Someday I've got to get out there. It's so close too.

Was there any water left over from recent storms?

Yes, saw lots of folks paddleboarding in the lake at Badwater. "Lake Manly"

Death Valley is fking awesome. I'll probably never get my 4Runner out there but I've given a rental Jeep hell out there.

Freshened up the cabin air filter

Time to give the manual hubs some attention! After talking with @G_Raw about his hub stud project I got to noodling about various upgrades and optimizations that may be possible with the Tacoma manual hubs. In this (picture heavy) post I'll show some upgrades hub studs and other hardware tinkerings.

The hubs are ready for some paint for sure. Rocking stock studs and acorn nuts from a 1st gen, all 8.8 grade.





A stud puller was necessary for pulling the old studs out. This one from Amazon worked great. It does mar the studs a bit so be prepared for that if you wanted to reuse the hardware.

Front Range Offroad (FROR) sells a custom set of ARP hub studs. A bit pricey, but better than the other ARP options available elsewhere. These studs are class 12+ so they dramatically increase the shear strength of the assembly. The kit comes with class 10 locknuts, which I didn't use because I don't like the idea of locking hardware here.

One swapped to show the difference. The ARP studs just barely fit. The short side uses all the threads in the blind hole in the hub with enough clearance for the taper of the unthreaded portion to seat into the hub. The long threaded side just clears the face of the hub, so we're good and have some extra length to work with.



All 6 on one side swapped out



Washers, cone washers, and hub face bolts soaked in Evaporust and wire brushed clean. It worked great for cleaning it up and left the zinc or cad coating of the bolts intact.



Fresh OEM gasket 43422-60060





Cone washers and washers



I took advantage of the extra thread length and got some tall class 10 "fixture nuts" from Belmetric. These have one flat face and one spherical rounded face made for matching spherical washers. The rounded face is installed outward for a nice finished look. Torqued to 25 ft-lbf which is standard for a class 10 M8 fastener. Stock class 8 uses 18 ft-lbf so we're getting a little more clamp force.



With the hub faces off I repainted the outers with Rustoleum Farm & Implement gloss black which should be pretty durable. The inners just needed a little Sunfire red touchup paint. Sanded the text a bit so make it show up.



Fresh face gasket 43531-60010



7 ft-lbf on the face bolts. Nice and shiny!



And the wheel center plate still fits just fine. Yay

Perfect timing! I'll be referring to this when I swap the aftermarket locking hubs on my 1st Gen to Aisin OEM ones. Thanks!

I did the SnowBound outboard rear shock mounts and noticed everything you noticed/calculated.

Sadly, mine was because the stock mount rusted through.



Yes, they are built well and the way they were shaped made them super easy to locate.


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Bumpstop upgrade time!

I've had DuroBumps on my truck for 5+ years and they have been fine. But I was very intrigued by the new bumpstop products that Perry Parts offers and wanted to try them out.

I got a set of bumps for just a bit over $200 delivered.



What's neat about these bumps is that they are 3D printed from TPE (thermoplastic elastomer) rather than cast polyurethane. Since they are printed there's a lot more flexibility in the design. Undercuts can be printed in as well as varying porosity (or infill) which allow the bumps to compress a lot more and allow for fine-tuning of the load-displacement behavior. Essentially they can be much more progressive than any other bump. Also, the fact that there are air cavities inside the bumps, that can be vented, let the bump actually damp out more of the impact in a viscous manner, kind of like an air bump would do. They come with nice grade 10, JIS hardware too (12 & 14mm heads).

Comparison of fronts and rears. Note I have a 1" spacer above my rear bump to dial in the stop length to accommodate my lift.





You can see the internal bellows in the front bump, and here it is installed. I like the fact that it's a single piece, not needing a base plate so there's more bump material in the limited space.





I had some fun testing out the compression of the rear bump. The face of the bump actually folds under load, making it more progressive, and it's longer so it touches a little sooner.



Here's the rear bump in action at not-quite full compression



Overall the performance is very good and a noticeable improvement over the DuroBumps (though those have done well for me, no complaints).

It's super cool to see inventors like Perry Parts making even higher performance stuff for our 3rd gens!

I also have DuroBumps but those Perry Parts ones have interested me. Might have to pick them up after your review.

I'm really interested to see how those hold up long term.