hirod build

Stuff on order. Painted grille surround. Xrunner transmission cross member braces. Shaft collars for rear sway bar. Tail lamp wiring harnesses. 700 lumen jumper reverse lights.

Light racing control arms should arrive this week.

Planning on trying to use switchback LEDs to compliment my reverse lights. Plan to use a donor brake light bulb holder modified to fit in the rear turn signal position. T-tap off the reverse light. Hopefully four rear facing lights when reversing and still have blinkers.

 

The brake light bulb holder/connector


The opening for the turn signal bulb.


Brake light in the middle with the two wires for the turn signal on the right.

I failed to remember to take a pic of the reverse light wiring. Sorry. I'll try add a pic later.

 

Ahhhhhh I want those x runner crossmember brackets too. Where did you order and what's the part numbers. That's been on my list for a while!!!

 

Don't know what the part number is. Just searched for it through the camelback Toyota parts site. Dunno if it'll fit but I hope it does. The threaded holes are there. They should be here by next weekend and I can tell you how it goes.

 

Plenty room with new sway bar.


K. New problem. These steering stops line up anymore. My truck is on the driveway which is sloped and my wheels are turned a little too the passengers side. Seemed to have arisen after the spindle spacer. Would adding another washer to the front bolt help or do something evil since the two would be unequal length? Any thoughts? You 5 lug guys got it easy, just relocate the control arm but can't do it as easily on a prerunner. I believe the manufacturers of light racing control arms says they can't correct the caster for lowered trucks. Hmmm....

 

damn that has yet to happen to me. I think it's due to how your upper arms are. With the 5 lug, although it's on the side of the frame, it's not curved like it is on the 6 lug. The only way I see to correcting something like that (the pull outward) is to adjust the tie-rod. You will need to take that to the alignment spot so that they can get an accurate centering. But that's the same with any dropped vehicle, after any drop it's a MUST to get it to the alignment spot.

 

My bad. Wheel is turned a little. The truck has a little toe in action normally. Either way I plan to take the truck in once I swap out my ucas. The light racing ones were the quickest fix I could find. They're supposed to come in today or tomorrow.

 

Got bullaculla's old front bump stops. Did some experimenting and think a chopped factory bump stop may do the trick. Chopped both of em and going to try see if I can't install em this weekend. Will be reading up on installing the control arms too.

 

I'm curious about those uca's, post up when they come in. hopefully they can get that tuned and you can have her out int he sun in no time!!!

... I'm really just pressing cause I wanna see

 

careful not to cut too much off. half is good, but past that, imo your defeating the purpose of the bump, pretty much giving the axle a thin line of rubber/polyurethane from hitting the frame.

 

K. Had a chance to fool around with my rear switchback project. Chopped up a harness and wired it up and it works. The electrical part seems sound so far. Know what to cut and what to join but the fine tuning part as to where to cut so the connections don't prevent me from putting everything back in the recess needs to be worked out.





This the guy we working with. Dunno if the colors are different for different years or not. Gonna cut off a donor brake light bulb holder plus wire and cut off a turn signal bulb holder. The donor bulb holder will have 3 wires since its for a dual filament bulb, one white and black, one green and red, and one green wires. One your main harness you'll now have a white and black and a green and yellow wire. Your green and yellow will hook up to you green and red. Your two white and blacks will go together. The remaining green wire will splice into the red wire going to the reverse light.

On my test harness, with the truck in reverse, the switch back was white. With it in reverse and the blinker on, the turn signal flashed amber and the reverse light remained illuminated.

With that said, that might've been the easy part. Now, how to get the donor brake light/turn signal bulb holder to fit in the turn signal location. And hopefully the resistor to fix the hyperflash doesn't affect anything. It shouldn't but things never go smoothly.

 

Took care of couple projects today. First off, finished up the prototype for my rear lights. Btw, thanks mike. Switched to the red lense tails, the old lights off mike's truck. The new harness worked and only required a small amount of trimming on the bulb holder and light housing. One tab and one notch were required to get the dual filament bulb holder to fit in the turn signal position. Using some projector style switchbacks for now. Gotta wait for the cluster ones from jumper to come in. No extra resistors either for now so dealing with hyper flash.




