'98 Reg Cab 3-Link SAS

Yup this. My trail grapps didn’t flex much at first but after 1 or 2 times being aired down they were wayyy better.

 

Sounds like those tires ruined your truck! You better trade me so you have a working rig again!

 

I've been using them for a while and always air down to 6-8psi. They are stiff as always. Haven't tried what slander said about driving them deflated on the road though

lol

they are good tires both on/off road. They actually ride very nice on the highway......but they are crazy heavy and stiff!

 

Hey how do you like those TG 5" springs? Any wrap?

 

Haven’t noticed any axle wrap yet.

Pros:

• TONS of flex.
• Good highway manners
• Relatively cheap
• Seem very well built, very similar looking to Allpro springs if you are familiar with those. Many thin leaves packed together.

Cons:

• Waaaaaay too much lift. Seriously, i think it was more than the advertised 5”. had I known, I would have ordered the 3” springs instead. Thought about removing a couple of leaves, but didn’t because as it is they are very soft spring packs. Ended up getting a shorter shackle instead. Leaf packs have settled about 1.25”, so now it is all good.
• Longer than factory springs so it requires new spring hangers. Not a big deal really, but they are not a direct swap.
• Too soft, might not be suitable if you have a lot of weight on the bed, or if you have a high hp/torque engine.

Overall, i really like them. They work well in my application. They remind me so much of the 3” allpro springs I had with IFS.

 

Great response man! Really appreciate it. Thinking about going to the 3” tg leafs from my current Chevy 63s. I’ve hated them since day 1.

Looks like I may just be doing that.

 

You’re welcome!

Most guys I’ve met that did the chevy 63” swap hated them.

I think you’ll be fine with the TG 3” springs. Shipping is killer though. They are heavy!

 

Exo Cage!

I have not updated this thread in a very long time.

After a few scary situations wheeling, I decided that it was time for a cage.

I debated building an internal roll cage. At 6’ tall, I am not the tallest guy around. However, these 1st gen reg cab trucks feel a bit too tight to me as they are. An internal cage will only make things worse.

One the other hand, I also hesitated about an exo cage for a simple reason. Most exo cages one sees out there look terrible! I know a cage it’s all about function, but I would not want my truck looking like a jungle gym on wheels either.

Eventually decided to go with an exo cage. Before starting the project, I spent months online looking for pictures of exo cages. I found some that looked half decent but not enough to convince me.

Then I came across @allenfab exo cage right here on tacomaworld. That was the winning design! He did such a phenomenal job. His low-profile design was very tasty. So I copied it with a few differences. It was very sad when I recently learned that he decommissioned his truck. It was such an inspiration for mine.

Anyway, this was my first time building a cage, plus I had no help. It was also my first time also using a tube bender. Let me tell you… the learning curve with a tube bender can be really steep the first time around!

I followed some online tutorials from pirate4X4 and youtube and started practicing with some scrap pieces. @thegame also gave me some pointers talking off line. That helped a lot. But building a low profile exo cage that looks relatively good is challenging. In fact, this is the reason why most exo cages look like crap.

At first, I wasted way too much time trying to build the entire cage beginning to end on the truck. That did not work too well. Then I decided to mock and tack weld the cage on the truck, remove for final welding on the ground, and then reinstall on the truck. Should have done that from the beginning! Oh well, live and learn.

Parts List

-Five sticks of 1.50” X .120 wall DOM tube. It was approximately 120 feet total.
-JD2 Model 3 bender, custom mounted on a harbor freight engine stand
-JD2 1.50” die with a 5.5” Center Line Radius (CLR), 180 degrees.
-Swag Offroad machined tubing bender air/hydraulic mount
-8 ton air/hydraulic mount from harbor freight

Many people choose 1.75” X .120 wall for cages. I went with 1.50” X .120 wall. The die with the 5.5 CLR was a good compromise to get the bends close enough to the cab. All parts of the cage are 1.50” DOM, with 1” X .120 wall gussets in key areas.

JD2 Model 3 Bender

This model is now discontinued. Really great tool, all American made. There's a tube bender in there somewhere lol


Instead of mounting it on the floor on a fixed location, I decided to mount it on an engine stand to make it mobile. In order to the tube bender work in this configuration, it must be converted to full hydraulic, or air-over-hydraulic. I chose the later to keep costs down.

Air-over-hydraulic is slow, but it works well. Full hydraulic is nice and fast! But I couldn't justify the expense. It is probably a must for fabricators and others who do this kind of work all the time. To make the air-over-hydraulic conversion, I used a custom mount from Swag Offroad.





This is the 1.5" die. The die cost more than the bender itself . These dies are so well machined. JD2 makes good stuff. I also bough a 1" die.



Learned the hard way that it is way cheaper to buy DOM in full sticks vs smaller pieces. Got five sticks, more than I needed, but saved money that way.


