New to the Tundra fam 06 SR5

Hi, I’m new to the Tundra fam but glad to be here. Trying to upgrade my new family grocery getter.

Recently I bought a buddy’s 06’ Tundra SR5. They were the original owner and I feel gave me a good deal in todays market for 10k$.

2006 Toyota Tundra SR5 170k mi

Current mods:
-30% tint
- interior LED swap
- wrapped chrome grill, bumper and mirrors white (limited look)
- currently has 1” level in front 2” in back (i think)
-Auxito H4/9003 LED headlight bulb swap (need decoder to fix issue)
-Nilight LED pod lights amber/white
-Auxito 9006 HB4 LED fog light bulb swap

And my favorite …. Bottle opener on bed of the truck

Goals:
-New deck and speakers
-Bilsteins 5100 on front possibly rear
-spidertrax 1.25"
-Sequoia clear headlight housing swap
-Brake upgrades

Questions/advice:
- Audio upgrade: looking for new deck, speakers and amp if needed. I am not to knowledgable of ohms, amps, watts when it comes to audio systems.
-Exhaust: not looking to wake the town up, but a nice sound and hopefully mpg help
-Brakes: I have read a number of people have upgraded the stock brakes, suggestions?
-Engine/part upgrades: any suggestions for its high mileage status

Anyways, thank you for reading!

Here is the Before:


After (currently):


this is my goal look for my truck:

 

Good luck on MPG, but start cheap and cut everything off behind the muffler, except a few inches to add a turn down. I'm only saying it because I did. Sounds just fine.

Loaded question. I'm in the process of finding out for myself. I have the same truck

 

Why 1.25" spacers?

 

Welcome!

Honestly, I’d leave the engine stock. Maybe add a cat back for sound.

 

Welcome from NY.

 

Exhaust won't get you any mpg without tuning.

I can confirm mpg improvement on my truck with a tonneau cover (approx 1mpg fwy) and changing my gearing from 3.91 to 4.10 (2-3mpg, city/hwy).

Also people have reported better mpg and improved response with 12 hole injectors. I haven't installed mine, so I can't confirm yet.

 

Hopefully I didn't miss anything you wrote. If so, my bad.

Most important is to ask your pal when the timing belt was changed. Needs to be done every 9yrs/90k miles per Toyota. If it snaps, bye-bye engine, so it's kinda important.

I think it's pretty well established here, no "reasonable" amount of money is going to buy you performance from the 2UZ-FE.

Sign up for the Toyota Owners website so you can pull factory specs on your truck. https://www.toyota.com/owners

RE: Suspension, is it not lifted in any way yet?

RE: Audio. Find out what you have now. Your truck has one of three setups:

1. OEM radio, no OEM amp
2. OEM radio, with OEM amp
3. OEM JBL radio, with OEM JBL amp

This may be visibly obvious. If the factory head unit has JBL silkscreened on it anywhere on the face, you've got the JBL system. If you see no JBL logos, you need to check behind the rear driver's side seat (I think on the wall of the truck, may be under a cover or carpet) for a bundle of wires going into a silver finned box, which is the amp.

If you have a system with OEM amp, there are wiring kits to bypass it when you install an aftermarket head unit. As we're 15+ years away from when that amp was made, tech has improved, quality head units will have equal power to what that OEM amp does.

Another option could be to direct-swap a touch-screen head unit from a newer Tundra/Tacoma as @empty_lord has done, it should generally be a plug-and-play experience, and depending on how intact you get it, you can add on microphone for bluetooth etc. This would let you keep the factory amp, and you could simply upgrade the speakers to something modern that doesn't have paper cones.

If you want to go aftermarket and amp-bypass, check this thread. Note this Alpine head unit I and a few others here installed has a piggy-back amp (Alpine's KTA-450) you can buy as a package, it piggybacks onto the unit, easy way to add an amp. Downside is, no CD/DVD slot on that Alpine receiver. But I bluetooth-stream almost everything, including GPS, so I rarely miss the lack of optical disc support.

For speakers, I will always recommend JBL kits. There's a reason a plethora of concert/club venues use JBL speakers, and many guitar players retrofit their old amps with JBL speakers. JBL has some of the best, most accurate sound reproduction there is at the price point. The 6" kit with tweeters and crossovers. It's easy to repurpose the stock tweeter mounts and install the amps on the doors, more info here.

Several guys have cleared out the rear under-seat storage on Double Cab trucks like yours, and installed either a sealed subwoofer unit, or installed a 1/2" or 5/8" carpeted baffle board over the floor compartment and installed an 8" sub or two into the baffle board, if memory serves. The storage, when sealed, becomes the box. Using a low-profile/shallow mount sub could be a good option depending on what you calculate for airspace.

I cannot stress this point enough: Buy from Crutchfield. They'll give you all the baubles, adapters, harnesses, and other bits you'll need, along with free telephone support. You'll likely pay less than other places, but even if you pay a little more, it's worth it, they literally hook you up.

 

The radio @empty_lord first did was from the 2017-2019 Toyota 86. I did the same one. It requires bypassing the OEM amp, as it's amplifier is built in (and was actually better than my non-jbl OEM amplifier).

 

Thanks for that clarification, slightly important!

Maybe it was on Tundra Solutions where I saw someone sticking a Tacoma OEM JBL radio into their 1st Gen for plug-and-play? Or I'm just totally wrong. I did notice the more-recent Tacoma radio (from a few years back) has basically the same plugs as the rear of my OEM premium-non-JBL externally-amplified radio.

 

thanks for the response, I am curious to hear how yours turned out with cutting everything off

 

Crutchfield is a godsend! I went on there after you suggested it and purchased all the stuff I needed . I’m pretty pumped to get it all in and install it. I went with:
- boss floating deck with camera
- 4 kicker speakers
- amp
The customer service was pretty helpful too. I wish all websites were as easy to use as them. Thanks for mentioning them

I obviously could have getting better stuff but wanted to keep my cost down

 

Welcome from LA (Lower Alabama)! Beautiful classic!