Turn signals


Reverse.

Very happy with it. Only had parts for one side so stuck with only one side with the high reverse light. Looks a little funny but can't help. Next rear lighting project may be to swap the red lenses onto the led lamp housings.

 

Nice and bright. Mke me one !!lol

 

Second project was mounting the light racing upper control arms. First impressions were the ugly welds. Almost considered grinding it and rewelding it but was in too much of a rush. Was waiting for so long and had high expectations for the control arms solving my camber and caster issues.

Lots of threads for what works so ill highlight the hiccups I ran into. First one was my attempt to avoid bending up the fender to get the drivers side control arm bolt. I cut off the head of the bolt and tried to slide it out the rear. Bolt hit the bundle of brake lines. Had to go out the forward side anyway. Technique did work for the passenger side though. Passengers side took about a quarter of the time the drivers side.
Second hiccup was getting the damn ball joint into the spindle. Could not get it seated properly, the castle nut can't thread on enough to get the cotter pin in. Going to email spc and confirm I have the right set. A little spooky without the cotter pins. Will be checking them frequently.
Third hiccup was encountered doing my test drive. A little too much camber. I overcompensated and ran the ball joint all the way outboard and ended up with squealing tires going down the street. Came back and ran them to the most inboard setting and it looks about even now. Right now seems all right. Real faint pull to the right.


$16 control arm bolt.

Project 2-1/2 today was installing the modified bump stops. Cut them just below the raised ridge on the factory stops. These bastards are hard. They bounce like baseballs. Not pretty cuts but with the truck lowered, don't think anyone's gonna be able take a peak between the control arm and bump stop.



Pretty long day considering I didn't get started til 4. Buss ass. If those balljoints had gone in smoothly I'd be in a much better mood. Most of the hard work is done and swapping out those ball joints shouldn't be a save for the weekend job.

 

Dunno if you want me to do that. I'm not a measure twice cut once kinda guy. Technically this one took 3 harnesses cause of the proof of theory piece. Its not really complicated but where to cut to minimize soldering is the killer. When I make my next harness for my passenger maybe I can figure out where to take pics and post em up here.

Did I mention I'm especially pleased with how this turned out? Slick, efficient, and effective. And easy!

 

I'm VERY happy with results and I don't even have that on my truck!!! Never really considered putting switchbacks on the rear either till now

Pix of the UCA's? I wanna see them !!!!

 

Your dual reverse lights look good Man.

Not sure what type of help you were looking for but I could make an LED strip that goes between the tailgate and the bumper that could was wire into the reverse lights.

 

I'm not very familiar with electrical stuff so was just wondering if I failed to adress anything like fuses and wire size. I'm a good instruction follower, just don't really know anything about wiring. Thanks.

 

K. Figured out why my ball joints won't drop all the way into the spindle. Wrong ball joint. Looked up the part number. Its the correct part number for an Fjcruiser. But I have a Tacoma. Trying to decide whether or not to just buy the correct one from wheelers and overnight it here or wait for spec or fat bobs. Kinda stuck driving with it. Sucks and little scary. Minimizing the driving for now.

 

Mailman came today. One box with my color matched grille surround and cross member braces and the other was some more wiring harnesses to finish my tail light mod.

The cross member brace. Forgot the part number. I'll edit in later. Of course it didn't fit. Its for an xrunner but it still was hoping. Not too bad though. Just extended the slots. Used a 1/2 drill bit and a dremel cutting wheel. Extended it maybe 1-1/4"? Didn't measure. I'm not good at math and reading rulers so, a slot is pretty convenient for me. Used 8 mm flanged bolts. Forgot the thread. Will edit that in later too. Will it stiffen up the chassis enough for me to notice? I hope so but I doubt it. The fact it was out there made me want it and it wasn't too much extra work to get it in. The way I did it, it should be able to fit everything out there as long as the threaded holes in the frame and cross member are there.






Drilled holes before cutting.


Frame side



Trans cross member side. Hard to see the other bolt