A masterclass in systems thinking that transforms chaotic mechanical failure into a predictable sequence of logical triumphs. It proves that most "junk" is merely a series of neglected connections waiting for a disciplined mind to intervene.
Deep Dive
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Deep Dive
Fixing Everything Wrong With My Cheap TacomaAdded:
We recently bought this 2007 Toyota Tacoma with front and rear bumpers, a six-speed manual transmission, and the 4 L V6 engine for an insane deal at only $2,500 because the stock engine was toast.
So, in order to get this thing running and driving again, we acquired an entire second 2007 Toyota Tacoma with the frame rusted in half. We swapped the engine over and once we got this thing back on the road, we discovered a whole host of issues from a rear differential that won't lock to five different check engine lights and whatever this is that I absolutely hate. And we're going to be fixing all of that today to turn this into the perfect daily driver and my dream truck. We've got a ton to do. So, let's get straight to work.
First thing first on getting this thing back together. We've only driven this thing twice and we've already had someone pull out directly in front of us and I found out the horn doesn't work. So, we're going to assess why the horn doesn't work. I already checked and we have a good fuse.
So, it's definitely not just a fuse issue. So, now we're going to go through the wiring from the fuse block to the horn and figure out where we're losing power and fix it. I pulled the fasteners for the grill already so I can just get it out of the way cuz this is where the horns are. Cool.
Issue found. I think if we can just put both of these in. Tap this wire in. Do I have enough to splice it? I guess if I just come in this way, I can just cut add splice with this. Done. This is the only Snap-On tool I've ever bought in my life, and I'm like 10% disappointed. It cuts and strips extremely well, but the crimpers suck, to say the least. But I will say I've had them like 6 years and they still cut wire. Amazing.
Crimped, heat shrunk. Let's get it back in the loom. Boom. You would never know.
Now, moment of truth. The key shouldn't need to be on, I don't think.
Is this real life? I fixed the broken wire. What?
That tick tick tick is the relay. Should be sending power to here. I'll get the power tester. What is going on? That should be horning.
What is going on? Is this wire that corroded? Like that's plugged in.
Okay. So, horn work.
Was it Are these wires just corroded? Is that what's going on? Let's find out.
I'm going to plug this one in now.
It ju It just worked. Is this horn bad?
Is it like causing a a short? I don't know how that would make it not horn.
Is there like another break up here that I just am making rubbing it the wrong way. All right. I swapped the wires. I have no idea why that would work, but like I don't nothing. Yeah, I didn't think that would work, but I I'm lost.
Okay, so that one went beep.
I half unplugged each of the wires.
I'm trying not to make my neighbors sad at me because I've been trying to figure this horn out for like 20 minutes now.
That's right, half unplugged. That's where these horns like to be in order to work. Why? I don't know. I'm just going to leave it. I guess if it works, it works. Next issue I'm addressing is this front bumper. It's rubbing the fenders. And it is atrociously annoying. It squeaks. It bangs and bumps down dirt roads. So, I am loosening the bottom bolts that mount the bumper on cuz there's some in the middle, some on the bottom that are slightly adjustable. I've got this jack on the fair lead as far forward as possible to pivot the bumper down. And look at that. You can see where it's been touching for probably years. And we got a little bit of space there. Now, I'm going to cinch the bumper back down like this. And hopefully it stays and it stops rubbing the fender and the fender liner cuz like I said, it's just squeaky and annoying.
Let's see.
Oh, that worked like better than I expected.
It was touching all the way from here back. And now there's Yeah, that's an appropriate amount of space. I genuinely do think that's what was squeaking and making so much noise. Every time we go over a bump, it would squeak pretty bad.
And then every time you hit a big bump, you could hear a thud. So, I think these were having issues with the body mounts being rubber and this being bolted directly to the frame. Now that we got the bumper mount figured out, I want to figure out what's going on with these lights cuz they currently don't work.
So, I'm going to investigate the wiring harness. I know the center ones don't work because well this is the power feed to them. I just need to figure out what's going on with the other ones if they were wired anywhere or if these have never been powered in this truck.
