Project Serenity: an 08 Tacoma DC overland build-up

[DarkHelmet]

Great build! Giving me a lot of inspiration for bed build-outs on my rig as I waffle between a canopy shell or not. Leaning more towards not now that the wife is thinking about trading in her Prius for a 4-Runner Trail Edition.

Love the stickers on the tool box lid (except for the AAC ones... I work for Gemtech ).

We should meet up some time and get the rigs out to kill some prairie rats.

- DH

 

[frozenground]

Great build! Giving me a lot of inspiration for bed build-outs on my rig as I waffle between a canopy shell or not. Leaning more towards not now that the wife is thinking about trading in her Prius for a 4-Runner Trail Edition.

Love the stickers on the tool box lid (except for the AAC ones... I work for Gemtech ).

We should meet up some time and get the rigs out to kill some prairie rats.

- DH

Thanks!

LOL I was wondering if anyone would recognize those. You guys make some great kit as well. My next .22 cal can will most likely be Gemtech :ylsmoke:

Sounds like fun. Next June maybe, you know some good spots in central or eastern ID?

 

[frozenground]

ARB bullbar

Well I had spent months trying to decide on a front bumper solution. I really didn't like the idea of adding that much weight up front, but knew I was going to need a winch and some front end protection eventually. At first I had the lame idea of trying to mod the stock valance to run a winch in there, then decided that I wanted something with better approach angles and more protection for the front end so I started looking at steel bumpers.

Originally I really wanted the Allpro Hybrid bumper they made for the 05+ taco. Anybody remember those? Damn they were cool, and super light. Still not sure why they discontinued that model.. Then I wanted the Allpro plate bumper pretty bad mostly because it seemed like the lightest option (without going to aluminum and associated costs), almost ordered one, waffled some more. Contemplated the Shrockworks for awhile, which was my favorite in terms of looks but heavy, pricey and long lead time.

Ultimately I chose the ARB. Not because it was the best looking, or the lightest or had the best angles but simply because of the amount of testing and pedigree that ARB has when it comes to animal strikes. In my AO an animal strike is a very common cause of a disabled vehicle. I can't even count the number of times that myself or friends or family have smacked a deer or had close calls with bigger critters around here.

enough rambling, on with the install!

big boxes are fun

everything unpacked and sorted. looked like a straightforward operation at this point. little did i know..

old valance removed, time to remove old bumper and crush cans..

ARB support frame mounted to truck frame..

ran into the first issue when we went to mount the tension brackets for the bumper frame. the bolt locations were blocked by the reservoir can brackets. frack. had to drop the sway bar and the rez cans to get these out so they could be drilled...

maybe a drillbit will make you behave, stupid metal thing

all drilled and re-installed with tension brackets in place..

this is about where i went to sleep..

next morning: winch wired, solenoid and stuff mounted to bumper

bumper on truck!

soldering up the light harnesses, yay. thought it was supposed to be plug and play with the fog light kit if you already had the factory fogs.. but no of course not.

later on we finally got the lights all installed and buttoned up

 

[frozenground]

hawse fairlead and viking winchline

the next issue was that I wanted to use my Viking 350 series fairlead in this bumper, but the ARBs are not designed to work with a Hawse-style fairlead.. so some modifications and fab work are necessary.

here's waht I started with, a couple pieces of thick wall box tube:

Once I got them cut to length and laid out, i cut one wall off:

then equalized the cut edges on the surface grinder, making everything square.

here is the test fit after drilling the first set of holes:

then I laid out the hole pattern from the fairlead and drilled that in:

next I cut some extra material off the ends..

next they got blasted and painted. While I was waiting for the paint, I wired the winch to the battery, made some grommets for the pass through and loomed all the cables:

and here are the fairlead brackets painted and mounted to the bumper:

winchline swapped to Viking 3/8 with safety thimble, and fairlead installed

almost done!

 

[frozenground]

enlarging the winchline port, stripping the vinyl

Time for the last factory badges to go... Kind of a sad pic.. they had a good run, but it was time.

then I noticed a very slight amount of contact between the bottom edge of the winchline opening, and the line itself once it got to the final wrap. I have been advised that Contact between steel edges and the synthetic winchlines is bad juju, however slight..

