If your feeling cooped up in the winter and really need something to do, consider the possibilities of exploring on a bike in the snow.  The Tires and geometry of these bikes offer tons of grip and confidence on the strangest of terrain.  You can also explore 8-15 miles in a few hours versus hiking and only seeing 3-5 miles.  It really allows you to get out there and see things.  Go places you would not normally go and explore the preserves that are in your home town.  Im lucky to live right along the fox river so we have tons of preserves and large sections of land set aside as natural area.  Also if your a bit of a gear junky, its a whole new space to explore, and most of the stuff that is good for biking doubles for cold weather camping, snowshoe, and hiking clothing as well.   

18 Months ago we picked up a GT86 Sports car.  My wife and I made the trip out to Kalispell Montana to pick it up and combined the trip with a short vacation with out the kids.  See, here in Chicago, Toyota dealers were not willing to budge on the price at all on these cars.  Out in Montana, where winter consumes 8 months of the year, the dealers there could not move them. So a large discount swooned us out to take advantage of the great deal and a Sweet base 2017 Model.

By the time we got home 5 days later we had traveled 2450 miles in the new car and it did great.  We averaged 34mpg and far more in smiles per gallon.  The trip was a blast and we had such a good time that we may try and do something like this again next time we are in the market for a new car! 

The Director of Marketing for the show reached out to our group in January and Chitown4x4 opted to step in and help organize the logistics of the event and do all the heavy lifting.  In Chicago we have a Tacoma, 4runner, Land Cruiser, FJ Cruiser, and Tundra Group all with great membership and activity.  Knowing who had some of the best built trucks in the Chicago land area (cause we helped build them), we reached out to those people and offered up the opportunity.  Its not something easy to commit to.  You have to be with out your truck for 2 weeks, move in and move out times were specific, and there were costs involved to make that all happen.  In the end we got one truck from each groups and had a totally awesome display! 

A huge thanks to Jim OBrill for letting us have the space at the show.  It was an awesome opportunity.  Thank you to everyone from the club that worked a shift at the show.  I think everyone involved had a great time talking Toyota Trucks!  Thank you to Kevin, Asif, Randall, Konrad for letting the booth take your truck for the week!   Below are pictures of the trucks in the booth!  Let us know if you have any questions!

What is Toyota Safety Sense? 
What Does it Do?
Can I still lift my truck? 
What does it compromise? 
How do I avoid it? 
Why do we have it?
Is it a good thing?  

These are all questions that we get at the shop when it comes to the new 2018 and up Tundra and Tacoma Models that are standard with Safety Sense Technology.  In a nut shell this is what Toyota says about the product that comes standard on your truck now.

Toyota Safety Sense™ (TSS) is a bundle of active safety features on many new Toyota vehicles at no additional cost. These innovative features were designed to help protect you and your passengers from harm.

Pre-Collision System
This advanced safety system is designed to alert you, and may apply the brakes, if it detects a potential frontal collision with another vehicle.

Pre-Collision System with Pedestrian Detection
This integrated camera and radar system is designed to reduce the likelihood of colliding with a preceding car or pedestrian.

Lane Departure Alert
A camera on your windshield may help you avoid the consequences of unintended lane departure by alerting you when it senses that you’ve veered from your lane.

Automatic High Beams
A camera on your windshield aids nighttime driving by using a camera to detect headlights and taillights of preceding vehicles, and toggling accordingly between high and low beams.

Dynamic Radar Cruise Control
This high-tech cruise control uses a radar behind the Toyota badge plus a camera on the windshield designed to adjust your speed, helping you maintain a safe distance from the car in front of you.

Road Sign Assist
Using a forward-facing intelligent camera, Road Sign Assist (RSA) is designed to detect speed limit signs, stop signs and yield signs, and displays them on the MID.

