I'll start with how I came to obtain the truck or "Marty" as it's been dubbed.

The Back Story
I've always been a toyota truck nut. So two years ago I jumped at the chance to buy a super clean, one owner, 2003 double cab TRD tacoma with 90k miles........from my parents. They bought it new when I was in high school and I've pretty much had a hard-on for anything Toyota ever since. Once purchased I started modding and wheeling it. 3.5" coilover lift, tires, bumpers, winch, sliders etc. Then I broke three teeth off the ring gear and that started another spree of mods including gears, ARB front, full skid plates and armor, snorkel, front sway bar in trash mod yada yada yada. So at this point its pretty much maxed out with bolt on and relatively easy to install mods.





A couple of friends and I make our way to a Big Dogs event at The Cove in Gore, Virginia to do some real wheelin' and boy was I out of my league. Everyone in my group was in purpose built trail rigs on 37's, 38's or 39's ...



aaaaand then there's me......in my IFS, grocery getter lookin' rig on 33's that looks like it should be sitting in the mall parking lot with baby seats in the back and Miley Syrus blaring compared to these guys rigs.





Not wanting to be a pansy, I said I'd do every trail they wanted or at least break trying. Well the taco surprised everyone(myself included)and made it through most everything.......but it wasn't pretty. I managed to make heavy contact with every single rock on the trail with every square inch of the underside of my truck. The day required lots of spotting, cursing IFS, heavy throttle, more cursing about IFS, repeated teeth cracking hits on rocks making the most retched sounds that I swore my truck was going to break in half, finished off with more IFS and lack of ground clearance cursing. The truck survived with the only damage being a small drive shaft dent, mangled shock mounts, ebrake cable brackets, bent 1/4" thick skid plates and a black and blue arm pit from the truck falling 16 inches onto the rock slider.

So I drive the 2.5 hours home and immediately begin researching different SAS setups. After a few days of that, the realization was reached that for the cost of doing a legit, nice solid axle swap on my tacoma I could buy a whole new rig and not trash my relatively clean daily driver. So my buddy who is an avid craigslister locates a few '85 or older yotas and we made an afternoon out of cruising around northern Maryland looking at solid axle yotas. Rust, rust and more rust until we crawled under this one.



A mostly unmolested '85 longbed, 22RE, Automatic with 158k on the clock. The frame and cab were so clean and free of rust we were trying not to giggle like little girls while looking the truck over. The truck would start, run for about a second and immediately die. The owner had been treating the truck like a diagnostic dart board and just kept throwing hundreds of dollars of parts at it but the truck still refused to run. A deal was struck and I returned a few days later with a truck and trailer to bring "Marty" home.



--End of overly wordy and pointless back story--

Hopefully Ill get the build portion all up to date tomorrow. I've got a lot of catching up to do. Should have started this thread the day I got the truck

 

:squealslikealittlegirl:

 

I love 2nd gen pickups so much

 

She's a purdy truck! thats for sure.

 

You going to tow it? I like where this I going!

 

Thats a SICK TACO you have there.

Great find on the 85 pickup. Very clean. They are very hard to find in that shape anymore.

 

Thanks guys.

When I go wheeling I'll probably tow it but it drives like a champ. Cruises very nice between 70 and 75.

 

Here begins the Failrated '85 longbed trail rig build/hodge-podge together/lets try it even though we've never done it before and hope it works thread.

So I get the truck home and start diagnosing the "won't run" issue. Went through all the usual suspects and everything checked out. So I call a buddy of mine to come over who is nothing short of an electrical genius. In no time flat he found some broken wires in the wiring harness. After soldering them back together the truck started right up and ran. I got tags and drove it about 100 miles the next day just to see any problems would arise. Well, one did. TPS went out. Replaced and calibrated the TPS and it has been running great ever since.

First step was to remove the bed and some of the frame



Let my buddy give the plasma cutter a try



My dog, NattyBoh approves of her shotgun seat. In this pic you can see how the clear is peeling really bad.



So I spent the evening sanding the whole cab down with 400 grit on an Air orbital.



