Kyle's SR Access Cab Build

Sick. I’d buy that t-harness if you sold it as an add-on.

 

Front suspension is about to be finished pretty soon! Just need to find time to slap these on. Excited to have the entire suspension done.

 

Any issues with your 0-offset Method's hitting the front shock reservoirs?

I keep getting conflicting information about certain tire/wheel combos rubbing. Going 34's with 0-offset method's, just trying to figure out if I need to run a spacer or not.

 

The wheel rubbing the resi? I've never heard of that. I've heard of certain offset wheels (typically stock) rubbing against the spindle gusset, but 0's have juuuuuust enough clearance to not need a spacer to clear. I have about 1/2" clearance from wheel to gusset and since it's a non-flex area it should be good. The wheel isn't anywhere near the resi I don't think.

Reminds me to update:
I got one side done and installed Working by myself and haven't had a chance to get the second side done... maybe today or tomorrow. Luckily this truck just sits during the week. Hardest part was popping the axle splines out; I'm not the weakest guy in the world and had to take a dead blow hammer and swing it as hard as I could at the axle (with nut still partially on) x30.

 

Ya I've read in numerous threads that the tires will rub on the reservoirs with a 0-offset setup. Certain size tires probably magnify this. I'm planning on 34's, 285/75/17 so just wanted to get spacers ordered and wheel studs ordered if that was going to be the case. Really didn't want to go through the hassle of wheel studs and all that unless I had to - I'm pretty set on Method's so I'll make them work. I'll circle back when you get the truck on the road as I'm about a month or two out - waiting on some rear leafs.

 

Finally wrapping up my suspension project. I guess it’s common for the spindle gussets to press on the rotor dust shield and it makes a terrible noise. I had the wheels off 3 times trying to pry the shield away and I finally broke down, pulled the rotor off, and beat the shit out of it with a hammer. The dying cat noise is gone now! I could only see the rub point with the rotor off.


So far the 2.5’s ride great! I’m going to give it a week to settle, adjust height, then get an alignment.

 

Oh boy…

 

At first glance I thought you got new roller blade wheels

 

I’m doing the same thing but with 10
I’ve gotta figure out all of the measurements for the wire

 

I mean… I could use them for that I’ll bet

Shouldn’t be too hard. Just time consuming. I tracked down the bullet connectors they use and am making a harness for them. I might be swapping the lights out for something better later in the year. Just using these as placeholders.

 

The mock-up:


Waiting on a few custom brackets and my Redarc BCDC before I start crimping battery lugs and the AMI fuse holders. This will be a very clean setup! I’ll have to modify the factory battery cables, unfortunately. I was hoping my Northstar AGMs would have the posts flipped, but no. NBD, just more work.

 

Nice and compact!


Now just waiting on brackets and I’ll be ready to install.

 

This reminded me... have you had any problems with your rear reservoirs being held on by nylon zip-ties? (it looks like that is what's securing them)
Maybe think about changing to the metal worm-gear bands your front reservoirs use. ???

 

Nope! No issues. The hose is pretty rigid, so once you make that specific bend, it's not going to slip vertically. The tie-down is just to prevent lateral shifting, and a zip tie is perfectly fine. I kind of prefer the black of the zip tie

 

I agree with the looks part (both smooth and black).

But the nylon does become brittle with age (more so for the cheap chinese made ones). Of course heat, UV, vibration, etc. shortens their life even more.
I was just curious if that location (rear) was any worse on them and if they had failed already. Glad to hear all is well!

 

Dual battery setup is coming along. Custom brackets are trickling in. Here's the one for the Slee that I designed around the Bussmann modular fuse holders:


It'll get securely thru-bolted to the battery tie-down using the j-hooks. I have one side (only 1 fuse holder for now) for the crank battery accessories, and one side (3 holders) for the house battery accessories. What's cool is the thing is modular, so I just need 1 main power feed to the input side of the holders and I can bridge it across multiple fuse holders:


If I need to add or subtract I just pop a different bus bar in there. Time to crimp some custom battery cables and start running them through the engine bay. The install is going to be the very last thing I do since it's kind of involved to get the tray in there. I want to get all of my cables made so as soon as I start drilling rivets I don't need to do anything else but plug it all in and get moving.

 

Another unexpected mod

 

I hopefully have mine by the end of the month!

I guessing you found a great facebook/craigslist deal

 

Interested to get more details on your bed lights.

 

Finished up my multi-day pain in the butt. Looking around I could never find a dual battery setup for the non-TRD trucks that was worth a damn, so I made my own. For the battery tray I went with one from Slee. Their tray seems to be the best for side-by-side mounting. There's a major problem with other side-by-side trays, such that the sheet metal underneath the stock battery mount starts to crack. The Slee mount comes with a side bracket to help re-distribute that weight better (it transfers the load from the side of the sheet metal to a nicer flat spot), and from what I understand I shouldn't have an issue with cracking. Everything from then-on was fully custom.



For my batteries I chose 2x Group 35 Northstar AGMs. Only problem was that I had to re-do some of my factory wiring so that I could reach the flipped terminal locations I didn't catch when I ordered them . Anyway, I now have a longer + going to the alternator/starter and the under hood fuse box. I also have a longer main ground cable going to the alternator and a new chassis ground. For those curious, the larger cables in your truck are 2 awg and the smaller are 4.

I picked a new chassis ground. The idea is to have a 1000W inverter off of my new house battery, so a 1/0 ground needs to touch the chassis. The factory location (green) gets crowded really quickly with all of the stuff I put on there. My military battery terminals also limit some of the space up there. For ease of use I used the chassis ground closer to the bottom of the tray (red). Works perfectly fine and my fat ass cables don't get in the way of anything.



I worked on some custom brackets to hold some modular Bussmann fuse holders. They're pretty sweet. You can get busbars for them and string together 4-5 at a time and just feed the block with a single cable coming from each battery. It really cleans things up and makes it so your battery terminals don't get crowded with junk. Basically it attaches to the top of the j-bolts, but for security I added some jam nuts to the Slee tie-down first and wrenched the batteries home tight so they can't go anywhere.



Then the bracket goes on top of the tie-down with more jam nuts, but I don't have to crank those down so hard. It's just a thin piece of aluminum. Here it is all hooked up.



I think its pretty sleek! There aren't a bunch of cables criss-crossing over each other like some of the off-the-shelf solutions I've seen. This project took me 2 days to complete, mostly because I was crimping the cables by hand. Each cable run was OCD'd to make sure it won't rub or bridge something stupid, I cut the cables to specific lengths to avoid excessive looping, loom was used on really large cables, high-heat tape keeps my loom tight, things are labeled, etc. The whole thing is controlled by a RedArc BCDC 1220 mounted on the passenger side. For some reason my truck has 3 threaded holes over there, so I used 2 for mounting and 1 to act as a ground. If you have those holes on your truck it's an M6 bolt, btw. Different than the driver's threaded holes.



So far I have my BCDC hooked up and my Bussmann RTMR on my house battery. I left a few open fuse holders on the tie-down bracket for future expansion. I'm planning a 1000W inverter and another Bussmann (or GEP48) on the house battery, and I have to re-do my ARB compressor wiring which will eventually connect to the crank battery.

Glad this project is over.