TL;DR - My 26-year-old door handle finally broke, and I've replaced it with a metal one.
Category: Tacoma Maintenance
General catch-all category for content relating to 2000 Tacoma maintenance.
TL;DR - I had to put a new starting battery when my lights were left on by the facility that stores it in Las Vegas. I also took the opportunity to "capture" the battery a little bit better.
TL;DR - I've needed to rebuild my front coilovers for a few months now but have procrastinated the job since it's rather time consuming. However, when I heard my front lower spherical bearings starting to make noise, I knew I couldn't put it off any longer.
TL;DR - The spot where my NMO ham radio antenna mount punches through the roof has been rusting for years. I think this was due to poor design of my original antenna. I've cleaned up and repainted the roof, and I think the antenna I use now will not cause the same problem again.
TL;DR - I had driveline vibes that I thought were a result of the center carrier bearing, but I now think were due to a bad u-joint. Both were replaced and the vibes are gone.
TL;DR - I replaced my greaseable SPC upper ball joints with the "lifetime" variant that SPC now offers. I'm not sure I believe that it's a lifetime part, but time will tell.
TL;DR - My Northstar 24F batteries have been great, but after 5 years, they are both dying. I need to start figuring out what I'm going to do next.
TL;DR - I knew I had cracks in the front passenger corner of the bed, but I had no idea how bad it was. Luckily, I have great friends who could help get it buttoned back up!
TL;DR - I am not happy with the lifespan I got out of the X-Axis joints on my SPC upper control arms (UCAs), so I'm going back to the original polyurethane bushing-based SPC UCAs.
TL;DR - I waited too long to swap out the spherical bearings in my ADS coilovers, and they ended up destroying the rod ends of my shocks. A simple job made more complicated by my lazy ineptitude.
Immediately after installing the Chevy 63 leaf springs at Zane's @Speedytech7 shop - with a lot of his help - and loading up the Tacoma for the trip back home, it was clear that the rear end was sitting just a tad low. In setting up the leaf packs, Zane guessed that I'd need four of the five leafs, and had kindly removed one prior to my arrival. Upon returning home, I promptly set about removing the packs from the Tacoma and reinstalling that fifth leaf, which pushed the rear end of the truck up a couple of inches. Restoring…
6 Comments
TL;DR - I fixed the wiring for my rear e-locker, and it was pretty easy!
TL;DR - It's finally time to replace my front brake pads on the left (driver) side, and I've been so happy with the Toyota OEM pads I've been running that I'm not even looking for other alternatives.
TL;DR - I had my second oil analysis done. With 260K miles on the Tacoma, everything still seems happy.
Another failure from CBI Offroad. I've run into problems with CBI before - both with their customer service when I was initially installing my rear bumper, as well as customer service when the latch that keeps the two swingouts closed, failed. This time, I was driving along the bumpy roads of the Whipple Mountains when I noticed that the Trasharoo was hanging at an odd angle off of my spare tire. This isn't unusual - all the jostling tends to move it around a bit - so after snapping a quick photo of some fantastic landscape, I set the camera…
4 Comments
May 22, 2023 With the Tacoma living in Las Vegas now, it's harder to perform various maintenance tasks as they pop up and between trips. As such, with a few general maintenance issues - oil changes, tire rotations, etc. - and a few items in recent Rig Reviews needing attention, I drove the truck home from the Three Days of R&R trip for a little TLC (Tacoma Loving Care). On my list for a warm spring day were the following tasks: Routine maintenance - Change the oil, Rotate the tires Grease drive train. Check the new SPC UCAs for play in…
10 Comments
September 1, 2022. Note: There is an important update below. It was more than three years and 120K miles ago that I installed SPC UCAs on the Tacoma. Shortly after installation, SPC came out with an improved design that was a single forged piece of material, with an entirely new type of joint. That joint - which they call the "X-Axis" joint - was essentially a sealed spherical bearing that replaces the polyurethane bushings where the UCA is mounted to the frame. And so, when I took the truck in for an alignment and the alignment tech (a good one,…
18 Comments
August 17, 2022. On our first day of the trip to Plumas National Forest, on our way down to Poker Flat, we heard a new banging noise. It reminded me of the noise I'd heard when I'd broken a leaf spring, so I was out of the truck quickly to look for the problem. I wasn't able to isolate it entirely, but I was pretty sure that I found where the bed had split (more than in the past) in the passenger front corner. Luckily, it only seemed to rattle around on significant downgrades with rocky conditions, and I knew…
14 Comments
I guess you can say that I'm a little gun-shy after having two trips to Death Valley cut short due to mechanical issues. The first one - when my transfer case started making noise - was a surprise, but the second trip - when the main leaf of my leaf pack broke - was something I could have easily avoided with preventative maintenance. And so, I think it's time to stop putting off a bit more preventative maintenance work that I've been procrastinating: changing my timing belt (and the other associated components) and replacing my clutch. I've done the timing…
2 Comments
If I've learned one thing over the last several years, it's that bumpy roads are a lot of fun. The problem - as anyone who knows them can attest - is that in time, all good things get destroyed by bumpy roads. It is a conundrum. The key of course, is to replace the good things before they are destroyed. Preventative maintenance. The easiest kind - or the hardest, depending on your outlook. Anyway, after nearly five years of service, I successfully bounced, rattled, flexed my heavy duty Alcan Spring leaf pack to death - breaking my first leaf on a…
10 Comments