So this passenger side furthest one is actually wired into something in the truck. It would be cool if maybe just maybe they actually wired it into the factory fog light setup cuz that looks like it's going into the factory harness. So I'm going to go turn the fog lights on and see if that one's got power. But I see the broken wire for this one and the broken wire for the other one. Both right here. So I know none of these are going to work. What we got? What do we got? Oh, okay. I guess I just need to figure out where the fog light wiring is on the driver's side and tie these wires back into it and we should be good to go. It'd be cool to have a bunch of like low light fog brights. All right, I'm stripping it all the way back down because I don't trust any of this wiring. Just want to do it properly with like I don't know waterproof heat shrink connections. Oh, and maybe like a crimp. Is this like half No, it's not even soldered. I don't even think it's soldered. I think it is just twisted together. Yeah, we're redoing this. Ah, this is horrible.
Okay. Well, I might even take a look at the other side, too. Oh, this one was another wire nut. That's what this was for sure. It was a plastic wire nut.
This is stupid. I'm glad that I am pulling all of this apart. We're going to do this right with crimps. Crimps don't corrode as easy. They're way better than this. They're way more secure. And we can run proper sized wire, not one tiny like 18 gauge and one massive like way too big of wire. Yeah.
And now here we got some nice 14 gauge full copper wire. It's going to be the same size on both sides. It's going to be routed proper and out of the way and not in risk of getting caught on the winch itself. And then we'll tie it back into the factory wires and should be good to go. Look at that. Made a new harness for this. That looks a ton better. Got it all spooled together so it doesn't have any weird hangy parts.
Now we can get it in there and routed the proper way. I might even uh cover it with some loom tape real quick just to keep everything even nicer. Try and get all this hidden. Wires are ugly. Maybe one day I'll get a a new fair lead. This one's a little crusty, but for now it works. Maybe a new hook. Maybe we'll we'll we'll revamp the winch a different day. For right now, we're just trying to get the bare minimum fixed and working.
And then we got a bunch of more electrical tape. And we got our log light circuit. Now, the smart thing to do would probably be put a plug here in case I ever want to pull this bumper off. But the fast thing to do is what we're going to do, and that's just splice it in. Thought about it. thought about it long and hard, like 10 whole seconds. Let's make sure we're on the right page. I will twist these together temporarily. Make sure I've got the color orientation correct. Now, this front left one should turn on.
So, now with this tied in, I can crimp these together. And with these secured, I can then tie in the two from the front, zip tie the wires up, and our front lights will work. That'll be really cool. That was actually a huge thing for me is having everything working. Moment of truth.
Okay, cool. So, now I have a switched LED light source on the front of the truck using a factory OEM switch. That feels good. Now, we just got to do the exact same thing with our reverse light so I can see when backing up at night.
With that, just about every single issue is wrapped up up here. Lights, winch, the horns. So, we're going to move to the back where we need to address the reverse lights in the bumper that don't work and the bumper placement as well.
We're going to start with the major issue with this rear bumper. That's this. So, the tailgate is sitting on the bumper, not on the stop. That's because this bumper is horribly aligned. Just like the front, you have a little bit of adjustment. Not a ton, but you do have a little bit. So, I'm going to loosen up all of the bracket bolts on both sides.
I'm going to put a hitch in here and I'm going to pull it down trying to get the bumper to rotate down and hopefully avoid this making this tailgate any worse. Tailgate's already thrashed. It is what it is there. Nothing I can do about that. But I can save it from getting worse and also just make it more comfortable to actually use the tailgate cuz it's not very fun when the tailgate's bouncing.
I literally already watched it fall.
They had this thing like as high up as they could when they installed it.
Wow, look at that. It probably just fell to where it needed to be. That's so funny. And now it's got like perfect clearance. Almost like it wouldn't have obliterated the tailgate on the bumper for the last who knows how long. I guess there is a possibility they like came down on the bumper hard and jammed it up into the bed. Different story, I guess.
