Cody's 2002 build "The Tank"

***PLEASE NOTE***
My images were hosted off facebook and I've fixed them three times already and facebook keeps changing their URL structure so it breaks the images. I'm in the process of getting all my images on my own server and my build being put up over there.
The progress so far can be found here: http://improperengineering.com/the-tank-build



how she sits as of 3.5.2013








Details

Base
2002 Tacoma SR5 2.7l 4x4 5spd

Performance/Drivetrain
I have a heavy foot
deckplate mod
flowmaster exhaust
5.29 gears
trd rear axle swap

Suspension
Icon coilovers
AAL rear
bilstein 7100's rear shocks
rear shock crossmember
ubolt flip

Wheels/tires
37" ProComp Extreme MT
Rock Crawler Series ProComp Wheels

Armor
front trailgear bumper with lighthoop and top plated
4xinnovation sliders
hack-fab(that's me, haha) high clearance rear bumper
hack-fab front diff skidplate

Interior
scangaugeII
hidden radar detector
computer switch panel
s̶o̶n̶y̶ ̶x̶p̶l̶o̶d̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶u̶n̶i̶t̶
̶7̶"̶ ̶T̶r̶u̶c̶k̶p̶c̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶w̶i̶n̶d̶o̶w̶s̶ ̶7̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶2̶0̶0̶g̶b̶ ̶h̶d̶
Kenwood head unit
uniden 520xlpro ash tray mod
instrument panel superflux LED bulbs
black door fabric
CCFL in door panel pockets
LEDS in footwells
HALO figurine security system

Exterior/Other
Gumby grill emblem
bobbed bed
bedrack with cb ant mount & kragen mounts
hack-fab tire gate

Lighting/Electrical
2̶x̶ ̶7̶"̶ ̶K̶r̶a̶g̶e̶n̶s̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶n̶t̶
30" dual row LED light bar up front
2̶x̶ ̶4̶"̶ ̶k̶r̶a̶g̶e̶n̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶b̶a̶c̶k̶
Porsche bi-xenon projector retro
Philips 85122 bulbs
12,500lb badlands winch

Wheeling Trips(2013+)
Jan 5th 2013 - Slade, KY
Nov 24 2012 - 491 offroad shakedown run
Jan 13 2013 - Horseshoe Bend
Jan 13 2013 - Big Rock Offroad
Mar 1 2013 - Land Between the Lakes KY/TN Tacomaworld Meet
May 17th 2013 - GSMTR at Windrock
May 25th Memorial Weekend - Harlan County Kentucky


I bought it July 4th, 2009 and she looked like this:

 

beast.

 

are you still plan on updating all night ?

 

killer transformation, looks good

 

for the next 4 hours on and off as soon as i posted i got swamped at work.

thanks guys!

 

blacked the lights out.





and deckplate mod




i wanted to continue blacking out the truck, so the chrome lettering was next to go. i've never seen anyone just paint the badge face, so that's what i decided to do.
i also decided to paint the bumpers too














and got 33" goodyear duratracs put on. loved them for everything but the mud, which i understand they are an AT.
also got my sliders welded on
in harlan:












my family is from the mountains of harlan county kentucky, that's why i love it down there so much. this pic is from a place called the hensley settlement. it's a 4wd only trail (on one side of the mtn) leading up to it but the place has been made into a state park since they bought the remaining land off my great great grandfather. it's where my family originated. this is my cousin and i on the front porch of the schoolhouse. it's truly beautiful up there. i'm saying this because i usually take a few trips a year up there, so there will be more pics later on.

 

Nice truck! Love the blue rings on your Kragens

 

after not being able to see anything at night, i had to do a retro. i've had experience doing them in the past and i believe this was my.. 5th one i'd done at the time? i'd almost say it was the best thing i've done to the tank.
i used Porsche projectors(bi-xenon) with philips 85122 4300k bulbs. one of the reason with choosing the Porsche projectors again was the fact they are one of the widest projector out there.
at 25ft, the top cut off is 37.5" from the ground.










and vacuum formed my own shrouds. also looking through these i realized i forgot to mention i did a grill. bought the mesh at lowes.












andddd more black was added. wheels. and beefed up the stock skidplade.
another harlan trip with my girlfriend at the time:








my ghetto tent:






made my bedrack and eventually found that my cb ant mount was too weak. there's a ton of pics on this one, sorry guys.

i made the support arm angles to be about 25°, which looked to be the same as the side of the cab coming up.

















































































and fixed!








this is the CB i was using. it was given to me for free and was only help on by industrial velcro, it wasn't going anywhere though. when you tried to get the cb off the dash the velcro would hold so fight the bottom plate on the CB would bend.

