welcome to botches off road uh so yeah um it's
still just me and mark since we record both episodes
on one day all in a row um today it's an hour
i'm gonna try and keep the bullshitting to a
minimum uh see how long we can keep on a couple
of topics um number one When do you decide a
project is too big and you send it to someone
rather than suffer through it? Yeah. No project
is too big for me. I will do anything. Does that
mean I'm going to get pissed? Yes. But I have
suffered through much harder builds than anything
we're doing on the Tacoma or the Forerunner.
yeah unless unless we're on a time crunch like
we were last time with my truck that wasn't even
a time crunch it was uh we were literally leaving
for a trip and weren't going to be home but you
still needed it for work yeah no i know but you
know i think back to like the power stroke build
that took three years and for that three years
i borrowed cars Like that was dumb. I won't do
that again. Yeah, well, I'm doing it right now.
You're doing it right now. But, you know, almost
anything we go through, it's not nothing can
be as hard as taking that turbo out with the
cab still on the truck. Especially before I put
the two by fours under. on the frame to support
the truck. Oh, God. And the cab was sitting on
the turbo. Do you remember that? I think I remember
that. Fuck, dude. I know I wasn't there for when
you guys initially did the engine build, but...
You were there for part of it. I think you helped...
I was later. You helped put it in, didn't you?
I don't recall putting the engine in. I know
I did the transmissions almost all the time.
Every couple months? Shut up. Was getting faster
at it, though. Do admit that. We were getting
pretty fast. I never should have got rid of that
fucking truck. But, you know, for you, Mark,
when do you decide a project is too big for you
to even tackle? I mean, I guess once it gets
out of my expertise level or, like, confident
about my expertise level about it. Like, granted,
we think we know what's going on with the Tacoma
now, but I was ready to take that to the shop
because I was giving up trying to figure out
what was wrong with it. And we're trying to fix
one thing, and now it's having different malfunctions
that we haven't dealt with yet. So we're like,
what the fuck is going on here? And it's consistent.
It's like every step of the way, there's something
else in the way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, this
is annoying. Don't get me wrong. We'll figure
it out. Yeah. It just sucks that we started the
weekend with two running trucks and finished
it with none. Oh, tankly one. Yeah. At least
one. Black one. At least one project that weekend
went all right -ish. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know,
man. I really don't think any project is above
me. I think I can. youtube and bullshit my way
through just about everything yeah like for the
most part i have literally done everything to
my truck myself with the help of you guys but
like we've had zero time of actually going into
someone to get work done yeah i don't think since
i bought the forerunner it's never been to a
shop Other than tire mounting and balancing,
because I can't do that. Oh, yeah. That being
said, though, I am getting tired of working on
my truck for the last almost four months now.
Dude, I'm getting sick and tired of working on
your truck. Which is funny, because you're annoyed
with us working on your truck constantly. Yeah,
why is this truck having issues? Yeah, I know.
It's fun when you're doing a modification, right?
When you're putting long travel on, when you're
lifting or doing something like that. But when
you're just fixing problems, it's not fun no
more. No, it is not fun at all anymore. I'm pretty
sure I have sunk almost $2 ,000 in this truck
trying to fix it the last couple months. Yeah,
yeah. That sounds about right. I'm at just about
a grand already in my timing project. That whole
thing, dude. Like, of all the times for something
that was... No indication that anything was wrong.
Truck never ran hot. You had no indication of
that happening. Just all of a sudden it's dumping
its coolant. Well, except for you had to put
coolant in the day of or the day before. Yeah.
yeah but that could have been just it burning
it out and you're like oh i just he had more
i hadn't checked the coolant in like eight months
yeah i but no indication for the most part no
smell of coolant no running hot nothing it just
all of a sudden one day it was pouring coolant
everywhere yeah This ain't your radiator crack
like last time. Oh, my God, dude. Twice. Radiator
cracks because it's old, so I replace it. Then,
the day after I replace it, leaking coolant.
