TL;DR - I need to replace the evaporator core inside the cab of the Tacoma so we can get cold air again.
I'm not sure why this hasn't been in past rig reviews, but it's definitely been an issue for over a year. I took the truck in to get the AC recharged before trips last summer and the tech (at Toyota) initially said that I had a leak. However, upon recharging the system, they couldn't find the leak so they called it good and told me that I could come back and they'd apply the amount I'd paid for a recharge to the diagnosis if the recharge didn't hold.
Sufficed to say, a few months later, the AC wasn't working again and I took it back to Toyota. They were great and diagnosed the issue for "free." Turns out that after filling the system with dye, there were no leaks in the engine compartment, but when they used a sniffer on the AC vents, they discovered 134A blowing out into the cabin. This, they assured me, was because the evap core had a leak, and so as air blew over it, it was blowing the 134A into the cabin.
And, it would only be $3,800 to fix. So yeah, I passed on that and haven't had AC since. With summer coming (a second time), it's something worth noting - because even on this last trip, there were times where it would have been nice to have some cool air blowing on us.
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