blueberry.taco build

blueberry.taco

Active member
Hi everyone,
I've been surfing expedition portal for years now but never joined.
(full disclosure: I joined so I can sell my previous rig to like-minded people so I can help fund the current build)

Anyways, since I need to build up 50 posts to sell the previous rig, figured a build thread for the current rig was the best ways to start.

I've been playing with wrenches and cars my whole life, been involved with some forms of motorsports, but really enjoy spending time outdoors away from 'society'.
Offroading was a good start, but that didn't get me away enough. Backpacking has been great, but you still start out from trail heads.
theoretically, a self sufficient house/rig that I could drive into the middle of nowhere, and then comfortably stay there for extended lengths of time is what I want.

I am currently planning to retire in about 10 years to live out my retirement doing #vanlife in some form, so this current build is the 'practice' run for the next decade.
I'll dream about buying an earthcruiser for retirement, but we'll see about that.

For now, I've decided to start with a midsize truck and pop-up camper and hope I can get enough time off work to do months long trips around North America.
with the possibility of forever work-from-home, this may allow for longer stints such as a whole summer up in alaska, etc, but that is being hopeful at this point.

my previous rig was (is) a 2004 ZR2 blazer that I've put substantial effort (and money and even a v8) into over the 8+ years I've owned it, making it into the "best overland zr2 possible" in my opinion, and have enjoyed many many weekender and weeklong trips in with my fiancee and dog. It has been the perfect size vehicle for the majority of those short trips, especially in the narrow forests of michigan and the east coast-er woody places.
But it's a little small in the living spaces, and ground tents are not always ideal in muddy places or cold.
(I'll post more details on this rig in 50 posts when I'm allowed to post it for sale)

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So that brings me to the current build.
I definitely wasn't ready to jump all the way to a full size truck after being so comfortable with a Blazer, so it had to be a midsize truck.
Reliability and parts availability was highest priority so the Tacoma beat out the Colorado/Canyon (including the AEV variants which are built down the street from where I work) or the Ranger.
Plus we were fairly decided on a fourwheel camper, which seems to have the most relationship/experience with Tacomas compared to the other midsize trucks.

And since we wanted to have reasonable living space, we needed to get a Fleet rather than the Swift, so longbed was the obvious bed choice.
As much as a larger double cab would be useful, I couldn't bring myself to buy a suuuper long wheelbase double cab longbed, plus Toyota doesn't offer that combo with a manual trans which is a requirement for me at this point.
and in order to get a manual, access cab, it had to be a TRD Sport trim.. also not super common which means I needed to order from the factory.

more on this in the next post.
 
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blueberry.taco

Active member
So, buying the Tacoma.
I had never bought a vehicle brand new before (or from a dealer), so I got to choose all the options I wanted which was a cool new experience.

I placed an order for a TRD Sport, manual access cab, LED headlight, dualzone climate control, heated seat + nav optioned Tacoma in early March of 2020.
Then Covid and associated delays, blah blah, and didn't actually get the truck until the end of September 2020.
The one good thing about this delay was all the other tidbits of aftermarket stuff I wanted, I could wait and get when they were on sale for various holidays, etc. Which has saved me a ton of money.
Otherwise, not getting to play with my new toy all summer was unfortunate.

Anyways, I wanted to 'break in' the new truck and feel it out in stock form, so we picked a weekend and headed up north for what we've been calling the "Staco" (Stock-Taco) baselining trip.
managed to catch the tail end of the fall colors and enjoyed some fishing on Lake Superior.
(Fishing is a new hobby for me, I'm trying it out and so far enjoying it, would like to learn how to clean and be able to eat them, but for now just releasing them)
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I've been taking a pic at the Mackinac bridge every time I cross it since college.
I have a good collection of pictures now of my various cars and trucks and motorcycles I've crossed it on
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our nice lakeside camp site
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and gotta take cool pics of the $500 LED headlights! (sunrise always make things look cooler)
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and the fall colors
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Since it was stock I didn't have time to set up the backseats to be a great place for my pooch but he didnt complain and enjoyed his porthole window
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I enjoyed getting 20mpg (it'll never be this good again!)
and it's been on jackstands in the garage since driving a whole 840 miles!
a good number of miles before cutting into it right?
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blueberry.taco

Active member
so, onto the build phase.

step1: starting with easy stuff.
disable the clutch accumulator. While I understand the logic on why a manufacturer would want to have one, I dislike the feel of it.
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step2: easy bolt-on: longer rear brake lines.
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step 3: also easy since it's just removal. pull out both diffs and ship them to ECGS to get regeared to 5.29 and ARB lockers put in
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blueberry.taco

Active member
Getting into a little more "fabby" stuff.

