DouglasVB
Rising Sun Member
@DaveInDenver has me thinking more about the longer-term plan on the truck. The goal is to at least attempt to keep up with @Squishy! and @HoneyBadger and @TacoDane which means I need a minimum of 35" tires and no fear of body damage.
I haven't spent hundreds of hours of reading forum posts yet but it seems the way to get into the 35" or bigger tire range is long travel suspension and a bunch of work trimming stuff.
I'm pretty sure with my lack of welding skills and lack of welder that I'll be looking for a shop to do a lot of the work required for the more serious suspension modifications. I could have the Marlin Crawler kit welded on then. And any other armor that should be welded rather than bolted.
In my old 4runner, I did smash in the stock gas tank skid plate pretty good. I also was constantly smashing the rear diff on stuff. Luckily it had welded on armor on the diff so it took the abuse. And the belly skid plate that the t-cases were mounted to got heavily abused. I expect I'll be doing the same dumb stuff with this truck soon enough. 😅
The main things I'm going for now with skid plate purchases are:
I'm looking at options for the exhaust reroute mod. I *think* it might be okay for me to do it in California... I see a lot of forum posts of 3rd gen Taco guys from SoCal getting the reroute done. The smog check here includes verifying every single emission control component is a state sanctioned component and installed correctly. But I think this is just a pipe so they wouldn't care too much? Looks like it should be in the $100-300 range to have done at a muffler shop. That seems worth it.
I haven't spent hundreds of hours of reading forum posts yet but it seems the way to get into the 35" or bigger tire range is long travel suspension and a bunch of work trimming stuff.
I'm pretty sure with my lack of welding skills and lack of welder that I'll be looking for a shop to do a lot of the work required for the more serious suspension modifications. I could have the Marlin Crawler kit welded on then. And any other armor that should be welded rather than bolted.
In my old 4runner, I did smash in the stock gas tank skid plate pretty good. I also was constantly smashing the rear diff on stuff. Luckily it had welded on armor on the diff so it took the abuse. And the belly skid plate that the t-cases were mounted to got heavily abused. I expect I'll be doing the same dumb stuff with this truck soon enough. 😅
The main things I'm going for now with skid plate purchases are:
- protect the expensive catalytic converters
- be ready for future upgrades and not have to buy new/different skids
- protect the underside of the truck now
- buy once, cry once
I'm looking at options for the exhaust reroute mod. I *think* it might be okay for me to do it in California... I see a lot of forum posts of 3rd gen Taco guys from SoCal getting the reroute done. The smog check here includes verifying every single emission control component is a state sanctioned component and installed correctly. But I think this is just a pipe so they wouldn't care too much? Looks like it should be in the $100-300 range to have done at a muffler shop. That seems worth it.