09blacktaco's build

any pics of the back up lights? what did you go with?

 

Sweet truck man!

 

I know right! I was pretty happy about it too.

Yes factory intake hose, Sealed up all the holes with Silicon, AFE filter.

yea buddy, MOAB! We need to get the caravan organized!

I just have a single Rigid 10" with an amber cover on a bed bar for now. I'll probably hang two of them off the back of the bedrack when it gets built.

thanks

 

Yeah man when are you trying to leave? I might leave mid day Tuesday and get there a day early, do some exploring and get a good site

 

Sup man, I think we are heading out tuesday sometime during the day.. Let me know if you wanna meet up along i70 somewhere.

 

Getting some work done before Moab.

Finally got around to chopping off the low hanging front cross-member. I got hung up on this guy all the time. It works great as a snow plow too. I cut off the drob brackets and welded the factory cross-member directly to the frame.

Also, plated the bumper mounts with 3/16ths, cut and re-bent the existing Ap bumper lower mounts, and re-bent the existing AP skid. Fits great and didn't cost a thing. The bumper feels so much more solid now and I'm not afraid of hard winch pulls now.

What it looked like before, way before...










Oh yea, got the sliders finished up about a week ago too. These were the AP kickout bolt on sliders that i modified. Coverage wasnt enough for me and I really started to hate that kick out. They are now welded to the frame with gussets, plate, and square steel. 1.75 .120 wall tube was used everywhere else.

 

Sub'd..Love the truck dude you have a lot of the mods I'm planning for the future so ill be keeping an eye on you! How'd the fender trimming go it came out great!

 

Thanks man!

Trimming the fenders went pretty well. I still need to fit some ABS liners in there at some point. Never enough time!

 

Looking beefy man! I love this truck!

 

Looks amazing Matt! Where at in the Rockies are you located?

 

I'm in Vail. How you liking that TC LT?

 

I found your c-clips!

 

It's amazing. I really want to upgrade to their new race kit. I have a couple friends running it and it looks amazing. Plus who can argue with lighter, stronger, and about 2.5" of gained ground clearance.

 

So Moab was fun!
Broke a bunch of stuff.

Candy caned rear driveshaft. (Getting retubed next week)
Every single LCA bushing dicked. (Replaced already)
Alignment (next week too)
Replaced eibach 650 fox CO springs with eibach 700's.
Another torn CV boot, outer this time (fixed already)
Skid re enforcement (when I have time)
Cleaned 16lbs of dirt out of the interior, lol

C-clips are still there this time Eric!

 

Wow! Didn't waste any time getting the repairs done did you?

Still waiting on my high clearance rear and a peek under the truck confirmed that I really should get a mid and tcase skid too.

 

Well here we are 8 months later and with 68k on the clock a new repair list has been made.

Lower control arm bushings AGAIN!
New gusseted knuckles, both sides (bent the passenger gusseted knuckle a few weeks ago)
Install steering rack poly bushings
New inner and outer tie rods, both sides
New wheel bearings, both sides (still on the stock ones!)

Planning on doing this stuff in a few weeks.

I did have a chance to make some new fender well liners. These are much needed up here with the snow, mag chloride, and mud. I cut about 3" out of my fenders for clearance, that left a large hole for crap to get into on all 4 corners. It was also very noisy with the tires and wind.

Did some measuring and bought some ABS plastic sheets from http://www.tapplastics.com/product/plastics/plastic_sheets_rolls/abs_sheets/524

After 4 hours, I had the front done.




And after another 4 hours, I had the back done.




Long tedious process, but i think it looks good. Its solid and does the job. The liners are held in place by a series of zinc coated screws and some home made angle brackets.

 

Those liners look sweet man! I need to do that.

Any upgrades done to the AP LT kit parts to make it stronger more reliable ?

 

The kit is very strong, but it just fits so tight that it eats the bushings up. The uppers are fine, its just the inside bushings of the lowers. I haven't had any issues since install with the LT kit at all except the bushings.

I just put in some expo leaf springs a couple of week ago, those are top notch. Very happy with that upgrade.

 

Just found this, didn't realize you had a build on here! So you bent a spindle that was already gusseted? Any big impact, or just noticed it?

Those fender liners are dope, should probably do something like that on my fronts one day . . .

 

Haha, yea i'm not the best at updating the build, but i try. My tin foil hat keeps me from posting too much on the deep dark interwebs.

Yup, bent the shit out of my gusseted passenger knuckle and UCA bolt. I took a pretty big hit at RT last year after we were leaving the Mill Creek swimming hole. I noticed that when i got the next alignment, my front cam's were adjusted differently for the same caster. Fast forward a year later and i couldn't get any more than 2.4* caster out of the passenger side.

I spend 16 hours replacing everything except the UCA and LCA last weekend, aligned it myself and its perfect now. Steering rack bushing are well worth the effort it takes to get at them. When i took the passenger knuckle out, the welds were broken, but i couldn't visually tell if it was bent or not. Must have been though. Tie rods were on their way out, wheel bearings looked fine, go figure, i replaced them anyway.

Time to head back to Moab to break it again!