Lane Tracing Assist
When Dynamic Radar Cruise Control (DRCC)  is enabled and lane markers are detectable, Lane Tracing Assist (LTA)  uses the line on the road and preceding vehicles to help keep the vehicle centered and in its lane.

Not a bad deal right? well that depends.  At the shop we are all about active safety features that have no down side and only an upside.  I would conclude that all of these features are really nice. I have driven in a bunch of these trucks now and all of this is cool and it works great... Until you mess with the ride height of your truck.

When lifting these trucks the safety sense sensor is moved up and its calibration of what it knows from distance and angle to the road is changed.  Safety Sense then throws error codes that it is not functioning properly.  Out side of error codes which is the most common issue, (whole system does not work) My Experience on mild lifts, most of these safety features are left in tact.  The biggest effected features is the Lane Departure Alert.  It becomes less effective and the pre collision system kicks in later than normal.  These findings are also confirmed with reports and posts on the internet of the same issues. 

Its our stance at Chitown4x4 that we don't want to compromise these systems on a truck if its avoidable, so what are we to do when a customer wants to lift that new 2019 Tundra and is still concerned for safety sense?  Well We have a work around, and it for sure was not developed by us, it was developed by the good guys over at Toyota Racing Development. 

See, TRD PRO Trucks come lifted from the factory, 1-2" in the front and they have an elegant solution that fixes all your issues with Safety Sense.  Its as simple as installing a TRD style grille that lowers the Safety Sense Sensor 3" to accommodate the lift kit that is installed and return it to factory specs.  Brilliant right!  Here is the 2 grilles next to each other so you can see the difference.

In both cases, the safety sensor location was dropped from the middle of the Grill to a lower point in the grill to accommodate a Mild 2-3" lift application and still retain the functionality of safety sense.  This was confirmed with engineers from Toyota out at FJ Summit 2018.  When lifting one of these trucks the trd grill is the only way to retain full functionality of safety sense and should accompany any lift kit up to 3"  Anything beyond 3" could throw error messages on your Safety Sense Display.

Please Note that the Large Retail Companies out there Like Four Wheel Parts have decided that a written insurance policy around installing lift kits on Toyota Safety Sense Trucks is a better solutions than making sure its still functioning. We don't believe that this is the solution as it does not keep your Safety Sense Program in tact.

We Stand Behind What Toyota has told us is the proper way to lift their trucks and keep Safety Sense in tact to keep customers safe.


TACOMA
So lets move to the practical side of this:  You want to lift your truck, here are the part#'s that you will need to get this right and make sure that Safety Sense is Still working the way it should be.

Its a bit confusing from reading the internet, but its quite simple really.  The 2018+ Grille and the 2016-2018 Grill can both be used, and here is how.

The 2016-2018 Pro Grille is Part # PT228-35180 and includes an insert that can be removed to bolt in your safety sense sensor. Along with that Grille you will also need the Safety Sensor Glass Garnish that is part # 53141-35060.

If you purchase the 2018 Pro Grill, Part # PT228-35180 the knock out will already be open and you will also need to purchase Part # 53141-35060 to fill the gap just like the 2016 version.

Both grills work, just a matter of what you can find and if your ok taking a few more steps with the 2016-2018 model Grill

TUNDRA
Because the Tundra Pro Models don't have Safety Sense till 2019, the quick fix for all you tundra guys is to simply move the sensor down.  This is possible with a 2014+ Pro Grill and relocating the sensor to a lower position 2-3" lower so you don't get error warnings. 
(images pulled from AERES user on Tundra Forums)

If you have questions, please let us know, we will be happy to help you out.  Please also note that although these solutions have been tested and shown to work, there are some limited reports that error messages with TSS still do get reported, but they are few and far between.

Mile stones are fun to celebrate.  What is life with out celebration? Ill lead this "What's New" segment off with a few numbers to consider.  5, 3000, 300, and 200.  Ill hit on why these numbers mean something, but having nice round numbers that all come together at once, well that is pretty cool, so let me explain.