Working on the main hoop. This is really a two-man job. Gotta make sure all the bends are level. This is trickier to do than it seems when working by yourself. Had to improvise with tall jack stands as my helpers lol. But it was a PITA moving that long piece in/out of the bender a bunch of times by myself while ensuring everything was level all the time in all areas.



Mock up of the main hoop. It took several tries until I got it where I wanted. Gotta go slow, under-bending is always better than the risk of over-bending. If you over-bend once, especially on a piece with multiple bends, even if you over-bend just a little bit, the entire piece gets ruined. The one are over-bent throws off all the other bends, then nothing fits where it should be. Ended up doing two iterations of the main hoop with the bends angled slightly differently between the two versions. Kept one hoop as spare for a future project.


Mock up of the back pieces.



Mock up of the top pieces.



Removed the top piece to fully weld it off the truck.


Then removed the entire cage in one piece for final welding - minus one of the front legs that fell off when I removed the cage from the truck LOL.


Some reinforcements.



Decided to tie the front legs both to the rock slides and to the frame through the shock hoops.



Paint!!



Finished.



Used gloss black paint for the outer parts and flat black for inner parts for a more stealth look in there.





I did a windshield cross bar, but ended up removing it. In order for the bar to clear the wipers and the hood, it had to be placed kind of high, and it obstructed my vision field too much. I drive the truck on the street so it bothered me. Who knows, maybe I would have gotten used to it eventually.

Coincidently, all of a sudden, soon after I finished the cage my windshield develop a long crack! So good thing I removed the cross bar because now I have to replace the windshield, which is the original one BTW...23 year old windshield! Can't believe it lasted that long.

Overall, I am satisfied with the end results. With a mandrel bender I would have been able to get all parts of the cage to follow all body lines perfectly. But I got them as close as I could with just the tube bender.

Oh...and I did the whole thing without a tube notcher. Watched a couple of videos about how to notch tubes without a notcher. Did all notches with an angle grinder . It works pretty fast once you get a hang of it.

 

Looks good bud, truck looks great as well. The holes through the fenders are clean. Did you run supports down to the frame in the back or is it just mounted to the sliders?

 

The holes through the frame look better from a distance

It is just mounted it to the sliders in the back.... for now.

Running supports to the frame in the back would require me to butcher the bed, which I don't really want to do because I am considering a flat bed. Keeping the bed intact will make it easier to sell when I go flat bed.

But yes, when I go flat bed, it will add more supports and triangulation tying things to the frame and bed itself.

 

My man just want everbody to be safe lol. You did good.

 

I appreciate that!

It was hard to find an exo cage idea with all points connected to the frame front/rear with the factory bed. Too many limitations.

Flat bed on the horizon. Work in progress!

 

Nicely done!! I would personally see if you can beef up where the sliders mount to the frame somehow. I tore a slider off a few years ago after I was wedged against a tree and went down a ledge and it peeled it right off the frame.

 

Thanks man!

Appreciate the feedback. You are 100% right, at a minimum that area should get more beef.

There's a little bit of room down there to add more reinforcement. I'll do that when the weather cools off here in AZ lol.

I use my bed a lot to haul things around. It's the #1 reason I've never bobbed it either. I use every single inch of that bed quite frequently haha. So I'm still doing some brainstorming around that, flat bed, etc. Definitely not going the truggy route for now. But with the bed there there's not a lot of room to do stuff. Oh well...

 

Bobbed beds are stupid anyway! There I said it, my hot take for the day LOL!!! Honestly it eliminates a lot of the advantages to wheeling a truck, at least in my mind.

I've gone back and forth on a flatbed but I always come back to just leaving it as it and let it get mangled up. As long as the taillights are intact and it holds stuff I'm happy at this point.

 

I think they look cool. Form over function, right?

 

I finally feel vindicated!! LOL! Thought I was the only person who felt that way about bobbed beds. You made my day with that post hahaha!

Like you, I've wrestled with the flat bed idea for quite a bit actually. I've mentioned it so many times already on this thread haha. The exo cage pushed me into considering it big time. The rear part of the cage, although it looks simpler than the front, it was more challenging because of the bed.

With the front, you just remove the fenders and stuff things in there. With the rear, not as simple if you want to avoid butchering the bed like in my case. And once you do that...might as well go flat bed from there.

But still..Love the factory bed !! Mine has some big dents that could be repaired, but whatever, I keep using it as it is.

 

Fuck bobbed beds.

 

Bobbed beds are cool when theyre painted, And look stock other that they look like shit. Flatbed are the only way to roll. Literally they help strengthen an exocage especially if you tie the bed to the frame.

Sell the bed now and hammer down

 

Looking good, glad I could be of some inspiration

but I’d like to add… FUCK flat beds/tube beds. One of my biggest regrets was doing mine. I wish I would have just kept the stock bed since I just essentially built the tube bed to do the same thing the regular bed did . I didn’t regret the bed bob though, it was nice for wheeling but I will say that as time went on, I sometimes wish I didn’t do it for cargo purposes obviously. Oh, and also FUCK a dovetailed bed. That is all