Airkewled's 2006 DCSB

Haha. Yours and a few others. Got it. Yours was one of the installs I was talking about. Just been browsing getting feedback.

 

Oh I didn’t see others saying it too!

 

Continuing work on the inner fender well. Used cardboard for templates. I'd just hold it up where it needs to go, sometimes use the tire itself at full stuff to hold it in place, then trace on the inside with marker where to cut and move that to a piece of metal. Cereal boxes were killed. There's Cheerios in the cupboard without their boxes



Tackity tack tack. The pieces up by the battery tray were the hardest. Kinda a compound curve there and had to deal with that by putting in relief slots to bend the metal as needed.



And all done


Full stuff left


Full stuff right

 

So with the inner fender cut like that, the fuse box can't sit as low as it did so will need to make some brackets up so that the fuse box can sit up on the new inner fender bump.



So put a 2" lift kit on my fuse box

Both brackets in place. Just like OE, one has a stud and nut, the other is a bolt


Tacked in place and checking clearance with the hood closed



Then I made new loom clip holes, and ground wire connections in the "new" inner fenders



And seam sealed the inside and outside

 

Today painted the top and bottom side of the inner fender





Got the fuse box, wire loom, etc all put back together


Cut the fender and got it ready for the fender beading to get welded on.

 

mmKay. So continuing on here. Welded on the fender beading. I shaped it by hand to get it close, then just clamped it in place with vice grips and got it right for a few inches, then welded, and moved on, adjusting it as needed. It's 3/16 rod so pretty stiff, but doable to bend by hand.





Next I tackled the driver side interior. As you can imagine, cutting away the firewall like it did means I've got a wire loom on the inside and that foot rest thing to deal with.
Before totally reassembly though, I added in a piece of sound deadening. My intention is still a daily driver here so gotta keep it quiet and such for the pods and tunes.



In my cutting I did nuke a mount stud for the plastic nub that holds the left kick panel in so I had to weld in a new one. Also added a lower bolt for the loom holder thing. Rivnut FTW.



Lastly to close the day out, I cut out my templates and got those all ready to cut for my DS side shock tower, bump stops, frame plates and limit strap stuff.


and in case you're wondering; yes, I'm freaking out about EJS being like a month away.

 

After work today I cut out my templates in metal. Not super exciting until I caught myself on fire. IDK what I'm going to do. My Bomber Fabrication shirt was +7000 fab skills.
You would think it'd be easy to gauge the 'close to fire' warmth, but no, actually it is not.
4hrs of cutting if you're wondering... and yes, I would love a plasma torch but I have a space problem.
Anyways, I took next week off specifically to work full time on the truck. See previous comment about freaking out about EJS... This HAS to be done by then.

 

I do not enjoy hole sawing thick metal. Drill press won't go slow enough so have to use hand drill which doesn't like going the right RPM either.



With that out of the way, time to get busy on the shock tower. After noting where things were attached, breather hoses, speed sensor wire and ground wire, chop chop.



Begin mocking things in place, trimming as needed. The templates were pretty good but needed some finessing.




Found that on this side, the alternator was pretty close, and I'm not sure how much the motor moves and such so decided to clearance the tower a little.



Put the UCA back in, stripped down the shock and installed that long enough to tack the upper shock tabs in place, then pulled everything back apart for welding


If you wonder why the tower is split on the sides, it's the only way I can weld the whole thing and still get it into place. I've got to put this piece all welded, in over the top of the remaining tower and rotate it into place, then the remaining side plates can be welded on. Else I'd have to have the motor out to weld on the backside of it.



After done mocking etc. I put a coat of paint on it. Same deal as to why. Hard to paint back there too once it's in. Put on zip tie tabs for the breather hoses and drilled and tapped two holes for the speed sensor wire bracket and something else I can't remember atm .


Starting to make a mess


Plating rearward of the tower. I don't have a press so to form to the frames shape, just cut some relief cuts and muscled / clamped / hammered it into compliance.



Wifey wanted to help so I ate lunch and she ran the sparker gun.


Tower all welded up


Install the front of shock tower plate


and after doing a good cleanup, done for the night. Next up, reinstall the UCA and shock so I can mock everything up to get the bump and limit strap mount welded in.




And I don't think I'll need these again. But I saved the final version just in case. After I'm all all done then they can go. Left to right, draft, CAD, cut templates

 

Started out the following day pumped from the momentum, got out all the things I was going to install.


