Just Scored My Unicorn - Now What?

Sheesh, I haven't been on a truck forum since my college dorm TTORA days with my old Taco. But I just nabbed my "forever truck" *hopefully*, and I'm ditching social media since it's all crap these days, and need something else to fill the downtime. So here I am, back again (tell a friend).

Need to get caught up on the latest and greatest for the 1st gens, I'm passing down my '21 to the next guy in line at the ranch, and will be building this thing out to be my mostly daily driven and also Baja camping rig for my boy and I. Super excited, been looking and swinging and missing at low-mileage 4WD California trucks for awhile. Can't believe how much these things are starting to appreciate. Local dealer in San Diego has one for $28,000 right now. Insane.

I need to do a little more digging (now that it's too late) to make sure this thing is legit, but I jumped on a 2005 with 62,000 miles (!!!!!!!!) for $15,300 before the guy got buried with offers. He didn't know what he had.

My knee jerk to do list is as follows (please advise):

• Gonna go ahead and get the timing belt/water pump done due to age, even though I'm not there yet mileage-wise
• Needs new plugs and coils (should I re-do the valve cover gaskets while I'm at it?)
• Some idiot rattle-canned the underbody with ghetto off the shelf line-x. There's no rust, I don't know what they were hiding. Does anybody do an underbody detail/prep with an outdoor lift and a hotsie? I want to detail the crap out of this thing to really be able to see what I need to replace due to age.
• New hoses/filters/bushings/belts, etc (should I go after market on the control arm and steering bushings or OEM?)
• Headers (JBA shorties, ceramic coated - right? That still the hot ticket?)
• Intake - yay or nay?
• Anyone make an aftermarket extra capacity fuel tank for these?
• Came with a shell, I might leave it for now but will keep an eye out for something that looks better.
• The plan is to put in relatively low profile custom sliding drawers in the back with a flat deck that I can inflate an air mattress on for camping. Not a big fan of the roof top tents. I'm gonna actually use this thing, not parade around town in it with never-been-used gas cans and shovels and stuck sticks (lol) bolted on to every available surface.
• Re-upholster seats with leather (would have loved the sunroof and power everything on a Limited but man the taupe is so ugly though)
• Seems to have a decent aftermarket radio deck with backup camera. Might keep that for now.
• TRD bronze wheels (duh)
• Need to eliminate the weird black grill insert paint. Just get it to matching silver for now. Will re-paint or wrap the whole truck white down the road
• Kings up front, will maybe see if they can make me some direct bolt ons for the rear
• Airbags (right? or nah?)

I dunno, that's probably a good start. I will start with the not-fun stuff first to make sure I didn't get bamboozled. And if I did I could probably turn around and sell it for $5k+ more than I bought it.

Man I love these trucks.

- Belk

 

Nevermind, I'm good, just ready Shifty's sticky haha.

Lots of good info, other than the rain on my parade for finding such a low-mileage truck. Gonna pull the valve covers now, just to check. Finger's crossed.

 

Nice find. Welcome.

 

Nice lookin truck
its rare to find a unicorn, these trucks can be well kept and look near showroom condition at 300,000 miles. I have a friend with 330,000 on a double cab with cloth seats like that and they still look so close to new you would think they had 50,000 miles. A little doctoring and you can make a 200,000+ mile truck look like a low mile truck.
NOT to say you didnt get an actual low mile truck, i saw one a little over 2 years ago, 2005 4wd double cab white limited in absolute perfect condition with like 75,000 miles, listed at a dealer i think in Tenessee or Carolinas and they were asking $26,500. I looked up the window sticker and the truck was $33,xxx in 2005. Kinda crazy they would ask that kinda money for a truck nearing 20 years old. It looked good though and boy if i had the spare cash i likely woulda snagged it. I love mine but shes a 50 yard faker, from 50 yards you think its pristine pony, the closer you get the more it lures you in until you get too close and see the small imperfections. Its about time to polish the white chalk board again, that single stage super white sure does like to turn to chalk about every 16 months and i gotta spend a solid day buffing it out and putting a sealer over it.
That silver looks really really nice, very nice truck kid.

 

Nice truck! Congrats! I've got my own silver sneaker, and wondered what it would look like with a canopy. I think it looks pretty slick! Great job checking out the sticky as that probably would have been in the first few responses to you. The rattle can job is concerning, did you check out the areas of concern mentioned on the sticky? Good call on the timing belt service, should be first on your list IMO.

 

Yeah I was concerned when I first saw the rattle can job, but I scraped it off in multiple spots and there's no rust underneath. Nothing else in the engine bay like bolts/clips etc are rusted. And the spray stuff is EVERYWHERE. I think some idiot just thought it would make it look better. Literally the front shocks are covered in it. What a hassle.

 

Make sure you have FIPG ready if you're seriously about to pop off the valve covers. If you're really going to do it, you may as well refresh the gaskets, it can wait, even if you found sludge there's nothing you can immediately do about it. List of exact numbers are around here somewhere... but you'd be better served to use a bore cam - which you can get plenty of cheap Chinesium ones off fleaBay/scAmazon these days - and scope thru the oil fill.

First thing I'd do is look up the history of the truck and where it's lived. It should help quell any concerns you have about frame stuff. If it's been in a rust belt state, you may want to look into that. The coating could've been Toyota - check your recall status and vehicle history for "SSC" items at Toyota Owners website - or it could've been hyper-proactive previous owner worried about rust. Seeing it would've made me think twice about buying, but far too often people make it here and read the megathread too late.