 

this would be the start of my truckpc. i had this in my car previously which is why it sayd "carpc" on it. at the time of these pics it was on windows xp with an 80gb hd and 1gb of ram. i think it was a pentium 4?






it used to be a nice clean truck.. till i started some :sawzaw: poser shots!








not a fan of red lighting.
24 white superflux 5 chip LEDs. def an overkill, but i made them for another project a while ago and never used them.






i painted the door fabric black to match the rest of the truck.
i also put a 12" blue cathode in the door pocket, and have 3 SMD LEDs per side in the footwells.

after a year and a half of wear and tear, you can see where it's fading.







gots me a nice kragen and stole the mounting location from Bobert






then it was time to start on the suspension.
bilstein 7100 10" stroke
they sit a few inches back from stock, and are angled /\ just a tad - 6" in from the frame box to be exact. and my redneck way of attempting to stuff the tire.








































the sliders had rusted bad. i originally used spray on bed liner (rustolium i believe) because i loved the finished texture but i had already re-sprayed it twice so i was done with it. it works great as long as whatever you spray doesn't get touched often. so. ~3 hours of sanding on one side, it was ready for something new. i picked up duplicolor bed armor with kevlar and got to work. i love the way it came out, but i don't have anywhere to test it just yet.






the last switch mounts i made for my aux light and interior lights was a joke. so i remade it. frosted the front, and added .. well yeah. haha







and remounted the truckpc screen





and also upgraded the hardware.
it's so nice having all my music and videos at my fingertips, as well as the internet, and everything else i could possibly need.

dual core intel atom with 2gb ram. 200gb sata hd @ 7200rpm and 7" touchscreen.







the old setup, since then all the wiring has been cleaned up even more.


also, this is the interface that i use for my setup. it's called centrafuse, it's all touch-screen friendly

 

lockright is in the rear. in the tanks life time, i've gone through 3 lockrights. i will never recommend them again if you do any serious wheeling.

snow wheeling (before sliders)



more posers






and another harlan trip. it's just so beautiful up here










just ignore the lady.. she's an ex






and i was still afraid of body damage then, so in order to not bust a tail light i used a come-along to ensure i didn't roll back. haha how sad right..






went to 491 offroad. all my wheeling buddies are(were) jeepers. so since i'm the only yota guy i of course always got crap from them. but on this trip all the locals started calling my truck the "tow-yota" because i was pulling everyone else out when they got stuck.








everyone got burried in that pit. i had to take a stab. i ALMOST made it out, but my rear diff was getting hung up at the very end. so much mud afterwards that the truck was actually sitting a ton lower.























this was the first thing i ever done that was steep. n00b vid

 

Looks good man.

 

Looks good thus far man, sub'd fo sho

 

random pics from round the farm:












at this point i was kinda at a stand still with the truck. i was getting into quad racing and most of my time and money was going into that





after multiple shoulder injuries i sold my quad with plans to heal and then buy a bigger quad. well. that money went into the truck haha.

we got a snow emergency here and they shut all the roads down. we threw in some gear and went on backroads to make sure no one was stranded, and also had some fun of our own.





oh and remember that pic with the chevy tied to me pulling me out of that mud pit? i didn't like it in the picture with me and needed a background for my phone.






ended up hitting a deer. snagged a badlands bumper out of it.









that stupid little thing did $2500 worth of damage.


(also before i turned the truck in for insurance)
yet another 491 trip.. it was raining the whole time and i basically pulled the black jeep everywhere



















this was the crew. see, all jeep guys.

 

made tube doors. i think this was only my 2nd welding project. used flux, and i know it looks like junk but so far they have held up nicely.
















had a 6" tree stump eat my sidewall. afterwards, went with 33" KM2s












how to stop rain when you have on tube doors




bye bye bedsides







oh, the older yotas didn't even need to cut their bedsides... they just rust out



































compared to my other stuff, i think the welds came out great!