But I think I can just tighten it down where it fell into place and it's going to fix all of our issues. Ah, so nice.
The tailgate is no longer I mean, it's not very secure, actually. Why does it feel like this tailgate's Oh, well, that's another issue. This tailgate's breaking in half. It's pretty rough right there. Quite literally like tearing itself in half. So, that's fun.
Taking the trim off this thing. See if I can mitigate it trying to fold in half because now I can, you know, have it down. But this is it's not ideal.
Okay, we're getting somewhere. It's almost somewhat straight.
Now, how do I reinforce it?
I mean, it's not worse.
It's a lot straighter than it was. Now, if I could get like a small piece of angle right there, we'll be in business.
Well, I did not have a piece of angle iron I liked. So, got everything to make one. Got some like slightly thinner than 8 in steel. Got a nice flat surface. I'm going to cut like a what I say like inch and a quarter or so. Yep. Inch and a quarter by like inch and a quarter.
Maybe a little heavy. So, I'm going to do a 2 and 1/2 in maybe like 2 and 3/4 in chunk. Bend it down the center to 90.
Go right there. And then we'll fasten it here somehow, possibly with a welder.
Using the tailgate to fix the tailgate.
Now we go put it in the vise and smag it with a hammer a bunch of times.
Good enough for what we're working with, honestly.
Far from perfect, but perfect from afar.
Now, I am well aware that what I'm doing is not a perfect solution.
But I'm not looking for a perfect solution.
I'm looking for a solution that is better than what I have.
And I think this solution is better than what I had. It is. It's not trying to fold in half anymore.
That's all I really wanted. So, I'm going to chalk this up as a win. And I'm going to do something that a lot of you are probably going to be like, "Why?"
Not only am I grinding the heads off just so it fits better under the trim, but I'm leaving all of it unpainted because, well, we live in the desert here. I don't have to worry about rust.
And you might not even ever see that.
Love it. 10 out of 10. That's a It's a good fix for me. Now, we can move on to the reverse lights. Yeah, I know it's there, but honestly, not bad at all. Is what it is. Tailgate is so much more secure. Yeah, it's not my favorite. And there will always be a weak spot here, but that kind of is what it is. I honestly don't love really anything about the bed. I don't really like the tanu cover. Uh I hate that the bed liner is there. This entire bedside is crinkled in. So I'm like halfway on the lookout for a silver Tacoma bed in 6 1/2 ft length. I'd really want it to be silver though cuz I'm not trying to paint this thing. Although we might end up doing something like that anyway to get rid of this ugly bed liner. I wonder if these wires that go to absolutely nothing or why these reverse lights don't work. I don't even know if they've been tapped in at any point. It doesn't look like there's ever been a connection from this to the truck. So, they might not have ever wired these lights up.
I'm going to start by removing these tail lights, figuring out exactly which wire the reverse light is. Red and blue. I guess I could tap it in up here and then I'm not tapping it in on the other side of the harness cuz these are aftermarket tail lights and when I bought it, this tail light was already taped in because well, it's broken.
So now I'm simply going to tap into this reverse light wire straight in this harness for the tail light itself and not in the main harness. That way if there's any issues with it ever, I'm not messing with factory wiring. Don't know why, but it makes me feel better in my head.
Hindsight's 2020. This really doesn't make sense, but in my head it makes sense cuz I'm not cutting into the factory harness. Let's see.
Oh yeah, we got our super bright LED reverse light. at least one side. Put this back in.
Be happy that this one's not broken because the other side is.
And uh rinse and repeat over there. Look at that. We got ourselves some nice bright LED reverse lights tied into the factory reverse lights.
Stoked about that. Well, the very last thing that we have to get everything working is this little license plate light. We got our reverse lights working. The tail lights are on now. And these are two wires that look to be cut. And the two wires that went to this look to be broken. So, we're going to go ahead snip these in and see if we can get this license plate light to function. And then we should have every single light on the truck working.
Oh, yep. Cool. These are the right wires. I actually need to get some crimps on them. The little things that make driving it a lot more enjoyable.
That's right. light up my own little work area.
