2003 Access Cab 2wd Revived from sitting since 2019 Build Thread

Hello everyone. I have been posting on here as I work to get my dad's truck back on the road and decided to make a build thread for it and link previous comments and issues here plus add all of the photos I have so far as well. Photos will be added later since my phone doesn't like to upload them at my work location.


Background:

My dad bought the truck used in 2006 after the original owner traded it in with "placeholder" miles on it. I have the original window sticker from purchase plus all of the paperwork from my dad's purchase. My dad used it for commuting to work as a machinist at John Deere and also his side business doing animal damage control work around the Quad City area in Illinois. He bought this truck after he totaled his 1st Gen Tacoma Extended cab.


In 2015, his kidneys started to fail, and he started dialysis, and the truck started to sit for long periods of time as my mom wouldn't drive it unless he absolutely had to and dad started driving less. At this time, it was around 125k miles on it.


In Dec 2018, they took it in to be serviced to get it ready to try and sell it and the dealership found several cracks in the frame. I had looked up the situation at that point when he told me and saw that some people were getting frame replacements and others were getting their trucks bought out from them (which I later found out was much earlier) and the dealership ordered his new frame. 4 months later, they get the truck back in Mar 2019. They told them that it needed a new axle as the current one was rusty and leaking as well. So, since they didn't have the money at the time to fix it, it was parked next to the driveway and there it sat until my first trip up to help them start going through stuff in Sep 2021.

More to be added later

 

No pictures.

 

See the opening remark on photos. I am adding more to this post and will add the photos after work tonight.

 

Sorry to hear about your folks
We all are going to be in that same situation one day, on both ends. Taking care of our parents, and then eventually becoming those parents needing to be taken care of.
Hope things are going good for you and the family now, i know it hurts to lose a loved one. Hope the truck story has a happy ending, you're super lucky you gotta new frame.

 

Here are the pictures I took in Sep 2021.




When I first saw the truck, it was full of leaves and limbs in the bed and hadn't been started since it was parked. I was able to jump and get it running while I was there for the week and looked it over. Wheels started turning at that point that I wanted the truck but at the time, I was getting ready to start my new job and we had just moved to TN. I started my research here and started coming up with a plan, but life delayed all of that until the summer of 2024.

Here is the link to the first thread I made looking for advice on an axle housing that was for sale near me.
https://www.tundras.com/threads/access-cab-rear-axle-housing-width.143700/

 

Pictures I took June 2024





Went home to see the family in July 2024 and I took my daughter with to do some more work around the parents’ house. The wife and I were discussing some automobile purchase options one being getting my dad's truck back on the road as well as her buying her uncle's Chevy Master Deluxe Coupe. While out at my parent's house, my daughter fell in love with the truck and since she just had gotten her driving permit, we started looking into all of the work it would take to get it drivable and get it to TN.


When I tried to start it this time. Starter would engage but would not turn. After some investigation, I found a mouse nest under the intake back near the starter. I read that this was common and could cause starter/flywheel to bind but had limited time and resources to check further.

 

Nice to have the LSD since it's 2wd.

 

Weellll, after swapping out the rear axle, I don't have LSD anymore. For now. I kept the axle shafts and the carrier, so, I do have the option of going back to LSD if I want to. I am slowly getting the pictures to load and will document what I have done. The new axle seems to have bad bearings so I may be swapping an axle shaft really soon.

 

Looking forward to seeing the out in the open semi cleaned up look. Hell of ride for a young adult once everything safety wise is fixed for her. Patience is on your side.

 

I love resurrection threads. Good on ya!

