4-Wheel Hi-Dezert Build

This weekend I'm doing my inner and outer tie rods and lower ball joints. I kept putting off a build thread because I figured it would be slow progress, but the more small projects I do, the more parts I buy, and the projects are adding up more quickly than I thought.

This is the truck as it stands right now:


To date, this is everything I've done to the truck, in both maintenance and upgrades:

Maintenance
182,300 - Drove the truck home!
182,800 - Replaced spark plugs, cables, and ignition coils (all new OEM), fresh oil & filter
183,000 - Replaced fuel injectors with REMAN OEM from MotorWest
183,000 - Replaced all valve cover seals (all new OEM)
183,600 - Replaced A/FR sensor (upstream O2 sensor)
184,000 - Replaced most vacuum lines
184,000 - Replaced fuel line (cracked it working on the truck)
186,666 - Nalgene wiper fluid bottle and oil / filter change
188,000 - Upgraded to 35” tires and 15” wheels!
188,500 - Replaced battery
188,600 - Replaced D/S CV boots
189,669 - Greased Driveshaft
189,760 - Replaced Air Filter
190,097 - Oil & Filter, New front brake pads
190,500 - Replaced Inner / Outer Tie Rods & Upper / Lower Ball Joints, Front End Alignment
190,800 - Installed King 2.5 IFPs
191,320 - Replaced 8/11 total Freeze Plugs, Flushed with ThermoCure & replaced with OEM 1LLAC Toyota Coolant
193,150 - Tire Rotation
193,257 - Oil & Filter, Greased Driveshaft
197,085 - Oil & Filter, Greased Driveshaft, Power Steering Flush, Install K&N Intake

Suspension

• Bilstein 5100s Rear
• OME Dakar CS019R Rear Leaf Springs
• Stock front coilovers with unknown small spacer lift
• KING 2.5 IFP front coilovers

Performance

• K&N 57 Series FIPK Intake

Wheels & Tires

• 35x12.5r15 Falken Wildpeak MT/01
• 15" Procomp Steelies 3.75" BS
• 1.5" Cheapo lug centric spacers

Exterior/Extras

• CBI Offroad Overland Bars
• Smittybilt Overlander RTT
• Small Autozone lightbar mounted on bed for camping
• BAMF BPV 5.5" Bracket

The Day I Drove it Home...


History
I bought this truck back in December, 2019 with 182,000 miles on it. It crossed the 90k mile with the PO, without getting a timing belt job done. This is my next big priority. I also knew it had a small oil leak on the rear passenger side of the valve cover. Just after I handed over the cash for the truck, before I got 5 miles down the road, the CEL came on with a P0303 misfire...

 

Nice build, and great up keep!
Keep on going

 

After figuring out I had a P0303, one of the first things I did to the truck was a tune up, to replace the spark plugs, cables, and coil packs with all OEM and then a quick oil/filter change. I also sprayed the shit out of the MAF sensor with some MAF cleaner spray.

This is what the plugs look like when they came out


I drove around for a bit like this but that did not solve my problem. I actually drove the truck off road from Pioneertown to Big Bear, CA to do some snowboarding and camping on New Years Eve/Day haha. Just before the trip I installed my CBI Offroad Overland bars and my rooftop tent.



The truck did just fine despite the CEL and seriously sad, flat springs! I'm also glad I brought my shovel because I spent about 45 minutes digging a path for myself up a steep hill slick with snow and mud haha.

When I returned from my trip, I got a little deeper into the engine. I checked the compression in all cylinders:
1: 195, 3: 180, 5: 195
2: 195, 4: 180, 6: 180

And I discovered the source of my P0303 code, by ohm-ing out the injectors, to see if that was where the problem was coming from:
#1: 15.9 ohms
#3: 36 ohms

Bingo. Bad reading from the #3 fuel injector! I bought a set of 6 remanufactured fuel injectors from MotorWest performance.


And started digging into the top end to replace all the valve cover seals, PCV, etc.

Throttle body was nasty! I cleaned that out pretty good.

When I buttoned everything back up, I had no more oil leak, and no more P0303 code! However, a P0171 appeared in its place. While I was troubleshooting this code, I replaced the upstream O2 sensor and almost all of the vacuum lines. At this point I was pretty much out of ideas, so I took it to a shop to get smoked down. They quickly found out that there was a major leak from the "back of the engine on top of the valve cover". I brought the truck back home and pulled the plenums off once again. Turns out my injectors weren't seated all the way in the rear so it was running super lean (probably a factor of working on the truck late at night after 6+ beers - kind of like how I'm writing this post right now). The O-rings on the injectors were super stiff so it took a TON of elbow grease to get them all seated properly. While I was tightening everything up, I actually snapped the fuel rail lol (cranked too hard on one of the bolts). Luckily I got one from a junkyard two miles down the road the next day and swapped it out!

 

Thanks guys!

 

Once I took care of the codes, I was stoked to really get started on the build. Next step was to remove my extremely sad rear shocks and very flat leaf springs and replace them with OME Dakar springs and Bilstein 5100 shocks I bought here on TW.



This is what the truck looked like before the lift... Some serious cali Bro-lean going on!!




I was slamming on my bump stops every single time I went over any kind of bump in the road


Old vs New and I cut the exhaust to fit


That's a healthy looking rear end



Much better! I like to have some rake in it, so I didn't remove any of the leafs from the pack. Though it did end up kind of stiff. It is way better than it was before and I love the lift. Bad news is that I pretty much maxed out my rear brake line and my BPV - I have still not replaced my rear brake line.