And we've got all of our lights back here sorted. We got the reverse lights.
We got the license plate light. And both bumpers now sit proper and shouldn't be rubbing the body anymore. This is a huge win. Tomorrow we're going to dive into getting the check engine lights sorted cuz well, that's kind of the big issue.
Not one, but five check engine light codes. Four of them are for evaporative emissions issues. And the final fifth check engine light is for a P0420, a catalytic converter efficiency code, which means it does not feel like the catalytic converters are cleaning the unburnt fuel out of the exhaust well enough. That could be something easy like a downstream O2 sensor causing a weird reading and it just not liking what it sees. Or the part I would really dread, the catalytic converters on the exhaust manifolds, the ones I put on the engine before we dropped it into the bay could have issues, which would suck because I specifically put the nicer ones on that looked cleaner and newer that had been replaced, and I would hate to have to replace those in the bay.
Where I live, in order to register the truck, it's got to pass emissions.
Luckily, emissions here is super simple.
They just plug the OBD2 reader in and as long as there are no codes, you pass.
You can go pay the MVD and get license plate. That's all I need to do. Which means I need to figure out our evaporative emissions issue, which is all like flow related codes, which might be as simple as a gas cap. But this gas cap looks like it's in good shape. The O-ring doesn't look bad. So, I seriously doubt that's the issue, but it's worth a shot. And the other thing I am thinking which might fix all of our issues is this thing's been sitting for a couple of years. A full tank of fresh gas. It might burn a little cleaner which would clear the uh P 0420 catalytic converter efficiency code and it might also help the evaporative emissions flow. If that's the case, that would be awesome and I could fix it for all intents and purposes free. We got about a quarter tank in it. Now, we're going to fill it up with an entire tank, possibly even a premium just to get some nice burning gas in there. And then we'll throw some heat cycles on the truck and see if we can't get this thing sorted out. We're also going to see if maybe, just maybe, the uh horrible squeaking every time we hit a big bump and the like tud tud goes away from adjusting the front bumper since now they're not resting on top of each other. Hopefully, they're not rubbing anymore. That'd be cool cuz it was a little annoying. It was hard to get on camera, but it was incredibly annoying to hear.
I don't love how crusty that feels.
All right, it's been a minute because we drove around all day. I cleared the check engine lights this morning and they haven't come back. Currently, there's no check engine lights. So, I think fresh gas is all this thing needed. I wouldn't be surprised. Uh gas nowadays kind of sucks, and I wouldn't doubt if the gas that had been sitting in the tank for 2 plus years wasn't the best. Was causing some issues with the evap system. But, man, I didn't expect it to be that easy. The only thing left mechanically that I'd like to fix besides doing a suspension revamp at some point is figuring out the four-wheel drive. Uh the rear locker. I would love if the rear locker would work cuz well, it's got a locker and it'd be cool if I could get it functioning.
No way.
The rear locker fixed itself, too.
Oh, good old Toyota. I swear so far, other than the engine, which was knocking, obviously not going to fix itself, all of our other issues have been fixing themselves.
You can't make this up, man. Like, look at this. The rear locker's working. The light's not blinking. It sounded like it was locked. What? I've done nothing.
Nothing to fix that. And it I mean, I drove over a mile in circles in my backyard on dirt trying to get the rear locker to engage. I guess this thing just needed some miles, man. Cars do not like sitting and doing nothing for long periods of time. God, this thing is coming together. Since we had no issues, I went ahead and just took it to an emissions place where we passed. But before we go register this thing, I want to give it a full cleaning cuz it's kind of gross in here. It's not like the worst in the world by any means, but I want to vacuum everything out. I want to wipe everything down. I want to power wash the outside. I want to make it as nice as I can make it cuz I'm really excited to get some tags on this thing and start driving it every day. So, first things first, we're going to start from the inside out and clean everything. We're going to get it vacuumed out, the seats cleaned, all the trash out of here, everything wiped down. And then once we get the interior all sorted, we will jump onto the outside and give it a good once over wash.
power wash that when we get to it.
