Build Tacoma 4500 build

Haven’t driven it yet with the new fans and honestly haven’t worked on it much. Just a few days here and there. I did find a pretty big intake/throttle body vacuum leak. Was my own fault when I didn’t have the throttle body tight it sucked part of the gasket in but sealed enough the truck ran fine iac etc wasn’t reading right. I did put a new iac in and fix the leak and just waiting to get it tuned again.

Bunch of other little things though. Some heat shielding under the passenger seat. Fixed an exhaust leak from a loose v band. Did the passenger window net. Mounted a new tire from the blown wheel. The old tire tried to kill me and blew off the inner bead when airing up. Rotated the one bypass that was hitting the coil spring in the front.

I like the use of the door storage

Penetrode Offroad said:

I like the use of the door storage

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Thanks. One bag is nothing but soft shackles, a winch extension and winch controller. The other has some spare parts. Spare parts bag will get moved to the rear boxes when I add them under the spare and a 30 ft tow strap will go in the door as a rock sling.

Driver window net in and done. Also finally drove it. Did the same 15 mile loop I’ve been doing for cooling testing purposes. Truck never got over 208 which is really good considering the fan doesn’t go 100% till 210 and above. I was definitely pushing the truck harder as well because it wasn’t getting hot. Also raised the temp the trans fan comes on which proved worthwhile. It only got to 185 ish. It comes on when the coolant reads 185 or higher.

And all this testing was without the rear air funnel panels. Only the side window scoop.

Extremely happy to have these cooling issues behind me hopefully. Now just to find this engine leak.

Videos old from shock tuning but still cool.

How are you triggering the trans fan?

BADASS! I am so happy to hear that the OEM Fans are working out better then the aftermarket ones.

I have always been a fan of my half doors and the open space where the window and track used to sit, with that said, it is a cluttered mess. What bags are you using? It would be nice to have bags in my doors to keep things better organized.

Ghetto Fab. said:

How are you triggering the trans fan?

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Through an input wire on the Holley. When the coolant temp gets to 185 or higher and engine is above 400 rpm, it triggers the fan to kick on.

06h3 said:

BADASS! I am so happy to hear that the OEM Fans are working out better then the aftermarket ones.

I have always been a fan of my half doors and the open space where the window and track used to sit, with that said, it is a cluttered mess. What bags are you using? It would be nice to have bags in my doors to keep things better organized.

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These are just prp bags. Two fit perfectly laying down.

That's great news. Glad you have it sorted.

Any ideas to save this tire? When the wheel exploded it damaged the inner bead. I tried to mount it with the damaged bead under the ring and it leaked. I then tried to mount the damaged bead on the inside and when airing up it blew out the bead and tried to kill me. Need something to slather on the bead under the bead lock ring to keep it from leaking essentially

More so just want to use it while playing/testing as the trails around the house are rocky and hard on tires.

Malburg114 said:

Any ideas to save this tire? When the wheel exploded it damaged the inner bead. I tried to mount it with the damaged bead under the ring and it leaked. I then tried to mount the damaged bead on the inside and when airing up it blew out the bead and tried to kill me. Need something to slather on the bead under the bead lock ring to keep it from leaking essentially

More so just want to use it while playing/testing as the trails around the house are rocky and hard on tires.

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Could the bead have broken internally?

abrogate said:

Could the bead have broken internally?

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Very possible. I can see a few cords and they don’t look broke though

My bead wasn’t quite this bad, but I just dealt with this last weekend successfully (so far). I built some beadlocks a while ago with two wraps of gorilla tape on the inner bead. I put Pitbull rockers on, and the inner bead was leaking bad on one where it chunked a bit like yours.

I got a cheap tub of the common “xtra seal bead sealer” from a local autozone (but you can get online), dismounted the inner bead (actually had to tear the gorilla tape, it took a lot of force and time). But lathered the tire bead and wheel bead in the stuff, and it’s now held 100% for the last week

AgitatedPancake said:

My bead wasn’t quite this bad, but I just dealt with this last weekend successfully (so far). I built some beadlocks a while ago with two wraps of gorilla tape on the inner bead. I put Pitbull rockers on, and the inner bead was leaking bad on one where it chunked a bit like yours.

I got a cheap tub of the common “xtra seal bead sealer” from a local autozone (but you can get online), dismounted the inner bead (actually had to tear the gorilla tape, it took a lot of force and time). But lathered the tire bead and wheel bead in the stuff, and it’s now held 100% for the last week

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Maybe I’ll try that stuff under the bead lock ring on the bad bead.

When the inner bead blew on the new wheel, it blew while airing up and it was like those Instagram videos of a tire exploding. It was insanely loud and blew the tire in the air so I’m hesitant to try th bad bead on the inside again.