Oh, brand new radiator's cracked. Yeah, I don't
know, man. I mean, we'll get through it. It is
what it is. All right. On to another topic. What
are your build regrets? Things you regret either
doing to the truck or you feel like was a waste
of time. Mine was waiting so long to go long
travel. All the front end rebuilds we did for
no goddamn reason. I quite honestly don't think
I have anything. Because, like, first year owning
it, we ran it as is, trying to figure out all
the kinks that it had in it. Fixed most of that
with the bumpers the following year. Beyond that,
it was just probably of putting off the fucking
knock sensor thing. I don't think I've had any
mods I hated so far I've done. My garden edging
flares. They didn't look horrible. No. They were
really annoying. Yeah, I can't think of anything.
Too bad Gavin's not here, because I'm sure he's
got a list of them with all the dumbass shit
he's done to the... FJ. Yeah, I'm sure he has
a list of stuff he's regretted doing. I regret
for him the giant hole he cut for no reason in
his bumper. Yeah. What is something you did in
your first year of wheeling that You think that
now looking back was really dumb. I think buying
the roof rack, the first roof rack with a black
truck. You think so? I don't know. It served
a purpose at the time. I'm trying to... I had
that truck sold shortly that year. I was trying
to decide what was a regret from that one. If
you hadn't rolled it, the roof rack would have
been awesome. Yeah. Granted, it wasn't the type
of roof rack you really wanted. I mean, kind
of. I was looking. Because I think that allowed
me to do it where I had basket sides. I was going
to do the basket sides eventually. Yeah, yeah.
So, I mean, it was something I wanted. I was
going towards it. I think the spare tire being
up on the roof rack was kind of an eh thing at
the time. Oh, I loved it, because where else
were you supposed to put it? Oh, I know. I mean,
it was a pretty sick look, I'm not going to lie.
Especially if you had ever gotten your cases
up there. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Spare
tires on the roof are cool. They don't always
work out the way you want them to, but they're
pretty fucking cool. That being said, I have
seen a spare tire on a roof that did not make
sense to me. It was, it looked like, I think
it was a Ram Dually. It was lifted. It was on
a truck cap on the rack. I'm like, how in the
world do you get that? And the truck cap sat
like probably almost four inches above the roof
of the truck. That sounds absolutely fucking
ridiculous. And the tire was all the way forward
on the roof rack, not, like, towards the rear
of the truck. Dude, oh my god, I didn't tell
you about this. The other day, when I was in
Nuevo, I saw, like, a 2001 Town & Country with
every single panel smashed in, and not, like,
trail damage. Like, someone hit this thing, and
mounted to the roof was, like, a brand new rooftop
tent. And it was on the factory roof rack, just
like... I don't know if they zip -tied it on
or what, but this thing was like... And it wasn't
a small rooftop tent. It was this big, massive
honking thing. Hard shell. Like, it wasn't even
a soft shell one. What the fuck? Yeah, dude,
it was... It reminds me of that Subaru that drives
around with a rooftop tent that's like... 15
inches wider than the car and like hangs off
the front of their rack it looks like they're
about to take flight and fly away all right i
guess that comes into another one what is the
most useless modification that other people do
to their trucks maybe not most useless but uh
Most money wasting. Or what you see as the most
money wasting. It might not be money wasting
for them, but what you think would be a waste
of money. I mean, rooftop temp's pretty up there
for that. You and me already talk about that
all the time, how that's a money waste. You know,
I don't know. I think rooftop temp's cool. Yeah,
for me it is. Now, the one that I would go with
is the pickup trucks with a metal frame and then
a canvas topper inside it. Oh, yeah. You did
realize I was going to do that, right? I know
you were. It looks really sick. It really does.
But the thing is, those canvas tops are not dust
and waterproof tight, generally. No. So anything
in there, they have mild protection from rain,
and they're going to be coated in dust, period.
