StevenP’s 37s + IFS ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ build

Ok, just got off the phone. They are indeed back ordered, and the reason is they are having a hard time sourcing cores. Doesn’t seem to necessarily be a supply chain issue, just a core issue. The gentlemen I spoke with said that they are typically able to keep up with demand but a few months ago cores dried up, and so they are a bit back logged. He said they are going to be making a change to the website soon to address the issue and also give an option for a work around, basically if you can provide a core they will discount a big chunk off the price. He also said its really hard to give an ETA for any orders right now because it all depends on the cores, sometimes they’ll be able to get a bunch at once, sometimes its just one.. when asked to take a stab he said he would imagine at least two months wait, but it could be longer, could be shorter, all depends on them finding cores.

EDIT: My conversation was based around their complete crawl box, so I’m not sure if your buddies adaptor delays are different and indeed a supply chain thing. I’ll cross my fingers for him, as well as myself, that all delays come to an end soon!

EDIT EDIT: On a positive note, I did put an order in for a triple stick from Rad Design, no delay there, and now I’m committed hahaha

 

Make sure you order the triple stick for a chain case and not for the gear driven rf1a case.

 

Thank you! I actually sent them an email to double check on which version I needed, and got a call back from Roy immediately (score one for customer service!) who was kind enough to patiently sit through a bunch of my stupid questions to ensure I got the right one.

 

Keep in mind, they will leak oil. They're a POS, crappy designed regardless if it's a twin or triple.

 

Hadn’t heard anything along those lines, I reckon I’ll just have to make it work, really want to keep everything up in the stock boot location.

 

All the guys I know leak, lol. From TG to FROR twin to RAD and Dave's triple.

 

I've got twins from Rad on my stock case and they don't leak. You just tie the breather port on the top into the stock breather line from the case. Then run that up into the engine bay.

I leaked from the crawl box shifter when I first installed it though because I didn't put the oil slinger in. lol

 

Luck of the draw I guess. Mine leaks, so is 2 of my other buddy. It's leaking from shift arm coming from the base.

 

Hot damn oversize me why not lol

 

Sub’d

 

It’s been a rough couple of days on my wallet;

Bought a crawl box from TG, sourced my own Tcase on eBay for cheap so they can build it right away (they are doing a 400 dollar credit for Tcase right now as they need them to catch up on orders), and bought triple sticks from Rad Design. Dual cases here I come! The cool thing is that I was able to compound TG’s 4th of July sale with their new subscriber discount, for a total discount of 27.76%, and I’ll be getting 400 back for the core.. so big big big savings on regular retail prices.

AAAAAND I found an absolutely killer deal on a supercharger, so I bought that too

I think I’m reaching the end of the rabbit hole, the only big ticket item left to pay for is gears. Going to have a lot of big install posts in the near future haha.

As far as this long weekends wrenching has gone, it’s definitely been slowed down while I took care of transactions and researched, but I’ve managed to get a few things done.

Completed:
Toyota Cam Bolts
Toyota Lower Ball Joints
Whiteline Lower Control Arm Bushings
Tundra Brake Upgrade

Heading back outside after this little break to do:
Flush & Bleed Brake Fluid
Flush Power Steering and clean Reservoir Filter
Magnefine In-line Power Steering Filter

If I have anymore light left I’ll attempt:
Grey Wire Mod
Wire 4/7 Pin Trailer Plug
Tidy / Loom Additional Wiring

I won’t be getting around to:
Pull Diffs
ARB Dual Compressor
Route Air / Bumper Chuck

I’ll post in more detail about the work I finished up later tonight or tomorrow, with pics. For now here are a couple teasers

 

Def in for a follow. I'll be doing 37" for snow, so I'm looking forward to seeing yours on them!!

And what's your IG handle? Always like 1st gens in my feed. Cheers!

 

Nice! I’ll try and be really thorough with what I do to make the 37s clear. There are some good resources I’ll be leaning on, but the more the merrier, and hopefully it can help out a little for anyone else considering them.

I don’t have any up on my personal IG, thinking of just making a dedicated account. I’ll definitely share when I get around to it.

 

My RAD doesn't leak. The stock crawl box shifter on the other hand...

