Mean Green get's driven by both of us! I'm alternating between both trucks, one week, the Taco, the other week... Mean Green! Funny story... the other day, I showed up to work at the mine, and had the 4Runner parked behind the gatehouse, and within the first 2 hours of my shift, I had 3 people stop and compliment me on my truck! lol!
Anyway... time for some mods! I didn't have the truck for more than a day or two, and I already started making plans for this thing! lol! One night, while sleep prepping for my upcoming night shifts, I did some shopping on E-bay. As a result, I ordered up some new LED's for the map lights, and the dome lights, a new shift knob for the automatic shift lever, and some other goodies that I'll share with you as they come in, and I have time to install them! lol!
First thing I did was get the LED lights in the map light unit. To do this, I used this thread:
Map Light LED installation - Tacoma World Forums
Seemed pretty straight forward, but the OP found it to be pretty difficult, as the map light bulbs are a little tricky to pull out. Someone later posted on the same thread, a map light "How To" video from Youtube, which illustrates the use of a "pick" to pry out the bulbs. This method seems to work the best, and eventhough I didn't have the same kind of pick, I did have a pick used for cleaning nuts (from the cutlery drawer in my kitchen). I was able to pry open the lens itself, and the bulb with ease, it literally took me less than 5 minutes to do both lights.
Here's some pics of the process:
The pick I used to pry open the lens cover, and the bulbs out:
Used the pic to pop oven the lens cover in the top and bottom left hand corners of the lens in this pic:
Once the lens was off, I was able to use the pic to reach behind the shroud, and pry out the stock bulb:
Here's a comparison pic of the LED vs the stock bulb:
I then did the dome light, using the same pick to pry open the lens cover, the bulb was easily removed, and the LED was inserted in it's place.
I don't have any night pics yet, as it's currently daytime, but I'll add some in the coming days, to show you the brightness of these bulbs.
Next thing I did, was replace the stock shifter knob. I did this with my 98 4Runner as well, as I find Toyota makes some lame shift knobs for our trucks. I did find some nice TRD knobs from the FJ Cruiser and such on E-bay, but I wasn't paying $80.00 or more for a shift knob!
I did find this carbon fiber/chrome knob that I liked, and ordered it the same day I ordered the LED's. I went with Carbon fibre, as I liked the look with our Grey Interiors, and plan on either painting out some of the trim panels black, or covering them with more Carbon Fibre in the coming weeks. More on that in upcoming posts!
Here's a pic of the stock knob:
Unscrewed it from the shift lever:
screwed on the rubber sleeve:
The knob has 3 tiny screws that secure it to the rubber sleeve, this allows for a multitude of applications for various vehicles. Once the screws were locked down, I screwed on the chrome sleeve over the bottom of the shift knob, and called it a day.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the look! For the price, it's a nice little addition to the truck, which makes it different... which is what I like!
