What have you done to your 1st gen Tundra today?

Well I haven't done it yet, but it came 3 days early.......

 

Good luck, bud. I'd kinda hoped @AmericanKing06 would've updated his post to remove the image, but here we are

 

A band aid on top of trauma. It'll do for now. At least the huge flakes of rust are gone. Definitely a 10 footer but I trust it not to fall apart while driving for a few years. Should've removed the brake system but I'm getting tired of grinding away at it night after night instead of putting it back together and driving it.

 

Post had be updated.

 

I mean . . . that's pretty hawt right there!

 

Did a transmission drain and fill last night on the Tundra (at 190,413 miles) and the shitbox (at around 469k). Fluid that drained out of the truck looked almost new, the shitbox was another story. Drained exactly one gallon of fluid so really easy to measure to fill back up.

Took a shot with the eraser wheel at removing the adhesive from my window guards. It did pretty good removing it but my passenger side doors don't have any clearcoat at the tops of them so it looks a bit off as the clear coat was still under the window guards but it is what it is.


I only did the back passenger door so far. I know you all are gonna tell me to buff it/wax it and all that and it probably would look better but in all honesty I've never buffed or waxed anything and don't currently have the equipment to do so. I'll probably just roll with it for the time being and see how the rest of them look after I remove them and go from there.

 

I have the flatbed about 98% welded.
I gave all the bare steel wipe down with Flood Penetrol FLD4 which gives everything a low luster and will keep things from rusting at least temporarily. The Penetrol is mostly linseed oil, but it has some added drying agents. Burns off well for any welding in the future, and in my experience does not cause any significant weld contamination.

This photo you can just see the "skinny puppy" look where the welding has distorted the panels. Comes with the territory. A guy could do some hammer and dolly planishing work to mostly eliminate this.


Killer stance IMO. I should throw the front skid plate back on today. I left it off for my alignment guy a few weeks ago.

Looking forward to getting the camper back on it and seeing the overall look for the first time.

 

I got under my truck to check the torque on the bolts for the lower ball joints, since installing them about 750 miles ago (I know I should of checked earlier, been busy). I remember torquing the bolts to 59ft lb, before, and then double checking them all a 2nd time. I was shocked to see that 5 of the 8 bolts needed to be re-tightened to 59 ft lb. Is this normal? I could of sworn I used red loc-tite on these bolts.

I marked the bolts with a paint marker this time so I can check for future movement.

 

If you used Loctite, no, it's not normal. For one, the red threadlock should've held them in place and required heat to turn. For the other, are you sure you didn't accidentally reference the FSM, where there's a typo that shows some weird low value for the LBJ bolts like 48lbft or whatever? I may be guilty of making that same mistake, and had to go re-tighten one side when I realized it tightening the other.

 

I've specifically avoided re-torquing my LBJ bolts, because...correct me if I'm wrong...that would break the bond of the loctite. Even if the torque wrench was a tiny bit off, and they were at the proper torque, but the wrench moves them a fraction of a cm before clicking...now the loctite bond is broken, correct?

If I'm wrong, I'd love to check the torque. I've just assumed I got the torque correct and used plenty of blue loctite, so there's nothing more to be done.

 

Retorqueing fasteners that have been loc-tited and properly torqued makes no sense to me. If you then turn the fastener after the loc-tite has cured, aren't you breaking the bond of the loc-tite and wouldn't you have to remove, clean the fastener, re-apply loctite and then re-torque it?

 

Clearly we're on the same wavelength here

Because my truck is the year range with the scary low bolt torque, I'd love to re-torque for peace of mind, except...

 

Thanks. Maybe I'm dreaming about the red loc-tite, maybe I'll pull a bolt and see if any is on there...

 

I agree with you guys afraid to retorque out of fear of breaking the loctite bond. Ive avoided doing that as well for that same reason.

I did use a paint pen to remedy this though!

