, Prinsu rack, Bedslide brand slide all hacked and frankensteined up...

Couple of thoughts on the new truck. I'll be honest; it had to grow on me. I was used to older, less computerized vehicles. It has power
everything, bells, whistles, gadgets. Just so different. I wasn't totally satisfied with the gearing (I am now after an upgrade to 4.88s - I will
provide some details on that later), but really it's a solid truck that I have grown to absolutely love.

A couple years back at first sight:

Today:

 

[Deleted member 1276]

The first thing I did was get this thing home and test fit some 2013 4Runner SR5 wheels with some 265 70 17 KM2s.
I always loved the wheels so it was good chance to do a test:

(Interesting to note that this is a couple years back now (trying to catch up the thread). I HATED the third gen stock wheels at the time
and couldn't wait to replace them. I don't mind them as much now, still not a fan, but funny how time changes those things. Still
stoked on my SR5 wheels though!)

Aaaaand sold on fitment. Found a CL deal on some SR5s, picked those up and a quick purchase of rubber:

Didn't have to wait long for the first snow test here in Colorado:

I've been a fan of the AT KO for years. I believe the new K02 tires are better in all conditions. Snow, slickrock, dirt, on road even.
Really digging everything about the new BFGs.... except I think they wear faster, which is to be expected I think given how sticky
they feel compared to the previous version. Good tradeoff? I think so, but time will tell!

 

[Deleted member 1276]

One of the next things I did was to get rid of the black film between the front and rear windows on the B pillar. Drove me crazy and I couldn't
wait to tear it off. Looking back now, I don't mind it as much! Still glad I did that. Took a couple hours with Goof Off and a heat gun:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

 

[Deleted member 1276]

First tire plug and repair didn't take long:

 

[Deleted member 1276]

Started putting "things" on and in the truck. Car seat, infant, topper, rack, bike rack... started thinking about upgrading the suspension pretty quick.

Settled on the TRD Baja Pro kit, which is really a TRD branded Bilstein 6112 Coilover with Bilstein 5165 rear shocks.

Getting the front coilovers in, rear shocks in. Both sides done:

Resulted in a 2"? lift(ish) up front. Second gen trucks would be a little higher. Note the rear is not lifted; I'd look at that later.
Happy with the damping and spring rate from the coilovers and really happy with the rear dampers over stock.

 

[Deleted member 1276]

And then some adventures with the truck out of state:

Returned to more snow, some trees crushed, and a bunch of cleanup:

And more snow:

But we made the best of it:

 

[Deleted member 1276]

Sometime as winter was moving into spring I picked up a RTT. Blair Witch Project style picture:

And eventually got my butt in gear and installed some OME Dakar leafs:

I also seemed to be on a mission to attach as many things as possible to the Tacoma!

 

[Deleted member 1276]

Adventure time!

Some northern New Mexico travels:

American Basin, Odom Point on a San Juan trip:

Summer camping with all the things on the Taco:

Late Sept adventures. Near Moon Pass accessed from La Garita:

San Juans near Blowout Pass. Drove in from Cumbres Pass through Platoro, had some great camping then over through some passes eventually landing in Del Norte.

 

[borison]

Looks really good. What can you tell us about your bed slide?

 

[Deleted member 1276]

Looks really good. What can you tell us about your bed slide?

Good timing, that's the next thing I was getting into!

Somewhere along the line I put a plywood cutoff in the back of the bed and trimmed it to fit tight with the bed closed. I put some ripped 1" by
1/2"(or maybe 3/4"?) strips on the bottom as runners and fit those between the composite bed ribs to keep things straight.

Super budget bed-slide setup. That did exactly as advertised. It was in the "bed" and it would "slide". Not well, but remarkably usable for el-cheapo
setup. I mounted some randoms scraps to keep things I used often in place, to mount bike for mounts, and some other items like that.

I used it it for at least a year; it just kept working and a price of exactly free wasn't bad. I just dragged it out onto the tailgate and
it worked for me. Little rough pushing it back in when on an incline though. Here's the old setup:

Eventually I wanted something a little better and found a used Bedslide brand slide that had been installed on a wrecked truck - like days
before it was totalled out. A good score. I mounted a slotted profile to the front (err, back) of it, which I added the fork mount to. This was just
a temporary setup. Well, it's all temporary until it's perfect!

Here you can see the slide when I was installing it and test-fitting how I'd have to angle my bike to fit. Shorter bikes can be straight. The slide itself
fits between the wheel wells decently, but eats up a lot of space. I was worried it would use too much, but I ended up really liking it from day one.
The added height of the "mid-rise" Leer topper helped keep some utility lost due to the height of the slide.

(Looks like the install was exactly TWO Ska Mexican Lagger units in duration!)

Used that for a bit, but hacked it up and replaced some parts with some extruded Aluminum t-slotted rails to fit my needs a little better. Below is a
shot that shows current rail in the back with where the cooler more or less lives when it's in the Taco. I use some ammo cans to hold often-accessed
items. Two are mounted to the slide, so they come out when I slide it out.