On your laundry list, I'm not the end-all-be-all voice here, but some items I'd comment on --

• Needs new plugs and coils (should I re-do the valve cover gaskets while I'm at it?) --> Coils why? You don't have nearly the mileage for coils; save the $$ for other mods. NGK Iridium for the plugs (do not gap)
• Some idiot rattle-canned the underbody with ghetto off the shelf line-x. --> Make sure linkage, parking brake especially, is free and clear of garbage, and moving freely, since e-brake functionality is totally critical to brake functionality on all four wheels
• New hoses/filters/bushings/belts, etc (should I go after market on the control arm and steering bushings or OEM?) --> Depends on bushings, for super-tight steering, Energy's kit and understand how to lube poly bushings properly ahead of install. Control arm ... skip unless 100% necessary (i.e. they're visibly blown).
• Headers (JBA shorties, ceramic coated - right? That still the hot ticket?) --> Meh. Long are about the only ticket for power, be prepared to fight with check engine lights even with shorties.
• Intake - yay or nay? --> FUCK NO. And OEM filters. If you don't do OEM, then avoid oiled filters, period, end of discussion, you're fucking yourself with throttle body spooge if you do.
• Came with a shell, I might leave it for now but will keep an eye out for something that looks better. --> I don't like that pop-out window style Leer, but Leer makes great shells. You should be able to get $400-600 for yours. When hunting READ THIS.
• Re-upholster seats with leather (would have loved the sunroof and power everything on a Limited but man the taupe is so ugly though) --> Katzkin is popular option on here
• Seems to have a decent aftermarket radio deck with backup camera. Might keep that for now. --> You may want to look into whether they bypassed the OEM amp, and how it's all wired now, so you can have potential fixes/buy the right stuff later.
• Need to eliminate the weird black grill insert paint. Just get it to matching silver for now. Will re-paint or wrap the whole truck white down the road --> It'll have chrome bars up front; may be easier just to source a replacement from a junkyard or part-out truck in the same color.
• Kings up front, will maybe see if they can make me some direct bolt ons for the rear --> As long as you'll use them, because that's gonna hurt the wallet $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
• Airbags (right? or nah?) --> Depends, are you planning to be hauling more than 1k-2k pounds out back regularly? If not, skip the helper bags. If you do go bags, Firestone kit is great, and DO NOT link the bags, it's a common mistake, plumb them separately.

 

@shifty` got a strong feeling about the intake, that's all I saw reading the above....lol
But yea, OP, heed shifty`words, those are weight in gold if not more.

 

Welcome from LA (Lower Alabama)!

 

Nice looking rig! Welcome from The God's Country, The Great State of Texas!

 

Sweet truck. It's in my favorite color too.

 

Welcome aboard! Nice looking rig and great score.

 

Nice one! Welcome!

 

If I find a Leer 100XR then you can have this one!

 

Nice find! She's beautiful. And silver is the best color.

 

Agree to disagree

 

If the lower ball joint recall (SSC 70B) hasn't been done go ahead and get the lower ball joints replaced. You can try to get Toyota to cover the job, or just buy the recall kit for $200 (04006-62134) and install them yourself in an hour.

 

got the same exact truck ha

 

And 8 new bolts, for the '05 @ part# 90105-12316

 

should this be done as preventative?

 

Absolutely. The achilles heel of the first gen is failing lower ball joints.

 

Since you don't have an '00/'01, your truck would've had the LBJ recall done, it should show up as an "SSC" or something related to "ball joint" on your truck's dealership maintenance history (available at Toyota Owners website). If not, you should have an open recall.

LBJ is the achilles heel of the 1st gen suspension, same way the radiator is probably the achilles heel of the transmission. As such, knowing the end result of a failed LBJ is disastrous, I would err on the side of caution of "proactive replacement" on those two items on roughly the same schedule. i.e. you probably want to be swapping both of those out every 100k-125k miles with fresh OEM, that's Denso brand on the radiator (picking the correct part# for your cab type), and OEM/Toyota for the LBJ and getting get fresh bolts while at it, since bolt stretch is a thing.

We could probably make a laundry list of things to change every 100k miles, like:

• Timing belt, water pump, tensioner, pulleys => Achilles of the engine
• Radiator => Achilles of the radiator
• LBJs + their bolts => Achilles of the suspension
• ....?

It's up to people whether or not they heed the warnings though. One warning you need to heed: Always use OEM LBJ. Period. You'll find no less than 50 pictures of people with snapped aftermarket balljoints on this forum, and hundreds around the internet, all from suckers who couldn't listen.

 

That’s the one.

they declined deep belt replacement but did LBJ, and got aligned. Not a lot of miles so I totally get why they didn’t do serp belt.

so your last confirmed LBJ replace was at 5k miles?

 

looks that way

 

it doesnt specify if its ubj or lbj tho

 

got radiator done recently(1 yr ago)... but not oem that i know of, was done at mechanic i dont trust anymore.. coolant was low a week or so ago, beneath low on res. topped it off. when i bought the truck 01/23 the entire skid plate was green from leaking radiator..

 

I'm sure it's fine. I wouldn't replace the radiator again. But yeah, shouldn't be using green fluid. Pink or red only.

It's lower. There was nothing going on with uppers I'm aware of.

 

Congrats on the score. Picked up my 2005 with 63k for 13.8k a few months back, only 2WD though. If they just didn't drive it much vs short tripping, I'd think you'd be good. That's how it was for me and it runs better than anything I've ever owned. The old timer that had it used it for their gardening etc and drove his Subaru when he didn't need something for truck work. Was a few pounds of mulch under the plastic bed liner when I removed it but not a single spec of rust lol, garage kept.