Thads Cement Grey Long Bed Build

01/24/2024

My Oregon title showed up today! The dipfuck behind the counter typed my mileage in wrong so it’s been filed and noted with 3000 more miles than actual clearly a typo since my ODO read 36,999. It is what it is. We also got like 3 of snow two weeks ago and it’s been 55 degrees recently so there’s ice everywhere and it’s quickly becoming mud season. I’m ready for a car wash

 

Just tapping into another Central OR Taco build, hope I see you around town. I'm up north of Redmond but make it to Bend quite a bit. I always wonder if some of the more built Taco's I see in town are on here.

Cheers brother, it's a good looking rig!

 

2/19/2024

Some of you may know, some may not. I've had some issues with my SPC control arms. The x-axis bushings and both ball joints were shot after the 18K miles I've put on the the truck in the last 2 years. I had tons of clunking, play, and steering slop. Thankfully, SPC agreed to warranty the whole unit. They covered shipping, most of the labor too. Very nice of them. After digging into the ball joint/x-axis issue further, I found that this seemed to be a known issue. QC at SPC is pretty bad. arms are out of alignment, the x-axis bushings are not "lifetime" at all, and the ball joints clearly don't last. I also found that they haven't updated the x-axis joint design, only the ball joint in the last 2 years. So I came to the conclusion that I was going to be replacing my defective parts with more likely defective parts.

I started looking at other options. I wanted to go with a tubular design with a ball joint as its still my daily driver. My options were JBA, Bilstein, Dobinsons, Icon, Camburg, or Dirk King. I settled on Dirt King for a few reasons:
Price- there was a sale going on and I scooped em for $590+shipping.
Build quality- these things are beefy and light. The poly bushings will need a bit more maintenance than the X-axis bushings, but should last a whole lot longer and their easy to replace. Same with the MOOG HD ball joint.
Off road pedigree- Dirt King makes great products and builds badass and top notch pre-runners and desert trucks, google it.
Reviews- Not tons of reviews online, but all of them were positive. nothing negative where SPC is completely the opposite-lots of reviews, mostly negative.

@memario1214 told me to be bold so I optioned them with red caps and they showed up about a week after I placed the order





I got them installed on presidents day and everything went in well. The truck aligned easy, MUCH easier than the SPCs did.





They went in and holy cow the truck drives night and day better. There are no noises in the front end. There's no slop in the steering, its direct and tight. The front end feels noticeably stiffer. A night and day improvement! There is however, one major negative. RUBBING. I am on a -10 offset wheel and I am on the cab mount. The secret sauce with the SPCs is the ability to move the tires forward in the wheel wells with the alignment. Now that I have lost the adjustability, my tires are farther back, touching the inner fender and cab mount. I am going to need a cab mount chop in the not too distant future. I do plan to upsize my tires at some point and the CMC will have to be done first.

I spent quite a bit of time on Wednesday evening trimming, grinding, cleaning and painting my inner fender to prevent rubbing and get my steering back. Driving to work on Tuesday I had 1 full turn of the wheel before I was hitting the plastic. It was borderline undriveable. Now I have full steering range again at ride height, but backing up and hitting bumps I touching the cab mount.

Anyway, I think I did a pretty good job cutting my pinch weld, fender seam, inner fender and plastic fender trim. I used my Dremel and cleaned up the edges with a knife then filed the ground edges smooth. I used some brake clean to get the mud, dirt, and metal and plastic shavings out and let it dry for a few hours before I came back and taped a few areas then sprayed some rattle can bed liner on the metal.

 

I would recommend pulling the coilover and cycling the suspension to full bump lock to lock to check for clearance. You'll likely have to cut more.

 

Oh I'm definitely going to have to cut more. Good idea to pull the coilover though and cycle the suspension to make sure I have all the clearance. Im gonna worry about it once I get the cab mount cut. I just quickly did this in an hour so that it was drivable.

 

Week of 3/25/2024

If you've been following along, you probably know that I couldn't turn most of this winter. It was starting to get annoying. Pulling into parking lots/spots, into my garage wasn't even a 3 point turn-it was 4-5 points. I could barely make it around a round about without rubbing. I was going to dinner with Sadie and I couldn't pull into the parking lot. I had enough and I could tell she was losing patience with me. A little bit of plastic rub isn't bad. But hitting the cab mount got old. I got it in quick for an aggressive CMC 2 or 3 days later and they did a pretty good job. You can obviously tell its cut and the pinch weld it cut back and the did a little more fender trimming. I wanted clearance for a 295/70 and that's what I got. I can steer again, I have inches more clearance back there so I would say that the couple hundred bucks was definitely worth it!





