I find myself at Jerry’s Home Improvement Store (much better than any Home Depot or Lowes) quite often these days, and there’s always a good chance of finding something worth a quick click. This tandem-axle Tacoma falls into that category, as these kind of conversions were once more common, but have become quite rare, especially on the later versions like this one.
The second rear axle is of course non-powered, often referred to as a “tag axle”, although that may imply that it can be raised when the load is light. It certainly is in this case, but there’s plenty of potential to put some serious weight on it, given the substantial rear overhang of this flatbed. Needs another axle back there, with steering.
i hope that atleast there is a six under the hood.
Sweet looking Tacoma. I’ve never seen a Tacoma flatbed, much less one with a tandem axle.
I see TONS of homemade flatbed pickups up here in central NY. The salt destroys the beds on trucks until they rust away into nothing and guys just make custom wooden flatbeds for em to get by. F150s and s10s seem to be the most common.. Those old s10s rusted like nothing else
Even they weren’t as bad as the pre-Tennessee Datsuns. The factory bed on those was basically a temporary placeholder for whatever you could cobble up to replace it.
Ah Datsuns…its been so long since I’ve seen one up here but you are 100% correct.
I don’t think it was a rusty bed that inspired the conversion. Tacomas had rust problems with the frame. A new bed would not fix a rusted out frame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxK3vFNyYxQ
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/04/08/toyota-paying-big-bucks-for-bad-tacos/
http://www.autoblog.com/2012/11/27/toyota-issues-recall-for-150k-tacoma-pickups-over-possible-spare/
http://blog.caranddriver.com/690000-toyota-tacomas-recalled-for-leaf-springs-that-could-snap-damage-fuel-tank-and-brake-line/
Wonder how that’s mounted? I imagine a simple solid axle, but with leaf springs perhaps?
I’d imagine it would have to be leafs for simplicity, I can’t imagine they would custom make all the locating and control arms and mounts for those for coil springs, let alone stuffing that all in there
This is a popular layout in Australia – at first sight I thought it was an article by one of the Aussie contributors, I didn’t know these were done in the US.
This is certainly very rare, I can’t say with 100% certainty, but I don’t remember ever seeing another pickup conversion like this. A Tacoma with a single rear axle but dual wheels on that rear axle? That I’ve seen.
The previous generations of Toyota pickups (before the Tacoma) were sold with duals, but I don’t think Taco’s were. I’m sure all tag axle (or pusher axle, with the driven axle ahead of the driven axle) conversions were aftermarket. Or homemade 🙂 BTW a tag doesn’t have to be liftable. A tag behind the truck, with hydraulic rams, as often seen on mixers, to reverse the bending loads on the frame, is called a Boost-a-Load.
These six wheeler conversion have a couple of hazards to their usefulness on wet roads which may have effected their popularity, fully laden drive traction can be lost unless the drive axle is fitted with slightly larger diameter tyres and off highway places like building sites present the same problems, these have no locking diff drive axles like full size trucks are fitted with, unless of course that feature has been plucked from the Toyota parts bin and installed, I like it in that it has a decent size deck and with a 3L TDI engine would be able to carry a tonne and a half.
…unless whoever does the conversion fits air bags to the rear axles to at least enable some load sharing…
Can’t say I’ve ever seen something like that before.
Ive heard that this configuration could possibly be how duallys are in the future. Single axle duallys have a minor flaw if driven often in uncleared snow. You’re cutting 4 tire tracks in the snow instead of just 2, although if it’s 2wd it may be to your advantage. On a side note I was behind a dually recently, noticing his outer tires on the rear were smaller than the inner tires. They were not contacting the road surface, with a gap maybe 1/2″. I could see daylight between the tread and the road surface. Perhaps intentional.
Always wanted to do this with a Isuzu (Chevy for clambrains) longbed LUV
Here’s an old Toyota motorhome with a tandem axle.