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

Did you at least eat the chip when you were finished?

 

Hell yeah I did! Even the particle that landed on the fender!

 

Took the Tundy to town. Came out of the store and found this dude next to me, they definitely chose this spot on purpose. Some sort of custom(?) bumper and an awning.


And then I went to another store and I was that said dude. I chose to park next to my truck's arch nemesis: 2004 Limited DC also with a Leer camper shell, but white. I could tell this truck is a little bit older than mine because it's sequential license plate number was lower than mine.




Even happier with black after seeing how bad these body lines stick out. This truck also put into perspective how low my coilovers are adjusted currently...

 

Please tell me you're leaving a few crumbs on mine... man's gotta eat.

 

The windows on the cap of the grey one look really large. It looks like there is no shell, just glass side panel.

 

I noticed that too. My back window has a non-glass piece where the tailgate seal mounts to and that's where I tend to put pressure when I close it. This one lacks that

 

Nice work! Like night and day, literally.
Hey so with the retrofit kits, are they compatible with both HID and LED’s? (Meaning good beam with clean cutoff of course). Or are those two different kits?. I know nothing about them.

 

I don't know if the projectors will work for both, I imagine it would. I did mine several years back and used D2S projectors, 55w ballasts, ignitor and low temp bulbs. I think that kit these days is around $350. LED might be cheaper but going too cheap leads to regrets with this stuff.

 

Im always that dude xD

 

I just did my homework and ended up at the same spot. Ordered a 453 from the same seller even, blue compass and harness pigtail.

So the 10 pin head unit connector has power, ground and ignition. I’m not sure if a reverse signal is in my 2002 Tundra but if you want a plug and play option, I might go something like that for myself.

Though, since I have a spare 75 amp high current relay and I’m planning seat heaters, I’m probably going to do a full ignition switched fuse panel at the bottom of the stack like I did in the Tacoma.

Still, a clean, entirely p&p option with the right lengths might be the ticket for the mirror. Probably a 4 pin JST connector at the top of the headliner then crimp to the pigtail.

In case that wasn’t clear, I can make two of these things if you want to send me your pigtail.

 

You mentioned clunky feeling from the rear the other day. A “new” slip yoke and balance solved that issue for me. I also had a vib around 35mph(I fixed this a while ago) which was because my slip yoke wasn’t in the correct balanced position. Changing out the yoke and getting everything balanced wasn’t very expensive and even tho the driveshaft shop insisted my original yoke was fine, changing it out solved all my clunking issues.

 

Did my diff breather relocate today. Used breather

$7 90930-03136 Toyota Breather Plug - 90930-03136

90930-03136 and the

$7 90404-51319 Toyota Genuine Parts - Union (90404-51319)

90404-51319 union to screw into the differential housing. Used 5/16 hose to connect everything.

 

oh i've got zero clunks. the bed has developed a squeak is what i was saying yesterday.. i paid $200 for the bed. broken spot weld somewhere on the floor of the left front side.

 

That is what I'm seriously looking into for the tundra... just needs some more cabling and work I hadn't planned on. But definitely considering.

 

I'm good on pigtail. Take a quick look at the mirror you bought. I looked at his sales for the last 24hrs. This is the only one I see sold, is this what you bought?: https://www.ebay.com/itm/154551990912

If so, look closely at the rear of it, the mount looks a little funny or non-standard compared to, say, this one which is exactly what I bought, Homelink, hidden compass, etc: https://www.ebay.com/itm/154566799692

This fixed my clunking totally and made the truck drive smooth again. I hadn't noticed the vibrations while driving until they went away. I honestly thought it was the fairly new tires on the truck when I bought it, which still have plenty of tread left. https://www.tundras.com/threads/shutter-or-jolt-as-i-come-to-a-stop.39219/page-2#post-1255809

If you can find the spot weld, I'd shoot some of the black windshield sealent up in there to hold everything in place indefinitely....

 

Thanks @shifty` , I’ll research that. It didn’t jump out at me last night.

My offer was to do you a plug and play option for wiring. Seems like the installation could be about a 10 minute job with that.

1. pull bezel then radio, install T, replace radio
2. Route extension along headliner
3. Remove a pillar trim or door mounding and route extension along pillar, replace trim/moulding
4. Feed extension through dash to radio spot and connect it.
   
5. Replace bezel

EDIT: seller confirmed fitment. The one diff between the two auctions is the trim piece covering mine but off for yours. But I suspect you were noticing what looks like a hinge? We will see how that affects the final installation.

yours

mine

 

I think it just may be the plastic tunnel on the top one in your pics. Not sure.