Later that week we packed up and headed for the coast. Weather was unreal. Sunny and 68 on a Saturday in march was more than we could have asked for. took the dog to the beach. cruised around. went for 2 good hikes. We had a great campsite at a state park that will remain nameless-we will be back.







The truck also rolled 39,000 miles on the way home. Im only putting 10k a year on it. It was on our last coast trip in May 2023 that I rolled 30,000 miles. We had a good 2-night trip, need to get out more and do more trips like that. We had a lot of fun.

 

Month of April 2024

I decided to get some bed stiffeners. I had noticed that the panel gaps between the tailgate and bed have gotten progressively larger over the last few years. I know I have a lot of weight over the bed rails between the topper, tent, us when we're sleeping so I decided that it would be a good idea to stiffen the bed. I went with Total Chaos stiffeners because they were the lowest profile of any other manufacturer and I got em on sale from runnin4tacos. it was like $150 shipped which was comparable to RCI, etc but these less obtrusive in the bed. pretty simple install. set the base bolts, then drill the bedsides in the proper locations then thread the provided hardware in and tighten everything down. The bed mat still fits nicely over them







Last few weekends have been pretty busy with travel and activties. Sadie was in Seattle, I was doing house work and getting those railroad ties out of my side yard. Sadie ran a marathon, sick. Hopefully getting out for some camp nights in May!

 

4/27/2024

I've had my eye on a wedge tent for about a year now. Between space utilization, square footage, and storage they seem to be a better tent option. Truth be told I was never super impressed with the ikamper build quality and what I got at that price point. Sure the mattress was better that sleeping on the ground but I wasn’t great. It took a while to open up and I couldn’t keep bedding up there. I did a bunch of research on wedges-looked at ikamper BDV, CVTs, FSRs, and even some cheaper no name brands like inspired. I ultimately settled on a GFC based on build quality. The fact that they’re made in Bozeman is another huge selling point for me.

Now to find one. I decided to stick with an RTT and not do a full camper mainly to keep things simple. I really like the Smartcap and I didn’t want to take a bath on the whole setup. There are plenty of used campers out there but obviously that was not the route I planned to go. I wanted just the RTT. GFC makes significantly less RTTs than campers, I also wanted a tangerine color. Less popular. These things don’t pop up on FBMP often at all. I’d be lucky to find one local to me in bend, Oregon. I’m not rich enough to swing a new RTT with all the mounts, accessories, sheets, ladder, etc. it was over 5k so I was certainly in the used category. Plus I hadn’t sold my ikamper yet… sore subject in my household atm.

In late march I found a used tangerine RTT for sale on the GFC forum and I hit the guy up. It was located in the Bay Area, about 8 hours from me. I got the 411 on the tent and decided that I wanted to give it some more time to hopefully sell my ikamper first before scooping his RTT up. Weeks went by and I was over waiting and wanted to get on with it. He agreed to meet me at a hardware store in Weed, California on Saturday 4/27 which was super nice of him to split the driving with me.

I unloaded the ikamper and put it in the garage on Wednesday night and we rolled out at 7am the next Saturday morning and pulled in that hardware store around 10.30. He was a super nice guy and he set up in their lumber/CMU block area to unload his GFC which was quick then I swapped the rails over and picked up some hardware from that hardware store to secure the rails and mount the RTT to the rails. Very smart to meet at a hardware store. Definitely a life saver to have a hardware store so close. It took about an hour and a half to swap the tent over then we turned and burned, grabbed fuel @5.60/gal, and headed home. It was a pretty easy, seamless process.

On the way home the truck rolled 40k miles. Big day and I’m pretty stoked on the GFC the build quality is apparent. Somebody come buy my ikamper!

 

Nice Thad! Is that the GFC Superlite?
I ask because I was looking at the Alu-Cab LT-50 rtt versus the GFC rtt for my build. I also have a 2021 DCLB OR in Cement so, I have been watching this thread for a while Keep up the build! It's coming along nicely!

Here's a pic of mine, I've been taking it out all over California and feel that a rtt would make things easier

 

Yo! It is not a super light. It’s a standard GFC RTT. It doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, but the build quality is top notch. I’m stoked for $3200!

Dude! Cement long box’s are such a vibe!

 

Gotcha! They are definitely built to last, great company!
Yessir, definitely!

 

How do you like those Toyo AT’s? How heavy and what size are they? I’m really into the RT trails but they aren’t snow rated and I definitely need that for the Oregon snow and ice.

 

These are 285/75/17 in a C load. i kinda wanted 35's at first but settled on 34's in the C load for a easier ride. I believe they are 60lbs and they rode great in some California snow in the Eastern Sierras and San Bernardino mountains!

I was also considering the RT's but, i've had the toyo AT's in the past and have had no complaints, except they aren't visually aggressive lookin' like other AT's. Also another reason I didn't choose the RT's was they weren't snow rated.
I had some Wildpeak AT3's before my current setup and wasn't a fan after 10k miles.