Those metal frames, they're all right. I mean,
if you're going to put a rooftop tent up there,
that's one thing, but I see too many of them
driving around with metal frames and nothing
on top of them. I think the only one I would
have done for... was extrusion because they had
a really good system yeah and i mean you know
like i said those racks if you've got something
you're going to be putting on a rack consistently
like maybe you're going to put a kayak up there
you know something like that okay that makes
sense but like around here all i just see trucks
driving around with the metal racks and they
might have like a molly bag mounted to it and
it's like guys what the fuck and then They'll
always have those canvas toppers. They don't
even offer protection to your crap in there.
If someone wants it, they're just going to go
cut it and reach in. Yeah. I just, I think that
one's kind of a miss. I think that it's only
for style points at that point. And it's hard
to say you're doing it for any other reason.
Yeah. Though a canvas topper with a cot in the
bed of a truck would make a pretty killer camp
setup. I mean, that was what I was going to do
with the black truck, because I had the six -foot
bed, so I would have been sleeping comfortable.
Yeah. There's a company called Bambords that
fit wood boards through the whole half -rail
system in the truck, where you put plywood and
stuff on. yeah i mean i don't know i got slots
and stuff for that there are ways to make it
worth it it's just that most people it's like
they spend all the money on the canvas topper
and the frame and then they give up after that
oh yeah like shit dude there's a there was okay
that's he sold it now there was this first gen
tacoma that drove around grant that that's all
he had like a rooftop rack system and a canvas
topper And that was all that was done to the
truck. It was on like 15 inch wheels with like
28. Like it was. I think if I kept with the black
truck, as long as I didn't roll it, I think I
would have just done the canvas top and then
set it up for camping. And I don't know if I
was going to still do the extrusion rails, but
that was a further down the road thing. Cause
how expensive that could be. I don't know. The
black truck would have been pretty sick with
a canvas top and you just sleeping out of the
back of it. I wish that when you'd bought the
silver truck, I wish you'd gotten one with a
six foot bed. Cause in all honesty, sorry, my
chair wouldn't lock. It was trying to tip all
the time. In all honesty, as cool as having that
extra departure angle is on the shorter bed.
A six -foot bed just has so many other gains.
Oh, yeah, I know. I've been back and forth about
it. After owning the cat briefly on the current
truck, I was like, man, I don't want to crawl
in and out of this bed anymore. What was I thinking
about sleeping out of this? And I was going to
shrink my window down even further. Yeah, I mean,
there is that. I think it'd be different, though,
if you had, like, some type of pad underneath.
Oh, right, but you were gonna... I think you
could've made it pretty okay. Yeah. I think it
would've been probably better off without the
bandboard system like I was going to. I had a
mattress fit around the wheel wells and stuff.
Yeah. The big downside to that is you lose literally
all of your storage. unless you had like a half
bed thing yeah i don't know sleeping in the back
of your truck sounds so romantic and amazing
and when i say romantic i don't mean man woman
romantic i mean like uh hot tent with camp or
with fire thing going romantic just the idea
of having a tent just folds out of nowhere and
you're sleeping in the bed of the truck where
you go Sorry, I had to... Damn it, I'm not done
dying. Yeah, I don't know. When it comes to third
gens, there aren't a whole lot of mods I see
people do that are dumb. There's this one guy,
and hopefully he doesn't listen to us. I don't
know. He posts all over the page about his Pizza
Planet third gen. That's pretty annoying. it's
so ugly dude like the pizza planet truck was
not a third gen forerunner so why do you make
a pizza planet based third gen forerunner i don't
think i've seen that one i've seen the actual
pickup as literally one for one for it but i'm
okay i'm okay with that that makes sense yeah
has there yes has there ever been a third gen
forerunner hero car I guess I don't know what
you're referring to. Uh, like the, a popular,
um, the main vehicle from a movie. Oh, gotcha.