While the 3rd member is out is the perfect time to weld on some metal to beef the rear cover.
This will allow me to back into big rocks without worrying about caving the rear cover into the ring gear.
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welded gussets onto the uprights to keep them from bending
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welded gussets to the LCA tabs that are known to be a weak spot on tacomas
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and chopped and plated the cab mounts for more room for tires
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blueberry.taco

Active member
after that, cycled the front suspension without the coilover and trimmed/relocated everything in the way of the tires, and then reassembled.
these are my first fancy bypass shocks I've ever had, I'm excited to see what they can do!
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and since the chassis was getting all the attention, I didn't want to have the bodywork feel left out so i poked a big hole in it
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plus, I think we can all agree that removing a little bit of the blue won't hurt anything.
and once i plugged the hole with a snorkel, everyone can really tell this is a serious business #overlandrig!
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blueberry.taco

Active member
I've never bought an aftermarket bumper before, I've always scratch built them, but Tacomas have such big aftermarket support, I came across a bumper that checked most boxes for me so I ordered it, knowing I'll still want to modify it but it'll save me a ton of time compared to starting from scratch.

Of course I still spent hours changing it up and there's still more work to be done to it, but overall I still don't regret my decision to buy.

The bumper came with some welds just being stitches, and not full welds, which has more potential for corrosion to start, so that all had to get welded up
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and I wanted to put antennas on the front hoop so I added tabs and little loops for clipping points for a clean wire run
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(of course, I made tabs based on CB antennas which I'm used to, but I recently figured out that GMRS antennas (or at least NMO mounts) have 1.5"+ antenna bases, I will need to cut this tab off and make a new one.
at the same time I'll add some more tabs for futureproofing for more antennas and flag for the dunes.

I also like to have a front hitch for various uses, it's just easy to add now so used a bunch of clamps to center it and hold it, burned it in
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and then spent a long time modding the bash plate to look like it belongs
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the bumper is now sitting in the basement, waiting for me to change the tabs and finalize it, then I need to decide if I should spend the money to get it professionally powdercoated or not.

the bumper came with little relocation tabs for the powersteering cooler but I wasn't impressed with what they looked like, (they are bolt-on pieces that will work fine for most people)
but since I have a welder, modifying the stock brackets just works better.
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blueberry.taco

Active member
After that came the fun part.

I removed the rear suspension from the truck.
and not in the typical "I'll unbolt these leaf springs" kind of remove.
all the stock brackets came off too. even the little bumpstop pads and shock brackets all came off.
oh and the axle side shock brackets all gone too.

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blueberry.taco

Active member
and then came the tedious task of measuring very very carefully to place the new suspension.
I decided to go with 63" GM 3/4 ton leaf springs (although I removed the overload leafs for better articulation).
this will provide significantly better droop and flex than the stock setup, and with a conventional shackle as opposed to the Tacoma's original inverted shackle I'll avoid dragging the hanger bracket on everything while hopefully increasing load carrying capability too (especially with the helper air springs I'll also be adding)

First step is to locate the front eyelet location of the spring based on placing the rear axle centered and perpendicular to the frame, at the correct wheelbase.
Lots of masking tape (color matched to the voodoo blue paint) on the floor, lots of plumb bobbing and remeasuring and eventually I was confident I placed everything correctly and welded on the front perch
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next step is the rear shackle mount, in a similar fashion, but it took a couple tries with a broken down leaf pack (down to just the single main leaf) to get the shackle angle to a good spot.
Since math is difficult when you don't know the exact specs of the leaf spring (noone really publishes enough info), it's more down to trial and error and art, but eventually I got them placed, but not before I remembered to add grease fittings. noone likes squeeky bushings.
it takes time because you need to swap back and forth between the full leaf pack to know where ride height is, vs the broken down monoleaf to flex it out to see full jounce and rebound positions.