PnP harness sounds cool. But I also need to run the harness for my Garmin dashcam which is behind my mirror. It needs similar direct power source with constant, ACC/IGN and ground ... so I'm probably going to work on a solution to do both at once, so I can wireloom and tape them to look more OEM.

My one missing piece of knowledge - I presume the Tundra has ACC/IGN and constant power taps at the fuse panel or somewhere similar. I just haven't dug to get that info yet. I normally don't like tapping power out like that, but not seeing a lot of options here

 

Yeah fuse panel is all there. My plan was to hit the radio to avoid add a fuse because I hate how that looks. Could do dual outputs too, it’s a 3 wire extension then split to 2x3 lead feeds. Straightforward.

 

Ok, so given that we have 2 accessory sockets and a cig lighter, and I don’t smoke, that means 3 round holes in the dash. One is currently a blue sea USB charger and I’m thinking of stuffing a blue sea voltmeter in one other. Leaving the third for a socket? The question is which layout makes the most sense. Probably voltmeter where the cig is, assuming decent line of sight.

Any other ideas for stuff? The sockets seem kind of useless to me in such a small cab, I’d rather do one in the bed for the fridge but for the time being at least I can run it under the seat and out the window.

 

Just a heads up, I tapped into the radio power (to make the two aux. sockets constant hots), and got a nasty buzz thru my speakers when drawing power thru the sockets with ignition on. Yes everything was grounded well. There may be a trick that I'm unaware of, IDK, but i found its best to steer clear of radio wiring.

 

100% agree for high current. Different story. I used the trailer brake controller in my Tacoma to start and switched to direct battery tap into the 75amp relay.

For a mirror or dash cam or Germes or Tombit or front camera or PAC, all low current devices, it’s a different story. Those are a handful of mA.

For un switched power, hit the battery with 8 gauge and MRBF, feed to maxi fuse holder in the kick panel and then distribute with 10 or 12 gauge to your sockets. And make a solid ground somewhere legit. They are 15 amps each, more than I think the radio is typically fused.

 

Modern receivers are more susceptible to line noise, voltage drops, ground loops and other similar issues. Given the system slated to go in my truck, that's one other reason I wasn't willing to go that route.

The type of tap you use can make a big difference too. Snap-lock/splice taps/T-taps are the worst. I find waterproof Posi-taps tend to work better, myself. But If I have an option to hardwire, vs. tap, I'm doing it every time.

 

You may want to use caution with the color of display you use, sometimes that bright blue can be distracting or to bright, maybe look for a green or red display for the VM

 

I use OEM connectors. I despise vampire taps. I don’t even like soldering anymore. It’s all so caveman.

Do you have reference material for your statement about “modern receivers?” Or is that anecdotal? And specifically OEM or aftermarket or both? I would assume the opposite really, that modern electronics would be superior in terms of noise suppression. But I’ve been sleeping on the car stereo front for 20 years.

Planning a 4660 for me once back in stock

 

Anecdotal, from years spent working in the car audio world on mid- to high-end installs, first professionally, then as a hobbyist. My shop time was many moons ago, but since, I've laid out and installed numerous high-end systems for friends, family and acquaintances who weren't afraid of spending money in exchange for premium audio.

I'll openly admit: I've been out of the scene for a number of years and lost most of my contacts, but I still keep up with it. My love waned a little bit when I realized how well-engineered the premium sound systems are in vehicles these days. Some of the stuff I'm seeing dropped into vehicles these days are pretty damn impressive, although the fidelity range isn't awesome, it blows away anything out there through the 80s/90s/00s, sometimes negating the hassle of trying to replace factory heads and cabling.

It's been my observation that additions and improvements to receivers and amps during the last 10-20 years - higher levels on inputs/outputs for example - seem to've only exacterbated noise, opening Pandora's box on different ways noise can enter the system and mess up your day. Whereas all we needed to worry about was alternator whine over the speakers from ground loops back in the day, now is "oh crap, where in the chain are we getting interference?!"

I personally prefer to run separate power where reasonable, avoid sharing grounds or power with anything directly or indirectly wired to a speaker, and getting obnoxiously OCD with my grounding.

I'll be the first to admit, I don't know it all. And I'm sure not everything I know about audio these days has proven to be fact. I learn new stuff every year. Some of what I know is probably habit without fact to support. But I try

 

Cool, sounds very well informed. I'm still not sure I buy the "new stuff is more vulnerable to noise than old stuff" but maybe you meant to convey that new stuff has lots more tech and more avenues for noise to be injected into an auto environment (which has similarly grown increasingly complicated). I'd agree with the later sentiment.