Still figuring out where I want to mount a stove for transport and also for cooking. Might install a slide out "drawer" thing for the cook stove (or a
newer/better stove) that slides out from under the cooler, but still not sure how I want that to be. For now it scraps to the cooler tie downs for
transport and on a box on the ground for cooking. Not full expo compliant yet

Here's how it looks today. It's quick and convenient to remove things and still use it like a truck. This is what it looks like most of the time. The
orange anodized fork mounts come out easily if I need a little extra room, but those are there basically 100% of the time.

This shows how the left-most can slides in with the bed slide and the right can stays where I can reach it quickly through the side window OR through
the back of the truck. That can has air accessories and tools. Can grab that quick and air up/down tires, set a bead on tubeless mtb tires, use air
tools for impact etc.

Here shows the amount of height I lost installing the slide itself. Almost 4 3/8" total height, which is a lot... That's one of the major downsides to
using a slide. However, I think the tradeoff has been worth it for me. In the future I may pull apart the frame and see if I can reduce the height of the
frame or of the sliding deck, but this is not a priority for me given how useful this thing has been and how less often I've had to crawl into the back
of the truck!

In case anyone is curious how I mounted the rail, there deck frame structure is based on angle steel. I mounted a 1.5" extrusion to this using the
little 90* corner brackets shown. This turned out to be really rigid and I'm happy with how strong it has been.

 

[borison]

Thanks for the write up.

 

[Deleted member 1276]

Someone asked me elsewhere about my compressor and how it fits in the third gen, so I'll share that here as well.

The ARB dual compressor isn't large for what it is, but space under the hood comes at a premium. I picked up the Slee
bracket to fit the dual compressor horizontally near the firewall on the passenger side. Here is a shot showing where it
currently lives:

Here's the bracket from Slee:

It fits, but it's tighter to the hood than I would prefer. The steel hose doesn't rub the hood, ever. The fitting for the hose
fits fine when running it with the hood open. I was thinking I'd want to create some more space and reconfigure that
for some reason, but I can't think of a reason I would have THAT kind of hose connected with the hood closed. I would
use a different configuration if I were running a tank... which I haven't found the need for while running small tools or
airing up truck tires (or mounting beads on tubeless mtb tires). Here's an angle showing how high the braided line runs:

I swapped out the shallow cubby above the knee to the left of the steering wheel with a 3D printed switch panel that I
found on Shapeways. It's made by a third-gen owner who created one for his own truck and sent the design to the
Shapeways site. If you order, Shapeways prints it, ships it, and (I think, hope?) gives a kick back to the designer...

Here's the direct link: 3rdGen Cubby Switch Panel I don't remember it being quite that expensive, maybe the prices
have jumped. IIRC there are some options for different configurations if you snoop around. Here is an exceptionally
terrible photo that shows where I put the switch and the two blank spots. I filled those with blanks:

Here is the switch I used from CruiserHeads store:
Direct CH4x4 link

 

[Deleted member 1276]

As much as these threads are about the gear and the truck. I am going to try to make an effort to show pictures from adventures as much
as include info about the truck. Here are some shots from here and there along the way. Trying to catch up to current.

Loads of Ouray/Silverton/Tellurude-centric shots get posted to Expo from the summer, but fewer from the winter:

Near Aspen Ridge between Salida and BV from February:

Some more San Juan mountain exploring from the summertime:

That one spot!

From a drive over Breakneck and Browns passes before driving over Weston Pass into
Leadville. Start driving young!

Above Buena Vista:

 

[dman93]

Thanks for sharing! Nice truck, nice pictures of beautiful places. I have a similar DCSB OR which I bought with a cab-height ARE topper which barely fit two 29” bikes inside. I first tried an alternate facing setup like you have, so I’d only have to crawl in to secure one axle mount, but even with just one bike facing backwards the handlebars didn’t really play nice with the rear liftgate width and height. So I switched to both bikes facing forward, so the rear wheels were at the tailgate end; better fit but a real contortion act to crawl in (no windoors).

So now we use a hitch rack and in fact sold the topper. But your setup with the midrise Leer 180 looks really nice, with the slide mostly eliminating the need to crawl in. A few quick questions ... even with the slide you appear to have a lot of height clearance. What size are your bikes? And/or, how much height from the top of the slide to the lowest obstruction on the rear opening? Could you position both bikes with forks at the front of the bed, and still clear the bars to slide them through the rear opening? I do like bikes nose in since it leaves more cargo room at the tailgate end of the bed (between the bike rear wheels) but maybe with the bed slide that’s not a big deal. Thanks in advance.
EDIT: looking closer, is your bike a Hightower? If so, my Tallboy should fit along with my wife’s shorter Ripley. Do your windoors allow you to access and fit small items up near the cab without having to pull the slide out?

 

[Deleted member 1276]

Thanks for sharing! Nice truck, nice pictures of beautiful places. I have a similar DCSB OR which I bought with a cab-height ARE topper which barely fit two 29” bikes inside. I first tried an alternate facing setup like you have, so I’d only have to crawl in to secure one axle mount, but even with just one bike facing backwards the handlebars didn’t really play nice with the rear liftgate width and height. So I switched to both bikes facing forward, so the rear wheels were at the tailgate end; better fit but a real contortion act to crawl in (no windoors).

