December 28, 2023. It's been quite a while - eight months to the day - since the last Rig Review, making this only the second review of 2023. That's just pure lazy on my part, but I'll plead "no way to work on the truck since it's been in Las…
6 CommentsTag: lighting
TL;DR - The new OEM headlight housings into the Tacoma are working great with high-powered halogen lamps. This is the way, LEDs are crap. After my last rig review, I replaced the housings with new OEM housings (left) (right), updated the bulbs to high-wattage OSRAM Super Bright H4 9003 90/100W…
Leave a Comment
May 22, 2023 With the Tacoma living in Las Vegas now, it's harder to perform various maintenance tasks as they pop up and between trips. As such, with a few general maintenance issues - oil changes, tire rotations, etc. - and a few items in recent Rig Reviews needing attention,…
10 Comments
April 28, 2023. The big news on this Rig Review is that the Tacoma has been stored in Las Vegas, largely eliminating the long, 20+ hour slog to get from the PNW to the SW before a winter adventure. While this has definitely reduced the wear and tear on the…
5 Comments
TL;DR - my headlight housings are getting foggy again. Given their age - original to the Tacoma - it's time to put in some new ones. A couple years ago, I went through a saga of trying to figure out the best setup for headlights. First, I installed some LEDs.…
Leave a Comment
Two of my favorite camping conveniences just got better. Ever since I modified my tire inflator to extend the hose on it - enabling me to inflate tires standing up rather than crouching down - I've been very happy. Old guys don't want to strain their knees when out camping.…
6 Comments
Ever since I got into this whole adventure thing, I've always sort of turned my nose up at aftermarket lighting. Looking back on it, I think there are three reasons for my prejudice: I'm not a fan of the "Instalighters." We all know these folks - they are the ones…
3 Comments
March 15, 2022. Time flies when you're having fun, and the last several trips have been exactly that. A regular reader may recall that my last rig review was just as the transfer case blew up on my Back for More trip to Death Valley. Since then, the truck has…
6 Comments
September 12, 2021. Whereas my previous update was several months in the making, it seems that I've already got several updates regarding the Tacoma after my trip to Canada and a few days in California, so let's get right down to it. Seemingly solved from previous Rig Reviews Relentless Skid…
Leave a Comment
I never win anything. I think we all sort of feel that way when it comes to raffles and drawings. I must have entered hundreds of them when I was younger - never winning a single one. Eventually, I gave up even throwing my name into the hat at all…
2 Comments
TL;DR - I love these lights. I had the opportunity to use the fogs for the first time on my Rady Can't Wait trip to British Columbia, Canada. All I can say is wow. I had no idea what I was missing, and quite frankly, I figured that the install…
Leave a Comment
August 1, 2021. It's been a while since the last Rig Review. Since then, I've put five trips and 20K more miles on the Tacoma. It has - as always seems to be the case - been fantastic. Scouting Black Rock Desert (Apr 2021) Owyhee West (May 2021) Forty-One Miles…
3 Comments
TL;DR - My Hella's are working less and less now; I'm biding my time until the end of the year, when I hear that Diode Dynamics may have something fun coming. I originally thought that my HIDs in the 7" Hella 700s were not turning on because there was a…
Leave a Comment
April 14, 2021 When I started Rig Reviews several years ago, I quickly found that after addressing a few significant items, most trips seemed to go smoothly, with relatively few notable issues - good or bad - cropping up along the way. But, on my last trip to Utah, that…
2 Comments
March 8, 2021. Over the course of the winter, the truck has performed well. Four (!) trips down to the desert to stay warm have put a bunch of miles on the odometer and resulted in only a few little tweaks to the set up. But any tweak is worth…
11 Comments
TL;DR - I need to figure out why my Hella's don't come on all the time. Low priority though for me right now. I noticed on this last trip (or at least recently) that the Hella's - into which I installed HIDs - don't always come on when power is…
Leave a CommentTL;DR - Bulbs burn out. Replace them and move on. I noticed on this trip that my passenger rear indicator wasn't working when I got out of the Tacoma to take a photo of it in the middle of the highway as I descended into the Valley of Gods. I'd…
Leave a Comment
TL;DR - I ditched the LEDs for high wattage halogens and couldn't be happier. Works great in all conditions. As I noted in the previous rig review - I generally liked the LED headlights - more than I thought anyway - but had some issues with them when it came…
Leave a Comment
If you've been following along for the last couple of months, you'll know that after 18 years of running my original halogen headlight bulbs, I finally had enough of running blind at night and replaced them with some LEDs - allowing me to see again! Now, after a mere 6…
16 Comments
19 years, 1 month, 28 days. That's how long it's been since my first mod to the truck - when I disabled my daytime running lights (DRLs) - so that I wouldn't have to replace my headlights so often . OK, that, among other reasons. Anyway, I thought the DRL disable…
Leave a Comment