Blumpkinson's Road Trip Build

One of the most recent pictures of my truck.



So I bought my tacoma back in 09 and never got around to making one of these. I bought the truck with 68,000 and it’s somewhere in the 150K range now. I've been beating this truck up since the day I bought it and it hasn't once let me down. The paint has definitely seen better days, but everything else is solid.

I recently completed a 30 day road trip across the country in it, which started in NJ and ended in Portland, OR. The majority of the pictures will be from the road trip. Somehow, I always manage to forget to take pics during modifications (something about being covered in grease/rust and in a huge time crunch).



The current Setup:

Suspension:
OME 882
OME Dakar w/ AAL

Wheels/Tires:
American Racing
285/75/16 BFG AT KO
Spidertrax 1.25" Wheel Spacers

Armor:
Demello Sliders
Custom Skid Plate
Custom Bed Rack

Interior:
3D printed Inductive Phone Holder (Thanks Shapeways!)
Wet Okole Seat Covers
Kenwood Headunit
Alpine speakers
Whistler 400W Power Inverter (Mounted under the seat, this thing is badass)


Misc:
Safari Snorkel
AFE Pro Dry S


On to the Pictures!!!!

First day I got her





Some more older ones






Oh Boy






Making the Bed Rack at my old job. I wasn't able to bend the tube, so I decided to fake the bends with a few angled cuts. It was good practice for welding, this rack took some serious time to make after hours. All of the pieces of the hoops were TIG welded, then I MIG welded the hoops down to the 2 sections of right angle steel.





I then decided to make a skid plate after my factory one was ripped off back at Wharton State Forest. I decided to weld a piece of C Channel (can't find any pics of this) across the ends of the frame. This gave me a nice flat surface to bolt my skid plate to as well as strengthen the front of the truck. I have since rounded the corners over and included a hole for draining the oil.






Here is my 3D printed inductive phone holder. I threw this design together pretty quickly in SolidWorks while on lunch break and ordered it in Strong White & flexible from Shapeways. The 3D printed part fastens to a mount I purchased from ProClip. The holder allows room for an inductive charger, so all I have to do is slip the phone into the holder and it starts charging. I'll get some pictures of it installed when I get around to cleaning the inside of the truck out.





I then installed the coileovers, aal and the wheel spacers. Along with some BFG 285/75/16.





Now onto the Road Trip!!! The trailer loaded up weighed somewhere between 1500 and 2000lbs. The truck definitely felt the weight and struggled on almost every uphill. We were constantly downshifting and had to go into 2nd gear quite a few times to make it up hills. The average mpg was right around 13.... It was a damn expensive trip in gas.





The bed is loaded up with 2 5gal gas containers, 7 gal water container, waterproof husky box for food, coleman cooler, all of my tools(mechanics tools, axe, shovel, bolt cutters, electric impact gun, etc..) and a misc tool box.





The first leg of the trip was a cannonball run from NJ to the Badlands, SD in right around a day and a half. This drive was pretty miserable until we got the first glimpse of the Badlands. The Badlands is a place everyone should visit if they can, it looks other worldly.













Some shots of Devils Tower and Yellowstone.




There were a bunch of people out climbing Devils Tower, definitely cool to sit back and watch them.






















I have several thousand pictures from the trip and will add more as I sort through them.

 

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!!!

 

Looks good. Did you use the nitrochargers with the OME 882's?

 

Thanks. Yeah I used the nitrochargers and got everything from Wheelers, they're a great company to work with. I haven't made a bumper for the truck yet so the springs are definitely on the stiff side, but i'm sure that'll change.