Put the UCA back in and the shock so I could mock it up at full stuff to get the bump can in the right spot.
Noticed that the UCA was not going up far enough; not hitting the bottom side of the inner fender. Big well sh** moment. Figured out that for whatever reason, my upper shock mount tabs are locating too low. Had to cut those out, which as you can tell is a sh** show to do b/c it's confined space.
Much work with the carbide burr and all day later, I corrected my f-up.

Here you can see the problem. This is the space between the UCA and bottom of the inner fender.



Tabs cut out and the evidence. Must destroy and forget this happened. What a waste of a day.



The tabs. Ate into them cutting them out so, those templates I saved in previous post? Yup, to the rescue to cut out new ones which I then mocked several time while trimming them to get the travel I needed.


This meant that my access holes that are in the sides of the tower to get the bolt in and out and a socket on etc were slightly mis-placed as well. Die grinder again, or as I like to call it, the sliver maker. This left oval holes which I can't have, and I know it's cosmetic, but cut out little moon shaped pieces and welded those in.




And here it is after correction, between the UCA and bottom of the inner fender. Nice and tight as it should.


Difference in wheel up travel is 7/8"



Literally the whole day blown on this. Eff me. Lesson: Tack, and cycle. Tack and mother trucking test fit and cycle. Every. Time.


Took a break the next day and hit some fresh snow


Now I can get back to those parts I was so pumped to get installing.
Can tacked in place


Cutting the tube part out of the limit strap clevis mount that I need



Drilling out the hole for that tube from ^^. I just pointed the bit toward the lower mount point so the clevis would be more or less in line with the strap. The rod ya know is a visual on that.



All tacked in. Mocked and cycled.


Finish welded


Swapping out the 90 fitting on the remote resi for a 45.


Assembled again, to mock and locate the remote resi brackets


And ready for paint


Painted. I don't want to jinx myself here, but I think it's soon ready to put on its wheels so I can get ride height and start work on the 3-link.

 

Glad that I found this; love the effort you put in to your posts.

How do you have the time during the week to be doing this much?

 

Finishing out this week, few minor things to take care of.
Reinstall the springs on the shocks using my ultra exclusive platinum edition spring compressors.


Then move on to brake lines. I used some aluminum TIG rod to mock a template then bent it.


This flare tool is the shiz. I've tried the 20$ kind and it's poo. This is the knock-off Eastwood? version and it works great.



And installed.


For whatever reason the short hard line between the caliper and the knuckle soft line didn't fit into the extended braided hose supplied. It's like the end was boogered. No idea how that could have happened.



So made up a new one. Seriously, this flare tool makes it like, not a pain in the butt to make lines.


That was pretty much the extent of fabrication for the day. Rest was just torquing things to spec and putting things together. Brackets, hoses, wires, tie rods, drive shaft, headlight, grill, Meh


Wanted to paint the inside of the fenders so they wouldn't rust where they were cut and welded on. So did that. Blue in places because, well that's how it was OE, so reasons?



And I was pretty excited, not gonna lie, so had to set her down on all four to see how she would look. I'm stoked.

 

Not a lot by way of changes today. The bed had been a collection point for old parts but with that needing to come off soon, I spent some time boxing the old parts and moving them to the rafters.

Next up though, I need to sort out the air intake business. No, I'm not willing to install a "universal" so called "cold air intake" ::cough:: hot air intake.
Big believer here that Toyota engineers have figured out the whole intake thing and what they have designed is for reasons so I'm going to attempt to keep it as close to that-ish as I can.

With the hump in the inner fender wells now from the clearance for the wheel/tires, the OE intake won't even sit down in place, much less connect to what's left of the inner fender intake port.

My idea is to build in a new intake port into the fender structure with a box, then off the box, convert to round and try and pipe that into some portion of the existing intake piping.

So before I cut into that fender support (IDK what to call it) I thought I should beef it up.


Cut out of 20ga


Clamped in place


Templating over the portion (including the 1/2 moon bit of what's left of the OE hole) that I plan to intake access at.


K. All zapped in


Figuring the profile


You might ask, why not directly into round? Fair. But I don't have a 3 inch round tube profiling thing. I've got a straight profiling thing, which makes boxes easy. ha. Tacked. Sorta you get the idea

I didn't know how to cut it square? There's not reference point/edge so hey, got a laser, so why not. It's level and plum so take that.


So then there's the intake port box thing. Clearly the end gets a round hole drilled in it but that's tbd.




K. Tomorrow we shop the auto parts stores and see if I can find some 3" exhaust tube.

 

Im thoroughly enjoying your build updates and thought process all while documenting it for us to see/read.

Keep at it!