So, with a heavy heart I took the fairlead off, removed the winchline, and marked out a half inch to cut out of the bottom of the winchline opening

I was grumpy at that point so didn't get any other pics but here it is after paint, about 5/8" larger opening

finally time to tension the line and test it all out!

old FJ makes a good anchor

 

[frozenground]

cargo platform

ok I'm back and getting close to being caught up on the build. I am supposed to be going through waypoints and updating some playlists for our trip, but instead I'm on a mission to get this up to date


time for our cargo platform mod:

we had been fighting with some serious gear-splosion issues in the back seat area, so we needed a way to tame situations like this:

started by removing the 60 side rear seat completely (previously we had been running with just the top portion folded down and seat portion removed)

cut up some 3/4" board

transferred the hole pattern and the radius on the corners from the seat back to the board. test fit:

next I measured out the mounting holes for the bottom portion of the original seat and laid out this bracket from 1" angle and flat stock, both 3/16" thick.

radius-ified the corners all nice

since the cab wall that the seat bottoms attach to is angled a little, I had to bend the legs of my bracket to match

paint (for now, got quite the list going to be powdercoated this winter lol)

starting on the carpet lamination, actually wifey did most of this while I was working on other stuff :coffeedrink:

initial carpeting done, seam sealer in place drying

molle panels attached and board mounted to seat pivots, velcro applied across the top edge. you can also see the hold down strap in this pic

here is the bracket installed into the lower seat mounting locations. The top is laminated with rubber weatherstripping, and you can see the other end of the hold down strap with fastex buckle

the panels loaded up

platform folded down, showing the clearance for the cargo

various setups:

One of our best mods so far! :costumed-smiley-007

 

[oxi]

started by selecting some steel, 3x3 angle and box tube:

removing the bedside caps:

measured and cut the bedside caps, removing the overhang over the rail. once I had the fit I sanded down the edges and cleaned them up.

first cuts completed in the steel: fitting up nicely!

long cuts completed in the steel, hole patterns transferred and drilled, test fitting:

trimmed to length and shaped, starting to look good

front:

next i fabbed up the rack mounts from the box tube:

rack mounts all welded on:

Then it was time to put everything together in the bed and make sure the tonneau was gonna fit with the new system and the Frontrunner rack etc. I also needed to get the final measurements for the weatherstripping that I later used to seal between the bed rails and the tonneau rails.

pics from the mockup:

tonneau rolled up:

tonneau rolled down:

Everything fit together pretty well at that point, it is a little tight getting the header installed with the extra thickness of the steel, but it works. Much stronger and more stable than the original mounts I had made.

During the mock up and test fit, I decided to make some tie downs and weld them onto the new bedrail caps as well. Turned out sweet, and have proven to be very useful.

At that point I wanted to get them powdercoated, called around and both local shops had a 3 week wait. Well, we had a trip planned so as usual I needed it done and took them in to get Line-X'd instead.. big mistake, came out looking like melted poo and coated so thick with giant runs they wouldn't fit back into the bed. Got my money back from that fiasco, stripped the Line-X off, and rattlecanned them with Krylon. I have plans to take them out again later this winter to make some modifications and will get them powdercoated then.

Like the setup but I am going to try and place side cattle guards, 2 bar system for the sidewalls and design a roof for a custom canvass cover system.

Kind of like this but not as tall and I will have a roof basket leading into the front of it...

 

[frozenground]

Like the setup but I am going to try and place side cattle guards, 2 bar system for the sidewalls and design a roof for a custom canvass cover system.

Kind of like this but not as tall and I will have a roof basket leading into the front of it...

very cool! looking forward to seeing a setup like that on a taco. I really like the idea of a convertible canvas topper, but wanted to keep my tent tucked behind the roof line. Did Can-Back ever start making toppers for the 05+ taco?

