The Toe Cutter

Just wanted to bid my farewell to everyone in this forum who was helped me in one way or another. I loved my '94 and treated her very well (which I think shows in the pics). May sound a little weird, but when I saw her driving off with a new owner it felt like highschool when you broke up with her girlfriend. I put a lot of preventative maintenance work into her and fixed all my problems thank to the writeups in here.

Anyway I sold it within 2 hours of posting on craigslist @ $5,900. It had 142k miles and some dents. Yeah I could have probably gotten a few hundred more for it, but this guy was so happy to get the truck it wasn't important as finding it a good home. Plus I got the '03 double cab 4wd limited (with leather as an option !) at a great price...about $2k under what others were asking.

I'll be in the '03 Taco forums now....here are some pics of the old truck.

keithguts

where are the pics of the new rig. LOL

The Toe Cutter

I found some on my kodak website. Anyone seen a double cab with leather interior ?
I bought it from 2nd owner and he said it was "rare" special order. Install job looks great, no problems that I can see.
Here are some pics

Farmerunner

That's a cherry ride! (the old one). You did a hell of job looking after that girl. Now, if anyone else has a rig like that for sale, let me know! My 99 Runner doesn't have enough cargo room and I need a taco!

leebee

well, howdy neighbour! nice to see another ontarian on this forum! check out this link and let me know if you might be interested:

http://www.jeepkings.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=56552

lee

TNRabbit

That was one helluva clean truck!

Figit090

dang that truck WAS clean! but so is the new one...nice.

MAXIMUS1968

I sure would have paid that for that truck also, Very nice ride you had!

CoedNaked

Too bad you gave up the fully boxed frame but oh well. If you needed the double cab configuration then all the power to you.

david28

whats different about the new yotas??

CoedNaked

Starting in 1995.5 when Toyota brought out the TAcoma, they went with a full C-channel frame with only a fully boxed subframe under the engine and part of the cab. The rest was C-channel under the bed. The good news is this cut weight which helps performance and gas mileage - one reason the 3.4feels that much more powerful than the older early 80s to 95 Trucks and the 3.0 3vze V6. But the downside is the 95.5-04 Tacaoma frames are not nearly as strong as the fully boxed frames found in the early 80's til 95 Truck frames. The 95.5-00 Tacoma's particularly aren't as strong as they have a weak spot right near the top of the arch near the front of the bed. These trucks will tow without issue, but if you are overloading and beating on the truck repeatedly this weak spot could show itself. In 2001 they beefed up this weak spot with reinforcement.

And it shows - the early 80's til 95 xtra cab trucks with beds 75" beds weigh on average 400-500 pounds more than the equivilent configuration Tacoma. Where do you think that weight is? Mostly frame.

At one point in the mid 80's Toyota produced a true 1 ton compact truck with a heavy duty suspension. Someone in here actually said this one ton frame was the exact same frame they used on all their compact trucks up until 95 in the North American market, with just a softer suspension to make it more of a true 1/2 ton (1400 pounds payload).

Now the kicker that kills me is the early 80's til 95 Toyota truck frames, the "platform" if you will have about 1400 pounds payload for the 4x4 xtracabs. I believe they weighed 3950 pounds and had a GVW of 5350 pounds which as you can see is 1400 pounds payload. The 95.5-04 Tacoma's actually had more payload capacity but they had a lighter GVW (I think it was around 5100 pounds GVW) and because they only weighed (I'm talking xtracabs here) about 3500 pounds, you actually had 1600 pounds payload technically.

In my opinion the early 80's to 95 frames will take a beating much more than a Tacoma. They are also a better offroad platform to build off of. Because there is more weight in the back towards the bed than the Tacomas have with just C-channel, the rear axles have more to push up against, combined with the fully boxed frame, which means less twisting, and more articulating because the suspension can do it's work and not twist or work on the frame. I know for a fact that the Tacoma's have way more frame flex than the Pickups. My buddy when he got his 03 Tacoma new with the TRD offroad package had issues with the bed flexing up against the frame and rubbing paint chips off the back of the cab just under the slider window. I've never seen a grown man nearly cry as when he told me about his new truck after he first took it out for a mild trip to a lake.

The frames produced in these early 80's to 95 trucks were the last trucks in my opinion to be "over engineered." Now this isn't neccessarily a bad or good thing relevant to the later Tacomas, but simply put Toyota at the time said we don't have the design capability to figure out where the meat and potatoes needs to be, so we're just gonna cook up a big wad of meat and potatoes all over the frame. When the Tacoma came out Toyota said we can chince a bit on the meat and potatoes as we know we don't need it here and we can just put it where it counts - I hope you get my analogy. I recall one person in here made a comment to the effect that they had to take their early 90's Toy truck in to a body shop b/c of an accident and after talking to that body shop and another one, both bodie shops told him that the frame he has on his truck is one of the best they've ever seen.


I think as long as you're staying within the capabilities of the Tacoma's you shouldn't have any issues with the frame. But if I needed to pick a truck to run a camper, or to build an offroad platform, hands down the 95 and earlier Pickups blow any compact or midsize truck Toyota has put out to date in the North American market, out of the water.

Figit090

damn....nice post. i'm busy but took the time to read that, and i'm glad i did!

the part about seeing the man nearly cry made it sink in