Tacobella Update

Well, we're going to try and give this blog thing another go. I've been busy the past few months, between life stuff and working on Bella, a lot has been happening. This post is going to focus on further improvements to Bella.

Once the winter was over, I was keen on getting a camping ready setup. When I purchased Bella, she came with a sleeping platform in the back but I frequently found myself wanting to also use my truck bed for cargo space. I pulled out the sleeping platform, but it was time to put it back in.

Since I've been solo camping, I didn't see the purpose of putting the full platform back in place, so I redesigned the platform and put in a twin sleeping pad.

This let me keep half of my bed for cargo, but also have a sleeping area that wasn't directly on the cold bed of the truck. I also took her out on a couple of trips, and spent some time in BLM land stress testing all of the new suspension and transmission components.

Shortly after this, I realized that monsoon season was quickly approaching in New Mexico. See, when I purchased Bella, I went ahead and bought a bunch of rust proofing materials for the chassis. If I was going to buy this truck then I wanted to make sure she'd last another 25 years if I could. First generation Tacoma's have a reputation for rusting out the frame, but luckily Bella wasn't in the worst shape. She had surface rust on the chassis, typical for her age, but was functionally sound.

I ended up purchasing Rustbullet for the main chassis, Eastwood interior chassis coating for the inside of the chassis, and Cosmoline RP-342 for an additional chassis / general coating of the underbody. A lot of these materials were sensitive though; They couldn't be applied when it was too cold, too wet, too humid, etc. So I delayed application until I finally couldn't. If I was going to get this done this year, it had to be right in the middle of June.

In June I started the process of cleaning the entire frame and underbody, and getting everything rust proofed.

The first two days were spent meticulously pressure washing the undercarriage, and then 3D printing a special adapter to clean the interior of the frame where a lot of dirt had settled over the years. It was a nasty process, but needed to be done.

From there, I went on to start applying the rust proofing solutions. First up was the Rustbullet. This required two coats of the frame, and I had just enough to get the majority of the frame done. I avoided areas that were things I was either going to replace later, or were not critical to chassis integrity. I did end up having enough to paint the rear axle and the hitch though.

From here, we went on to apply the Cosmoline and internal chassis frame coating. The application of the Cosmoline really made the undercarriage pop.

Having a couple of cans of Cosmoline leftover, I decided to go ahead and pull off the rear wheels, paint the housings, and also paint the front bumper.

During this process, I also did some much needed maintenance on Bella, and did a full fluids swap. New differential gear oil, new transmission and transfer case fluid, new coolant, an oil change, and applying two different types of grease to all of the driftshaft axle grease points. Having done this I was finally ready to reattach Bella's skidplates that I had removed last December, in preparation of the front end suspension replacement. Every single fluid change resulted in a massive performance improvement and just made her that much more enjoyable to drive. With the skid plates back on, Bella was feeling ready to hit some more intensive trails rather than just sticking to forest roads.

I took Bella out for a camping trip at Santa Cruz lake, and had a great time celebrating one of my friend's birthdays.

while I enjoyed the camping experience, I was left wanting more out of my truck bed camping situation. I was hitting my head, running out of cargo room, my air up matress pad popped and was swapped for memory foam, and just in general wanting a bit better of an experience from sleeping in the back of my truck.

There'd always been an upgrade I had wanted, but I thought was out of reach. It was right after I completed everything that the perfect opportunity arose and Bella had to be prepared for a mad dash 2,000 mile trip across the country. That's a story for another blog post though ;)