Turning a Brand-New 2023 Toyota Tacoma Into an Overland Exploration Vehicle

There's no denying the fact that overlanding is a hot-button thing in the world of 4x4s. And even if you're not actually going out and exploring the wilderness for days on end and living out of your 4x4, there are many who still want the function and utility that many of these overlanding products afford—things like over-bed racks that allow you to haul bikes, canoes, kayaks, and other cargo without losing the functionality of your bed, locking bed covers that protect expensive off-road accouterments like fridges and recovery gear from prying eyes and sticky fingers, not to mention good ol' bread-and-butter upgrades like onboard air to inflate tires, mattresses, run air tools, and so on, and selectable lockers that allow you full tractor-like traction at the push of a button but turn off completely and seamlessly for no-compromise on-road driving. That's only the beginning of our plans for this brand-new 2023 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road to kick off Season 2 of4x4 Garage, presented by RealTruck. We'll be building the truck up at Wood's Off Road over the course of a couple days, and then we'll log into OnX Offroad to pick a super scenic route to some outdoor adventure and camping!

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In this episode, Christian Hazel is back at Wood's, with proprietors Johnny Wood and Amber Medrano, as well as longtime Ultimate Adventure sponsor Jeff Ismail of IH Parts America and his son Zaed, who just so happens to own the truck we're transforming. With RealTruck as the presenting sponsor, we had an absolute smorgasbord of options at our fingertips when it came time to make our parts list. For starters, we wanted some secure bed storage, so we opted for a RetraxPRO XR Retractable Tonneau Cover. The RetraxPro XR is packed with features, from powdercoated aluminum slat construction to roller ball-bearings that allow the tonneau to glide open or close with ease. It's lockable and, best of all, it incorporates ReatraxPro's Trax Rail system, which accepts any T-slot accessory so you can easily add racks and mounts from various manufacturers.

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We quickly took advantage of the Trax Rail in the RetraxPro XR to add another RealTruck catalog find, the Elevate Rack System, which easily mounts into the T-mount channels of the RetraxPro XR. You can slide the Elevate system anywhere in the rack to make space for whatever you're carrying, and the Elevate Rack System can be set to three different heights to accommodate many different cargo sets. There's also a T-mount channel in the top of the rack crossbars. When not in use, rubber stripping fills the channels to keep out debris.

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With the bed more or less sorted and the rooftop tent we ordered not arriving until the next day, we switched gears and cracked open the box containing the N-Fab Predator Pro Nerf Steps. Although N-Fab does make a heavy-duty steel rockslider for these trucks that we'd feel confident dragging over rocks with abandon, this is a brand-new truck, and the owner, Zaed, isn't quite ready to abuse it off-road to that degree. The N-Fab Predator Pro steps we selected are a great, super-lightweight option that provides easy front and rear step access as well as a boost to help us get at the roof or front of the rear cargo area. They're constructed of powdercoated aluminum and bolt directly to the factory running-board mounts in the Tacoma body. There's no cutting, drilling, or muss needed, and anybody who can operate a wrench can easily handle the installation.

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Finally, before we put the truck up in the air to address some more intricate upgrades like an Eaton ELocker and Superlift leveling kit for the next episode, we cracked open the boxes containing our Viair Dual 400 High Performance VMS onboard air system. Viair has been making onboard air compressors for a long, long time, and we've used the company's products on several off-road builds in the past, always with excellent results. Viair's new VMS line, which stands for Viair Mounted System, features bolt-in, vehicle-specific brackets for the Viair compressors on many Jeep, Ford, GM, Lexus, Ram, Mercedes, and, of course, Toyota vehicles. In fact, for our Tacoma, Viair offers a VMS to mount its Dual 400 system in three different places depending on wants and needs. There's a kit that mounts the compressors in the bed, another that puts them on the radiator core support between the grille and radiator, and the one we selected, which places them cleanly behind the airbox under the hood. As an added bonus, the underhood Tacoma mount can also accommodate an optional one-gallon air tank, which we went with as well.

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It's an easy kit to deal with because it includes everything you'll need for installation, from the wiring harness to the distribution block, fittings, air lines, and more. In fact, the most difficult part is simply selecting which compressor setup you want. Viair offer a variety of compressors for its VMS, from the high-pressure Viair 485 High Performance, with a 100-percent duty cycle at 200 psi that'll happily run all day long and take a 35x12.50 tire from 10 to 40 psi in 3 minutes, 49 seconds, to the 444 High Performance, with a 100-percent duty cycle at 100 psi (fills a 35x12.50 from 10 to 40 psi in 3 minutes, 59 seconds), to the super-fast 400 High Performance system that we selected, with a 33-percent duty cycle at 100 psi and a blistering 5.12 cfm for quickly airing up a 35x12.50 from 10 to 40 psi in just a tick over 3 minutes. The mounts are made by other companies, with the underhood tank and compressor mounts offered by Mountain Off-Road Enterprises (M.O.R.E. ). They fit with no drilling or major modifications necessary.