Hey guys and gals!
I figured I'd start a thread on my new Tacoma build. It's not exactly planned, but hey...lemonade out of lemons. Here's the story:
I bought my first car 5 years ago when I got out of college in the city, and have been building my Syncro Vanagon Adventurewagen from the ground up (I have a thread in the van section that was updated sporadically) specifically to camp on the beach here on Cape Cod ever since. It's just been something Iv'e wanted to do since I was a kid. I got it on the road about a year ago, and even though the interior was bare and I couldn't camp overnight (you need a chemical toilet and permanent mounted bed to get the permit) I got a solid 8 months of beach excursions while I was building out the living space last summer. It was probably the best hobby/passtime I've ever had, and driving that van on the beach was the experience of a lifetime.
Then while driving home for Thanksgiving on my first out-of-state trip in the van in November, I got hit by an old drunk lady that ran a red light at 40mph. She flipped the van across 4 lanes of traffic. I was ok, the van was totaled...biggest heartbreak of my life.
Insurance paid out and I was financially whole, but they took their time and we only settled about a month ago. I'm building a house right now and won't have time to build another van for a few years, but I wanted to make sure the van project lived on. I put that insurance money right towards my new home.
I decided that come hell or high water, I was still going to make my goal of sleeping on the beach this year. This thread is my attempt to make that happen.
But First....
...I had some vehicles to sell. I had 4 cars to my name including the van, only one of which was on the road and none less than 25 years old. As I'm building a small house and doing the whole simplification thing, I decided to downsize the rest as well. This meant selling all of the cars and building one all-around vehicle. I've sold off the whole driveway in the last 3 weeks.
The first to go was an '81 Jeep CJ-8 I had bought out of Oregon about a year ago for a screaming deal. Completely restored with less than 100k on the clock, I used it as a promo/company vehicle for my business. But the new truck will take over eye candy duties infront of the shop, so it was the first to go.
The next was my daily driver, a 1990 Montero I got out of Arizona. It cost $3,000 shipped to the east coast with beautiful original paint and a rebuilt motor. That truck gave me 3 years of perfect, hassle free driving through the two worst winters Cape Cod has ever seen. A friend had been bugging me about selling it for over a year, so one phone call and it was sold for a bit more than I paid for it :beer:
Next was a hand-me-down Honda Civic I took from my mom when she was going to scrap it. It had been sitting for two years and I never got around to fixing it up, so I put it on craigslist for a couple hundred bucks and got it out of the driveway in 24 hours. No picture there.
Last, I bought the van back from insurance for about a thousand dollars. It has a ton of money left in useable parts, many of which are NLA or have 2 year waitlists (like building the locking transaxles with new cases...which no longer exist). So I put it up for sale and it was gone in 18 hour in as-is, totaled condition.
The NEW Whip!
I quickly settled on a first gen, post-2001 tacoma as my vehicle for the new build. I picked this platform because I liked the small size, I liked the reliability and power of the v6, and I liked that I could get a bare bones, crank-window-and-tape-deck truck that was still pretty modern compared to anything I'd previously driven. My budget for the whole build was just what I'd made on the sale of the van and cj-8, so I had to keep that in mind as well.
I started my hunt and within 10 minutes stumbled on the perfect truck browsing eBay (of all places). I've bought all my cars online and shipped them from dry places because the cars here rust out, so I made sure to do some due-diligence and everything checked out perfect. This was from New Hampshire but was a well documented 2004 Tacoma with a 6 foot bed, v6, manual transmission, new frame, and...you guessed it...crank windows and a tape deck. Did I mention it had under 100k on the clock and the price was under $10k? Perfect start! So I purchased it and it arrived about 4 weeks ago.
I got to work researching parts and used some of my budget to get the suspension and tires first so they had time to settle a bit. I picked up some 4runner wheels so I could keep the old tires on the old wheels (studded snow tires) and sell them for some extra cash. I chose some Cooper Discoverer sst's in 255/85r16. For suspension, I decided on the Toytec Boss kit with Dakar spring packs and some Light Racing upper control arms. I figured this would give me a good all around suspension setup, as I don't do any heavy wheeling. Over the past week, I've got all of this stuff installed. Feels like I'm moving at light speed compared to the Syncro!
So what's next? It's time to take care of the whole camping thing! I wanted a lightweight option, so I found a used Flippac in Arizona that will be arriving in a couple weeks. I'm going to be installing a Powertrax noSlip next week to take care of the open rear diff, and I'll be doing a full paint job, solar setup, onboard air for airing up after sand driving, and the interior camper build in the next couple months before the season hits in May.
The goal is a simple, functional beach camper. It looks like I might just make it!
Hope this wasn't too long! It's nice to be here in the Toyota section, I've already learned so much from you all as a newcomer to the Toyota world.