Probably some random sci -fi never heard of until
you actually see it once. Then I want to watch
it. Yeah. There is a database with 610 movies
and shows that have forerunners in it. apparently
the first black panther movie had a forerunner
use in action scenes like third gen forerunner
or fifth gen third gen black panther 2018 and
the movie baby boy in 2001 had a third gen forerunner
oh just spotted in the film not it was just spotted
not actually There's a difference between spotted,
because I've seen so many virgins at that point.
Yeah. That's funny. I guess another mod I hate,
I mean, it's cheap, is the whole Amazon bumper
thing. It's like the same thing, cookie cut,
and everyone just goes for it because it's cheap.
I... also dislike amazon bumpers and not even
from the cookie cutter standpoint like whatever
for me it's because they tend to be made of shitty
material oh they have no recovery benefits whatsoever
and they have almost no structural integrity
in the case of an accident yeah yeah i it really
bothers me And from the cookie cutter standpoint,
I can't say much because I have a Trail Gear
front bumper and a Trail Gear rear bumper, which
is pretty... I wouldn't necessarily call it a
cookie cutter, though. Oh, it definitely is for
4Runners, dude. The Trail Gear rear bumper is
like the most common rear bumper I've seen. Okay.
How many actually redesigned it that way, though?
What do you mean? Like, how many listings have
you seen besides Trail Gear themselves selling
it? I've only seen Trail Gear's. Yeah, that's
Trail Gear, the brand itself, not another brand
with the same exact look. Yeah, I haven't seen
any other similar. I mean, there's some with
similar looks, but you can tell when it's a Trail
Gear and when it's something else. Like, 4xInnovations,
I think, has one that's similar. Okay, well,
that's... i think you're missing what i'm getting
when i can we got hooky we can clearly see hooky
and you see slowly labeled totally different
but it's literally the same thing just slightly
modified it yeah yeah i don't you don't see that
no like trail gear def they make their product
they're not some amazon uh like white label shipper
by any means yeah it just They make a lot more
bumpers than the average person or average company.
And there's a lot of third gens with the trail
gear rear bumper. So it seems cookie cutter.
It is a small market though. And there aren't
a whole, there aren't a whole lot of them. No.
So it's kind of hard not to be cookie cutter.
Yeah. You're literally the only one in the market
currently. It's like with. uh, Cherokee trail
Hawks, how there's only one bumper if you want
an aftermarket bumper. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
look how long it took me to find a rear bumper.
I like for my truck because I was trying to match
the front, but it was either all two or all plated.
There was no hybrid between the two. I like your
hybrid. Oh, sorry. I'm yawning guys. It's been,
it's been a week. I like your hybrid rear bumper.
Oh, yeah. Little B, I love the Little B. I was
so glad when I bought the C4 that that came out,
like, two months prior. I just discovered it.
I'm like, oh, there's the bumper. It matches
my C4 bumper. Too bad C4 and Little Bs didn't
work together, because then you could just have
Rockrunner on both ends. Lil B's front bumper
is okay. It's a lot more like C4's hybrid. It's
just C4 had the high clearance front bumper and
it was what I wanted to do with. Just because
of what we do. Yeah. Yeah. High clearance is
pretty important for us. I mean, mine is like
in line with my body. So that's nice. god i can't
wait to fix that truck dude i i just it makes
no sense that it decided right then and the worst
part was i took the timing cover off right belts
are perfect i mean everything is so pretty but
there's water seeping out of the weep hole how
wrong would it be to just change the water pump
timing was just done yeah like 70 000 miles ago
so maybe we'll just change the water pump we'll
see how that works because like i know it's driven
by the timing but maybe we can like release tension
off the uh belt You know, slide the belt off,
put the water pump on, put everything back on
without having to adjust anything. Yeah. I guess
I don't know too much about timing. That's the
reason why I have no idea how you're going to
do this. Oh, I started the part one of Timmy
the Toolman's video. I made it an hour in before
I fell asleep. An hour of the two -hour video.