 

LOL. Mines the opposite. Rf1a shifter don't leak except for the rad base.

 

Really really nice build so far!

Any chance you would know the dimensions on your sub box or could check? I asked a local shop to build one for my 04DC and they gave me a $1429.00 quote lol. I can build a lot of boxes on my own for that price and maybe even get one right!

Thanks!

 

I can certainly check dimensions for you. I can also reach out to Marv and see if he kept the dimensions to make more, I’m pretty sure he does that for future builds. I’m sure he’d be happy to whip one up for you for waaaaay less than you were quoted.

Also, pardon the delay on a more complete post about last weeks work, it’ll be up at some point in the next couple of days, busy busy!

 

Ok, so I had 5 days off last week for the 4th and I had given myself a big list of things I wanted to get done. I did not get through nearly as much as I wanted, but I did get through some tasks I really wasn’t looking forward to so I went back to work on Monday pretty happy. A lot of time during that period was spent researching and gathering more goodies at big discounts, I saved a pretty hefty chunk of change, so I figured it more than paid for my loss in hourly mechanical wages

Now to the work. I really only completed things on the front suspension and did the brake upgrade.

I started by getting the front of the truck on jacks and taking the wheels off. I use 6 ton jack stands, but I may need to step them up now that I’m on 37s, I had to improvise quite a bit to get it high enough to take the wheels off.

From there I started to work my way to the LCA. Disconnected the LBJ via 4 bolts to the knuckle, disconnected the outer tie rod end, took out the lower shock mount, and lifted the knuckle and what was left attached out of the way. I also disconnected the steering rack so I could have better access to the rear adjusters and room to install the new bolts when the time came.

Now I was ready to start removing the cam bolts and adjusters. They didn’t look tooooo bad, so I did a little prayer and got to it.



Unfortunately all 4 were headaches. The adjusters were pretty frozen to the LCA mounts, but came off without too much issue, other than the driver side rear (near the steering rack), that one was a real pain to pop off. The cam bolt sleeves were all frozen to the bushings.



After trying a couple various methods of removing the sleeves without any luck, I grabbed my Hackzall and got to cutting . I used Milwaukee’s carbide blades, but was really wishing I had a diablo carbide blade to try, seems people get through tasks pretty easy with those.. I went through 3 blades for the 8 cuts, and it took a pretty good chunk of time. But finally things were free!


You can see it wasn’t really too bad on the mounting points here, but the sleeves in the bushing is what will get you.


After I cleaned all that up with a steel brush, steel wool, and some brake cleaner (sorry forgot to get picture, but it’s nothing super awesome) I moved to pressing out the old bushings. I used the bottle jack/heat method, and it was SUPER easy. Just put the bottle jack between the arms, got it centered, and started to load it up. You don’t want to load it up too much as you can risk bending the arms which would make re-installing difficult or flat out ruin the arm, just get it good and loaded up, but don’t bust out like Hercules


Next comes the fun part. I grabbed my heat source, just a cheapo propane torch set up, and started working the metal that houses the bushing, doing my best to heat it evenly on all sides. After its good and hot you start playing with the jack some more. Some of the bushings started to come out on their own with the initial load and applied heat, some required more load after heat, they all came out easily with no big explosions or rocket shots.


Heres the disaster once removed.


While I let things cool down I threw my Durobumps on, and removed the LBJs.


There was a bit of grease coming out of the passenger side LBJ, but play was still good, the driver side was also good, and didn’t have any grease issues. I’ll probably clean these up and keep them around for spares.

Now that the bushing side of the LCAs was all cooled off I cleaned them up and opened up my whiteline bushings I was going to replace them with, set everything in order and started assembling them.


I greased the inner sleeves, and the poly bushings and pressed the sleeves in by hand, easy-peasy. Next up was pressing the bushings into the LCA’s. I live in a trailer park and don’t have much space, just a little storage shed and my driveway, so unfortunately I don’t have a nice workbench and vise for pressing bushings in. I instead grabbed the big bolt and nut from the steering rack I disconnected, and a couple sleeves from my press kit, a few washers to take out extra length and I was ready to give it a whirl. I should also mentioned I applied copper anti-seize to pretty much everything, really don’t want any issues with adjustment in the future.


