"vicariousILive" (vicariousILive)
08/28/2014 at 10:03 • Filed to: Taco Mods
4
2|
"vicariousILive" (vicariousILive)
08/28/2014 at 10:03 • Filed to: Taco Mods | 4
| 2 |
Intuitively you would think if you have a Tacoma with the TRD Off Road package that your vehicle would be optimized for... I don't know... off road travel. Toyota likes to dangle the 7 pin receptacle probably because they don't want to make a different bumper. Only problem is over time and going over steep approach angle, the connector starts to looks like this(NOTE not mine... Mine was bent the other way) .
I can't stand to let my precious Tacoma parts fade away into rusty decay even though I use it only once in year if I'm lucky, unlucky in the case of using the tow plug because I prefer not to tow.
The mod was quite simple actually. I had to remove the receptacle from its dangled location as shown above. The next part was a bit tricky because if you want to keep all of your wires intact without having to to cut and reconnect them, you have to take apart the pin receptacle. It was quite tedious because the parts had to be removed from the inside out so I could release the wires from the plastic housing. Lucky for me on Tacoma World there have been !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! than I to tackle this task on their own and I must say it was most helpful.
Once I got that done I had to drill a 2 inch hole next to my license plate. I broke my cheap Black and Decker 1/4" drill bit used in the core bit in my hole saw. Luckily, I came upon an extra bit. Then I drilled two 7/32 holes used to attach the receptacle housing to the bumper. Got the holes drilled and slid the wires through the drilled hole and attached all the wires. I was sure to note the order they were attached before I took it apart to begin with. I'm sure I got them in the correct order reattaching everything.
Before I started attaching the housing to the bumper I coated the back side in black RTV because the back is not flush with the bumper and I wanted no gaps.
So there you have it, now one less thing to get torn off the next time I encounter a steep approach. Only regret of this mod is I wish I would have put on some mosquito repellant because I got annihilated as soon as the sun went down. If you don't hear from me in a while it's because I'm dying from West Nile virus
HammerheadFistpunch
> vicariousILive
08/28/2014 at 12:57 |
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Looks great , no more dangly bits. Any luck with that fender dent?
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vicariousILive
> HammerheadFistpunch
08/28/2014 at 13:05 |
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haven't even tried