2007 Toyota 4Stunner

[Senor_Taylor]

So far this thing has been a tank and very enjoyable to drive. I've driven it about 7,000 miles since Mid June which is a lot considering I split driving this with other vehicles. Gas mileage has settled in at 19.6 which is far better than the Tacoma. I've taken full advantage of the fold down space hauling furniture, people, and car parts. It's taken me to Myrtle Beach, JMU a few times, and even down to Radford for recruiting. It's by far the best vehicle I have ever owned.

I got under it to grease the driveshaft (which should be done every two oil changes or else you start to get slack in the driveline) and was promptly met with a blizzard of rust. The paint/rust converter the PO/dealership applied to the underside is already mostly gone and revealing lots of surface rust. Nothing to make me think the vehicle is unsafe and would cause problems within the next 10 years, but I'm a little disappointed I haven't escaped the notorious Toyota frame rust. I'll probably take a sander to it some time next year and rear coat everything for my peace of mind, but I suspect the exhaust won't occupy its current location much longer with the rust I see on the hangers.

That leads me to my next thing I need to tackle. The exhaust leak. I believe I have a cracked header, but I also have a really bad exhaust rattle from the same location, so i'm wondering if the dealer just didn't tighten something properly when they installed the headers before I bought it. I'll need to poke around, but I'm not motivated at all to work on this thing since it doesn't fit in the garage. If the manifold is cracked, I have two options. Spend $700 and replace the manifold with an OEM one that will most likely crack at some point in the future, or drop $1000 and buy 2 stainless manifolds and replace both. I'm leaning towards the former, but the latter sounds cool.

I also need tires. My front right has a slow leak (which may or may not be causing my TPMS light to stay on, jury is still out on that one) and the performance of these tires is very subpar. ABS kicks in pretty often on hard braking or in any amount of rain, and the traction control even activated one time in the dry just because I rolled backwards slightly on a hill before hitting the gas.

Any suggestions? I know nothing about All Season/Road fairing AT tires. I want something more aggressive in case I do choose to tackle some fire trails or play in the snow, but I do quite a bit of highway miles. I'm okay with leaning to a more aggressive tire though. I can live with less life out of them.