 

got stuck bad and had to get pulled so hard it bent the frame. luckily rust recall saved my butt
(taken from my thread)

went wheeling a few days ago and decided to climb a creek bank only to find a 8ft drop off right over the top - which i didn't know until half the truck was hanging over. after 7 hours of trying to recover it, i finally got a buddy with a sami down to pull me out. haha that was the best part, because every time he tried to pull, the whole sami would literally jump off the ground and go sideways. anyways, he got me out but when i got back home i noticed the bed was sitting low on the driver side. i just thought the bumper i recently finished(last week) bent up since he was only tugging on one side. after further inspection i see that my frame is bent right past my slider in the bend that goes up to the bed.

what the heck. i'm surprised the bumper didn't give at all and the frame bent first. not looking forward to the price tag to fix it :\

these are the tires just hanging off the dropoff









so toyota replaced the frame and blahblahblah. it was perfect timing, that's for sure!


also, before my high clearance bumper we had another trip to harlan. sorry, just found these


























had a trip to big rock in maysville, ky








got a little too ahead of myself and tried to tackle the more challenging part of the tire garden. ended up taking 2 built jeeps to get me off

 

oh yeah, i also added 1.25" wheel spacers from all pro to stop my rubbing. tires are even with the fenders










designed up some vinyls, but the zombie one was later removed






finally got some body damage



tried to pop it out the best i could, but i think it's worse.








few more randoms. sorry guys, i'm finding these going through my online albums.










got sick of one of not being able to use my phone charger when the truck isn't on, so i snipped the switched power and tied the power line into the stereo power.
don't know how to show that it works with the truck off, but here's 2 pics






killed the lockright.









richmond replaced it under warranty.


clevis' can be used for more than pulling people out with




getting prepared for some upcoming electrical additions. so wanted a new switch panel. originally bought these switches:




but seen this at microcenter and figured i could use it:






then found out that microcenter carries one that already has LEDs on it. so i returned the green one and got one of these. it was a 3 way switch with red and blue LEDs:

(review)
http://hardwarebistro.com/?option=c...FAN-ATIC-5-Port-Military-Switch-Baybus-Review



but it was going to be more a headache than anything. it required both a 12v and 5v input. the LEDs were wired for 5v and the switches put out 12v on one position and 5v on another. that wasn't going to work. none of my relays switch on 5v, i think 7v was the lowest. so i had to redo it all. went to radioshack and bought single switches that had red and green LEDs in them, so i took that out and made them blue. here's it finished:








rode with some friends up at dirty turtle and seen Mike Sweet, number 366 from KOH. basically drooled over his rig. got a few ideas from it.

first two are size comparisons. this is a beast. the second is tire size next to by buddy who's 6'5

 

ordered new kragens from the group buy. had to weld a new tab on my bed rack for one of the 4". moved my old 7" up front so that i have 2 7"s up front and 2 4"s on my bed rack. you can def see a difference in design on the 7"s. the new ones have different pressure bulb making them seem brighter. they also don't use an aluminum mounting plate but plastic which feels incredibly cheap. also changed the wire loom to blue. new theme will be black with some blue parts.







































talked my buddies into getting a kragen or two. these are just random pics








my friend showed me light painting on his camera and i'm quite easily amused.

 

then tragedy struck.
The parking brake somehow failed after i started it to warm up and it went rolling over a hill backwards. jumped a rock drop off, did a 180, took out numerous trees, a bee hive house, and finally was stopped by a tree, still running. hopped in and back it up off the tree.
if it wasn't for the badlands bumper it would for sure be totaled.
was a little less than $200 from being totaled.






























but i had too much work into it, i wasn't about to let it go.

this came in and already decided i wanted it plated and was going to make a light bar for it. since i was driving a rental car and the plasma cutter was at my uncles i loaded the car and left.




















trip to 491 offroad to rest it all out. it was a day after i got it back. i also slightly slid into a tree haha.

 

i love the colors in this:






side hoops. didn't like them at first but they def grew on me.




























was able to help dad at his house in TN make a bird feeder. i don't get to see my father or little sister very often, i cherish every second i get with them.





leaving Tennessee




my rear bumper has always been my main cause for getting me hung up on stuff.

 

blacked out the kragen covers and detailed the tank. afterwards i hated the way it looked though. and was able to fully flex it all out




















and got a few new toys



say what you want about badlands since it's a harbor freight brand. i've had 0 issues whatsoever out of it and i've used it alot. same with the tube notcher.
i hate the roller fairlead. you should see it now.. all beat and banged up and one roller is missing. thank you rocks!










and made a tire gate. though for now it doesn't swing so it's more a tire carrier.. and changed the design midway through.















































boogerwelds




and harlan bound for the april fools run