The contraption worked like a champ and all 4 bushings went in without a hitch.


I took the LCA’s back to the truck, unwrapped the new cam adjusting hardware, and put it on. It was a bit tricky getting the washer on the outboard sides of the LCA in place.. basically tapped it in as lightly as I could until I could get a screwdriver on it from the frames mounting cut out, then I use the screwdriver to center it with the adjuster sleeve. It’ll make sense when you’re doing it lol. Once all the washers were in I assembled the rest of it.

Running the 37s I knew I wanted to move the wheel as far forward and give myself as much castor as possible, so I adjusted them accordingly, rear adjuster all the way out, forward adjuster all the way in. I later used my SPC UCA’s to get a little more castor and set my camber, and tried my best to set the toe by eye. It’s not perfect but its close enough for a shop to deal with when I’m able to drive in for a real alignment.

Next up was putting the new LBJs on. I ran into a weird issue, you can read more about in this separate thread I posted here. In a nutshell, a few pieces of the brand new OEM hardware stretched and or broke. No biggie, grabbed some of the old bolts and used those, no issues. Teaser shot, more in the other thread.

I put everything back together, shock, LBJ, TRE, Steering Rack, and moved on to the brakes which I’ll get to in the next post.

 

The Tundra brake upgrade was pretty straight forward.

I started by removing the old caliper and rotor.


Once the old was out, I put the rotor on the hub to see where I needed to pull or trim the dust shield.


I probably could’ve gotten away with a lot less trimming than I did, and I apologize for not taking pictures of any of that in process. But the dust shield is pretty easy to work with, a good pair of pliers to pull it back in places, and a cutting device to trim, I used a dremel with cut off wheel (the little wheel of death)

Next up was checking out the caliper and my banjo bolt. I did not go with the kit from LCE or whomever else offers one. I instead chose to drill mine out. I started small and just worked my way up until I felt the shape was similar to the cone inside of the caliper. Very easy to do, and saved a bit of money (which as you’ll see in the next post disappeared anyways). If you go this route just be sure to get that banjo cleaned out really well, don’t want any shavings left in there and getting into the caliper!



I slapped in my new SS extended brake lines from Marlin, used their washers, and hooked it all up.


Same on the other side


After that I flushed and bleed the system. I did Rear Passenger, Rear Driver, LPSV, Front Driver, Front Passenger based on run distance from the master cylinder. Unfortunately I did not have any clear hose or a clear container, so I was a little blind, but I just pumped more to make sure all the old fluid went out. I was also doing this solo, so I made sure to run the bleed line above the bleed valve so any air would trap itself at the top.


Now, the strange thing is the brake pedal feel.. (I don’t have seats in the truck nor could I find a milk crate or something similar to try driving it, so probably not the best sampling..). The pedal feels significantly softer, things seem to be working fine, but the pedal is really soft until about half way down and then firms up. I know I’ve stumbled across this issue happening before, I’ll have to find that thread and look into again because I don’t want my brake pedal feeling like that.

It was getting later into the evening at this point and I had to be up at 5am the next day to drive 5 hours (each way) for a part that’ll I’ll post about next. I didn’t have a lot of time to get into much else, so I figured I’d just change the engine oil and the transmission pan fluid since that was all due anyways.


Unfortunately, while doing the transmission fluid I found out I had stripped the drain plug last time I did it, guess I over torqued it, oh well. I was able to plug it up so it’s not open to the elements, and I’m not too torn up about it, as I’ll explain in the next post.

 

So I told you all about how I had planned to get a lot more done, but I lost time to research and purchases. Some of this is also further back in this thread, but I’ll sum it all up.