PS: you make me feel slow and lazy when it comes to my own build!

 

Sick work dude! Appreciate the fore thought into capturing this for your build thread. I know I sometimes just get stuck in and before I realize the task is complete.

 

So air intake. Found some exhaust couplings that are 3 inch so that's good. I don't have a 3" hole saw so metal sliver maker to the rescue.




So how the intake was, and how it sits naturally, there's this like box deal soon after the intake from the fender. Near as I can tell, this box deal, is at the low point and has holes in it to drain so maybe like a water catch/drain thing if you accidentally hit more water than expected?



So I made up like a boot shaped box that would do this. Translate the intake that's higher, to the lower point of the upstream intake pipe and be the low point that I could put drain holes in. It has to be narrower because the inner fender hump and b/c I need flanges to put silicone couplers onto.



TBH I don't know if this is going to make the cut. Prototype. I had thought that the intake pipe upstream of this water trap box was bigger than it was, but it's 3" just like the intake from the fender area, it's just really thick plastic there. So I may end up doing something different here.

In any case, can't do much more here until all the pipes and like silicon couplers that I ordered show up. So got to keep moving. Pulled the bed.

Yes, I like to live dangerously. Hahahaha


Truck fired right up. No whine from the new power steering pump either. No strange leaks. Pretty happy about that. The battery of course didn't fit right, but it's janked good enough with a pair of vice grips. (stay tuned for that). Washed off the frame as good as I can for what's to come.


And poof, what's to come

 

Low photo warning

removed the fuel tank, cut off brackets, semi cleaned up the frame. covered myself in piles of metal shaving drilling out those rivets. those things suck the big time. you've literally got to be directly under some of those, drilling straight up, pushing with all your gumption, and just taking it to the face with the drill shavings. After getting them all out, I hit the frame with the air hammer to knock out the majority of the rust there in-between the parts where the rear half is riveted to the front half of the frame. yup, if you didn't know, the frame rear section is just riveted to the front. I'd say that's pretty lame and it's also like the one place on my truck that's rusty. It's just a trap for moisture. enough rant.

There it sits. Ready to start measuring and mocking, figuring, pondering and such for where to mount things to get my target 80-90% anti-squat.
If anyone has wisdom to share for 3-linking or their 3-link calculator spreadsheets you want to share,

 

Tacked brackets together, cleaned up the axle and started mocking things in place.

Tacky tack


I see Dirt Lifestyle Nate always using one of these sanding attachments on his grinder and picked one up off Amazon for cheap. Actually work pretty good. I dig it.


Figuring out how to mark the very top center of the axle tube. IDK, this is what I decided.


Mocking. I didn't really science this. I just eyeballed what seemed reasonable, then plugged in the measurements to the 3-link calculator to see if they would give me good anti squat numbers and refined from there. With that, then just making sure things clear.







At some point late in the day, I could tell my body fuel cell was low. Wrote down 5/8 on my hand so I wouldn't forget. Later I looked at my hand and realized I needed to stop and eat something.


The upper link was hitting this cross member / charcoal canister mount so drilled a clearance hole through it. I think I'll plate the semi circle relief cut and the top part and call it good?



I'm not sure how far I'm going to chase "full stuff" This is more than I was expecting to get out of it and it's close to as far as I'm going to go. The upper axle side link mount is about flush with the top of the frame rail.


About 2 - 2 1/2 inches axle to frame. Good / Bad. Idk. Let me know what you've got if you're linked.


Still clears the body mount


And the panhard bar is close to horizontal at full stuff too. I'm going for panhard bar at an angle at ride height so that I split the movement in half. Up will go driver, down will go passenger. Right now the axle side is mounted inboard the frame. I'm going to see if there's room to go outboard too. Maybe.. maybe.. depends I think on shock mount and how much clearance that needs between the frame.

 

Looks good, I like the lower link frame mount on the side of the frame, that is going to save you a ton of clearance. I couldn't do that with my 4Runner and they drag everywhere.

The pan should be level at ride height for optimal road manners.

Coilovers?

 

Got the cross member that supports the charcoal canister reinforced and mocked up the panhard bar outboard.



I think it's going to work. Put a wheel on it and everything seems to clear. Having a longer panhard make me happy as this will reduce the side to side motion


I am worried still about shock mounting and clearance. I shaved one side of the panhard mount so it's not flared out to give myself a little extra room. I guess when adding in shocks, if it is in the way, it's not that big of a deal to move it inboard.

 

Nice work.

Any reason why the 3 link and not the 4 link? Other than keeping the factory fuel/emissions components?