Eccracer104’s build 2.0 - a work in progress

I should have washed the truck before doing this, but decided to dive into the suspension today. Finally rid of the spacer lift! Phew!

The studs in the spacers broke free, so had to wedge a flat head in there to hold them in place so I could remove the nuts.


But it worked. Front end complete.


Didn’t take an after pic for the rear, but did snap my extra hand lol

 

nice ! welcome to the club (the gen 2 club )
for quick de-chrome, get the rock warrior painted grille. Also recommend the morimotos headlights. such a big change for the gen 2 front end.
Still have the cap ? it looked good with it too.

 

Thank you!

Got some paint for the grille shell, I’ll get to that one of these weekends (also also pull the SR5 badges). I’ll also check into the rock warrior grilles. Sounds like a good idea.

The Morimoto headlights are sweet! I like them. I might build a retrofit set though, I have a lot of fun making them.

Yeah, I still have the shell. It’ll go back on soon

 

I second the rock warrior grille, I painted my old grille and I got tired of it fading and chipping and kept having to repaint it, but I also didn't do a very good job with it haha. Threw on a rock warrior grille and was done with it

 

If you happen to build an extra set let me know, I been needing one also haha

 

I have a sneaking suspicion that’s the same path I’ll take haha. I’ll paint mine then keep my eyes open for a deal on one locally or something.

Lol! I might keep my eyes open for a cheap set locally and then pull mine apart to paint the internals for a simple “black headlight mod”. If these are as much a pain in the ass as the 14+ headlights are I want no part in building more sets haha.
But my 07’ and 15’ Tacoma headlights were much easier because no permaseal. Will be a nice test and change up the look.

 

While swapping the suspension I had time to look around under the truck, and realized it has a diff drop installed. Then it dawned on me why the stock skid didn’t fit.

@nishibot had given me a stock skid (the truck came with no skids), and when I went to install it, it didn’t quite fit. I didn’t have the time to mess with it so I moved on.

Went to go pull the diff drop, but realized the bolts are too long and I don’t have the stock bolts. Moved on to the skid, made a makeshift spacer out of a nut and some washers and now I at least have the tin skid on. Eventually I’ll do something for real skid plates, but I wasn’t thrilled with the BB skids, RCI is too thin, so maybe DIY something but that’s a lot of work. Not sure yet there.

 

Now that the rain is nearly to an end, diff breather is installed. Haha.

Initially I bought 8’ of fuel line thinking it would be plenty to have extra, but actually ended up using it all. Routed the breather up behind the taillight. It’ll still get some dust there but not nearly the amount of dirt as the stock location. Old breather was clogged up.



If this helps anyone:
8’ of 3/8” ID fuel line
2 hose clamps that fit up to 5/8”
A few zip ties
And the two Toyota parts (Breather & Union)

Then I routed it straight up, leaving slack for suspension droop. Zip ties are loose to hold it but allow it to move as needed.
Up and over the frame.



Then tucked into some of the bed structure. It squeezes the tube pretty good but doesn’t pinch it for the small amount of air ventilation needed for the diff.



Lastly up and behind the taillight.

 

Looks good! Diff breather is definitely next on my list of things to do as well.

 

Put the camper shell back on today



Also was able to fix the side windows on it. The little rollers came out of the track and I couldn’t get them back in. Figured it out today, the solution was so simple idk how I missed it before

Then while on a roll I messed with my backup camera. It’s been spotty lately, so unplugged it and plugged it back in under the bed. No change. Unplugged and plugged back in inside the tailgate. No change. Then I tried to unplug the actual camera but couldn’t figure it out. I guess I fiddled with it enough though because it’s working again haha.

 

looking good

 

Thank you

I’ll be at work all week lol

 

Today was my onsite day lol

 

Some photos from this weekend:




Truck did great for the shakedown run! Overall awesome trip, but it did get HOT out there. Day time in the desert is about done. Haha.

 

Ummmm… you just gonna put a pic of an airplane in the desert with no comment?

 

A few people landed to unload some items








Jokes aside 1000% looked like a drug runner. Unfortunately we arrived just after they had landed. That would have been fun to watch! Super cool people, just flew out for fun to go shooting. We didn’t stick around to watch them take off or anything as we had places to go.

 

I had some Zenon projector headlights for a while. The light output was phenomenal, by far the best I've ever had. The reliability however was the worst. They lasted for a year, maybe 2 then it became a constant parts replacement issue. The voltage is such that a regular multi-meter doesn't help. It then becomes a guessing game, is it the ballast, igniter, moto control, harness, bulb??? So, I threw in the towel and bought OEM leds. They're a significant step down in performance from projectors but a huge step up from halogen. The reliability with an Ihacker harness has been impeccable. However, in pursuit of greater performance, I recently found a deal on and bought Morimoto LED projectors. We'll see how they stack up. Anyhow, just my .02 on headlights.

 

Those Morimoto LED projectors are what I have my eyes on. Cool you found a deal on a set! Very interested to see how they work out for you.

I had issues with mine too. First set ended up having a weird power issue through the fuse. Would have been an easy enough fix but sold the truck.
Then my black tundra had an igniter go out the day I was meeting to sell it haha. So ordered a replacement and was an easy fix thankfully. But the HID projector kits definitely are more problematic.

 

I believe there's an "open box" set of Morimoto's on Ebay RN.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/225618202129

 

Nice!

I do really like those. They have a OEM feel which I appreciate.