I got an email from Trail Gear (and all the other connected companies as well) letting me know about their 4th of July sale, which was 17.76% off. I’ve been wanting to get a crawl box so I went and checked out how much the sale affected price, it was 400 dollars off retail! I started digging into research on all that and called TG to answer a bunch of my newbie questions. After talking with Lincoln, who was very knowledgeable and super patient with me, I was in. I then spoke with Nathan, who like Lincoln, also knows his stuff, and we spoke about availability... which there was none. They had no cores to build into new units, and he told me that were launching a program to offer 400 dollars for a core. So I got the details on what core I would need to expedite the process and went hunting. Found a few viable options on eBay pretty quick, and swooped up the cheapest one, at just a hair over 200 dollars. Now I was $400 dollars off retail with their sale, I was another $200 ahead having found my own core for them to use, and then Nathan informed me I can subscribe to their newsletter for another 10% off coupon that I could use with the sale, so another $200+. I locked in my order happy as could be saving over 800 dollars off a new crawl box I used the 27.76% off to also procure TGs dual case crossmember at a massive discount. OH and I ordered a triple stick set up from Rad Design to keep everything in the cabin clean and keep my cup holders! The only thing left to get for that project is another transmission mount for the crawl to rest on the crossmember with.

While I was hunting for the core I came across a listing for a 1st gen supercharger for 1500 dollars, I’ve never seen a supercharger listed that low so I reached out to the guy and started asking questions. I was mainly concerned with how complete it was and its’ condition. The guy told me it was his spare after an earlier mishap with a rebuild on another unit, and it only had about 25 miles on it after a rebuild, and that it was priced so low because he was in a bit of a pinch for money. It was a pretty complicated story so I won’t add all the details to this already sprawling post, but the guy was super nice and upfront about things, so I didn’t really have any reason to not believe him. Unfortunately it was about 5 hours away, but at that price I figured it was time for a little road trip.

When we meet up and I got to inspect it I was really happy I made the drive. It was missing a little hardware, hoses, had the old style tensioner, but the main unit was in great shape and spun well. I priced out everything that I would need to have a really nice set up, mostly stuff from URD, and it still was under the price of the package deal from URD, so we made the deal and I drove home with this and a box of other parts.


I then ordered up the rest of the stuff I had priced out at URD. My goal here is to have a really complete and thorough supercharger set up that runs efficiently and safely. I don’t want to have to do this job more than once, I want to get it all set up so that it’s just routine maintenance afterwards. With that in mind here is what I have on the way from URD.

URD 7th Injector
URD 2.2” Pulley
URD Crankshaft Pulley
URD Tensioner Pulley
Magnuson Supercharger Hardware Kit
Magnuson Supercharger Dynamic Tensioner Kit
Magnuson Supercharger Belt
Doug Thorley Headers
Innovate PSB-1 Wideband AFR/Boost Gauge

I will also be getting a Methanol Injection Kit from Snow Performance. I’ll be going with their Stage 2.5 set up with the VC-50 controller. This will not only get me more power out of the SC, but it’ll help with reliability and longevity, as it keeps temperatures down and helps with AFR and pinging.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do from the cats back for my exhaust. I thought about Borla because I do love the sound, but I also don’t want the exhaust hanging that low on the backside when I wheel, I like the way the exhaust stays up high right now with the cut off I have from installing my suspension. I will probably just get a flowmaster 44 or super 10 and have a shop swap it in place of my stock muffler to get that deeper rumble and keep things up high. It’d be a shame to chop up a new shiny cat back.

In the post above I mentioned stripping my transmission drain plug and that I wasn’t too torn up about it.. this is why.. I read about the supercharger possibly wearing down the transmission, and read that the solution was to have the valve body reworked. IPT Performance Transmissions was heavily recommended, so I gave them a call. I spoke with Jon (John?), and he was awesome. Really took the time to break things down as to why the damage occurs to the transmission when you add a supercharger, and why the valve body corrects it. It coincided with what I had read, so I made an order. So I will be pulling the pan and the valve body, shipping the valve body off to IPT, and I can inspect the pan better once its off. If the threads in the pan are fine I’ll reuse it with a new plug, if they are also not in great shape then I’ll make a decision between a heli-coil, keen-sert, or a new pan. Whichever way I go, the pans coming off for the valve body anyways and whatever needs to be done will be easier.

My wallet hates me, but life is short! Hoping I can find some local members here that have experience installing cases to help me out. I should be fine with the supercharger, but the crawl box definitely intimidates me.

In any case, I shouldn’t have any issue rolling this rig on 37s once it’s finally ready to go!