Looks awesome. Miller welders are the best. I had a 250mp at my last school, and it was the Shizz.

 

Sick. I haven't looked at this build in a while. She's come along nicely!

 

Thanks guys!!

1 heavy coat of rustoleum Industrial primer, I coat rustoleum industrial , rattle can top coat.

Fiance helped with the paint.

 

sweet cage bro. Im just trying to figure out why you made it so pretty considering you are going to beat it. lol Im just teasing. great job as always

 

Nice, I want to cage my 4Runner. Moab made me realize I should get one for safety.

 

I figured with a locked front, Im going to get into more stickier situations. Im sure it will come in handy.



And welded on with the fenders mostly on.

 

Wow looks great rattle wagon, I only have one question.
How clean was your truck before you started wheeling it. Because it looks like it was in great shape for that year and I was wondering why it was made into more of a trail rig.
Looks great now and should be a beast I'm just curious , please don't get offended by my question though. Keep up the great work

 

Go to page 1. There are pictures on that page from when I just got it, 7 years ago. I had bought the truck because I liked what my friends were doing with their jeeps, and I wanted to play too, but I just wanted a truck. So it was destined to end up in the woods. It was clean then, but trying to keep up with friends in the woods and VT winters took its tole on the body and frame. I drove it daily for 3 years till the trail rig part of it took over, and it stayed fairly clean for most of that. It was already starting to get rusty and beat. By that time I knew what I wanted out of it, and function took over fashion.

 

Saw the pics on page 1 that's why I asked. I more for looks but I can respect a purpose built wheeler. Keep us posted

 

SICK! BlueberryZilla! Haha..... Great work buddy! Always extremely entertaining to watch.

 

Rattle wagon.. Looking great, like always. Can't wait until you get some bone fide trail pics. I'm debating doing an Exo similar to this one once it warms up. Very inspiring!

 

The better you rig the more trouble you can get in goes up exponentially.

Sure is fun.

 

Thanks guys! Hope to have some trail pics soon. Next club run is on April 13th, and there should still be plenty of snow. Hopefully this weekend I can knock out the leaky valve cover gasket (passenger side) and change out the clutch slave cylinder and the short bit of rubber line.

 

Your cage turned out really good! I like how you tied into the front bumper under the fenders. Can't wait to see some wheeling pics!

 

Thanks Ed!

1 step foward, 2 steps back. Changed out the leaky clutch slave cylinder and both valve cover gaskets. Passenger side valve cover gasket still leaks and now front diff sounds crunchy. I sounds more like the locker is ratcheting under load, not a skipping ring gear, but Im gong to pull it out just to make sure, and Ill have another go at the valve cover gasket Thursday night





Looking at this next picture, I think I need to re do my re shock mounts for more up travel...



Aaaand stuck.





Sank the second I went off my old trackl. haha. No pics, but step dad pulled me out with the excavator.

 

Im curious on your modded ifs hubs and the brake rotor setup!!

 

Info is on some of the previous pages. They are Ifs hubs ground down to fit into a 97 Tacoma rotor. You have to take about 1/4 if material off. It requires moving the break caliper to the outside of the ears on the axle and spacing it out with a small washer, and I drilled out the holes to to put a 1/2 in bolt in there. Im running the backing plate eliminators, otherwise you would have to trim that too. Also had to widen the opening of the caliper a bit to fit over the taco rotor.

Some pics here and here

Now I have a matching IFS width without wheel spacers. You could technically still run spacers, but thats putting a lot of stress on the trunnions and would not recommended it.





Early ifs hubs are "flowered" and is easier to grind down, later (like mine) were solid all the way around. I ground both of them with a flap wheel in about 1/2 hour.

Below is a later ifs hub with the outer edge cut down (not my pic) Stock on the left, cut down on the right.



IFS hub on the left, solid on the right. You can see how the overall length is the same, the IFS hub WMS just rides a little farther out on the spindle. Again, not my pic.



Let me know if you have other questions about it, its a pretty simple swap.

 

Snugged down the valve cover bolts a bit, seemed to stop the leak? Calling it good for now.

Then pulled it in to check out the front diff. Drained the fluid and it looked like some one poured glitter in the gear oil. So the 3rd needed to come out. One thing I love about the IFS hub swap is I can pull the spindle off as a "unit bearing" took me 20 min per to get this off and shafts out, sort of like a modified "camo method"



Ring and pinion looked great, so I fixed the slipping locker. Ill test it out this weekend.

 

Time to test it!!

 

Thats great info on the IFS hubs!

I really need to do this. The fact that you are able to remove it as a hub unit in 20 minutes it totally worth it!! Looks good.