

escape the ordinary


TL;DR - the new transfer case seems to be working great so far.

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 travelled! I suppose I can't always expect everything to work perfectly, and on my Back for More trip to Death Valley, I had a bad-enough-to-head-home-immediately failure of the transfer case. But, the story starts much, much earlier... Background It was in November 2018 - while on a trip to 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 be a sudden sound of something that sounded like a bearing "spinning up." The sound was disconcerting enough that I'd immediately take my foot off the gas, and the sound would slow - eventually ending in a clunk and everything would be "back to normal." Everything that is except my…
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