Heavy Irrelevance

Thanks Noah. I need to peek my head behind there as there might be something pushed into the dash but likely if that's the case it's somehow toast anyway. Might be fun to have a small piece from your truck in my truck. Maybe I can return the favor someday. Cheers.

 

I assume we have no clazzio options on these guys but I filled out their form just in case. I dig my Tacoma clazzios.

 

OK, so, now my memory is starting to come back. I sold this truck at 92k to my friend and I'm 99% sure I replaced the timing belt myself (well, a local shop did) before the sale, sometime near 70-80k ballpark.
It has 158k on it now. I'm going to ask him if he knows if he replaced it but I'm going to assume he did not or if he had it'd have been semi recent and he would have mentioned it. Dealer quoted something rather high for it and similarly high for water pump but pricing comes down if done together. I might go with the local shop as a cheaper option but thought I'd at least get an eval from the dealer so that I know everything they think should be done, based on the assumption they will be on the conservative side of things so if they say don't worry about it then I probably don't need to.

 

The bezel on a 2004 is 8 x 4. When looking at Pioneer and Kenwood(bought kenwood DDX8906S), almost all their demensions were 3 15/16 x 6 7/16. The 1/2 inch gap on each side was filled with Metra 95-8202 Dash Kit, bought thru Crutchfield also.

Metra 95-8202 Dash Kit Fits select 2000-up Lexus, Scion, and Toyota vehicles — double-DIN radios at Crutchfield

 

Sub

 

Gotchya, so all aftermarket is just double DIN in which case buying the wider bezel gets me nothing, may as well have bought the 01-02 bezel?

Nobody makes a nice aftermarket display which takes advantage of the extra space I take it? So maybe best off with the Toyota unit after all and maybe some line level converters to feed the amp/sub/door speakers.

I was also somewhat pondering one of the halo units where the faceplate is out in the air, though that wouldn't take any advantage of the extra bezel.

Thanks for the info.

 

There are Chinese units that are the 200mm wide setupX but major brands, they only exist in Australia. Oem is the only US option other than the Chinese android units

 

Hah, crutchfield says the Pioneer 6600 "fits" in 2004 Tundra. It's spec'd at 9x5 which of course would be bigger than 8x4. I suppose one has to see exactly how tight it may actually be. I assume I can likely handle the mounting bracket portion if there's a chance of stuffing this in...

 

Many radios that I see have special brackets but then sit in front of the hole a little bit. The last few Pioneers have been this way.

What on Earth does your Title mean here and why have you tweaked it?

 

Yeah, I'm curious how much hacking would be needed to shoe-horn in a full size wireless carplay option. If that's a clear no go then maybe I'll revert to double-din and get a 2nd bezel.

I'm trying to strike up some sort of balance with my Tacoma build, which is modeled off a running blog from about a decade ago where a good childhood friend of mine coined the phrase of "that's irrelevant" when referring to accomplishments other than his own.

If I can get it securely mounted and it doesn't look horrible I might be rather temped. The Toyota units seem to be rather not special. Also I already ran all the cable for the amp and I have the exact size I used before (stainless screws through the floorboard, yes I know, that was not my favorite part, but in so cal we have limited rust and the frame and floor look pristine).

 

Well considering that the DIN standard is well a standard and people now "Need" bigger radios what I was saying is how it is easily done.
Pioneer understands this and so the radios they sell with huge faces will come with standard DIN mount adapters to easily accomodate a DIN sized hole.

Go to a store and see what I mean,it is easy to fit but will just sit in front of the hole a little bit.

 

Yeah, my plan was to wait for the bezel to show up and compare it to my pioneer 6600 in the Tacoma to see how it looks / fits. Then decide if I'm blowing $900 or not.

 

Good luck with that.

I stuck one in a BMW Xsomething most recently because some guys daughter had to have it and it turned out ;ppking fine but the rest was a complete nightmare!

 

And by "the rest" you mean mounting it on the brackets or something else?

 

No I mean interfacing with the BMW existing amp and other crap,we ended up ripping it all out in the end.
The guy bought it all from Crutchfield but told them the wrong stuff that was in the car already and there was no way to make it work after all.

 

Ah, gotchya. Yeah, the thing with this truck is it's been all dialed for aftermarket sound nearly it's entire life. Has the alpine mic clipped on the visor even, ran 12 gauge through the door boots (not that hard in a 1st gen Tundra) and 4 gauge to the battery. Needs all sorts of cleanup after years of neglect but wire is wire, not like 10 years of tech change that too much. Seems like a mild bummer to revert to Toyota vs going all the way and having carplay and nav.

 

I just stuck an under $100 Kenwood with Sat in mine,way under $100 as I am still a Sat listener but devoutly not a Music Listener in the car and prefer a dedicated GPS to Nav in every case that I have tried so far.

 

And you kept the 01-02 bezel and stuck with double-din then?

I find the screen so small now, it's hard to look at it and not think 1980s

Your paint looks awesome!

