Fitting 35’s with minimal trimming NOW ADDING LONG TRAVEL AND 934 CV’s

Pending the results on @Evenflow truck something will become available especially because I understand a cage is out of reach for most

 

That’s great to hear. I’d buy it right now if I could. Anxious to see what you come up with. I think a lot of other folks would be, too.

 

Awesome there is a lot of contractor brothers in here! Yeah it’s really crazy right now. Hope it gets better in the future. We had to stock pile 100’s and thousands feet of wire because we were scared wire was going to shoot up so much we’d loose our ass on the job. Crazy times. All we can do is push forward and keep learning from Harry what we need to do to make our Tacoma’s awesome.

 

Do you have pictures of how the interior turned out? Never saw any updates on the interior pictures.

 

Alright fellas. At a certain point, I'm pretty sure each of you has asked yourself, "is this the right platform? Am I building up the right truck?"

Just so you know I'm not trolling but asking a serious question, I've been a Toyota guy my whole life. There's always been at least one Toyota 4x4 in our driveway my entire life. My wife and I both drive 2nd gens. But, when the 2nd gens came out in 05, I remember crawling under one and not being impressed. Weak looking frame, fragile looking LCA tabs, unboxed UCA's, kinda retarded exhaust crossover, super retarded leaf hangers, ugly interior, worst seats/driving position of any Toyota and at that point, the composite bed wasn't proven yet. But my girlfriend that would become my wife drove one and it has been such a good truck, we decided to buy a 2014 a few years ago and phase her 2006, 230k mile DCSB out (but it still continues to be such a reliable, cheap to own vehicle, we'll probably end up keeping it another 5 years).

I digress, but while it's awesome that Harry is building all of this cool shit to upgrade a lot of the weak points of this platform and while I'm a firm believer in the Built Not Bought ideology in every vehicle I own, I read through threads like this, especially the ones that talk to how bad these frames truly are, and ask myself, "did I chose the right truck?"

Those of you who have gone down this road, have or are serious about building them in to something truly special, what is your rationale?

 

Build the truck to do what you want. You are correct...a Toyota is good at a lot of things, but in order to be great at something, modifications are required. Toyota is in the sweetspot to start towards a direction (crawler, runner, overlander *eye roll*).

If I were able to go back in time and give myself advice, it would be to either keep it mild or go wild and stupid. Commit, because figuring it out later is just a waste of time and money.

Be reasonable with your expectations and expect everything to cost 2x as much so when it does you'll feel smart for guessing right. Make a budget, be honest with yourself and keep a spreadsheet.

 

can confirm ~60mph wiggle in the walk, according to my precision butt-accelerometer and laser focused side view mirror aimed at the topline of the bed.

The only thing stronger than a triangle is more triangles... there's no other way that's sane/affordable unless anyone has access to space/airframe goodies for the cause

 

I'll answer. For me it's pushing the limits what can I absolutely get out of this and "fix" most of the issues. It's fun to put this truck on trails that guys are like that isn't going up that and then I do. When you're told you can't you want to do so. Every "on-road" vehicle has their weak spots for doing what they aren't intended which is take people from a-b. If you wanted something to be the best offroad vehicle build a buggy for whatever you like to do, want the fastest drag car build a tube chassis door slammer, and on. Its kinda one of those deals.

 

I was always told you couldn’t have reliability and a true do it all build. So I built an extremely reliable all around rig. Cool thing where I live is you can do it all in one day. Crawl, play in mud if you like and do high speed stuff on our thousands of snowmobile trails. I plan to continue building until reliability long term starts to disappear. Then I’ll really build it.

 

Honestly, I never noticed the frame flex until after I put the lower pivots and slide rack on. I’ve always noticed flat spotted tires in the morning, but the frame flex puts it on a whole new level. I don’t know why the front being stiff would impact the rear, but seemingly it did.

 

More triangles? A solid square/cube contains infinite triangles

not always better though, obviously.

 

I did that a lot before deciding to do LT. I could have picked up a decent truggy and trailer for what I’ve put in the Tacoma and had a much much more capable off-roader. But that’s all it would have been good for. I went back and forth on it and decided at this point in life with a wife and baby I would get more enjoyment out of a modified “do it all” vehicle.

I am constantly getting house stuff, making some deliveries, getting supplies, riding the kid around etc. It’s nice to be able to hit the trails or a park in the same vehicle. I didn’t have to bother with trailering it back and forth and the baby and wife can go, too. Not that easy with a trailered rig. Seems like a whole ordeal to go wheel and it better be for the whole day. Half day trips are easy with this.

I’m pretty certain a truggy/crawler/bouncer will be in my scope once the house is finished. At that point I will have hopefully wheeled the taco enough to know what I want in a desicated off-roader. For now, I just want to put the finishing touches (like shitty frame wobble) on the truck that make it more enjoyable to drive and save back for something in the future.

 

the reason is that the front end is far more rigid now so the energy skips past the front end and is focused toward the mid section

 

All I know is it shakes like a dog shitting razor blades, especially when the tires are flat spotted a little.

 

My sliders are bent up into the pinchweld of the cab nowadays, and I've noticed how much less the cab/bed flex from each other. Crazy how much the stock body mounts allow, on top of an already flexy frame.

 

so what's the next logical step if not caging
After installing the pivots

 

You wait till Harry is done testing and then if he launches a product to fix it you buy his solution because it'll be thought out, tested and verified to work.

 

Next logical move would be stiffening the chassis up via boxing and beefing up X members and ideally adding extra bracing.

 

Have you guys seen how the full size guys flex the whole truck when they’re wheeling? Yes my Tacoma suffers from the same since I beefed up the front but ours is mild compared to those guys.

 

That’s why we do this to all the full size trucks we do