December 28, 2023. It's been quite a while - eight months to the day - since the last Rig Review, making this only the second review of 2023. That's just pure lazy on my part, but I'll plead "no way to work on the truck since it's been in Las…
6 CommentsTag: transfer case
TL;DR - After replacing the transmission seal on the transfer case input shaft, my leak disappeared for about three months. But, it's back, so I need to replace the seal again. When replacing the seal in the transmission where the input shaft of the transfer case connects to the output…
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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,…
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December 18, 2022. The final three months of 2022 have seen several more trips and the Tacoma has weathered them well (as usual). Interestingly, while the set of trips is large, the actual driving for these trips has been relatively small: Olympic Peninsula Passages (Sep 2022) Lake Hopping the Eastern Sierra…
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TL;DR - The seal in the transmission that accepts the input shaft from the transmission is leaking and needs to be replaced. At the same time I noticed the slow leak at the rear diff, I also noticed a drop of gear oil on the transfer case skid plate. A…
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March 15, 2022. Time flies when you're having fun, and the last several trips have been exactly that. A regular reader may recall that my last rig review was just as the transfer case blew up on my Back for More trip to Death Valley. Since then, the truck has…
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TL;DR - the new transfer case seems to be working great so far. After the input shaft bearing in my transfer case gave out on a trip to Death Valley, I quickly picked up a new (to me) transfer case from a local junkyard and swapped it into the Tacoma.…
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By and large, the Tacoma has performed spectacularly over the 21 years since I drove it off the lot. With regular maintenance, I've really only had two or three failures - none of those failures requiring anything more than an early drive home - over the 200,000 miles it has…
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December 15, 2021. It's been three months since the last rig review, and in that time I've put another 10,000 miles on the Tacoma. With a nearly catastrophic failure, as well as a few great successes, it's time to dive into the good and the bad from the last several…
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TL;DR - I need a new transfer case. Like most of the rest of the Tacoma, I "only" have 200K miles on the transfer case. While these are generally viewed as rock solid components that can last upwards of half a million miles, mine actually started to show signs that…
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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 Sierra, and a nearly two-week adventure through Wyoming and Colorado. Of those, the…
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TL;DR - I have oil leaking from the transfer case where the front drive shaft attaches. The truck is subjected to a lot of muddy water crossings and over time that muddy water gets in the various seals and things start to leak. That has happened on one of the…
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This is a long, wordy post. Sorry, and enjoy the story. As we drove the several-hundred-miles to eastern Oregon on our recent trip to Owyhee and the Alvord Playa, all was not well with the Tacoma. Four times - each time after three uninterrupted hours of driving - there would…
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