     5 years ago today I was working out of my garage welding up a mount that would hold an additional 8 gallons of fuel off the back of my FJ cruiser.  My friends and I were planning on completing the Kokopelli trail in a few weeks and the 169 miles track did not have fuel along the way with out a bypass back into Moab.  I pushed late into the night, blue sparks lighting up the cul-di-sac out side my townhouse and finally came up with a concept that worked.  The fuel pax holder v1.1  

Next was to test it out and make sure it would hold up.  The following weekend a group of us went to the badlands offload park, filled up the mount full of gas and thrashed all over the park for 2 full days.  The creation held up, I was shocked myself, not because the design was bad, but because I have never welded anything of substance in my life.  Not only did the creation hold up, but it also proved to hold up for a full week of off road abuse through Moab and continued to hold up for years to come.  See, 5 years ago, I created the Fuel pax holder for the FJ cruiser.  Picture below is from the night it was created..

     During our time out in Moab, the night we came off the Kokopelli trail everyone gathered up at the Moab Brewery.  Hanging out,  Kevin, Rich, Ryan, Missy, Josh, Nathan, Chris and myself, we had a few brews and it was decided that I need to start a company.  That was the night it was decided to start selling the fuel pack holder to the FJ Cruiser market.  We had a toast and just like that, I started selling the units.  5 years ago, I informally started Chi-Town 4x4 and launched a website www.chitown4x4.com.  So the number 5 is a double meaning for me but the big one is that 5 years ago this thing started in Chicago.  Here is a pictures of that brewery crew at the top of the world in Moab 2013.

     So celebrations are fun, 5 years in business is a mile stone.  But on our 5 year anniversary we hit 3000 likes on Face book.  In the grand scheme of things, 3000 is not a ton, and I was never impressed by social media numbers over all. But for us to hit 3000 followers/likes on face book the day we turn our 5 year anniversary is kinda cool.  Thank you to all of our face book friends, customers and wheeling buddies.  Its been a blast and hope we keep having a great time together.

      To come up with this number, I have to go back 10 years.  10 years ago I was so sick of rolling my windows down in the fj and forgetting to pop the rear window to relieve that wind pressure in the cabin.  And even then, when the window was popped, I had lights on the dash and dome lights on.  I hated the vent lock idea as it rattled and I always forgot about it.  So I decided to make a powered rear window solution for the fj.  It came together pretty quickly actually, only busted one piece of rear glass and wrecked one interior rear door panel during its development.  Turns out 400 lbs of force is way more than what is needed to open the rear fj window once its unlatched.  

So back to the miles stone part.  I had developed the powered rear window back in 2008, but did not start actually selling a kit until 2013 when we started the business, sure most of the local fj’s had versions of the kit on their trucks but it was just a custom at that point.

The mile stone part  did not occur to me until tonight, but I went back in our records and discovered that we sold our 300th powered rear window kit the day before we left for summit.  That means that we sold 300 window kits to 300 happy customers on our 5 year anniversary.  Kinda Cool!  For those that have not experienced the rear window kit.  We have 40 kits back in stock as of this moment ready to ship! Come and scoop them up! 

     Once I realized we had sold 300 window kits I had to check another item.  I went back and looked at how many pax units we have sold,, guess what.  On our 5th anniversary we sold  and shipped our 200th Fj Cruiser Pax mount! Nice!   Here is a picture of our latest version that has proven its self for the last few years to be great alternative to expensive swing out bumpers.

So what does this all mean to anyone else, not a whole lot.  But for us at Chitown4x4 they are milestones that we can keep building on.  We have had a lot of fun servicing our Chicago based customers over the years and looking forward to continuing to help them enjoy this hobby and lifestyle to its fullest.  

Thank you to our customers and friends that have helped get the word out about us.  We have only used word of mouth advertising and appreciate what each and everyone of you has done to help us grow and enrich the community here In Chicago.  We are excited to see what the next 5 years brings and the wonderful things we can do together!

