sirhk100

I figured I'd use this as a good place to put together an in order pictorial of my build. Gonna keep the text minimal and let the pictures talk. I did all the fab work myself.

Here's what I started with and bought for pretty cheap. Poorly built but had a decent platform and some decent parts to use or sell off to help fund.







Quick spray paint job and slapped a home built bumper on it...





The bedcage had to go. Poorly built and was in the way of my plans!







Ditched the national leaf pack on the rear, moved leaf mounts, installed 62" deavers, fuel cell and finished rear cage area with spare tire mounts.



gotta have room for dirt bike gas can too!



Home made chromoly shackles...





Finally figured I'd take the time and step up to a better front suspension which meant building front cage. I wanted the truck to flow cage wise and had a vision of what I wanted to do so the front suspension upgrade forced me to do the cab cage too at the same time. The truck came with a duffco front suspension that was average at best...

















Here's the new front suspension... This is one of a handful of parts I didn't fab myself...





And continuation of the cab cage into the engine cage area...





















Somewhere along the way I picked up some HID's so a light rack popped on the roof line too.



At this point, life changes happened and I moved from Az. to Nv. Housing and work space issues put the project on pause for awhile so I ran it as you see above for a bit. The stock 3.0 V6 was pushing 250K, leaked oil and spewed power steering fluid. I bought a house with a garage and was able to get back in the game. I picked up an old race motor from Dan Vance who might ring a name to some of you and did the 3.4 swap.





That's not a finished picture but you get the idea... I put about 50 miles on the motor swap and stumbled on a dash deal I couldn't pass up. It had been a few years of motoring with no dash and just the nastiness of what was behind it so I jumped on it. I had ripped out all heater and A/C during the motor swap so I'm pretty minimal. Future plans include a mojave heater in the extended cab area for the colder months and a spray bottle with water and windows down for the summer.









As the toyota gods would have it, rather then enjoying the nice dash and the motor swap that's 50 miles old... I stumbled on some lower links that were too cheap to pass up. I happened to have some 14" coilovers laying around already and I'd picked up a built ford 9" axles years earlier that was rusting away in my sideyard to swap in eventually. The time was right so I figured screw engine testing, let's keep building...















Long story but left over from a friends project I ended up with a new 32 gallon cell for all of $100 so I bumped up from the 22gallon that I already had.















Here's screwing around with the highlift. I've got a 4x4 on the foot lifting it and I still can't get the tires off the ground front or rear. LOL






So basically, it's a 1989 frame, cab, and transmission. Custom front end 6" wider per side pulling 18" of travel on coilovers with hydro bumps. Full chromoly steering including pitman arm and idler arm. Fully caged bumper to bumper, 3.4L ex race motor from Vance with headers computer tune and other mild tweaks, 3 linked in the rear, trussed ford 9" with a spool, 5.04 gears, currie built 9+ third and currie axles using explorer disc brakes.

Mostly self built... hope you enjoyed... I've got a tacoma build coming over the next year that is a race venture I'm involved in so that should be pretty fun too! My truck is just a toy, this one will be more legit!

flashkl

too dope.... makes me wanna build a prerunner too

westjohns yota

the only think i dont like about it is no 4x4, but other than that its awesome!!!!

sirhk100

Funny you mention that cause when I was shopping for the original donor truck I was looking for 4WD and wanted to build something a bit more all around. Not amazing at either end but something I could semi rock crawl with and something that could jump and sorta prerun with. Well I ended up looking at that 2WD in the first pictures and the price was too cheap to pass up really. I figured I could sell the national leafs, rear kings and duffco kit. Keep the fiberglass and beadlocks and obviously have a platform to build off. I picked up the truck for $2K. The price was the deal sealer...

I actually was lined up to buy this truck but I seriously missed the deal by about 2 hours. I'd lined up the cash and everything. Was waiting for a friend to get off work to give me a ride and it got sold before I could get there.


This one was 4WD and already decently built but it worked out in the long run. I actually now also own a Jeep TJ on 35's that I'm going to start putting money and labor into next so instead of having a one vehicle does all thing I'll just pick which platform is going to work for the intended trails! LOL

B-yodaful

Holy crap that awesome

sirhk100

My best impression of a 4wd screwing around on a loading ramp behind my work. Remember though, I've got a spool in the rear axle and with 5.04 gears my 1st gear crawls decent. Momentum bumps the front end up a lot of obstacles too so you'd probably be surprised where I can get this thing. I'm not dumb though, I know the front tires not pulling will limit me. That's why I have a jeep on 35's in the garage too! :p





Not sure why this one is 90 degrees off. I've rotated it in my editor and it shows it correct but when I link it here it's off...

john4wd

WOW that was awesome, your a great builder/fabricator, wish I had those skills and the tools and shop, Are you going to race it?