 

But in October 2024, things turned bad for the family. My mom got sick and ended up in an extended care facility and then went downhill fast and passed away in Nov 2024. I went home for almost a month to get my dad moved into an apartment and get anything out of the house that we wanted so we could sell the house. I got the truck hauled to the local dealership to see if they could get it running (wouldn't turn over but could hear the starter engage) here" so I could possibly drive it back to TN eventually. Stealership didn't do a whole lot except tell me I needed a new starter at a cost of over $1200 to replace it. But they did check to make sure the crank would turn freely which freed up the starter, but they never tried jumping again after it arrived. Decided that was not worth doing at the time and I ended up having to ship it to me. When we put a jumper box to the truck to get it into neutral, the truck ended up starting and I was carefully able to back it off the trailer with 2 flat tires. Was really fun trying to get it off the trailer. The driver side tires went flat in transit and the truck shifted to the edge of the trailer. After some careful back in forth on the trailer, we finally got it unloaded.

 

First thing I did was found a used set of 4-Runner rims and tires locally for $300 to be able to at least move the truck around to be able to do any maintenance on it. Main issue was getting the old rims off. They had fused themselves to the hubs. Ended up using a 10lb sledge to knock them loose to get the new ones on. I really like the look of these rims on this truck.

As you can see in the tire pictures, these had almost fill tread on them but were so dry rotted that the driver front would not hold air longer than a couple hours. Passenger rear was the only one that would hold air for any length of time.

The next issue that developed was that I then had a no start/turnover after putting a new battery in it. That issue was covered under this thread.
https://www.tundras.com/threads/200...fter-new-battery-install.152303/#post-3795544
Ended up being the neutral safety switch was not aligned very well. It is working now, but every once in awhile, it will not try to start and I have to take it out of park and back in and it will start just fine then. The more we are driving it now seems to make this better.

 

After getting the starting issue taken care of, gave it a good bath and took it for its first short drive to the nearest gas station about a 10 minute drive away. First time it was really driven under its own power since March of 2019. Setup the appointment to get it into the shop for work the next day. It took them two days but I got the timing belt and associated parts changed out, supplying the shop with all of the OEM items, replaced front rotors and calipers, got the rear brakes adjusted, they cleaned up the neutral safety switch and got it aligned better and finally, topped off the rear axle fluid. Next thing to tackle would be the rear axle and it's leak.

Also, I was able to pickup this spare tire from an FJ Cruiser for $100 of FB marketplace.

 

Here is what happened after I got it back from the shop.

https://www.tundras.com/threads/2003-ac-2wd-lsd-rear-axle-leaking-question.156477/#post-3880112

The axle breather was badly clogged and blew out the pinion seal as seen in the pictures and the thread. Long story short, I replaced the breather and had the shop replace the pinion seal. They marked all of the places that they could see oil leaking through the cover for me and I then proceeded to try and clean the cover of rust and try and seal it up using the Pore 15 and FlexSeal fix seen in other threads on here. See next post for pictures of this.

 

Here is the before and after pictures from getting it detailed.


Before

After


Before

After


Before
This picture does not do it justice on how dirty the center hump carpet was. That is not all shadow on that carpet.

After

He spent all day on it and most of it was cleaning the interior. He ran the ozone generator in it during the morning while he was working on the outside and engine bay. He also refreshed the headlights for me for free (which I had planned on doing myself anyway). Most of the spills and odors from my dad's business and 7 mouse nests that had been found in the truck are now gone. My wife has now ridden in the truck with my daughter driving for the first time since it had arrived. She wouldn't go near it before.

 

Here it is all cleaned up back at the house and a proud daughter after getting to drive her truck.

I did get some pictures out of order. There is the replacement axle I picked up and had to use 3 bottles of gear oil to go get it, 2 before I left and 1 just to be sure before I got back on the interstate after picking it up. I had the axle put in the next day but it took them a second day to get to it. Old axle had 127k on it and the new one has about 190k. Here is the picture after it was installed and then I took it to be detailed. There is a bearing going out in the replacement axle and I will get that taken care of next. The shop said it was good to go for now. I pulled the axle shafts and carrier out of the old axle and will be holding on to them. Might even use the shaft out of the old axle to replace the bad bearing one.

 

Got my photo dump done finally. I will start filling in on formation and adding links to the threads that i have already created for issues and also some of the posts on other threads.

