Run to the Hills! - Jason's Completely Stalled Colorado GTFO Build

Got a good look at the clearance between the upper shock mount crossmember and the bed and it’s exactly what I was hoping for. The bed is riding right on the crossmember, which is perfect because the stock bed support in the middle of the bed doesn’t touch the frame anymore with the 1” BL.





Now I just need to fab up some beefier 1x2 bed spacers that will replace the woefully insufficient ones from Daystar. @xtremewlr had a good idea about boxing them in to make them even stronger, so that’s likely what I’ll do. Since the bed support runners on the under side are crushed a bit by the Daystar spacers, I think I’ll just weld some 1/4” shim on that side to try to square up the bed again. We’ll see how it turns out...

 

Can you fit the resi through that opening between the frame and bed?

If so lets build some new hoses so your resi and adjusters are outside the frame and easier to get to and adjust on the fly.

 

Thanks, Tim.

I’m fairly certain that I can get the resi through there, but I’m not sure where it will fit outside. The bumper mount is right there but there might be enough room to sneak it there somewhere.

 

Ended up getting a bonus night of camping in this weekend after the grandparents took the kiddos of our hands. The lady and I decided to throw everything in the truck and just go for a drive and see if we could find a spot to camp and hang out. The best we could do on a Saturday afternoon was a spot right off of a major county road, but it turned out to be a great place with great views.

Sunday morning, our neighbors in the sites next to us all bailed out, so we relocated to a more private spot and just spent the day relaxing, eating good food, and drinking good beer.

The difference in the way the truck rides now is like night and day. The relocation and shock upgrade was absolutely worth it, as the truck can go much faster over worse terrain now. I do know that a custom set of heavier springs is in the future, but the Expos will get us through for a while. All in all, the truck is performing better than I imagined it would.

 

Got another two nights of camping in, this time with the whole family. We were lucky enough to get a great site at West Lake in Red Feather where we could play around on the water, fish and also ride bikes all over the place.

The Red Feather area is fast becoming one of my all time favorites. It just resonates with me in a big way, much like the Kolob Canyons section of Zion NP back home in Utah. I really like the ponderosa pine forests and all of the amazing rock formations. So incredible.

Being a fairly typical American family, we had plenty of shit to haul with us for our few days at the lake, including a couple 2-person inflatable kayaks. The truck was definitely loaded for bear, but aside from riding the bump stops a lot of the time, the truck did great. I will say that having the weight of the bikes cantilevered off of the back of the frame definitely led to some observed frame flex. It’s just too much leverage. Still, it’s worlds better after beefing everything up.

 

Life is good.

Saturday at six p.m. and I’ve got the place to myself.

 

Not the most badass mod by any stretch, but it makes me happy.

I picked up some basic Trico wiper blades and jumped up to 19” on the driver side and 18” on the passenger. Much better sweep now, and not a single streak, which is great because the expensive Bosch blades that were on there before sucked.

Here’s some shitty pics. If you look closely, you can see how much further out the coverage is.

 

Solo trip?

 

Yeah, it was spur of the moment. Definitely nice to have the time to myself.

The first part of that trail is really fun moderate crawling with some shelves and rock gardens and the last part is jaw-dropping views of Mt. Meeker, Longs Peak, and the Indian Peaks wilderness. I want to go back with a buddy next time and attempt the stair step obstacle that I had to bypass this time. Wish I had taken pics, but I was in a hurry because it was late in the day.

 

Dude some of my favorite trips have been solo. (Minus Macaroni.) awesome seeing you get out and enjoy the truck and time to yourself.

 

It’s been a good season so far! I need to link up with some of my buddies and do some strictly wheeling trips, but the camping so far has been really good.

 

The lady and I ran Pole Hill yesterday on our way into Estes Park and we had a blast! It’s another moderate trail that starts with a long rocky climb with tons of line choice possibilities, so it was cool to be able to pick the difficult lines knowing we could bail out to an easier line if we needed to.

The best part by far, though, was the scenery. We took the northern loop past the Notch and the views into the Estes valley were absolutely stellar, especially with the sun setting over Longs Peak and RMNP. We also found tons of really great camping spots that I marked on my map for future use. Definitely a trail and an area to go back and check out again.

 

Nothing to glamorous, but this has been a long time coming.

I finally got around to lowering and leveling my WRX bucket seats. I had discovered last year that they were both leaning toward the center of the cab pretty badly so I took a bunch of measurements, busted out the porta-band and welder, and got to work. The passenger side was simple as I only had to lower the height of the outside rail, but the driver side was a bit trickier. I ended up having to rework both rails, but it is so much better now. Both seats are perfectly plumb and as low as they can possibly get. That’s kind of important for a tall bastard like myself.

And thank god I could pull the rails off the seat frames because I was NOT looking forward to welding with them on the seats. I did have to tack them in place while they were in the cab, but I didn’t end up starting any fires, thankfully.

It was a fun little free project and my back has already thanked me in advance for finally getting it done.

 

Did you re-use the rails from the stock seats to put them on in the first place? Or adapted them to work with their current rails? I'm undecided since it seems every cars rails are taller than stock tacoma rails.

 

I got them from another local member, but I’m fairly positive that he had just modified the stock WRX rails. For whatever reason, though, the holes and everything lined up, but the seats both had a really bad lean toward the center console.

It’s much better now. After driving the truck this morning, it feels weird to not have all of my weight on my right hip. And I was able to pull an inch or so of height out of them so now my head isn’t less than an inch from the roof anymore.

 

That's the concern I have with the seats I am working on fitting, they are significantly taller but at the same time the seat height from the floor doesn't look that tall. So realistically it just looks like its got a taller back, but not taller bottom. I plan on trying to put them in as is (got them from another member who made them work but said they felt too tall), but also considering swapping rails to see if I can lower them.

 

I’ll bet you’re exactly right, Mike. The stock seats backs really aren’t that tall. Yours are from a Scion, right?

 

Can't believe no one made a comment about you takin your lady to pole hill

 

RSX