 

I think you're dreaming, and it's the main reason I didn't mention breaking the seal. If you actually used red threadlock, not only would they have not backed out any, but you wouldn't have simply re-torqued. Even if you under-torqued the fasteners, red threadlock is supposed to require heat to break free, and the extra hold they'd have put on an under-torqued bolt should've added up in a way that I'd expect the torque wrench to give as if it was properly torqued.

There are really only a couple explanations I see here:

• You forgot to use red threadlock
• You used red threadlock, but under-torqued the fasteners enough that added play in the LBJ and suspension knocks broke the threadlock bond
• Your red threadlock is defective and should be trashed

Easy enough to figure it out: Back one of the bolts out fully on both sides. You see any evidence of red, anywhere? If not, clearly it's the first option. If you do see traces of red, it's one of the latter two. And given it could be the last of the three, I'd trash what you've got, go out and buy new threadlock, and re-seat the bolts.

I can tell you, definitively, I used blue Loctite liquid on mine and marked the bolts. 3k-4k miles, my bolt position marks are still on-point.

Worth mentioning liquid vs. stick differences. Liquid threadlock has been tested to have stronger hold than the sticks, to the tune of having 1/3 - 1/2 less strength in stick format, IIRC. I'd either stick with blue liquid or red stick and you should balance out to being roughly in the same ballpark, red stick having a little stronger hold than the blue liquid.

I believe you can safely back out one bolt, clean, re-threadlock, reinstall, torque, then rinse/repeat for each add'l bolt. I've seen others do that on here for various reasons, and have no issues.

 

After my next car wash I'm going to mark those bolts with paint. Not sure why I've never done that. My LBJ bolts are the 37ft/lb torque variety...so I definitely want to make sure they're still tight.

 

Great work man, really inspiring me to build a flatbed for my truck someday. Couple questions:

What made you decide on the height above the frame that you went with. Clearance of tires?

And the bed bolts. Did you need to buy longer ones or you had enough extra length to still have them get enough thread into the frame with the stock ones? Thanks!

 

I went back out there to check it out. Apparently the day I installed the bolts, I was subscribing to "a little loc-tite goes a long way" theory. There was loc-tite on them, but not much. I applied a healthy dose of loc-tite to each bolt and re-installed. Should be good now.

Also, when I put my steering rack in, I didn't lube the inside of the bushing... Got it lubed up too.

I can almost sleep softly at night now!

 

Thanks oscardog!

The height is indeed set by how much tire clearance I wanted. I think this is as low as a guy could go due to where and how the oem mounts are placed on the frame.

The factory bolts have enough thread engagement, but just barely. It is on my list to swap those at some point before the rig starts seeing a lot of miles. Alternatively I may recess the heads into the tubes for the extra 6mm that id like. As a bonus the deck would be completely flat without the bolt heads sticking up.

 

Well dammit, "didn't use enough" wasn't on my bingo bullet list!

Glad you got it sorted anyway.

 

This guy may have not used any thread lock. I always have red and blue on hand, so maybe I did? Used Arp's and Paintmarked so they are just gonna ride unless I see something funky.

 

I certainly did use thread lock, just not enough to do the job. Opened a new tube of loc-tite this morning for it. I almost took pictures of the bolts just to show it was present, but decided not to.

 

Now you're making me really curious if I did or not. If anything I used blue, but im about 50/50 on it.

I did just check and I've had no movement at the reference marks. Send It!

 

Sounds good to me. Just watch those marks.

 

Has anyone used one of these. I need to replace my license plate mounted one.
How do you like it?
How does it fit up?
Does your tailgate latch still work?
Which one did you use?

 

It’s a ripoff (probably directly, malicious) of the Master Tailgaters camera latch which many have used on here. I’d prefer theirs but …

 

Bro it's right there in the name, it's both extreme AND amazing! I have the MasterTailgaters one and it's been flawless.

 

So look up the Master Tailgaters version got it

 

This one of the black metal for 109?

 

I've got one on the black truck. Not sure if it's the same brand. But I love it. Everything works great. Install wasn't too bad.