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Thought this would be interesting to some of you. I've been slowly building my Toyota Tacoma since 2005. The stuff below is quoted from my build thread on the customtacos forums, so some of it will be high school, early college kid mistakes and silly mods. The good stuff comes later.
Begin Story:
I started out with simple things. My senior year of high school(2004-2005), I bought a 10 CD changer and installed that with the help of my friend David. Later on, thanks to the crappy construction job done by the lunatics they hire to do roads here in Miami, my truck's shocks blew. I drove it that way for a while and thanks to all the excess vibration caused by that, my truck developed a few rattles. I eventually grew tired and went to Toyota where I bought 4 new shocks and installed them, literally the first time I had done any serious work on my truck(All I had done before was changing brake pads or oil).
On my second year at the University, my friend Ricarfens got me into the idea of adding a grounding kit so I ordered one and installed it. It noticeably smoothed the idle and improved how loud I could turn up the music without distortion(my factory ground was probably just in bad shape). My friend Javier later bought an intake which was not meant for his Corolla. It was too long, so we cut it and part went on his car and the remainder was used to replace the corrugated plastic part of my intake. Before long, the spark plug wires went bad so I ordered up a set of MSD wires and these also smoothed the idle, even more so than the grounding kit. Javier, who helped me install both even noticed; which he didn't after the grounding kit. Soon after, I bought some ebay "projector" headlights and destroyed all but one of the clips holding on the grill because the stupid Hanes manual said I could remove the grill without taking off the bumper- WRONG! Luckily, the bumper holds the grill on and so do the corner lights. I gained better lights, the ability to change just the bulbs, and some bootleg angel eyes as well.
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Later on, my trans started acting up. It became impossible to shift gears in many cases, and in first the truck would drive forward without my pushing the accelerator and with the clutch pressed completely down! This was caused by the master and slave cylinders failing. So off to Toyota I went, to obtain the originals, and I had my mechanic install them. The starter later gave out and I had him install a new one as well. Also, the key cylinder for the ignition somehow got locked so I had to go off to Toyota and buy a new one to replace it. This I did myself in a matter of minutes. I also took off my old plastic bedliner, prepped the bed, and did a roll on liner.
Summer of my second year, the tires wore out and I bought new ones. The Futura GLS tires were pretty good except that they have some inflation issue and wear out in the middle first no matter what you do (short of under inflating them). I stuck to the usual things for a while, oil, spark plugs and brake pads. I also did a 100,000 mile service which was way overpriced and I could have done myself. At one point I got shocks for the hood and made custom brackets to hold them on. Unfortunately, the shocks were too thick and alot of underhood brackets would have to be modified so that they would not hit anything when I closed the hood so I scratched that project.
On the summer of my third year, I painted the edges of the bed with a rubberized undercoat, it looked great but eventually lost color from the sun. The metal frame around my four pane rear window was fading so I masked all that area off and painted it all.
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My Cd changer stopped working for no apparent reason-prompting me to realize Sony Xplode equipment is garbage, so I removed it and never bought Sony Xplode stuff again.
Begin Story:
I started out with simple things. My senior year of high school(2004-2005), I bought a 10 CD changer and installed that with the help of my friend David. Later on, thanks to the crappy construction job done by the lunatics they hire to do roads here in Miami, my truck's shocks blew. I drove it that way for a while and thanks to all the excess vibration caused by that, my truck developed a few rattles. I eventually grew tired and went to Toyota where I bought 4 new shocks and installed them, literally the first time I had done any serious work on my truck(All I had done before was changing brake pads or oil).
On my second year at the University, my friend Ricarfens got me into the idea of adding a grounding kit so I ordered one and installed it. It noticeably smoothed the idle and improved how loud I could turn up the music without distortion(my factory ground was probably just in bad shape). My friend Javier later bought an intake which was not meant for his Corolla. It was too long, so we cut it and part went on his car and the remainder was used to replace the corrugated plastic part of my intake. Before long, the spark plug wires went bad so I ordered up a set of MSD wires and these also smoothed the idle, even more so than the grounding kit. Javier, who helped me install both even noticed; which he didn't after the grounding kit. Soon after, I bought some ebay "projector" headlights and destroyed all but one of the clips holding on the grill because the stupid Hanes manual said I could remove the grill without taking off the bumper- WRONG! Luckily, the bumper holds the grill on and so do the corner lights. I gained better lights, the ability to change just the bulbs, and some bootleg angel eyes as well.
Later on, my trans started acting up. It became impossible to shift gears in many cases, and in first the truck would drive forward without my pushing the accelerator and with the clutch pressed completely down! This was caused by the master and slave cylinders failing. So off to Toyota I went, to obtain the originals, and I had my mechanic install them. The starter later gave out and I had him install a new one as well. Also, the key cylinder for the ignition somehow got locked so I had to go off to Toyota and buy a new one to replace it. This I did myself in a matter of minutes. I also took off my old plastic bedliner, prepped the bed, and did a roll on liner.
Summer of my second year, the tires wore out and I bought new ones. The Futura GLS tires were pretty good except that they have some inflation issue and wear out in the middle first no matter what you do (short of under inflating them). I stuck to the usual things for a while, oil, spark plugs and brake pads. I also did a 100,000 mile service which was way overpriced and I could have done myself. At one point I got shocks for the hood and made custom brackets to hold them on. Unfortunately, the shocks were too thick and alot of underhood brackets would have to be modified so that they would not hit anything when I closed the hood so I scratched that project.
On the summer of my third year, I painted the edges of the bed with a rubberized undercoat, it looked great but eventually lost color from the sun. The metal frame around my four pane rear window was fading so I masked all that area off and painted it all.
My Cd changer stopped working for no apparent reason-prompting me to realize Sony Xplode equipment is garbage, so I removed it and never bought Sony Xplode stuff again.