 

DAAAAAANG the paint shined back up ?? NOICE

 

I love this truck already, even though I won't be driving it that much now that my daughter has claimed it. I can tell she will love it more than me though, which is a good thing. I have already started to keep my eye out for a 4WD Tundra (Blue or Green maybe) for myself at some point since she will be going off to college next year. I was originally planning on her taking my CR-V to college but may change my mind on that.

Things that still need to be done:
Get a rearview mirror backup camera setup for it. That is the one thing that my daughter has issues with is seeing behind the truck. This and a leveling lift below should help that.
Replace all 4 O2 sensors possibly along with a cat back exhaust system ( throwing a P430 code and already have the sensors) The shop I was using didn't want to chance braking off the old rusted sensors and not be able to fix it in house. So recommended going to muffler shop.
Within the next year, replace lower ball joints, they were replaced under recall at 39k miles and currently at 127k.
Replace front springs and struts to do a leveling lift on the front and new shocks and maybe springs for the back.
New tires by winter 265/70-17 Cooper Discoverer Road and Trails. Maybe the 275/70 pending the leveling. My coworker has that size of tire on his Tacoma with the same rims as my spare tire and I might borrow his to see how well they fit after the lift. He is looking at a different set of rims for his.
Get a tonneau cover for the bed. A lot of water sits in the bedliner after a rain and we already have visibility issues for my daughter that a topper will make worse.
Maybe do some touching up of the paint by removing the bad clearcoat and getting that fixed. Our detail guy gave me a couple places locally that do some inexpensive work in this area.
Eventually replace the headlight and turn signal housings and do the LED projector upgrade to get better visibility at night for my daughter.
Maybe replace the radio with aftermarket HU to get Android Auto capability. Already added the Bluetooth adapter kit for the factory radio so we can at least stream music and navigation directions through the speakers.

And that is where we are at so far.

 

Always feels good to see a transformation like that.

 

Are the axle shafts from an LSD axle the same as those from a non LSD?

Also, how much of the parts on the shaft can be swapped from my new axle? Talking about all of the rusty parts being replaced by parts from the new axle I just put in.

 

X2

 

Ffs, are those oil earing catipilars!?
Catching up here... great thread.

 

LOL. No, they were some sort of pollen producing pods that were falling off of the trees at the time and getting stuck in the oil as they got blown under the truck.

 

Pine tree tassels, “male pine cones”. Not kidding. Look up “male pine cone”. (It’s not a NSFW joke)

 

Wow OP, very impressive work and results!

Before we found the double cab we bought, we considered a 2000 access cab another mowing client had. His had sat under trees for years with a back window left open about 1/2 inch. The mildew smell would give me a headache!

I charged the battery and got it running but it had some sort of wheel issue and the owner wanted me to have it hauled to a shop for a pre-buy inspection. That was too much risk for me (assuming the mildew smell could be fixed) so we passed on it. He partial traded it to a shop for a 1980's El Camino he now has sitting in the same spot. (At least under a car cover but it hasn't moved an inch in two years).

 

This just popped up in the feed and should do the trick for what I was asking about. Backing Plates I might try and get the bearings only done on the new axle. Since I have extra axle shafts and carrier (LSD was taken out of old axle) I may just rebuild the original shafts with non-rusted parts and just swap them in. Then I will have backups the next time and can just keep swapping them back and forth as bearings wear out without much downtime on the truck.

 

Impressive. Very cool. Best part about it is that it went to a young person and it will teach her many lessons about NOT always buying new, the benefits of putting efforts into something and bringing it back to life. My 17-year old first car is a 2010 Mazda3 in need of some repairs. I made sure I brought him to the mechanic so that he learned how to interact with mechanics and be thankful when good work is performed. I taught him how to change spare tires (we don't call triple A) and how to check the general health of the car. These experiences are NOT the same when you buy your kid a new car. Plus, in my family new cars are not found in trees, you work for them after you have a good job and can pay for it without letting the debt crumble you. Now that I think about it, I can't think of any relative buying a new car in the past 40 years.