 

I have a Scan Gauge stuck in there under the radio and I miss the 80s!

This is a Work Truck and it works just fine and the radio hole is literally of no concern to me.

 

Got my status report back from the dealer, time to solicit advice on do now vs do later and do myself vs pay someone as well as dealer-does-it vs other-shop-does-it.

1. Front Brakes 6mm, good to 3 or maybe even 2, that's reassuring as I plan to swap to larger rotors once I buy my bigger wheels, don't need to spend in the short term
2. Rear shoes are 2mm and the thought was to remove and see if the drums can be machined, this becomes more urgent at 1.5mm but I had thoughts of doing a disc swap on the rear (is that possible?)
3. L inner and outer tie rod need replacement, quoted $1138 for that
4. Timing belt recommended, seems highly unlikely anything was done while my buddy owned it, $598 quote (I'm told this is a competitive price)
5. Water pump (if doing timing belt at the same time) is an extra $633
6. Spark plugs recommended every 30k so may as well do them, I'm told standard (non-irridium) and quote is in the 200 ballpark. I wonder if this is something I can do myself, are they easy to access, is it a 2-3h job or more like 5+ in which case 200 seems like a decent price?
7. Serpentine belt tensioner and belt need replacement, I remember replacing the serpentine belt so likely good to do this, quote is $397, I can probably get this done at an alternate shop but it is a little tempting to throw it on the pile if paying for dealer work
8. There's an oil leak, categorized as 5/10, recommended remote and replace valve cover gaskets and spark plug tube seals, $1309 quote on this
9. Third brake light on the shell is non operable (the entire shell is in rough shape) and may have been axed with the research done to eliminate parasitic draw where the cargo light was killed a swell, cool thing is I'm comfortable with electronics so no biggie on that one, though I might want to jerry rig something sooner rather than later for safety.

Adding the whole thing up and counting on $230 or so on plugs, this would net around $4300 which is right around the $5k hit I was expecting/planning for.

I probably need to shop around these prices but maybe some of the rest of you have comments? I'm sure it's all on the high side price-wise. @shifty` @Tundra2 @empty_lord @Jack McCarthy

 

A lot of that can be wrapped into one job, or smaller chunks that should save a lot on labor. Plugs are pretty easy to do.

 

So, take the info, shop it around to someone who can give me better deals on the package of work? Might be harder to find parts but then again chances of catastrophic failure with any of this is reasonably low? Planning to lend the truck out to my buddy this weekend for a trip to big bear with our dog while we do couples hike up san jacinto.

Nothing too scary in this list? The oil leak is a little unexpected, not sure how serious that part is.

 

Let him borrow it, but tell him he better not enjoy it to much! Kinda jealous of your hike.
Nothing on the list is red alert level, I don’t know if I saw lower ball joints on the list. They are known to do “catastrophic” failures-look it up.
I would ask the dealer to wrap up some of the jobs in entire quotes instead of everything separately, other than the valve cover gasket job(the oil leak) and brakes, most of that is all involved with the timing belt and water pump and usually normally changed when you do said job.
If you have a mechanic that you trust that knows Toyota’s I’d see if they will use oem parts; even better if you can provide them and cut some markup out of the deal.

 

Just called the guy back (10 minutes before he leaves) and was told upper and lower ball joints look good, mechanic thought they had been replaced at some point.

 

I think I'll shop around a little bit and see what I get on a package deal from the local shop. I'm 99% sure they did the serp belt when I owned it and they beat the socks off the dealer price at the time IIRC, maybe $100-$200 total (I think I bought the belt). Worth doing the research just to see how bad they want the work, if they are swamped and not going to beat prices that much then there is some comfort in having the dealer own a bunch of this if I'm going to keep it for another decade or two.

 

I can post some photos and make you more jealous but said photos won't allow you to hear my wife yelling at me the whole time about what an a-hole I am and how much I suck so maybe knowing that part will curb your jealousy?

That and the ridiculous price tag of the fancy hotel since this is our first time overnighting without kids in 6 years.

 

Haha 6 years, that’s totally worth it, but I know you guys will be like; so I wonder what the kids are doing……. Haha seriously enjoy it, that sounds great and you better share pics of the adventure-I can mute your wife from my house.

 

I will take a photo of her favorite pose, you can decide if it's blue steel or bitch face.

I am honestly more worried about the dog, he is going to big bear with the tundra and my buddy, he knows the cabin and the family but he is very much a pack animal and doesn't understand words. Also a tiny bit worried about any safety problems with the truck while my buddy has it but he's not a total idiot, just not overly mechanically competent.

 

The timing belt with water pump price is good honestly. At work we’re closer to 1000 For the job.
The serpentine belt and tensioner should be lumped into the timing belt. The tensioner literally has to come off to to the timing belt.

valve cover gasket quote is insanely high, these are some of the easier valve cover gaskets to do.
Spark plugs are simple to do.