I am 17 years old and never really had an interest in Toyota trucks until early 2014. my brother has owned 4 Toyota trucks and talked nothing but good about them so I finally caved in and bought one

 

Here's what I started with

 

Nice truck like the flat bed.

 

Long story short the truck ran like crap. I assumed it was a carb issue so I tried to resolve it and realized the truck was starting to smoke really bad and had no power. So began my search for a new motor. Another truck was a better deal so that's what I did I bought one for parts

 

Here's the fun part. Ripping the old motor, tranny, transfer case out

 

Nothing on the 87 cab was right. I bought a 1990 2wd truck for the motor but the cab was so nice I had to have it. I paid $1150 for the black truck, later realized it had a solid front axle from an 85. Got the red truck for 800 with a clean title. Here's some pics of the tear down of the 87

 

After I got the drivetrain out I pressure washed the frame and painted it with black rustoleum because the frame was perfect and I wanted to keep it that way. Now it was time to take apart the 90 and get that cab off. Everything went great until the engine lift flipped over and the boom cracked my windshield. Stuff happens haha

 

I forgot to take pictures of putting the motor and transfer case back in but I used a 5 speed tranny that my brother had from one of his old trucks. He had a transfer case as well so I used that too. The hydraulics on the engine lift decided to stop working right after I got the drivetrain back in. That made it very tricky to get the cab on but we made it work. The hardest part was getting the cab back on but we made it happen.

 

The 87 frame came with a 3 inch leaf over lift so I kept that and bought 3 inch lift blocks for the body to give me 6 inches total. It took me a few weeks to get everything hooked up correct. A few long nights with my brother and we finally got the truck finished and ready to hit the trails.

 

Loaded her up on thanksgiving and went four wheeling all day and night the day after. I was very impressed with now well this truck did with bald 35's it only got stuck bad once. Had a few issues with it running weird but we brought tools and fixed them on the trails. Thanks for checking my thread out! This build took me about 4 months from the time I had both the trucks. It cost me $2200 total to get everything up to spec plus a lot of labor

 

Nice project!

 

thanks man! It was a lot of fun and a good learning experience

 

Great job, that is a nice truck.

 

It turned out much better than I expected