So I picked up this 96 Taco a couple weeks ago and have been loving it! I had a 88 Toyota pickup 4 spd 2wd no options popcan before hand so this is a huge jump in luxury for me! Been dreaming of owning a Tacoma for a long time so now that I have one I wanted to share what I have been doing. First thing to go was the stock wheels and tires, loving the powdercoated rims! Full K&N system, Cat back Flowmaster, Tinted the windows, canopy, ski rack, new stereo, ventnisers, then spent this weekend playing with the cosmetics...

This rig has the crappiest paint job I have ever played with. Good in that I can play with my new truck and not worry about scrathes, bad in that the paint is coming off so bad I can't tape off sections to herucline ( I was going to Herculine the rocker panels) with out romiving whole strips of paint! This really irked me because that means new paint job or in my case since I am a grad students means primer coat to prevent rust till we can afford it.

So I pulled the fender flares and painted them flat black with 2 coats of clear, much better in appearance. Then I heruclined the bumper. This thing is bullet proof! I took it down to bare mental, primed it and spent the rest of the time playing with herculiner. Herculiner has to be the nastiest stuff I have ever played with, I recommend using a paint brush and a roller pan, it seemed to give the thickest coat with the best homogenous distribution of the chunks. 18hrs later I layed down 4 coats of clear coat so protect from UV.

Other than that painted the recovery hooks red and called it good becuase I was still mad about not being able to paint the rockers. But thanks to the reviewers of the herculiner on the other threads, helped me out a lot... None on my hootus!

 

Welcome to YotaTech.... looks real good.... guessing you have the 3.4L

 

It looks great. Those powder-coated rims look awesome!

 

That bumper would make me want to ram stuff