Full Circle SAS

The title of my build goes way back to how I should of done this build to start with years ago instead of building a third gen, dumping a ton of money into that, just to decommission it from the rock crawler life in order to build Darby the 2002 Tacoma. Myself and my buddies always knew that this would be the fate for my wheeling endeavors... This build thread will be lacking pictures because I tend to live in the moment and I don't take many photos of things.

Anyway lets get to it.

Darby came into my life from Jackson WY in April of 2024. 242,000 miles 1st gen supercharger has been on it its entire life. The owner owned the truck since 2004, he was selling it for his wedding (bummer). Picked it up for 6k and drove it back to Denver in limp mode due to a bad knock sensor. The truck was bone stock and was desperately needing some maintenance.

I went ahead and did the timing belt, rebuilt the supercharger, and immediately slapped some chevy 63s in the rear and 5100s in the front and some 35x10.5s on it to wheel it for the summer. Of course I had to build some sliders and a front costal bumper as well.


After the season closer Moab trip it was decision time. I had already bought a Waggy axle to sas this thing over the summer but did I really want to commit my winter to endless metal dust and grinding? Well based on where we are now I guess I did.



Tore everything down.



Plasma cut and sawzalled off all the stuff... Make sure to leave a crossmember or your frame will spring. Get yourself a beefy grinder and a couple eager friends to do the grind work.

Now here is where things went off the rails... Like I said earlier I picked up a waggy axle that was built with 4.88s air locker etc. everything I needed axle wise. Well trail mart ended up with a good sale and I said to hell with it "I don't have time to piece the rest of the SAS all together" and ended up buying SAS Kit C which to my surprise also did not come with everything. 6k later and I had a pallet of parts sitting in the street for me. Leave it to trail mart I got some incorrect parts and some extra parts. Anyway...

I started to get leafs hung and absolutely could not live with how ridiculous the front hanger mount was. I was not going to add 3 inches of lift so I could run the stock pitman arm and not notch the frame so I decided to french the hangers half way up the frame to lower the height of this thing.


The truck is still super tall even with this modification.

With this you have to run a flat pitman arm as high as possible and notch the frame to clear the castle nut.



I got the steering settled. The box goes forward as far as possible. The way trail gear makes their leaf ends up swinging the axle back in the wheel well a lot under flex. No issues with the tie rod and drag ling hitting each other.

I went ahead and pulled apart the leaf packs to fix the centering pins (trail gear built the leafs with the wrong diameter pin) as well as setup shocks and bump stops.



These are bilstein 7100 14" short body shocks. I had them sitting around and they're better than the 5125s that came with the kit. By no means will this get close to stroking 14" but if it fits it ships they say. The only down side is I had to notch the body to clear the resi fitting since bilstein put the fitting at a 45 degree angle.

That is pretty much where it sits. More photos and details to come.

 

Personally, I would get rid of the BL.

 

Too late. There are many things setup to utilize the extra inch! Story of my life.

 

Down on its 37s

 

Radiator situation is a real bitch with the frenched hangers. Currently the tiny 4 cylinder radiator fits fine, finding a lower radiator hose to fit is a pain.

 

I have one of those for added clearance. I was able to find a joiner for the stock hose and just shorten it in the middle.

 

Lower hose: Gates 22120 / Napa 8791

 

That's also what I did. I'll order the hose that @02hilux mentioned as well

 

the S bend has the correct height except for the length on one side. I think I trimmed ~2” off and fit perfect.

Work with the Denso 221‐3136 and fit the new KoyoRad VH010513 when I swapped to a full aluminum.

you should have no issue with the 4cyl radiator. I ran the Denso 221-3136 for years with 40 inch tires and climb grade from 300’ to 8k elevation.

 

I had to run a 3137... Even smaller. My truck had the 3136 factory since it is a manual... At least I think

 

All of the Denso radiators have the AT fluid cooler in the bottom.

You have to go with another brand to get 4cyl manual option, which is even with the frame and no AT cooler.

 

Model 1985 has a cooler but is even with bottom of the frame. You can remove the cooler elbows too

 

Running and driving. Ran 70 down the highway without any qualms. Shocking how well it moves on 37s and stock 4.10s.... I guess that's the perk of a blower lol. The only issue is a nice solid thud/clank while nearing full lock from the passenger side. No idea what that's about.

Next up:

Re gear the rear end
Fix exhaust dump
Get a front driveshaft built
Run air locker stuff
Put on steering stabilizer

 

Check to make sure your steering link ends aren't hitting each other at lock, happens to my buddy's rig only turning one direction

 

Digging the progress! Hope to see you out on the trails!