I figured I'd start a thread on my new Tacoma build. It's not exactly planned, but hey...lemonade out of lemons. Here's the story:
I bought my first car 5 years ago when I got out of college in the city, and have been building my Syncro Vanagon Adventurewagen from the ground up (I have a thread in the van section that was updated sporadically) specifically to camp on the beach here on Cape Cod ever since. It's just been something Iv'e wanted to do since I was a kid. I got it on the road about a year ago, and even though the interior was bare and I couldn't camp overnight (you need a chemical toilet and permanent mounted bed to get the permit) I got a solid 8 months of beach excursions while I was building out the living space last summer. It was probably the best hobby/passtime I've ever had, and driving that van on the beach was the experience of a lifetime.
Then while driving home for Thanksgiving on my first out-of-state trip in the van in November, I got hit by an old drunk lady that ran a red light at 40mph. She flipped the van across 4 lanes of traffic. I was ok, the van was totaled...biggest heartbreak of my life.
Insurance paid out and I was financially whole, but they took their time and we only settled about a month ago. I'm building a house right now and won't have time to build another van for a few years, but I wanted to make sure the van project lived on. I put that insurance money right towards my new home.
I decided that come hell or high water, I was still going to make my goal of sleeping on the beach this year. This thread is my attempt to make that happen.
But First....
...I had some vehicles to sell. I had 4 cars to my name including the van, only one of which was on the road and none less than 25 years old. As I'm building a small house and doing the whole simplification thing, I decided to downsize the rest as well. This meant selling all of the cars and building one all-around vehicle. I've sold off the whole driveway in the last 3 weeks.
The first to go was an '81 Jeep CJ-8 I had bought out of Oregon about a year ago for a screaming deal. Completely restored with less than 100k on the clock, I used it as a promo/company vehicle for my business. But the new truck will take over eye candy duties infront of the shop, so it was the first to go.
The next was my daily driver, a 1990 Montero I got out of Arizona. It cost $3,000 shipped to the east coast with beautiful original paint and a rebuilt motor. That truck gave me 3 years of perfect, hassle free driving through the two worst winters Cape Cod has ever seen. A friend had been bugging me about selling it for over a year, so one phone call and it was sold for a bit more than I paid for it :beer:
Next was a hand-me-down Honda Civic I took from my mom when she was going to scrap it. It had been sitting for two years and I never got around to fixing it up, so I put it on craigslist for a couple hundred bucks and got it out of the driveway in 24 hours. No picture there.
Last, I bought the van back from insurance for about a thousand dollars. It has a ton of money left in useable parts, many of which are NLA or have 2 year waitlists (like building the locking transaxles with new cases...which no longer exist). So I put it up for sale and it was gone in 18 hour in as-is, totaled condition.
The NEW Whip!
I quickly settled on a first gen, post-2001 tacoma as my vehicle for the new build. I picked this platform because I liked the small size, I liked the reliability and power of the v6, and I liked that I could get a bare bones, crank-window-and-tape-deck truck that was still pretty modern compared to anything I'd previously driven. My budget for the whole build was just what I'd made on the sale of the van and cj-8, so I had to keep that in mind as well.
I started my hunt and within 10 minutes stumbled on the perfect truck browsing eBay (of all places). I've bought all my cars online and shipped them from dry places because the cars here rust out, so I made sure to do some due-diligence and everything checked out perfect. This was from New Hampshire but was a well documented 2004 Tacoma with a 6 foot bed, v6, manual transmission, new frame, and...you guessed it...crank windows and a tape deck. Did I mention it had under 100k on the clock and the price was under $10k? Perfect start! So I purchased it and it arrived about 4 weeks ago.
I got to work researching parts and used some of my budget to get the suspension and tires first so they had time to settle a bit. I picked up some 4runner wheels so I could keep the old tires on the old wheels (studded snow tires) and sell them for some extra cash. I chose some Cooper Discoverer sst's in 255/85r16. For suspension, I decided on the Toytec Boss kit with Dakar spring packs and some Light Racing upper control arms. I figured this would give me a good all around suspension setup, as I don't do any heavy wheeling. Over the past week, I've got all of this stuff installed. Feels like I'm moving at light speed compared to the Syncro!
So what's next? It's time to take care of the whole camping thing! I wanted a lightweight option, so I found a used Flippac in Arizona that will be arriving in a couple weeks. I'm going to be installing a Powertrax noSlip next week to take care of the open rear diff, and I'll be doing a full paint job, solar setup, onboard air for airing up after sand driving, and the interior camper build in the next couple months before the season hits in May.
The goal is a simple, functional beach camper. It looks like I might just make it!
Hope this wasn't too long! It's nice to be here in the Toyota section, I've already learned so much from you all as a newcomer to the Toyota world.
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