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and while I won't say I'm a bad welder, sometimes I lay down some beads worth taking a picture of.
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blueberry.taco

Active member
once the 2 ends of the leaf spring are set, next is the shock.
I went with a conservative 12" shock because I didn't want the axle side shock brackets to hang too far under the axle (I've been snagged on that in other trucks before).
but if I were to redo this, I'd go with a 14" shock because I'm definitely leaving some droop the leafs can provide on the table.
Shouldn't be a problem with my stock travel front being my limit anyways with the current setup.

so, back to the monoleaf for travel studies, and then some clever fixturing and placeholder "dumb" shocks, and a couple tries later, I have the shock brackets placed.

first 2 pics below are when i had the tabs too high on the axle side, you can see I'm bottoming the shock which would wreck them, so i had to cut the tacks and move the lower shock eye lower on the axle

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This ended up being a much nicer position
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and added some limit straps to save the shock on the rebound side
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the airspring pictured is just a placeholder, I just had that spring laying around from my lowered mini truck days back in high school.
but it helps to visualize and make upper brackets while i decide on a specific air spring.
I found airlift makes springs with internal jounce bumpers in them, in 3 different ride height variations.
I eventually ended up picking the tallest one based on measurements from ride height
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blueberry.taco

Active member
this was an exciting day.
the first time I was able to set the truck fully on the ground on the new suspension.
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it sits a little tall, but these are brand new leafs so I'm hoping they'll settle in a little bit.

and of course, once I know everything fits good, I got to take it all apart again to fully paint
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I just realized I can drop in full size pictures. oops.
I might go back and increase photo sizes in previous posts now.
 

blueberry.taco

Active member
Cleaned up the upper air spring bracket and painted and bolted them up
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you can see in the last pic I'm running the 2/0 wire to feed the "house" batteries once I get the camper (54+week lead time!)
the cable terminates at the front of the bed at a MEGA fuse block, and also junction to the rear of the frame for the future rear winch
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I got lucky and with some clever bending and shifting of the stock brackets, managed to avoid having to extend any ABS wires to account for all the extra droop travel
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blueberry.taco

Active member
Tacoma owners will know that the lowest point on the stock truck is annoyingly the exhaust. it loops under and behind a crossmember but it's "free" ground clearance if you relocate it.
which is exactly what I did.
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while I was at it, I moved around some bends from the stock tailpipe I had to cut off to fit the new suspension and welded it together to provide a rear turndown exit tail pipe to reduce fumes from lingering under the bed
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Bolted up the ARB twin compressor with -6AN hose (it comes with -4 which i've read is a restriction) and plumbed up both ARB lockers.
Really bummed the ARB anodized blue does not match my voodoo blue paint :(
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built up some lower air spring cradle mounts which ended up way more complex than I would have preferred, but the u-bolt flip caused some headaches to avoid.
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bolted up an aluminum skid plate to protect the fuel tank (plastic), which needed minor clearancing to fit alongside the new spring brackets
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and finished running the 2/0 hot wire all the way into the engine bay to another MEGA fuse block, and then added a nice 2/0 ground cable to the frame to match.
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blueberry.taco

Active member
this was the real nail biter of a project.
sticking stickers on the switchpros panel straight and centered.
unlike welding and cutting metal, no redos on this one!
but I think i did a good job.
Bought a nice custom RP panel for the switchpro panel to mount to, and relocated all the stock switches to the lower row.
open hole was intended for an ML-ACR switch for dual batteries but decided I wasn't going to do a dual battery setup (at least for now) so it's free for now. I'm sure I'll find a way to use it soon enough
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and an overall engine bay (pretty dirty for a 800 mile truck!)
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Splurged on a bluetooth controlled airspring manifold (dual channel for LH and RH independent control, which means push button leveling capability!) and mounted it
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but immediately took it back off again to make a rock shield to protect it
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then worked on the purchased bolt-on rock sliders to the fit and finish of my liking, and also some cutting to notching to fit the leaf springs (I feel like the suspension mods have caused me just a little bit of extra work)
managed to remove a bit of excess steel (and weight) but also added features to retain the stock wire harness which loses some retention features due to the bolt-on plates.

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then i took them down to the basement and prepped for paint, and as it's been suuuuuper cold outside, decided to paint them in the basement.
Bad idea. I'm sure the paint enjoyed the temps for a good cure, the fumes did eventually propagate throughout the house which was unfortunate for everyone.
I won't be doing that again.

aaaand we're all caught up to my so far 5 months of truck ownership. whew.
 

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