 

I'm just here for the dclb cement action. jk. Tent looks awesome!

 

6/8/24

The gfc has been awesome! It’s been my favorite tent to date! It’s got more space and more useable space than the ikamper, build quality is way above, and we can keep all of our stuff in it. Keeping bedding up there has been a complete game changer. Makes getting out for a night a whole lot easier. We’ve been camping quite a bit this spring and it’s been great







We picked up a 1gallon propane tank for our camp stove which has been MUCH better than those little green Coleman bottles. Less expensive and we have all the propane in the world. Plus, we could run a fire pit off it in the future. We also grabbed a domestic water faucet and some hose on Amazon. This has also been a game changer and frees up tailgate space. We can leave the water jug in the way back of the bed and the faucet sits on the tailgate. I scooped up a replacement cap and fittings online to make it all work but it’s so nice to have a faucet and “running water.” Yesterday we ordered up some overpriced Hest pillows for the GFC. I had a coupon code so it wasn’t a huge dagger but those should also be a game changer once they arrive.

I did finally relocate my rear diff breather. I was playing around on onx and saw some potentially deep water crossings so I ordered parts to move that up. It was also about the right time to grease my UCAs for the first time. Pretty simple, but definitely more of a PITA than the SPCs. Had to jack the truck up, take the wheels off, loosen the through bolt, pump grease in, torque it back down, clean up, then reinstall the wheels and torque em down. Break hard lines were definitely in the way and there unfortunately was not tons of room to fit wrenches in there. Also, one of the techs that installed the DK arms put a zerk on backwards, facing the engine, so that was really helpful

 

7/8/24

I sold the other tent like 10 days after I picked up the GFC so I was out of the dog house pretty quickly. Some guy with an R1 came down from PDX and handed me some cash. He said he was planning to take it to Alaska this summer so that was pretty rad. And I got my garage spot back, the dirty looks and the “we have 10k in tents” comments stopped which was quite refreshing.

We headed up to Washington for a few days in late June. Camped on the Washington coast which was neat, but kinda cold and cloudy. Honestly should have just gone to rainier instead. It was like 90 in Seattle at the time but 55 on the coast.



Sadie had some friends in town the following weekend so I had an opportunity to head out and go wheeling with some buddies. We hit the local trails on the SW side of Mt Bachelor and we made it pretty high up, had to cross some snow fields and do some tree winching but we made it all the way to the cabin lookout. I ran over a boulder that smashed my factory (useless) skids pretty good and I hit a tree stump which I’m not happy about, up it was a fun day. The truck dropped an oil cap and threw a CEL on the way down the mountain which kinda scared me. The dealer changed the oil last and subsequently the following day too (for free) and said that they see a lot of 3g’s dropping caps. Seems like total bs to me. But the oil levels looked good and everything seemed fine so it didn’t end up being a big deal.





















it also needed an alignment pretty badly after this run. It felt like I either bent something in the front end when I hit a downed tree or I shifted the rack over. Thankfully it was the ladder. So week and a half later it went back on a rack to get straightened out.

But also 2 days after that run we hopped in it and drove to Idaho for the 4th. Pretty awesome to beat the piss out of it, then drive it 1000 miles round trip a few days later. We got to camp a night with a buddy I hadn’t seen in a while was a great time.



So I’m on the hunt for some cheap, light weight skids cause my factory ones don’t really fit, they rattle, and don’t protect the truck. Thinking either RCI or a TRD PRO plate for now!

 

Damn, the same thing happened to my 3rd gen with the oil cap! I did a post-trip inspection after a 2.5K mile trip in April and boom, the oil cap was missing
No CEL's tho. Dipstick read fine.
I changed the oil and filter asap and there hasn't been any issue.

I can vouch for the RCI front skid in Aluminum! Fitment is good and they commonly have good promo sales

 

At least your truck didn't throw a code! My truck threw a lean code on the passenger side bank and that's when I noticed the cap was missing. Oil levels looked fine and the filter looked pretty clean. Everything has been fine since I changed the oil so I'm not too worried about it!

I've heard good things about RCI aluminum. Thanks for the tips

 

Love to see you beating up the truck buddy and +1 for RCI's. I just tossed sliders, skids, and a bumper on the Tundy from them and they're all very high quality. Plus it seems like they're running a different sale every other week, so there's a very good chance you won't pay full price.

 

Hey Thad - awesome build thread & trip reports! I know you've been following along with my build thread for a while so I'm sorry that I just now stumbled upon yours! I am definitely following along now & hopefully we can link up and wheel when you head down to Moab. Have you finalized what days in October you think you'll be heading down there?