 

[frozenground]

cargo box install

selected the Hardigg 3100 Stormcases for cargo boxes to mount in the basket. These are excellent rifle cases, and it just so happens they are also the perfect size to fit side by side in the BajaRack basket

started by removing all the unnecessary hardware from the cases:

next was laying out the hole pattern

I used little u-bolts that fit around the basket bars to attach, plus some silicone to seal

these pics show how perfect they fit, they even hold each others lids up

while I was messing around on the rack, I made this little bracket to bolt to the inside of the fairing to hold the GPS puck. Here it is with some fresh paint

In order to get the USB extension through the firewall, I had to cut it and re-solder after it was routed. yay.

GlobalSat unit in place, tucked behind the fairing

 

[frozenground]

Golight install

Next up I wanted to mount a Golight to the rack, so I purchased a 50W HID Stryker model.


I needed to raise the base of the Golight about 1 inch so it would clear the fairing. In order to do this I had to come up with some sort of bracket.. really wished I had a TIG torch at this point because I would have done this out of aluminum in a heartbeat...

anyway after some cutting welding drilling grinding and paint, this is what I came up with :chef:

looming the wires on the rack, ran them down in the windshield channel to the aux fuse block

here it is in 'park'

used some super velcro to attach the remote here for now. it's kind of obnoxious there, but very easy to use.. still trying to think of a more permanent place for it.

Golight installed!

 

[frozenground]

Vision X tantrum lights

I showed my wife a vid of these in action on youtube and she loved em, so I got a set to make her happy :sombrero:

first I laid them out to see where they should go in terms of light spill, and started trying to figure out how to attach them

ended up making brackets for every damn one of em lol.. made these out of 1/8" alum plate

closer pic of the lil buggers

routed all the cables up into the engine bay and made some brackets to hold the distribution block on those nuts you see loose there

here is the distribution block in place and everything plugged in. There was a bunch of slack in some of the cables, so I had to coil it up in loom for now. Later when I have time I will cut out the excess and solder everything to the correct lengths, but this works for now..

here's a couple shots of the lights mounted. I used copious amounts of silicone to seal around them just in case

and a decent pic of them on

 

[frozenground]

up to date?

Welp I guess that brings me pretty close to caught up with this build documentation. I know I skipped over a couple smaller things, but all the major stuff has been covered I think.

This last week has been a busy one getting Serenity ready for a wander through Death Valley and west/central NV. We will be out for a few weeks, but will be checking in here as access permits.

- cleaned up a ton of wiring (takes so much time to do it correctly: solder, heat shrink, split loom, repeat, repeat blah blah)
- re-arranged all the gear storage in the cargo platform
- installed Vision X tantrum rock lights
- attempted to seal up some of the places in the bed where dust comes in, used black RTV sealant in all the drain holes and in the cubbies, then used bulb gasket weatherstripping to go around all the tailgate area where it meets the bed. We shall see...
- installed Scrublades wiper blades
- replaced the in-cab air filter with a better washable version
- mounted 2 super Quik Fist clamps in the side of the bed to hold the Hi-Lift
- full service and pre-trip, checked and topped off all fluids, changed oil, etc.
- put on the custom vinyl

 

[18seeds]

nice build. you sure did do EVERYTHING!

Where did you pick up the GOLight? How do you like it?

 

[frozenground]

nice build. you sure did do EVERYTHING!

Where did you pick up the GOLight? How do you like it?

thanks man! ordered the Golight from Larson Electronics out of TX
http://www.magnalight.com

Been pretty impressed with it so far. The rock cover thing they ship with it is kinda junky though (mine wouldn't even really stay on, first pothole and it would've went flying) but it didn't matter to me since I was planning on facing it backwards when not in use anyway.

Did I mention I like it

Deploy zombie face melter beam!!

 

[TangoBlue]

Wow. A reader steps away from his PC for 24 hours and look what happens...

You do excellent work. Very creative, elegantly simple solutions and with a high level of craftsmanship.

Your build says, "I know. We're going for a ride." Must be some relation to the Tam family.

Thanks for chronicling your build and spending all this time posting it. Now go have a good time.