Bead sealer or if that doesn’t work, a retread shop may try to repair the bead for you. That one may be bad enough they will say it’s as good as gone.

Malburg114 said:

Maybe I’ll try that stuff under the bead lock ring on the bad bead.

When the inner bead blew on the new wheel, it blew while airing up and it was like those Instagram videos of a tire exploding. It was insanely loud and blew the tire in the air so I’m hesitant to try th bad bead on the inside again.

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Having it blow completely off the inner bead is pretty concerning, that does make it sound like there may be actual damage to the bead wires within the rubber like abrogate mentioned. If that’s the case I’m not sure there’s any saving it, but pinching it tight under the beadlock ring with some sealer is probably the best chance like you were thinkin. I’m not sure how much faith I would have in it, but better than nothing

Long post. Learned a lot this last week.

On Sunday wife and I took the car out. We ended up doing 110 miles…. And found that anything over 60-70 miles stuff goes bad.

First 30 miles we did were flawless. Got gas in pahrump and did the math and we were getting 7mpg so we continued onto the old pahrump 250 course/towards Johnnie. It was leaking oil but nothing new and seemed my driveline vibration had lowered (reason to come found later) to 50-60mph from the previous 70 I was able to do.

We made it 70-80 miles into our trip where highway 95 and the 160 come together and the truck started sputtering and running like crap. Thought it had a miss so we pulled over. I checked a bunch of stuff and tightened the v band before the o2 sensor but nothing obvious. Gas didn’t cross my mind as we hadn’t gone very far.

To get back in a decent hour, we parralled the 95 till mercury (about 5-10miles) and the car cooled off enough at fast speeds and the new fans it turned off the transmission fan. Which caused the transmission to get hot… we stopped again checked more fluids. But by now it was leaking a lot and I wasn’t entirely sure what all was leaking cause it smelled like every kind of oil. Engine was a 1/2 quart low so I added some and the atlas sight tube was showing the oil in it was getting dirty so it was probably hot as well. And the passenger axle seal blew and was slinging oil everywhere.

Once the trans cooled we hopped on some smooth powerlines and made our way back to the house. At 90-95ish miles it started running like crap again. Thought maybe there’s a lose plug wire or wire connection or something so slowed down and decided to try the old on/off to see if it goes away. We stopped and when I cycled the ignition, the fuel pump sounded different. Turns out we were out of fuel… go figure it was in one of the last canyons and no cell service. Wife was able to send a satellite text to the teenager that comes over and helps me and he was bringing us 10 gallons from the house. I got it to run on the second fuel pump somehow after sitting a while and made it probably 8-10 miles before it was done. But we were within 10 miles of the house and less than a mile of the pavement to the house. Dumped 10 gallons in. The axle seal was pouring and the rear end of the car was covered in oil

Limped it back and spent 4 or 5 hours and 4 cans of engine degreaser the next day cleaning it. Dropped the skids and got to looking…

For now a few pictures of the ride and I’ll do a new post with what I found.

After cleaning it I found the atlas site tube was empty…. So majority of the oil was from the atlas. Luckily draining it it still had a 1/2-3/4 of a quart in it. I found the rear output flange wasn’t seated all the way on the output shaft. There was about a 1/4” gap of splines not engaged. The flange is from my other Tacoma which has an older atlas. After talking to advance adapters, they told me they changed the design and machine a relief in the end of the flanges/yokes to slip over a 1/4” collar and went on to tell me they’ve been machining the flanges for a few years but haven’t put out a notice about it and even told me Jason Schear at koh this year had the same issues after they mangled a flange with a broken driveshaft…. Still my fault for not pulling the nut and checking it was all the way on but still frustrating.

So I ordered a new flange from them and the driveshaft side flange to match up. I went on to pull the bottom plate on the atlas and everything inside still looked good. No bluing and no unusual amounts of metal on the dipstick. Just what I would expect from a new tcase honestly.

I then moved onto the engine leak. It looks like it’s coming from the crank sensor behind the starter so I started there. It felt lose in the block so I replaced the o ring and the interwebs said a small amount of rtv around the sensor helps it seal. I also changed the engine oil and blew out all the lines and the cooler. Engine with the kevko pan, fluid cooler and remote filter holds about 7 quarts of oil. Still need to run the engine to make sure the leak is fixed. If it’s not that I’ll pull the oil pan and put a new gasket in there as we didn’t rtv where the front and rear covers meet the block and didn’t know it was a thing to do until I started googling common ls leaks.

Some of the bolts on the trans pan had worked loose and were sweating so tightened them up.

And today I got the front tore down and replaced the short side axle seals. Both of the short side seals were ripped but I think that was on me from having to put them in and out a few times. I repacked both seals housings with more grease and then a bunch of people recommended rtving the seal housings in so did that as well. Got the third back in and ran out of time.