Part one. Oh, man. I mean, Grant, I know he's
gonna be more in -depth, so he's, like, not gonna
speed up time frame of Teardown like some videos.
Yeah, it's... We'll see how it goes, man. It's
quoted as, like, an eight - or nine -hour job.
God. But it has to be done. Eight or nine hours.
nine days later. Oh god. At least it's third
gen and not a second gen Tacoma. It should go
much faster. Yeah, it's something, dude. I really
hope we get that fixed and there's nothing wrong
for it. Like, for a while. I just hope that we
swap that out. God damn it. It's a fucking lag.
I just hope that we swap that out and then it
just runs right after that. Oh, yeah. I hope
so, too. And I hope that I don't have to deal
with another knock sensor teardown until either
way down the road or I have a different truck.
You better never have to do a knock sensor teardown
again. This better be the last time. yeah yeah
it just doesn't make sense it's such a bad spot
to put the knock sensor and patrick had some
had the idea of moving it which i love that idea
patrick kissman uh midwest adventure outfitters
great guy best toyota mechanic in the business
hands down go there to do whatever any of your
toyota repairs but he uh And that's not me just,
like, quoting an ad. They do not sponsor us whatsoever.
Just Patrick is that good of a mechanic. And
he's like, yeah, you should just move it to the
outside of the block. And I'm, like, looking
at it. I'm like, dude, where the fuck do we put
it there? Yeah. There's, like, one exposed there,
and there's one that's, like, way tucked underneath
a bunch of stuff. Like, we've got, like, run
wires and all that. yeah we were trying to do
it quick in the future if i ever have to do it
again i probably will try and move it outboard
and then make a write -up on how i did it so
that yeah because it's stupid to have it in the
valley like that i mean it sucks that we could
have probably put an actual video out there that
was more instructful than any of the videos we've
looked at The only video we had that was a teardown
was just a speed -up video with zero details
like what size bolts, what tools, and none of
that. But then we dealt with problem after problem
after problem, which I guess if you're watching
a video, you want to learn all the possibilities.
Yeah. But at the same time, we were frustrated,
so there was no way we were recording. No. Between...
Fuel injectors weren't fully set in because of
a mad seal, so we were dumping fuel out. It ran
okay that time. Yeah. I thought we had another
issue before that. Oh, no, it was the solenoid,
wasn't it? Yeah. We had something happen before
the fuel injectors did that. Yeah, the other
solenoid. Yeah. Yeah. Mark, I'm out of topics.
We've driven... Do you have any voicemails? No,
I already checked. Okay. I kind of figured you
would check. We don't really bullshit the way
Gavin does, so we can't just make shit up on
the fly. I don't know. I just chat GPT some good
topics and they're all stuff that we've talked
about a hundred times. So like, Oh, my favorite.
They're a very bottom recommendation for a topic.
Interview a local Wheeler or small off road shop.
Bro. Do you know how many times we've done that?
Cause do we have anything planned interview wise
yet or no? nah if anyone wants an interview and
wants to be on a podcast please reach out to
me like i haven't had time to really reach out
to anybody i reached out to one guy and he's
like how many followers do you have and i'm like
well it's rss based so we can't really tell you
like how many followers or subscribers we have
and he's like he just never responded to me after
that i'm like I'm sorry that it's not a social
media podcast. It's not the fake podcast. It's
a real full -blown podcast. Yeah. Yeah. I was
on one of those social media podcasts once, and
he took out of context something I said and still
blasts it every day or two. Yeah. And I'm like,
bro. You're not even giving the full context
of the conversation, and then you're making me
look like a fucking idiot. Yeah. And then the
way that his AI editor does things, it stretches
me. And I'm fat, but it makes me look really
fat. Yeah. I would not want to ever do that to
one of our listeners. No. It just doesn't even
seem appropriate. No. Yeah, you know, on that
point, you're getting two 30 -minute episodes
this week because I think that's all we got.
So we'll catch you guys later. Yep. Later, guys.