I traded my Celica in for this truck, and I've enjoyed it even more then my Celica from day one (though sometimes I still miss the Celica's agility). Here's the history of the truck before I bought it.

I to this truck off-roading a lot with the Utah Chapter of the TTORA club.

Modifications in order of completion:

  • Sterio - My Wife and I got matching CD/MP3 players for our 1 year anniversary of meeting. They're cool, and even have an auxiliary input so I won't miss my tape deck adapter. Install was quite easy as the stock brackets matched up perfectly, and the wiring was fairly straight forward. Here's some info on how to remove the stereo, and here's some info on the wiring. I latter added the Sub-woofer from my wifes old tracker.
  • CB Radio - Check out how I managed to get a CB radio to fit in dash below the Stereo.
  • HAM Radio - I put on an external magmount antenna for my handheld HAM radio too, so now I have three antennas on my truck.
  • Front Bumper Trimming - This greatly helped the entry angle to the front wheels, and it looks cool too.
  • 2" Suspension Lift /w 32x11.50 tires - 2" Cornfed spacer up front, 1.5" Downey Rubicon shackles in back, and 32x11.5 Pirelli Scorpion Tires on stock wheels. The made the truck fill bigger, and changed the way it handles.
  • Alarm - from my wifes old tracker. This gave me keyless entry, and should help to keep the bad guys away.
  • Danahoe Racing Coilovers - A couple months shy of a year, after getting my 2" suspension spacers, I upgraded to a much better suspension. I got them from the awesome guys at Tuff Trucks. We cranked them up to 3", plus a little extra on the drivers side to get ride of the drives side lean. This greatly improved the ride, and gave a much more stable feel to the truck over all. They even did an awesome job, and went the extra mile, to get my messed up alignment straightened out. Strangely enough my rear end still seems a bit taller then I was expecting. I though I'd need another inch or so lift to level the truck out with the new lift, but just replacing the front leveled it out farely well sice the back was still high from doing my 2" lift. I'm now wondering if the rear leafs were replaced with heavy-duty ones to compensate for the camper shell that was on it when I bought it.
  • I replaced the oil in the Tcase and gear boxes with Red-Line. Along with some other maintainance items.
  • Rock Lights, and fog lights.
  • Sliders!!
  • Custom Rear Springs with Shock relocation and U-bolt flip.
  • New Wheels and Tires - I got some 15" Black Steal wheels and some generic 32x11.5x15 tires.
  • High Angle CV Boots - I had one break on me, so with some help from a fellow TTORA member, we replaced all four of them with some new ones from Downey Off-Road.
  • Danahoe Racing, Deaver 1.5" Add-A-Leaf - Along with re-ajusting the DR front coil-overs. The truck now sits as tall as it ever will (other then with bigger tires). I also was able to finally ajust everything to be level at the frame, but the body still seems to lean a bit probably due to warn out body mounts.
  • New Clutch - It's so much smoother and dosen't squeek any more. Todd at Tuff Trucks did an awsome job installing it for me.
  • I gave it a tune up, including new spark plugs, fuel filter, and a general all around checkup.
  • 1" Front Diff Drop

Wish List:

  • Upgrade the front speakers with pillar pods from a 4runner, or surface/angle mount tweaters, and a small amp to power them. I may even replace the stock door and rear speekers too, and put in a sub. I would also would like interiror map lights from a 4runner.
  • My next set of tires might be 305/70/16 as this would be equivelant to a 33x12x16 which is a size bigger then what I crrently have. I'll also get some 16x8 black steal wheels with a 3.25" offset so that with the 12" wide tires the extra 1.5" (over stock 10.5") will stick outward for a wider stance. I might have to do a little fender triming to keep them from rubbing, even with a 3" lift, but I'll need aftermarket fender flairs at this point, anyway.
  • Mobile HAM radio Unit (not sure which one I'd want yet, but it'll be a while anyway).
  • Secondary Battery, to run all the lights an accessories off of.
  • Spot lights on each side of the cab, auxilary reverse lights (so I can see better backing up over rocks), and a light bar to go on top.
  • Hook up some extra power outlets including a built in power converter for a 120v power outlet.
  • Engine - Intake (ie Snorkel), headers and exhaust for a better sound & more power.
  • Re-gear for 33" tires with a limited slip in the rear, and a locker up front.

    Here's some gear ratio and tire size differances in persentages:
    31" to 33" = 6%
    31" to 35" = 13%

    4.10 to 4.88 = 19%
    4.10 to 4.56 = 11%

    "You could buy a Tundra LSD from a wrecking yard, put in new matching ratio gears, (to match the front) and basically re-place your rear diff. The Tundra rear will bolt directly in to your stock Taco rear. OR you will need to get the tundra LSD and pull the limited slip out of the drop out housing, and do the same to your Open stock unit. Then exchange rig gears, and put the Tundra unit with your stock ring gear back into your stock drop out. You will have to have someone who sets up gears re-setup everything, then put it back together.  .  .  . Remember to do new axle seals, and fresh gear oil whe you are doing the install, as well as take into consideration the cost in a gear set up (which will have to be done unless you find a Tundra diff with the same gear ratio as your truck now). Not all tundra have the LSD, so watch for that also."   - Randy @ AOR

  • Trim - rear bumper, undercarriage skid plates, Front bumper with integrated winch, etc. - basically all that essential and non-essential off-road equipment. CBI Off-road Fab. is also a good place to get all of this stuff.
  • Engine - Port and polish the heads. If it takes me long enough to get this done, it might just become part of a complete rebuild.
  • Supercharger - will put a lot more power into that v6.
  • Drive line - Heavy duty clutch to handle the extra power from all the power upgrades. Hopefully all that extra power will put me it into a quarter mile time comparable to my 2000 Celica; especially if I re-gear, and use smaller tires at the drag strip.
  • This list will likely grow and change as I find new and more interesting things to do
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