In our 20 year old trucks though, I'm not sure I see a material difference between sourcing at the in cab fuse box vs after the radio fuse at the 10 pin connector, in terms of supply very low current to a mirror or dashcam. But I'm a huge fan of anal / ocd so I am thrilled with you solving in a manner which makes you most happy.

I'm also not sure I agree with not sharing grounds, the entire chassis is ground and it's shared if grounds are done right so not sure what that concern stems from? If I find a good ground with a solid bolt I'll for sure use that over making a new ground.

I don't personally understand why some people dislike "shared power". In on sense, all 12v power from a single battery is indeed shared, it's a matter of where you are branching.

Noise from inductance increases with current flow as the magnetic field increases and impacts other parallel wires. Low current devices don't typically cause problems with that, it's high current and especially on/off switched devices like amplifiers and refrigerators and the magnetic effects from the change in large currents which is the typical culprit. Hence alternators (as you mention) and usb socket power (up to 15 amps, perhaps for an inverter) or fridge or air compressor or car amplifiers. To me, high current and low current are the two worlds, high current should have all it's branches reaching the battery post independent of all the low current branches going through the engine/in-cab fuse box to their destinations.

Sounds like you might like the solution I'm going to reproduce which works well in my Tacoma, I tap one of the 12v socket leads (20 gauge) to switch a 75 amp relay feeding a blue sea 8 circuit fuse block from battery power (through kick panel maxi fuse). That gives me the output for the final usb socket power (with 16 gauge instead of 20) along with seat heaters, two additional usb power delivery devices and dedicated power for my Germes module. I haven't yet run dedicated fuse block power to the front camera but that's next. It's nice to have ignition switched power delivery for additional circuits. No need for any solder, posi-tap, vampire clip or anything else but direct end to end wire and crimps.

For the mirrors, though, we also need constant 12v which means I probably want two fuse blocks, one for switched power, one for unswitched. That's what most seat heaters want too but only because they pull the high current from unswitched as most people don't install a 75 amp high current relay. I'll see how much space I have behind the trim as I contemplate that, I might just split off the mirror power off the input to the relay.

Still, I think all of this is massive overkill for a mirror which is going to sip current slower than a yuppie on a fixie sips his cortado.

 

Correct, this is ultimately what I was getting at. We're on the same page.

I think when you factor in age of OEM cabling, inevitable oxygen creep and oxidation on cabling, it's even more important on older vehicles running newer tech. Furthermore, the least-tainted, strongest circuit is one that's unbroken, so when you start break in a length of a circuit or tapping from an established circuit - effectively penetrating or peeling back its molded sheath, creating more entry point for oxidation - you're opening Pandora's box to any number of things to happen. It's why, if I'm going to tap something, I'll be using a weatherprooof Posi-tap because it's far less invasive than virtually anything else out there (purely opinion - no scientific evidence to back this up) but ideally I want a direct, uncut circuit.

I will too. But I'm not going to splice into an existing ground and I'm thoughtful about where and how I'm grounding. There are a lot of common mistakes you learn to avoid in the car audio industry to avoid ground loops which, if you've ever had to isolate one after spending $10k+ installing a competition-level system, sucks ass. If you're not familiar, I think this found via quick Google search summarizes it well.

It's not that I don't like shared power. I don't like tapping into, breaking, or splicing power and ground circuits if I don't need to. Just like I don't like breaking my skin: It's an entry point for bad stuff to come in.

Right, but say you have a low voltage unshielded RCA line pushing a signal from your head unit to your amp. And you decide to zip tie that to the 2awg or thicker power wire(s) going to your amp from your dash back to the rear of your cab and/or trunk, giving plenty of room for EMF noise to enter the low level RCA line, which gets fed into your amp, which then amplifies that noise out to your speakers. It's potentially easy to avoid, using shielded cables, but even easier to avoid by just keeping these two away from each other. Maybe it's a different train of topic than you were going for, I'm not sure. I'm just pointing out: Lots of common mistakes to introduce noise. You'd think we'd have built better circuits and processors in our audio equipment (and some have) in this modern day and age, but cost cutting and overhead reduction are a reality.

It's a big undertaking. And also why I try to go out of my way never to force opinions on others and add disclaimers wherever I remember to. "To each their own" applies on virtually everything in life. I think what you're planning on doing sounds awesome. For me ... sometimes these days I get so sucked into the details - like, wheere will I mount this amp so it's not a projectile in a wreck and I don't need to add a rust entry point or cut holes in crap, or how to I effectively get semi-isolated power to these two different devices next to each other in a safe, fused way - that it takes me months to finish projects.

 

I have no idea what is being discussed.

 

To much to skim….