Who does not love more Hp.  Well im sure there are a few out there that have something to say negative about it, but from what I have seen and experienced, there is no down side!  There is a company out there called Magnuson superchargers that have been creating epic tools of Hp for the last 40 years and they finally have something available for the 2010+ 4.0 Toyota Motors. 

There is a bit of history to why we are so excited that they finally have this product to market.  Go back a few years and I never thought i would ever write an article about this mythical supercharger.  There had been a lot of talk about TRD releasing a supercharger for this motor.  Lots and lots of FJ and 4runner owners wanted one and they were trying to deliver what the fans wanted.  It became clear they were trying when I was treated to a ride in a supercharged 4runner at the FJ summit in 2013.  We knew that something was being worked on but could not get any solid answers on release dates, power, out put, price and the like.  

Fast forward to today, and the whole story becomes a bit more clear.  As some of you know, Magnuson made the TRD superchargers for decades and in 2015 TRD decided to not offer superchargers as a dealer installed option on their cars and trucks.  This came at a huge disappointment to Toyota fans as they were really nice kits to have!  A few months later we started hearing that Magnuson was going to re release all of them and brand them with their true creators name,  Magnuson.

We were lucky enough to be chosen for Magnusons Pilot program on our 2014 4runner.  (thank you Magnuson)  Being part of this so far has been a lot of fun!  The email arrived kind of unexpectedly on a normal day at the shop!   We were excited to be part of it as we had worked with Magnuson on other projects in the past.  Remember that this has been 5 years in the making, so to finally see something happening was really awesome.  The packaged arrived a week or so later in 2 huge Magnuson boxes.  The Fedex guy grinned as a I signed for the packages and asked, what are these going on?  I told him a 4runner and he looked so confused. 

The next morning I kicked my wife out of her 2014 4runner along with the kids seats and sippy cups and gave her my fj cruiser for the next few weeks, which she was not happy with at all.  She was curious enough about what was going on to ask what we were doing with her poor truck this time.  I told her, it’s gonna be faster.  She grinned and handed the keys over.

We tore open the boxes and started setting things out on 2 folding tables that we set up for the install.  After sorting thought the parts, I took the install instructions home to digest a bit and see if there was any surprises in them.

Installation the first time through took about 12 hours.  We documented changes that we would like to see made in the instructions and sent the ECM off to get flashed with a new tune.  We were so excited that we sent it next day air, just to get it there sooner.  7 days later the ecm came back to us and with in an hour we fired the beast up!  

Initial thoughts staring at it running in the shop was how quiet it was.  Idling there it sounded no different than a stock 4runner, which is unlike my Fj Cruiser and Tundra super chargers that make their presence known.  Once the motor was up to temp and we checked for leaks, and air pockets in the coolant lines we shut the truck down for the night.  It was raining pretty good out and did not feel like taking it for a test ride where we would just spin the tires.

Next morning was a Saturday, I came in super early as I was excited to get some time driving and testing it.  I rechecked all the connections, checked fluid levels after the warm up and cool down and pulled the truck out side.  As I pulled out of the warehouse, it started to rain again. I said screw it and drove on into the now heavy rain.  Gently prodding the gas pedal with the data logger (my ears) to make sure we were all good i kept giving it a bit more and more.  I got down the street and pushed it a bit more and there it was...I heard the classic whine that only Magnuson can make.. the subtle warring sound that all car guys know.   Ahh its super charged!
After messing around with things a bit and making sure we did not have any knocking and the tune seemed like it had taken properly.  (you can tell when they don't!)  I started to make some passes.  Now remember that it was raining so every time I touched the gas pedal above 2800 rpm, the rear tires were breaking loose!  So I did what 4runner guys do, drop it in 4wd and let it rip.  My first run at 80% throttle threw me back in my seat!  It pulled smoothly and constant and the supercharger was no longer quiet, but belting out a wonderful harmonic song!  

