Fully polished TuRD

Literally the same fuckin problem Ruffstuff left me with

 

Maybe there's a vehicle out there that uses 1/2" or something??

 

Good question. Hard to say.
Maybe just patch it and make it your spare?

 

That's probably what will happen with it.

 

Maybe I missed it, but what size tube did you end up going with? and how did you bend it?

 

and 2 mins later I found my answer

 

Nothing flashy progress wise, BUT the truck can drive on its own pending a brake bleed. Today was sucked up doing a ton of little shit, like hooked up all the emissions stuff, adding zip tie mounts to the frame, gas tank mount, another crossmember and hooking up brake lines. The truck does start and runs with no CEL. I did do some painting though:

I did end up having to move the charcoal canister, finding a place for this was a huge time suck.

I did add this crossmember, this is one of my old sliders hacked up, I needed the steel and it felt right to include one of my first mods ever on this truck to live on in some form.

What's left is:
Mount bump cans
Mount licences plate with lights on the tailgate
Wrap up the pax side fish plate
Mount the gas tank skid in a non dumb way
Get a muffler on there
Bleed brakes
Build a rear bumper

And the big one:
Cut out rockers and replace with 2x6 tube.

I did find some brake lines ready to fail, those are on the way

 

I'm ready to burn this fucking truck down. Went out to the garage today to build the bumper and get the exhaust done and button up all the other little shit and hit the road. So I bolt the tires in and notice the driver side tire was crooked, like 4" closer to the frame in the front of the tire, vs the rear. So I measured from the horse collar to the leaf spring hangar and was off by a lot on side to side WTF. So my wife came out and we measured the wheelbase and I was 2.75" off side to side. This is where I made my first mistake, I should have went horse collar to the spring mount and not used the wheelbase. Anyway I dragged it out for the garage and tossed the bed on it.

Pulled it back in the garage and measured and figured I would move the driver side spring and shackle mount 2.75" forward. Cut that shit off and welded it back on as I luckly had an extra spring hangar. Got done, brought my wife out we measured and now the wheelbase is still off by 2". I measured the horse collar distance and it was right around 1" diff, so I moved the driver's side spring 1" forward on the perch holes and called it done. I called @Snowy , confirmed I wasn't going insane, both agreed that if it driver fine, send it and fix in the future. After that I hacked together the exhaust and a TON of little stuff that sucks up time. My wife wasn't down for brake bleeding so I didn't get to drive it, but once that done it's test drive time. I tried gravity bleeding that they wouldn't.



So now what's left is a rear bumper, the rocker sliders and change one of my tires out with a new 37 that doesn't have the cords showing.

The wheelbase shifting HAD to be because the tire was slightly turned or something. It just sucks because after so much wheeling and how old the rest of the frame is, I don't trust any of the measurements lol.

 

Damn man that sucks. Hopefully it won’t be a huge ordeal to fix. Who knows, might go down the road just fine. It’s hard as hell to line shit up on these trucks. Anything that looks like it would be mirror image or centerline isn’t haha I’ve measured shit a thousand times and one of my front upper links is still nearly a quarter inch closer to the curvy part of the frame than the other. Can’t explain it. The “real” measurements make sense. Doubt it would matter for me. Might just be like that from the factory. Who knows. If you decide to burn it let me know, I’ll toss mine on the pile, too

 

Yea that's the conclusion Connor and I came to, drive it and see what happens. I looked for common places to measure off of for this swap and all the ones Toyota says to use were either covered up or I knew was bent or inaccurate LOL!! The other funny part is I used a standard distance off the body mount as my measurement for the spring hangars. Apparently they are almost 4" off side to side lol!! I guess I shouldn't worry too too much since when I did my SAS I basically eyeballed everything and used a tape measure like 2 times, and it drives fine.

 

You can’t trust anything on these trucks haha as long as mine doesn’t do circles unintentionally or drive zig zag down the trail I’m good. Poor thing doesn’t need to see the pavement ever again for everyone’s sake

 

How do you like your pro comp tires? I've heard mixed things on them

 

Love them. Great on the street, hook up nice especially at low air pressure, they work in everything I have thrown at them. They even work good in the snow in 2wd with an autolocker after I had to limp the truck home with no 4wd in a pretty nasty snow storm last year. I was expecting fish tailing all over, but they worked great even trying to break them loose. Offroad I run them at like 2psi, once I get up to 8psi or higher I can tell they slide around a bit more. I did rip a chunk out of the sidewall down to the cords, but it hasn't lost any air pressure in almost 6months. This is all in SE, boulder type trails that are sometimes wet, or have a layer of fine dirt on them and of course clay like dirt between the rocks. Previously I had Toyo MTs and that was the worst tire I ever ran offroad, would not hook up to dry rocks at all, like slid right off, even compared to some old ass super swamper SSRs. Those toyos loved rain soaked muddy rocks though, so bizzarre.

 

Good to hear. I was eyeing them for my next set because of how light they are compared to other options.
I don't commonly get down into the single digit pressures though, more like 12-15.

 

I have beadlocks, if I didn't i would be in low double digits. I like running low air pressure, no excuse not to in beadlocks, but I also am doing low speed crawling 99% of the time. We don't have the long distances between obstacles like our west has.

I needed a tire that was good on the street and good offroad as I have to drive this thing too and from the trails (3hrs -16hrs) so comfort during those trips was important. This one has done everything I asked of it and then some.

 

Got the brake bled today, turns out the bleeder nipple was a ball of rust on both sides and that's why it wouldn't bleed. Took it for a 30mile shakedown drive today, got it up to 80 and no issues. I do have what seems to be a tire out of balance, but it very well could have been like that pre all this. Tonight I got the rear bumper built. All i have left is to do the rocker sliders. Some poly bumps are going on for my wheeling trip next months I wont have time for the air bumps, and I may have to move the spring mounts anyway.

Pics of the bumper, chopped up reminants of my old one:

Steel for the rockers

 

Well this beast is ready to wheel. Outside of a few punch list items, like welding on a non crucial fish plate, and some poly bumps for an upcoming trip, she's good to go! I knocked out the sliders today, goddamn that sucked. Not the rain of fire like @Snowy warned me, but it was just a tedious, dirty, nasty job.

As you saw above I chopped out the rockers. I found this under:

That side impact beam ATE cut off wheels, like evrey inch I moved the wheel it took off an inch of wheel. Crazy.



Welding thick steel to sheet metal and rusty body seams sucks!! My objective was to finish them in one day and mission accomplished. I do have a Barnes cross member bushing kit to mount them to the frame back by the wheel in the future.

 

Okay I gotta ask, why to the body vs the frame? Aren't you putting a ton of pressure on the body mounts when you slam down on them?

 

Thought the same thing, but I have a few friends who have done this starting 4yrs ago with no real Ill effects on the body or the body mounts. Jeeps have had "sliders" mounted directly to the body since forever. The argument they make is that it spreads the load over a greater area and the body mounts absorb the shock. I'll be interested to see, worst case scenario is I tear a body mount off and have to weld it back on, I already ripped a slider off my frame wheeling once LOL!! Over the summer I need to cut out where my sliders used to be and replate all that again as they are pretty well fucked from rust/dents/bends.