Underneath isn't terrible. While we're in here, I had everything torn apart. I pulled the cup holders out so I could power wash them and figured I might as well tighten up this clutch cable. It's not like insanely loose. But it's a good time to go ahead and tighten it up a little bit so we don't have so much play and hopefully tighten up the lever itself cuz there's not much going on for the first like three to four clicks.
This is not good.
Now, with the interior about as cleaned up as we can get it, let's move on to the outside and engine bay. Going to get everything washed down. I might even see if the power washer will remove any of this bed liner cuz it's kind of ugly.
I've opened a can of worms and I don't know what to do with it now because uh you can definitely tell that someone like sanded this I assume in preparation to bedline it.
But I think the sand marks look better than the bed liner. Like this is real colored paint. It's not crappy bedlininer and all that we're using to take it off right now is acetone and it's not really hurting the factory paint. So, like I guess I might spend two days stripping all of the bed liner off this thing cuz it is going to take all of like two days.
This has been a slow process. We're talking 30 to 45 minutes to do this this well.
It's actually working better than I expected.
When I first discovered that it looked like there were a bunch of sand marks here, I was rather discouraged, but they seem to dissipate a ton when they're not full of the bed liner. You can't see them near as well.
A small eternity later and it's almost almost fairly decent over here.
Like we're far from perfect, but I'm I'm impressed. So much better.
We're We're just about there for this 12in section.
I guess that's getting somewhere. After a pretty decent success getting all the bed liner off right here, you can definitely tell someone like scuffed it before putting the bed liner on, but it doesn't look near as bad as I was expecting. We got some more supplies, more plastic razor blades, more acetone.
I even got some lacquer thinner cuz it shouldn't evaporate as quick. And we're now going to remove all of the bed liner. I'm so excited and so nervous all at the same time. This is going to suck to do, but it is going to be so satisfying to have the factory paint back. Hopefully, there's nothing horribly horrible under all of this and they just did it for the looks. Uh, we're about to find out.
Since it's supposed to rain today, we're going to back it into the garage, get a little bit better. Uh, garage is jam-packed right now. But I, uh, I'm ready.
Let's see how this goes. So, we've got acetone in a spray bottle. We've got a plastic razor blade to hopefully get it off. And then I have an interesting idea. We've got rags and magnets. I'm actually going to soak down a section of it, cover it with a rag so that it hopefully keeps the acetone on there, and then magnet the rag to the body, trying to melt off as much of the bed liner as possible before I start scraping. I guess I'll do this over here and then just normal spray over there and see what happens.
Let's see how this goes.
Okay.
Okay, I'm already liking this better than the the back. I don't know if it's the spray or what, but this is moving along swimmingly.
hours and hours later, we are finally getting somewhere on side one. We haven't even begun on the fender flares, but we're about to the point where the front and rear doors and the bedside are finished. This is I I vastly underestimated how much time this was going to take. Literally getting acetone. Well, that's actually lacquer thinner. And then gently scraping as much as I possibly can. And then we get a rag and wipe all of the residue off.
And eventually you get to decent looking paint. There's some scratches. I think somebody like very poorly scuffed the paint before bedlinining, but there's no rust. There's no issues. And I'm really honestly so much happier with how it's looking. Hours and hours and hours later still. And I think we finally got it. It looks incredibly better. I'm so happy with this. We're We're about there. So, it's been I think it's been like 6 and 1/2 hours that we've been working on this and we didn't even do the fender flares. So, it's probably going to be like 20 plus hours of just removing this bed liner, and it was worth every second. We're going to move on to the passenger side. We have a ton to do. The back of the bed, the front of the bed, the doors, you know, everything. This is This is going to be an extensive project. So, if you ever find yourself in a position to take bed liner off of decent auto paint, this is the best method I have found for this bed liner. We are absolutely soaking all of it in this is acetone. We've also been using lacquer thinner. These are plastic razor blades. Just online cheapos. Soak it down. Scrape.
At first it feels like you're not doing much. But promise you're getting stuff as long as there's black coming off. And then resoak.
