October 16, 2021. It's been nearly three years since I installed my ADS suspension on all four corners of the Tacoma. I did the rears first - twice, actually - relocating them for more travel. The fronts were installed not long after, and of course I've been battling the spherical…
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I've discussed the trade-offs between disposable and rebuildable shocks in the past as I've replaced spherical bearings in my ADS coilovers, but I've never walked through the process of actually rebuilding the internals of a smooth body shock before. But, now that my shocks have absorbed some ~80K miles, it's…
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August 1, 2021. It's been a while since the last Rig Review. Since then, I've put five trips and 20K more miles on the Tacoma. It has - as always seems to be the case - been fantastic. Scouting Black Rock Desert (Apr 2021) Owyhee West (May 2021) Forty-One Miles…
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March 8, 2021. Over the course of the winter, the truck has performed well. Four (!) trips down to the desert to stay warm have put a bunch of miles on the odometer and resulted in only a few little tweaks to the set up. But any tweak is worth…
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I've replaced the spherical bearings on my ADS coilovers several times now. I only really mentioned it the first and second times, but its become regular maintenance every 10,000 miles or so - generally about 3-4 trips and ~2 oil changes. I chalked it up to normal maintenance required on…
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December 1, 2020. There've been a few tweaks to the truck, and two trips to Death Valley since the last rig review, so it's a good time to take stock of how things are going. First, in case you missed the trips, check out: Retracing Panamint Valley's Nadeau Trail Death…
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I've done a lot of work to the suspension on the Tacoma - with good reason since it is what helps to make our trips more comfortable, and what helps to isolate most of the truck from the harsh terrain over which we travel. In doing that work, one of…
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October 12, 2020. There's no doubt about it, the truck worked pretty well on the Clear, Colorful, Colorado trip for the entirety of the two weeks. Heck, it even got me there and back on the highway - two 20+ hour drives straight, with a bunch of dirt thrown in-between.…
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May 24, 2020. Our last two trips have both been to the Owyhee area of southeastern Oregon and western Idaho - Into the Owyhee Uplands and Owyhee Redux. The truck performed well on each trip, but as always there are little tweaks I want to make to the setup, so…
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It seems like just a few weeks ago that I replaced the spherical bearings on my ADS coilovers for the first time, though it turns out, it was actually a few (4) months ago. Prior to that, I'd put some 27K miles on the new ADS suspension (see installation) -…
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March 17, 2020 Back from the eastern Mojave, it's time for another look at how the truck performed over the course of the last 5 day's adventures. If you haven't read those - and want to - go right ahead, I'll wait. Front ADS Coilover Spherical Bearings (again) TL;DR -…
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January 4, 2020 Another year of wheeling and camping is in the books. I find myself here writing a rig review as one of 2020's first posts, for the last couple of trips that we took in 2019. By and large, the truck performed well on those trips In Search…
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Today was going to be an easy day working on the truck. I knew what I had to do and it wasn't hard. I'd gathered the parts I needed - twice really, since the first time I tried to do this work, I found that I needed some additional bits…
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September 30, 2019. It was another whirlwind of trips through August and September, with three more trips and 21 more nights now in the books: The Whipsaw Trail in BC, Canada, a trip with Pops to the California Sierras, and a nearly two-week adventure through Wyoming and Colorado. Of those, the…
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April 29, 2019. The trip to the Alvord Desert and Hart Mountain Antelope National Wildlife Refuge was one that we threw together relatively quickly and without much work on the truck after the previous trip. The only work really was maintenance - an oil change, tire rotation, and re-booting the…
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Rig Review is a new type of post that I'm going to try to write up after most trips, where I'll note any things that worked really well, or could have been better. The idea has always been to optimize the Tacoma build and setup over time, so there's nothing…
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Rig Review is a new type of post that I'm going to try to write up after most trips, where I'll note any things that worked really well, or could have been better. The idea has always been to optimize the Tacoma build and setup over time, so there's nothing…
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January 15, 2019. What can I say? It's the end of an era, sort of. Really, it's the end of a transition period for the Tacoma - a time when it was transitioning from daily driver and home renovation hauler to a more dedicated exploration vehicle. It was nearly three…
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December 17, 2018. I'm generally pretty good at building things with my hands, but in relocating the rear shocks on my first gen Toyota Tacoma, I'd royally screwed up. If you haven't read about that, I'd recommend checking out the previous post in this series - Rear Shock Relocation -…
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December 3-4, 2018. Rear shock relocation day was finally here! Zane @Speedytech and I were up bright and early so we could be at ADS right around their opening time of 8:00am to pick up the rear shocks they'd been holding for me for the last couple of months. As…
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