So now we use a hitch rack and in fact sold the topper. But your setup with the midrise Leer 180 looks really nice, with the slide mostly eliminating the need to crawl in. A few quick questions ... even with the slide you appear to have a lot of height clearance. What size are your bikes? And/or, how much height from the top of the slide to the lowest obstruction on the rear opening? Could you position both bikes with forks at the front of the bed, and still clear the bars to slide them through the rear opening? I do like bikes nose in since it leaves more cargo room at the tailgate end of the bed (between the bike rear wheels) but maybe with the bed slide that’s not a big deal. Thanks in advance.
EDIT: looking closer, is your bike a Hightower? If so, my Tallboy should fit along with my wife’s shorter Ripley. Do your windoors allow you to access and fit small items up near the cab without having to pull the slide out?

Some thoughts, and some pictures below.

To answer your questions specifically:

• Both bikes are mediums. More on that below.
• Measurement is 32 5/8" from top of deck to topper door "top" opening:
• 
• I can measure the height, but the stack on the red bike is highish. It's a 150mm RS fork (higher a2c measurement than comparable Fox generally speaking) and it's a 29er. Even with that tall fork mount there's room to spare on the front end.
• The seat is usually the limiting factor - the seat needs to be down (via dropper post) or adjusted down at the seatpost clamp. Another reason dropper posts rock!
• There's no way I could mount both bikes nose-in and have them both slide through the topper opening. For a couple of reasons; both our bars are wide and would interfere with each other without mounting them with a major offset; secondly the slide doesn't pull out far enough. With narrow bars, it might be possible, to fit, but I'd still probably have to offset them a bunch, so one would have to be significantly shorter than the other.
• Yes, that's a HT, other bike we fit in here straight (without having to run it diagonal) is a Tallboy, both MED)
• The win-doors allow for a ton of access that I wouldn't have without them. They were especially useful before the slide came a long. They're still used here and there (for grabbing the high-lift for instance), but generally I pull the slide out whenever I'm putting things in and out of the truck bed. If you commit to mounting everything that could interfere with it ON the slide, it's SO damn convenient.

To go further, because I love to hear myself talk, I have some more thoughts on all that:

• I love hitch racks but for long distances and/or driving through weather, I *hate* having my bikes outside in the spray. Especially now that it's desert season; we end up driving to/from the desert often and a lot of the time there is snow/ice/mag chloride on the roads that I like to keep off the bikes (off the pads if nothing else!). So I do whatever it takes to have them safe and sound inside the tiny truck bed
• We have a Tallboy and a Hightower. Both are medium. The HT has a longer wheelbase than the TB and it has some extra length due to a crazy headset and the low-mode I'm using (and a taller fork over spec)... so it's long. Both of those bikes have seat-droppers. Neither fits through the opening topper opening without dropping the seat. Partly because the fork mount I happen to have is so tall and partly because of the height I lose due to using the slide itself.
• An interesting issue is that as bikes progress in terms of geometry, they're getting longer per size. So length is always an issue, but as bikes have become longer, the length of stems has shortened. Mounting a bike inside the topper nose-out used to require moving the mount far enough away from the tailgate to still close the topper door without it running into the bars on a bike with a long stem. I can now mount my bikes closer to the tailgate than ever before because they are slacker at the head-tube and I run 40mm or 50mm stems which don't push the bars into the topper door as much... so that's a happy tradeoff but not sure I gain anything because the entire wheelbase is longer.
• Nose-in is nice because the slide doesn't pull out far enough for the bars to interfere with the topper-door, so you can run the bike closer to either side of the truck. But its still a matter of leaning in pretty far in order to put the fork into the fork mount when you're setting the bike in the truck bed and even with the slide out it's still a stretch. When the rest of the truck bed is packed with camping gear its difficult. But it's worth it when there are two bikes. With one bike I always mount it nose-out. It's less awkward to pull out and WAY less awkward to put it back into the truck that way. I wish the bed were long enough to run my bike straight back without having it at an angle, but that's life. I sometimes remove the rear wheel and put something under the bottom bracket to keep things tidy and strap the wheels to the frame with gear ties.... that allows a little more flexibility. It's tricky to get it all to fit but now that I have the system its fast and convenient.
• The win-doors are really nice and allow to grab things, but once I went with the slide I never looked back. It's SO much nicer to be able to pull it out and grab that stuff. There are still things that I need to grab through the sides, but most things I can lean in and grab/move/turn with the slide out.
• Another thing I discovered is a clean way to mount the front wheel to the frame with gear ties when you're stowing the bike in the bed on the fork mount. It tucks between the pedal (clocked just so) and the fork leg, then a gear tie or two to keep it from moving at all is good:
• 
• A second way to mount these is to have both wheels off. This requires the drivetrain sitting on the truck bed floor (or bed slide as the case may be) or spacing it up higher and mounting both wheels to the frame. This can keep things a little cleaner to run the frames straight fore/aft when needed.

Here's how the bike looks more straight on with the slide pulled out, and then in: