I use Netflix to go on vacation to different countries and experience their culture. I've been to Korea, admiring the role of respect in their society while at the same time being disturbed by their acceptance and embracing of revenge. I then went on to Japan and was taken back by their sense of honor and duty and how it is woven into every thread of the fabric of their ways. After my visit to Japan, I turned to France. Wow!
     If by watching Korean films you can ascertain that in their culture the general consensus is; if you break the socially accepted boundaries of respect, then revenge will be visited upon you and be damned if you'll get any sympathy from anyone. And, if by watching Japanese films, you figure that the culture there is; honor is above all, even death, without question. Then by watching French films, you get this about their cultre; life is short with interspersed mandatory nudity and in the end, none of it makes any sense. Oh, and also that at any moment no matter how bizarre, Gerard Depardieu can show up. So watch out!

Thanksgiving 2010 Garner State Park, Texas

Garner State Park Photo Album. AWESOME, AWESOME AWESOME!!!

Cargo Solutions Versions 1 & 2

Moby is a CrewMax Tundra. The cab is great for allowing me, the wife and the two kids lots of room to stretch out and relax when driving distances. Unfortunately all this cab space comes at the expense of bed space. At almost 67" square, there is not a lot of room to begin with in the bed. Throw in a tool chest that is around 20" deep, and bed space starts disappearing rapidly.

 Having previously installed the Yakima crossbars to Moby's roof, it seemed the simple solution would be to go with a basket on top. So the search began for a suitable gear basket.
We have a 2005 Pathfinder that can be seen elsewhere in this blog. On the top of the Pathfinder we have outfitted a Yakima Load Warrior basket with the extension. This has been a good product. My friend Chris had a Yakima Mega Warrior basket with the extension also that he was willing to sell. We exchanged money and basket and mounted the basket.

I ran this setup for a few months but, I did not like the inaccessible location of the basket way up on the roof. It worked fine for storage of camping gear, and left the bed open for other items like bikes and such

but getting all the items up and down required a display of gymnastics and balance beam acts on the bed rails and various other parts of Moby that made me feel like I was pushing my luck a little too much. It became obvious after the trip pictured above that this setup would not last.

Now this moment caused a  major rethink for me. I had always planned on doing something similar to the Expedition One's Tundra that has a bed rack not quite in line with the roof and mounting a basket or possibly a roof top tent on top. My experience with the basket over the cab showed that items placed that high would not really be feasible for most of the camping situations I encounter. I decided that placement almost directly above the bed rails would really work best in my situation.
To facilitate this, I purchased some Yakima bases, towers and crossbars to mount to the bed.

With the help of my son Quinn, we took the extension out of the Mega Warrior basket. The basket measured 74" long with the extension and hung way over the tailgate.

We mounted the towers and crossbars to the bed of the truck using stainless steel hardware and mounted the basket on to the crossbars. We managed to finish this up right before our World of Webelos campout in Sealy, Texas. We got everything loaded up and I have to say, this is the best setup in the world (for me). You can load the basket, cover it with a tarp, and strap everything down easily. Once the basket is loaded you've got the bed left for the heavier bigger items. You can just see in some of the pics, but mounted outboard of the basket on the crossbars are two bike carriers. I mounted these because the basket sits too low to allow bed placement of bicycles.  Contact me if any questions, be happy to get more specific if requested. Thanks.

Differential Breather Extending

Huh?

You know when you're sitting at a light and underneath the car/truck/van in front of you, you see that circular thing in the middle? That's the differential. To those of you not in the know, your differentials have to breath. It's good that they breath. They get cold and they can suck air in. They got hot and they can let air out. If they didn't have a breather, they would blow the oil inside past seals and eventually leak... That would be bad.

The normal differential breather on most vehicles is up to this task. But what happens when you go off-road and cross a stream; your differential, while underwater, needs to breath to compensate for the contraction that all things experience when they get cold? Guys you know what I'm talking about... Well, it's underwater, it's not going to breath air and that's bad. Inside the differential is oil and oil and water don't mix well, do they? What to do? What to do?

How To Extend Your Tundra's Rear Differential

1. Go to you local Toyota dealership and purchase part# 90404-51319 Union

If you're lucky you'll have someone like Ricardo here who'll give you a discount in exchange for taking a picture of him for your blog! If you're unlucky, you'll get the guy in the back.

2. Go pickup about 15' of 3/8" fuel/air line. You probably won't need quite that much but extra is always better than not enough.

3. While you're getting the fuel/air line, pick up a bunch of HEAVY DUTY zip ties.

4. Park your truck in the driveway set the emergency brake, chock the tire (safety first! you'll be under that thing!).

5. Run inside to your PC, open your browser go to this blog, print this article and take back outside for reference.

OK, on to the real meat of the thing...

6. You'll need some tools to do this job.

At a minimum you'll need: 12mm and 14mm wrenches, CR-VT-30 torx (I really don't know what that means, but it's the thing that lets you remove the tail light housing, just look at it and find the one that fits), scissors to cut tubing, the aforementioned zip ties, and being an old punk-rocker/skater I enlisted the help of my old friend... duct tape. Man, I love that stuff! Got all your stuff? Let's continue.

7. Open up your truck tailgate, and look on the now exposed vertical plane to your left.

Ok, you see the two torx bolts? I know there's four, but we're not going to mess with the two holding the metal latch for the tailgate, ok? You want to take out the top and bottom ones. Once you do that...