I got down the street a bit, made my way around the other end of the business park and floored it.  This time, all 4 tires broke free and the truck got squirmy on the crowned business park way.  Hanging on I looked down and was doing 70 before I realized it.  I kind of giggled to my self as i pulled a u-turn and did another blast rocketing down the road. 30-50-70 the speedo swept across the dash and squeezed back on the brakes.  I was setting up to apex a corner that i am very familiar with and slammed the skinny pedal back down again.  The 4runner was doing 4wd power slides and clawing for traction up till 40 mph in the rain! 

Im trying to paint a picture here... a truck that has no business being driven like this is not only doing it, but doing it well and handling the power well.  The transmission shifts are smooth and spot on, the power delivery is smooth, and the sound, ohhhh that sound.   

The 4runner is putting 334 WHP down on the dyno.  That is pretty dam good.  I have gone on to daily drive this truck and have embarrassed a Honda S2000.  (should have seen the look he gave when I reved the motor at a stop light next to him) and kept right with a Range Rover Sport HSC Supercharged.   The truck runs constantly 5.5 to 5.9 second 0-60 runs on my big 295-65-r18 all terrain tires.  I should go see how quick it is with stock tires... but then the truck will look wimpy :-) and who wants that.  I got my first solid gas tank through the thing and saw 16.5 MPG.  That is 2 mpg better than I saw with out the blower!  OMG, I can save gas and have more fun, SOLD!!

All in all, the package is super nice.  The fit and finish is the best I have seen of the Magnuson kits so far.  The tune is well put together and smooth.  These units should be landing here at the shop sometime early 2018.  It has a list price of  $5650.00 and install will run right around $1000 with replacement fluids and everything needed to wrap it up. 
 
We will be posting superchargers up on our web site for purchase when we know that current production and stock can support it.  Currently we already have a waiting list from local customers, but be patient, the supercharger for these trucks is no longer a myth, its here and its our time as Toyota enthusiasts to enjoy the power and feel of a Magnuson Supercharger under the hood.

Please help me welcome Rick Vance!  Rick got his start in this business by attending school and becoming a certified Toyota mechanic!  From that experience he moved out of dealer work and on to private auto repair on all makes and models before settling in here at Chitown4x4.

   Chitown4x4 is proud to announce a totally revised version of its Gas Pax holder for the Fj Cruiser.  As many people know, having a swing out bumper can get bulky and hard to move around.  They also have a tendency to chatter and make noise on the trail.  We set out with our version 1.0 to alleviate these issues and did so successfully. 

   Customer feed back led us to push for better design, something stronger, more versatile, and adjustable.   A common complaint on the fist gen design was the use of a spacer was needed to clear the inner workings of the wiper and the spare tire horn.  The new design improves upon that and removes the need for any extensions or plates.  This allows those with back up cameras to have the same view they enjoy now.  and nothing needs to change.

Things that were addressed with design 2.0.

• Brand new aluminum frame is designed out of 1/4 thick 4000 series sheet.
• Weight has been reduced from 18.5lbs to 15.1 lbs
• All welds have been eliminated for durability
• A new 2 piece design for easy removal from truck with out taking the spare tire off.
• Adjustable mounting positions allow tire sizes from stock 31" all the way to a 37"
• Modular design to allow future line expansion of Max-Trax and High-Lift mounts.
• Does not interfere with entry to rear door or operation of rear window
• 10 Grade 10.9 Zinc Plated bolts secure the mount to the base plate
• Retains all stock back up camera mount and does not obstruct camera in any way
• 2 piece design allows for far less expensive shipping

We have a few prototype models out there enduring testing at the moment to see if there is any changes that need to be made, but so far response is great and they are doing well.  Pre orders are being accepted now,  Shipments will start to go out in late May just in time for your summer trips!

We are running a first run group sale to kick this off for pre orders so check out the site and extend your exploration range.