sirhk100

Thanks for the compliment! I've got a lot of time and labor into this thing so it actually really is appreciated. I didn't have the tools, skills or space at one point either. But years ago when I was still living with the parents I had a ford explorer that I wanted a custom tube bumper built for. Cheapest I could have quoted was $400 and some went as high as a grand. I started looking at pictures and realized metal is fairly cheap. With $400 I could buy a tubing bender and a cheap harbor freight chop saw. I had a friend with a welder I borrowed. I threw away a lot of wasted metal on the bumper but I did it! I thought it was the sickest bumper ever!!! In hindsight it was hideous! LOL But I learned!!! Next was a rear bumper. Again, cheap quotes were $400... Well I saved up and instead of paying for a bumper I bought my first welder. From then on basically any time I wanted to have something done I'd spend the money on tools instead of labor to have someone else build it for me.


I'm hoping tonight to finish getting the rear bumpstops mounted up on my truck so I can really go out and play with it!

As for racing it. I don't plan on it. I'm intending to keep it just as a play toy. I actually am sort of mid build on a truck I will be racing though hopefully about a year from now. At least that's our goal for a first race on it. The deal with that truck is the owner is a friend of mine who got stationed on the east coast. He's pretty much funding the build and I'm doing the labor. The truck will live at my house and I'll do the build and race prep between races along with testing and everything else to go with it. In return I get to drive half the race. Basically he's the truck's sugar daddy and I'm the labor but my pay is getting to be behind the wheel for half the race! The truck we're building is actually at a friends shop having the front control arms and spindles built. Once those are done it comes back to me and I'll finish it up. I'm expecting to have it back around the 1st of the year and hope to have the major fab work done by summer before the heat kicks in here in Vegas. This is how that truck looks right now... It's a tacoma with the 3.4L in it as well though, not a 86-95 platform.

Here's the truck as he bought it...



Tundra conversion clip and we built a bumper for it. (he wanted to change the look of the truck from how he bought it so that it was more "his" truck then what he bought. Hence the tundra conversion clip and TT bedsides pictured below.)



Cut off the rear bedcage that was in it, ditched the bed and CUT HOLES in the cab! LOL, no turning back now!!!



A little more... In the works here is rear cage from B-pillar to rear bumper, fuel cell, 62" all-pro race leaf springs, 16" king bypass shocks and TT bedsides.



I'm no professional welder... Here's a close up of my "average" weld. Some are better, some are worse... I won't lie! LOL



As it sits now or well how it sat when it went away to my friends shop for him to give it some love in the front suspension area!



It had a camburg kit on it but that wasn't good enough for what we expect to do with the truck. All of this suspension is off the truck though now. The arms have already been sold but we still have the shocks. If anyone is looking for coilovers or bypass shocks to slap on their ride he'd probably let these go for a pretty good price.



LOL, my sideyard with it stuffed in behind my jeep! You can kind of see that the holes in the cab have been patched up. This is just before I dropped it off to the shop it's at now. Before it's all said and done the entire roof of the truck will end up being cut off.

flashkl

Shweet. How much travel from those coilovers you're trying to get rid of?

sirhk100

They happen to be in the trunk of my car right now. LOL

2.5" diameter sway-a-way, 8" travel, 22.5" eye to eye extended (eyeballed with tape measure), 600 lb rate springs

yotasavg

awesome build man!

BigBluePile

iTrader: (3)

Wow...excellent build(s)

sirhk100

Eh, how about a pic and a video from the other day?




This is right out of the box, no shock tuning or any work dialing it in. It'll get smoother and faster still for sure!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L0xxAuSyVA

toyota4x4907

This truck makes me happy in my eyeballs

sirhk100

This seems like a good single location for pictures and documentation of my hooptie... Put about 70 miles in the dirt on it over the holiday break with absolutely zero issues. Still need to do shock tuning but the thing definitely puts a smile on my face even how it is right now!

sirhk100

Well, not sure if it's considered an update but here's a video a friend of mine put together. I've been busy building an '04 tacoma that we're going to be racing. There's a build thread in the '96-04 tacoma section for our "tpf racing" tacoma that I'm building. So basically my truck hasn't really been seeing any love lately. I am collecting parts though to build myself some new spindles that will be running dana 44 parts of a late 80's F150. I figure that should pretty much be the last of the custom fab stuff on my truck and then eventually I'll just focus on the interior and getting the creature comforts setup. I also this weekend picked up another offroad toy that will be seeing my attention also.

But anyways, enough jibberish... Here's almost 10 minutes of fun! Nothing too rough, mostly rally type road stuff. Couple good jump clips around the 5:30 mark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cqm1...layer_embedded

thspittingllama

sweet........ not sure what else to say

yotasavg

Great pics!

sirhk100

blakefogt

rad picture.