Rescrape. And we've just been doing this everywhere.
soak, then scrape. And eventually you get to the point where most of it's all the way off. And when you get to this point, which is where most of it's all the way off, we just use a rag soaked in acetone and wipe everything. It's been really pretty chill to the clear coat.
Um, I'm sure there's probably better methods. I'm sure there's probably quicker methods. This is just the method I'm using.
We are in the home stretch.
This is the last fender flare. We are almost done. This is the last bit of bed liner on the entire Tacoma. I'm so excited to get it off. Soak this thing down like four or five times now to get it completely prepped and hopefully softened up. We're We're going to see.
Hopefully it's just like Yes, there's your method. Soak bed liner in this is lacquer thinner because lacquer thinner does not evaporate as fast as acetone. And uh comes right off.
We did it. We're done. It looks so much better. It's far from perfect. You can see some scuffs. You can see some scrapes. It does look like someone like scuffed the paint under the bed liner at one point, but all in all, it looks so much better. And I cannot understate how much work this was. I expected to spend a full day, maybe like a day and a couple hours. We're like 16 to 17 solid hours into this with two of us. The majority of this was done with two people working two scrapers, two rags full of acetone. We used two and a half gallons of acetone and lacquer thinner.
Um, but it's done and I'm stoked. And if you think it looks better, uh, put in the comments that camerawoman is the best because she did half the work and I literally couldn't have done this without her. So, let's pull it out. See what it looks like in the sunshine cuz we're done, buddy.
It looks so much better. I literally cannot express how much better this looks to me. I know it's not perfect. I don't care about perfect. Obviously, if you've watched the channel, you know I don't want my vehicles to be perfect.
But walking out to this versus what it was before, it it literally makes me so happy. Just this. I think it feels like a whole new truck. I'm so flipping excited.
So much bedlininer. This isn't even all of it. I know some got thrown away. This is most of the rags and most of the bed liner. And also, we did peel off a little bit of like PPF from the very front of the bed sides. This is so much work watching it condensed into this.
We're talking an entire pack of rags, dozens of plastic razor blade scrapers, and literally close to 40 man hours. We're talking 30 plus man hours of just cleaning bed liner off the truck.
Feels so good. I'm so happy. It it it was 100% necessary. This needed to happen. Yeah.
Look at this massive pile of bed liner.
And it's not even all of it and all the rags and all the everything. Not to mention, we used a gallon and a half of acetone and a gallon and a quarter of lacquer thinner. What do you guys think?
Think it was worth all the time we put into taking the bed liner off? One of the next things I want to do is take this tanu cover off. Uh there's a few reasons for that. Most notably, our overall plans for the truck and the tanu cover don't really clash. We have plans for the bed that do not involve having it covered all the time. Also, it's just a little bit broken back here. The latches that hold it all the way down.
It's like got a tab broken off and it doesn't sit flat anymore. So, it's always just a little bit of a upward slant. And I It's just not worth it for us to keep. So, I'm going to go ahead pull it off. Probably going to like list it on Facebook Marketplace for like 50 bucks cuz we don't really care. So, let's go ahead yank this thing off and turn this thing back into a truck truck.
Literally six bolts later. Well, five cuz one was missing and a couple set screws. And I think Yeah. Cool. Yep. Removed. Tanu cover is no longer attached to the truck. When we go to put something on this bedside, we're going to have like a bed rack.
This wouldn't have fit anyway. Our Tacoma is starting to really come together. It's starting to look good.
It's completely mechanically dialed in.
We passed emissions. We went and got it registered, so it's completely street legal. The bedlininer's gone, so it looks immensely better. The tanu cover is gone. The interior is cleaned up. And I think next we got to get some cosmetic upgrades on this truck. Maybe some slightly bigger tires, some nicer wheels, a little bit of a lift, new headlights, new grill. I don't know. Let me know what you would do if this was your truck next. That is it for now, though. Thank you for watching. Thank you for subscribing. The best way to support the channel is to grab some merch. And I cannot wait to catch you on the next
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