I did think you were referring to these Morimoto LED projectors though haha
https://www.theretrofitsource.com/bi-led-morimoto-m-led-headlight-projectors-kit-HS-MLED

 

My bad. The Mori's are LED projector for the 2.5 gen Tundra but reflectors for the 2.0 gen

 

Yo Mike! Hope all is well buddy. Truck is looking awesome. If any of your Tundra buddies that you roll with need Sliders let them know I’m here to help!

 

Yo! For sure, Ryan!

Thanks man

 

Build 2.0 W.I.P. teaser:



Notes to other potential builders out there:

The harbor freight tube bender will put kinks in the tube. Oh well! It was rather fun and not so hard to do though. Just go slow. Mark and measure your tube prior to bending so the marks remain to reference off of later. The kinks are small enough and on the back of the tube, so really not a big deal but if you care then avoid this method.

Take the extra time to fit tubes up and prep them. I skipped this for a couple complex notched tubes and had to fill some gaps and it was a pain - but kinda “ran out of time”.
- Set aside more time than you think you’ll need. Lol.

I opted for these 3d printed tube notching guides I found on Etsy, but next time would invest the money into a more custom notching tool which will save a lot of time and frustration setting up complex notches. These however worked great for a simple notch, but not so great when the tube comes in on a second axis.


the more custom tool(s) - https://www.centurialinc.com/tube-coping-tools


Still need skid plate material - so if anyone has a piece of aluminum or steel approximately 3’ x 14” in dimensions let me know!

 

More progress! Bumper still isn't done, but getting close and wanted to start putting some of my notes up here before they escape my memory.

Starting point:



(of course I'm going to slip a Moose pic in lol)


End of the year left me with some time off of work, and I got a wild hair to build a bumper! I used almost all of a 20' stick of 1.75" x .120 wall HREW tube which from calling around ranges $70-85 in my area. Fortunately already had the welder, but needed to get a tube bender, and for $150 I was willing to roll the dice with how the harbor freight bender would fare. (it did about as good as you'd expect a cheap bender to do)



I made some bumper mounting plates and then started with pvc pipe to get the angle I thought was best. I had never done this before, so starting here felt right.







++

After a few variations I landed on a 42 degree cut on the forward tubes off the mounting plates.
This ended me up here which I felt good about.

Then i decided why not start on what I thought would be the most daunting part - bending the main tube.

I started with a 8' section of tube and marked the center.
(not pictured are more markings every foot and 6" intervals. Then in the regions that will need to be bent I added down to the inch hash marks in sharpie)



The very middle does require a slight bend





This is the point where I started to realize the tube bender is indeed the tube kinker like the internet claims haha. For what it's worth I didn't pack the tube with sand or preheat it.



pump pump pump bend release scootch tube over an inch or two aaaaaand repeat.



After this I got a little overzealous and made an oops.
I got excited and welded the tubes to have a solid base to continue working off of - this is also the moment where I realized how important proper tube coping is, I hadn't learned my lesson yet but did learn it is important. More to come later.
But next up I needed to cut this leg off. It moved enough so that it wouldn't bolt back onto the truck, my coping was too sloppy and I thought welding it off the truck was a better move and live and learn!



I should also mention that I eyeballed a very large amount of this. 95% was solo so sometimes holding something up my eyeballing was "ehhhhh yeah looks good-e-nuff" * bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz * melting metal. I would try to measure the pieces to be uniform, but some stuff isn't quite right, and some of the gaps lead to the not being quite right.

The replacement leg was fit to the tube better -


This coping shit is not easy, but I will say by the end I could make them smoother, just tricky to get the angles and depth right (hence why that Centurial tool would be nice)

The next several stages I was trying to move too fast, time flew by and before I knew it I had exceeded my time window. I didn't take so many photos, and it was also the parts that were more challenging.

I wanted a bottom bar that if I were to hit something, it would hit this before my frame, but with the location of the stock cooler it would need to be bent. I didn't have the confidence that the HF bender would make a tight enough bend for what I wanted, so I cut and coped two very short pieces to connect the bottom tube. These were a challenge as the axis for these small pieces was different that both tubes it would connect.
Eventually though, I got them made, but like I mentioned before, hadn't fully learned my lesson on coping tubes and gaps - so those unions got a little fugly but not too bad.
I also made some supports for the main tube, cut the ends off after deciding the HF bender can't accommodate such a tight radius at the end of the bumper, then capped off the main tube.
I also slapped a temp skid on so I could get to work without running the risk of road debris into the radiator.




I wanted a "push bar" on the front, and thankfully had just enough material for this.
A couple small pieces cut and coped then join all three pieces together. This was a real treat to hold all three in position with one hand while tacking it up with the other haha.






Today after cleaning off the rust, added some light tabs, shaped the temp skid a bit, and threw some paint on so it wont continue to rust as much. I still need to weld some end caps on to the two open tubes, then also get some more tabs and the final skid material and figure out the end position for that.





But there she is! My first go at this and I'm stoked how it's coming out! I could have cleaned the tubes up some more before paint, but it's just rattle can so I can clean it up later if needed. This way people who know more than I can be all "you see whatcha did wrong here was blah blah blah" and I'll be a bit more prepared for the rear bumper!

 

Thanks for sharing some lessons learned. Whose sexy white tundra is in the third pic?

 

great write up Mike. More so that you are building this yourself.

 

Thanks Sid!

 

@tundra_20 Looks like Yours.....