 

I rolled around on the 33's with that lift for a little while, but every day I was looking on craigslist for a cheap set of 35's. I found some BFG KM2s in pretty rough condition on a set of 15" procomp steelies for a grand total of $400. The size on these was 35x12.50r15



That was all I needed to template out my cutting and welding to tub the firewall.
I started by marking out my cuts on some painters tape, then cut reliefs into the side of the body and ran the whole length, cutting out tabs with the angle grinder.





Cutting the relief cuts made this a relatively painless process. Clearancing the rear end is very quick and easy. After this process was done, I used the grinding wheel a little bit and then just put some edge trim on that I got for about 12 bucks from Autozone.

The front was a different story and admittedly a pain in the ass. I started by removing the front bumper and then taping and marking out my cuts on the fender, same as with the rear end.




This was the easy part. After the cuts were complete, I had to fit the new wheels/tires to see where I needed to trim back the firewall to fit. I pulled my coilovers out and stuffed the tires in best as I could.



You can see that when I turn the wheel even a little bit, I make contact with the fire wall.




I marked out with a sharpie and made similar cuts on both the driver and passenger side. My photos kind of jump between driver/passenger, but it's the same process for each side. I used my angle grinder for this whole process. Also, you'll notice that I didn't touch the cab mounts. Idk why, but I was a little nervous about cutting into the cab mounts during this process. I don't rub at all, but when I slam really hard, my tires do make some contact with the firewall/cab mounts. If I could do it again, I would probably cut the cab mounts to give myself a little more room there.


I made templates out of cardboard and traced it onto some steel.



I cut the steel in three pieces, as we tacked each piece in, we basically banged the sh*t out of it with a hammer to shape it how we needed it to fit. My buddy came over to help me with the welds. He has a stick welder so we got it in there best we could for now but need to run a bead over the whole thing to seal it up.




Ah, much better



You can see it's a little bit tight towards the cab mount, but it fits at full stuff/lock. Barely. I would have definitely gave it some more room if I could do it over. It's still not too late to do that, so I may pull the wheels off and adjust.



Finished product!

 

Friggin sweet ​

 

When I installed my Dakar’s my brake line nut was seized so I ended up stripping the nut to remove the line. I ended up bending the whole bracket downwards, giving more than enough slack. No need for an extended brake line now.

 

Interesting! How much slack did you get? I'm worried that if I go off road, I might flex it too far and end up damaging the line

 

I don’t do any hard off-roading, maybe an occasional trail/dirt road so this is just fine for me.

 

After I picked up and installed those tires, I ran into a series of minor issues that left me no choice but to do some much needed maintenance on the truck, which I had been putting off in favor of dumb projects like 35's lol. First of all, the truck was driving like garbage from the poorly balanced and probably misshapen tires. While I was procrastinating getting a balance and continuing to drive the truck, I felt a new vibration coming from under the driver side front and some noises on turning. On further inspection, I noticed that it was a torn CV boot. So I ordered a set of inner and outer boots and grease from Amazon.

While I was waiting for the CV boot shipment to arrive, my battery died! Trip to Autozone (on the way to work) left me with a new duralast gel battery. They didn't have any Optima Yellow tops in stock but I would have much preferred to go with one of those! Unfortunately, since the rig is my daily driver, I didn't have the choice to wait for one to come in stock or ship on Amazon.

After taking care of the few minor issues, my wife and I took a trip down to the coast to Carlsbad for the 4th of July weekend. The badly balanced tires did not do me any favors and I was having some extreme vibrations over 50 mph. After driving a couple hundred miles on the bad tires, the front driver side one exploded! I limped to a used tire shop on the flat (of course I don't have a spare) and was lucky to pick up a 35" tire in really bad shape for about 50 bucks.



I'm almost caught up to where I'm at now! Bear with me, a few more updates and we'll be up to speed.

 

We made it back home, where I bit the bullet and bought a new set of 35x12.50r15 Falken Wildpeak MT/01 tires. It wasn't so bad considering American Tire Depot has a great deal, 0% financing for 6 months on purchases over $199 if you use their credit card. Mounted and balanced I was in about $1100 for the new Falkens. I offset the cost by selling my old 17" Raceline wheels & 33" tires for $900 on Craigslist. I was very happy with the work that American Tire Depot did! The new tires looked great on the Taco.

On the new tires, I drove to Utah to help my buddy @natehg pick up his new (old) 2006 Tacoma! While we were out there we put his dead stock and somewhat beat up truck through its paces on some sand and some rock. Utah is easily top three favorite states for me.

 

Been a minute since my last update, but I still have some catching up to do on my build, so I'll pick up where I left off...
With the tall rear lift and new heavy wheels/tires, my front brakes were taking a beating. The rear BPV was basically maxed out, meaning that I was utilizing almost zero rear braking power and all of my braking was coming from the front discs. I also saw that my "brake" indicator was coming on intermittently. I wasn't too worried about it, until returning from a Labor Day trip to Big Bear, CA driving down the mountain... some sketchy moments where I was not confident in my brakes. When I got home, I went straight to Autozone to pick up a new set of brake pads. Here's some pics of the old vs the new:



The rotors look good so I didn't replace or take them to get refinished. I also bought the BAMF 5.5" BPV Bracket to fix my rear brake issue. After completing the install, the brakes felt great, I really couldn't believe how bad they were before!

 

Here's some photos from the Big Bear trip. We ran a couple nice trails, had a good time driving offroad. My buddy was a little nervous to bring the new RAM out on the trail.



At this time, we could see the California wildfires dumping tons of smoke from the south. It was mid-late October, so I think we were looking at the Apple Fire.

 

I stumbled across one of your pictures in the wild and had to do a double take, I thought my own truck had been moonlighting without me. Cool truck dude!

 

I just looked at your build thread and your truck sure does look like mine! I think this style was the greatest of the 1st gens