Zip tied the stock tail lights to a 1x4 and bolted it to the frame since I knew it would be a month or two before I built a bed for it.

 

The original plan was to just spray bomb everything and be done with it. Well after sanding down the body and priming some areas it became apparent that the cab was in spectacular shape. One small ding on the hood but other than that, nothing. No bondo. Not even a door ding. Considering the condition I decided to get a "real" paint job. Pulled the grill, signals, mirrors antenna and badges and drove it to Maaco the next day.



Picked it up from maaco and put all the stuff back on



Cheap and quick Maaco paint job turned out good.




Painted the grille, signal light surrounds, and bumper ends with Krylon Fusion satin black. Used satin black wheel paint to spray the chrome bumper. Also put on a one inch body lift and swapped out the 32x11.50 BFG ATs for the 33x10.50 KM2s off of my tacoma.

 

single cab with no bed... will it do a stoppie?

 

flat bed????

 

Took Marty on a mild trail ride with some buddies to test out the 4WD. Its pretty cool how these little trucks can squeeze down ATV trails.





Much of this build is being done at my parents house using my Dads shop and tools. I really can't do anything crazy in my own garage at my place in Baltimore without pissing off the neighbors. So you will see tons of pics with me in them because my dad loves this kind of ˟˟˟˟. He taught me a lot through helping him restore his old BMW's and he thoroughly enjoys seeing me do the same to my own project. As you will see, he's documenting EVERYTHING.

Next on the list was to fix the insanely annoying leaking manifold. Got a high crush gasket and helicoil kit from amazon. Also a manifold stud kit from trailgear. No more tick tick tick



A few of the stud holes were stripped. First time using helicoils and they worked great.



Next order of business was gears and a rear locker. Marty was such a turd with the automatic and stock 4.30's trying to turn 33's. I ordered the full regear kit from sky offroad which came with two sets of USA Standard 5.29 gears and two master install kits. The Spartan locker I got from the cheapest place I could find which was Rock Auto. At this point we have only done the rear. The front will be tackled soon I hope. The gears have to be done at a friends house and finding time is tough. FYI neither one of us has ever done gears before so this was a learning experience.





Spartan install was cake



Neither of us have a press so we had to put the ring gear in the oven to get it on the carrier. The pinion had to be put in the freezer to get the bearings on it.

 

Hahaha. No but it locks the rear up really fast! Especially since I bypassed the proportioning valve. I actually put about 1500 miles on the truck with no bed on it. Not sure how I didn't get pulled over

 

Yup!

Here's a link to the thread about the flatbed build. If you want specifics on the bed, it's all in that thread.
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f88/...latbed-276466/

I'll be putting up all those pics plus more in here.

 

And for the most recent development.....the flat bed!

Flatbed and tire carrier build thread here for specifics:
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f88/...latbed-276466/



My 110 Mig was pretty much maxed out on this 3/16" steel for the base structure.





No such thing as too much beer











I was going to miter cut the front corners so there were no open ends but then decided to leave it open for a place to hook straps. That was a mistake. It looks like garbage and I have to see it every time I get in the truck. :-(

 

very nice work

 

Thank God for plasma cutters











Did not need or want to completely weld all the seams. Used this on ALL unwelded seams to get a clean look with a water tight seal to help prevent rust.













Side marker lights were added when I realized the back half of the truck was almost invisible at night. I know rear side markers are supposed to be red but these were all I had.

 

Glad you started a build thread after seeing your flat bed build in the fab shop section, again nice truck, love the color and how the bed turned out! Really like the double cab taco too, definitely on my "yota wishlist"! Can't wait to see some more pics!

 

beautiful work on that flat bed. soon mine will be fixed, but im keeping the oem bed for the foreseeable future.

 

Thanks guys. I never did a build thread for the Tacoma and kind of regret it. So expect lots of pics of this build.

Got the long Trailgear sliders all mocked up and tacked together.



And the first performance enhancing modifications yet. The butt dyno tells me I gained about ten horsepower. The JDM sticker was a drunken agreement made with some friends late one night at the bar, and well.....it's on there.