Hopefully this fixes my oil leaks and I think the rear output moving also contributed to my driveline vibrations. But I went ahead and dropped both shafts off to be balanced. They called today and said they’re done and they got them balanced well. Said rear was super close and front was close as well but did require some heat and weights.

Tuesday I’ll finish putting the front back together and hopefully the oil and flange show up and I can run everything.

As for the mpg issues. The second half of our ride we only averaged 2mpg and were far from pushing it. Was definitely a slower pace trying to find trails and just going slower so it wasn’t super rough and avoid rocks. The engine was originally tuned with the vacuum leak that I found after the fact so I don’t think that’s helping. The tuners been busy getting cars ready for NorCal series but said now that round 1 is here and about to be done we will get it done next week. I did call a local hub dyno guy but it would be 12-1500 bucks to get that done and not really interested in spending that kind of money yet.

Sorry for the long posts but just seemed to find a lot of problems lol

better to shake it all now then to find it after taking the green flag. sucks to deal with in the moment though.

Malburg114 said:

I did call a local hub dyno guy but it would be 12-1500 bucks to get that done and not really interested in spending that kind of money yet.

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dude spend the money, its cheaper than having to replace it after burning it up

mobil1syn said:

dude spend the money, its cheaper than having to replace it after burning it up

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10000% spend the money on the dyno for the day and have your guy there. Best money spent aside from shock tuning on a race car.

I know the new car blues suck but you’ll get through it. This is part of why so many cars don’t make it past lap 1 at KOH. Get it past you now so you know it’s dialed for race day

Agreeing with the others about getting it tuned asap.
That much extra fuel being dumped in can do a lot of damage. If it washes the rings and contaminates the oil, that's going to be a expensive and bad day. All it needs to do that is foul a plug.

If you're ever in need around Pahrump, let me know. I live here. We're also "relatives" by marriage, supposedly.

mobil1syn said:

dude spend the money, its cheaper than having to replace it after burning it up

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Malburg114 I went cheap out on my first engine tuner, they messed up some basic baro settings that I never caught. Had to pull the motor to get it rebuilt since the cylinders had lost all the cross hatching after ~300miles because the ECU was over fueling and the oil film got washed off the cylinder walls. It was a couple thousand dollar mistake...

I was faster after the rebuild though and a better tuner though.

Engine tuned and starts better and doesn’t smell rich anymore.

Correct flange on the atlas. Resealed the bottom plate. New 75-140 oil in it. New seals in the front axle and new oil.

Ran all the breathers to the back bumper so I can better narrow down any future leaks. New vent hose on the fuel cell that’s braided line since the old one would always kink. Trimmed the skid plate since it was hitting a link mount. Rebled the brakes. And some other odds and ends. Picked up 5 good Mickey Thompson 37s. 4 are probably 75% and probably only street driven. 5th looks brand new. And some more 40 take offs.

Need to get some more 91 and drive it to shake more things out.

Old picture from sand hollow

If you think there’s a chance your vents might be puking oil but you have them hanging off the back bumper, will there be evidence that you lost a bunch?

I was involved with some vehicle testing a while back and had an issue where a prototype diff was puking oil out the vent, so to measure how much was lost we stuck the end of the vent hose in an empty water bottle and zip tied it to the frame. Might be worth doing here if you think it could be a culprit.

thezentree said:

If you think there’s a chance your vents might be puking oil but you have them hanging off the back bumper, will there be evidence that you lost a bunch?

I was involved with some vehicle testing a while back and had an issue where a prototype diff was puking oil out the vent, so to measure how much was lost we stuck the end of the vent hose in an empty water bottle and zip tied it to the frame. Might be worth doing here if you think it could be a culprit.

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When I said future leaks I meant like seals. I think the engine has a leak around the oil pan or crank sensor. I put some rtv on the crank sensor but if I still have a leak now I’ll redo the oil pan gasket.

And It’s more to keep oil from going all over the car if something does get hot and pukes out as it seems to make a giant mess from a small amount of oil. The engine breather seems to just be wet and a small amount of oil drips out of it when parked. When it gets hot the oil left in the tube then gets sprayed all over the trans, sub frame, rear axle etc and makes a mess.

I also put the rear axle breather in the middle of the inspection cap and I think the ring gear throws oil into it so I put a catch can which stopped that from leaking but oil would still bounce out the vent hole in the cap so I routed that through a hose out the back. A super small amount comes out but just enough to make a mess. And then when the axle cools off it sucks all the oil back in because the nipple is at the bottom of the can. Same with the coolant catch can.

Maybe at some point I’ll make a catch can for the back of the car and dump them all into that. I also labeled each hose so if ones wet we know what fluids to check.

LS leaks off the back of the engine is usually the rear engine cover/ rear main cover or the cam shaft position sensor on top (if yours is the older style not on the front cover.)