8. You should be able to gently slide the tail light assembly out and let it hang down.

Inside, you'll see the strut that makes lowering and raising the tailgate that much easier, you lucky Tundra owner you. I chose to extend my differential to this point mostly because of other articles by much better people than myself. Now to the underworld...

9. Grab your 14mm and 12mm wrenches, your newly purchased union, your zip ties, your print out of this blog, and if you're an old punk rocker/skater your duct tape, and climb under the back of the truck.

10. The doohickey you're looking for will be on top of the differential about eight inches off-center favoring the driver's side. Take you 14mm wrench and remove this. If you're lucky, you won't hear, ppppssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss, as you remove it, like I did. If you do, this means your breather wasn't working and your differential had built up pressure. Good thing you're doing this mod, huh? 

11. After you remove the old breather, take your newly purchase union, your 12mm wrench and install the union. Careful to not cross-thread!!! After you're done it should resemble this:

12. Okay the rest from here is highly up to your interpretation of what works best. I'll show some pics of how I routed mine, but get creative and make this your own routing of the 3/8" line up to the tailgate strut area. 1st Hint: poke the hose through the tail light area down, feeding roughly enough to route to the differential. This is easier than going from bottom-up. 2nd Hint: If you are going to install a lift later, leave enough slack to compensate for the amount of lift desired.

As you can see, this is where the zip ties come in handy. Let's move out to the tail light area where you have routed your hose. 

12. After the lengthy 11., you'll find yourself back in the sunlight, staring at the tailgate strut and all the excess hose leftover. What I did at this point, was route the tubing up the side and over the top of the strut, secure it with zip ties and duct tape (that stuff ROCKS!!!), install a breather on the end (not pictured)...

13. Take your torx thingie and put your tail light housing back on and you're ready to fearlessly cross streams, rivers, lakes or, if you live in Houston, our streets after a heavy rain, without the fear of contaminating the oil in your rear differential. Thanks for reading.

HEY!!! WAIT!!! I have a 4WD Tundra! What about the front differential? THIS IS NOT CONFIRMED: I talked to several Toyota technicians and I was told that the transmission, transfer case and front differential were ALL extended into the engine bay by the front strut/motor-mount area on the passenger's side. If this is the case great, I couldn't find it. I have looked at some exploded parts diagrams for the 2010 4.6l Tundra's drive train, and it does show unions and breather hoses for these parts. I did not look for the 5.7l so you guys will have to do some digging on your own.

Good luck and good night.

Here we go...

Ok, I know it's been a while but I have been busy, as you will soon see. I have accumulated the items needed to wire in an auxiliary fuse block, but still need to install. Things that have been done: Extended the rear differential breather, added a Yakima MegaWarrior basket with the extension to the cross bars previously installed on the cab, removed the Yakima MegaWarrior basket with the extension from the cab of the truck, installed additional Yakima cross bars over the bed of the truck, removed the extension from the Yakima MegaWarrior basket and then placed it on the newly installed Yakima crossbars, added two bike carriers outboard of the Yakima MegaWarrior basket and called it a week. Yakima should pay me for all the free adverts!!! I'll go into details in a few...

MIA

Ok, I'm apologize for being non tendo for so long. I have been real busy with work and kids. I have managed to do some work on Moby here and there. Full write-ups coming soon with pics! Thanks for following along.

All Work And No Play...

Okay. I did not work on the second coat for the wheels this weekend. I also did not start the mod that I have all the parts for (that's for later). I took a break this weekend and went fishing with my partners-in-crime, Craig and Robert. The day started early.

By the time you see above, I was already dressed and had the truck loaded with my fishing gear, Coast Guard type stuff for three grown men, the boat all hooked up and the Igloo/live-well loaded in the boat.

(Sorry for dark images but as I said, it was real early)

The plan was for Robert to meet me at my house: check. Get on the road at 5:30ish: check. Go straight to Craig's house: not quite a check. During the "Go straight to Craig's house" portion of the trip, I happened to look out my side window and notice an Igloo/live-well on the side of the freeway overpass that looked suspiciously familiar. Moby having the convenient roll-down rear window that he does, I rolled it down and asked Robert to look and see if he could see the Igloo/live-well in the boat still. He did not. I pulled over to the side of the freeway (hazards a blazin', safety first) and double-checked. Sure enough, no Igloo/live-well. Hmph. Well, we had to go back. I couldn't leave it there. So, we made our u-turns, got back to the overpass, pulled over (hazards a blazin' a second time) and found the flying Igloo/live-well laying there undamaged except for one broken latch! (Igloo's are made in Texas by the way, just like Moby!) I put it in Moby's back seat this time.

We did manage to pick up Craig eventually.Then we headed to BJ's Marina to launch the boat. This is a small little boat ramp on the east fork of the San Jacinto River. Supposedly, there are 40lb catfish here just waiting for you to drive by in your boat and jump in. Not the case. The entire trip yielded; 1 White Bass (just legal), 2 Catfish (too small to keep), good times with good friends, and 1 Hank III convert (I promise to make that CD Robert!). All-in-all a good trip. The east fork is supposed to have excellent Crappie fishing. I don't think I would recommend it for catfish though.

Launching at BJ's Marina

Craig and Robert: Craig has this amazing ninja casting ability!

 Enjoying some of the river scenery since no fish were biting.

More scenery

Robert waiting on that catfish to "jump in"

Thanks for checking this out. Coming up: Igloo/live-well build (kind of backwards since I've already chronicled it's near death experience) and Moby's rear axle gets a snorkel of sorts. Stay tuned.