Battleship Jones: 2015 Tacoma DCLB Build Thread

Another little thing I accomplished this past week was trimming the pinch welds on either side to establish clearance for the sliders. I put them on when the truck was relatively new and hadn't completely settled, once I started to settle a bit I would get contact with the slider legs on harder impacts on both the driver's and passenger's sides. I had half-assed clearanced the driver's side a while back by notching the pinch weld and folding that over, but that just looked bush league to me so I decided it was finally time to touch those abominations up. I made a template that rested on top of each slider leg and would ensure that my cuts on each leg were consistent. I went in there with a Dremel to cut the metal away before touching up the bare sections with Frame Saver. Final tally = 41 Dremel cut off wheels to make the 8 cuts.

IMG_1818 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

 

And in a sweet bit of irony, after posting up a feeling for trading my steel skids for aluminum ones I doinked the IFS one pretty good over this past weekend. Just backing up around camp, went over a rock, and as I came down the backside it stood up and I landed on it. Oops!

Also re-torqued the u-bolts after they had a chance to settle. Squeaking come from the leaf packs = gone. Oh how sweet the silence is.

 

Bro, your rig is so chopped up this surprises me! I'm pretty scared of splicing into my factory wiring as well I tried to make a plug and play harness but no luck.

 

Check Amazon for extension plugs. Do your splicing on that without touching OEM wires.
Might get lucky and find a Y adapter even or something.

When I put LED foglights in my plate bumper, I found some adapters to solder onto the aftermarket fog leads and then just plug in to the truck. No cutting on OEM wires.

I was surprised at all the options for extensions and conversion plugs. You should be able to find something.

If there isn't a Y adapter, you could make your own. Get a socket plug adapter (plugs in in place of your bulb and has wire leads), then solder on both a new plug for your bulbs plus some leads to connect your bumper signals to.

 

Awesome build thread! Also great write ups!

 

Electrical type work has always mystified me so I try and keep it simple. Not to mention using those T-type splices into wires seems a bit janky and prone to failure. So I do my best to make everything removable, serviceable, and as close to OEM-looking as possible.

Thank you sir!

 

As a follow up to the whole healthy (borderline obsessive) quest to prevent rust, I pulled my sliders off a few weeks back with the intentions of re-painting them. The Rustoleum auto enamel paint wasn't holding up as well as I had hoped and there were several areas where it had chipped away and allowed for some surface rust. The same held true for my vehicle frame. I won't pretend it was anything more than a little bit of red creeping in, but the paint near the welds, of which there are many, is lacking. I decided that while the sliders were off I would at least begin the process of coating the frame as best as I can. It would be a much, much easier task with the body off as I could simply spray everything, but with the body on I was relegated to foam brushes. It works pretty well and does an admirable job at self-leveling but it's not perfectly flat. Whatever. The main point is that I will now stave off the beast that is corrosion for a few more years to preserve the $30K+ truck that I've put so much work into.

Frame rails underneath where the sliders go:

IMG_1872 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

And the sliders with my 1-man jack assisted mounting setup:

IMG_1873 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

 

What product did you use to protect your frame and sliders?

 

Magnetic Paint Company Chassis Saver in gloss black. The stuff is great, easy enough to brush on and dries really, really hard.

$43 Magnet Paint Co Chassis Saver - Gloss Black - MPC-UCP99-04 (Quarts)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EP8BYNK/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

I hear you again, I just masked and sprayed my frame bottom with Eastwood chassis paint before bolting on my bamf sliders. I'm going to spray a product called lanox before winter.

 

Have you ever used Lanox before? I've heard of similar products but don't have any experience with them. Seems like it could be a great thing to spray on before winter to help prevent the salt from feasting on everything.

 

Sometimes even the best laid plans get thrown out the window and this weekend was certainly a case of that. The wife and I intended to head down to the Sangre Cristo mountain range intending to visit Bishop's Castle, the Mission Wolf sanctuary, then culminate the weekend by running over Medano Pass into Great Sand Dunes National Park. We got off to a bit of a later start on Friday night and made it down to the San Isabel National Forest where we planned to pull off and establish camp for the night. The road I had earmarked as being the one to head down turned out to be a private, gated road that clearly wasn't going to work so we had to call an audible and head down the road a few more miles. We got a bit deeper into the National Forest and somewhere around 10 pm, near absolutely nothing, we rounded a corner and came across a dog in the road. My wife was able to chase her down, and it turns out the poor little thing had no tags or collar, was exhausted, cold, underweight, a bit mangy, and hobbling around with a broken leg. We scooped her up and brought her with us. At the moment I'm not sure what the future will bring for Chewie (named her), but if our suspicions that she was dumped are true then she will have a home with us.

IMG_1889 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

We rigged up a diaper for her as her back side was covered in poop and she snuggled in between my wife and I in bed that night. We got up the next morning and reformulated our plans as camping another night with a dog in bad shape seemed a bit irresponsible, so the plan was truncated to Medano Pass and Great Sand Dunes.

Medano Pass is billed as a very unique trail to Colorado as it starts in the mountains through the aspens before dropping down to the river and culminating in Great Sand Dunes National Park, another treasure for Colorado. As fall has arrived the leaves have started changing I thought it would be the perfect way to usher in the season. The trail starts down a 7ish mile road that cuts through a private, stunning ranch. I can see why they chose this piece of property.

IMG_1879 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

The entrance into the National Forest is pretty subdued, nothing more than a cattle guard and this sign announcing that you are now on the Medano Pass Primitive Road.

20160924-DSC_1725 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

The trail climbs up the pass pretty quickly, though it was a nice easy cruise up with the truck in low gear to chug up the steep grades. There wasn't anything really difficult on this side, just a nice pristine little single wide trail through pine trees and through the forest. With a nice crisp breeze blowing through the windows it was the type of trail run that only fall can bring. We crested the pass and came down the other side into some more open mountain meadows where the fall colors really started to show themselves.

20160924-DSC_1730 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

The road down the other side was mellow, but difficult enough to keep most people away. We saw a few vehicles roll by at the beginning but after we crested the pass there was no one until we hit the park. Just the way I like it.

20160924-DSC_1727 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

The trail was a beautiful mix of aspens and water crossings as we lost elevation. The leaves had definitely reached peak in some places.

20160924-DSC_1735 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

The water crossings were fun. Enough to splash in, but not deep enough to worry about drowning something.

IMG_1884 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

The proliferation of established camp sites was a good indicator that we were nearly into the park. Our suspicions were confirmed when we rounded a corner and saw the first of the dunes in front of us.

IMG_1888 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

My only complaint about the journey through the park were the number of idiots using the single wide trail as their personal baja track. There was a Jeep full of teenage girls that had to lock them up coming around a corner and almost slid into my front end. They were far from the only ones roosting their way down the road.

The big payoff at the end is the ability to play in the tallest sand dunes in North America. Being laden with 3 dogs we didn't do much more than walk around and play in the sand a bit. The rescued dog needed some attention and we figured we better boogie rather than hanging around. Back into the truck, out of 4wd, and onto the pavement we went on our way home.

IMG_1893 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

For those concerned, we gave the pup a bath when we got home to clean off all of the poop, removed the huge eye boogies she had, gave her plenty of food and water and put her to bed. She's in good spirits and a very sweet dog. She is now up to date on all of her vaccinations and we are working on putting some weight back on her while we figure out how to proceed.

 

That's awesome that you are keeping the dog or at least taking care of her! The scenery out there looks epic! Nice photos btw!

 

For those of you who would like to do more...Sweet Lady Chewie visited the vet today regarding her injured hind leg. Unfortunately, it was bad news. Her pelvis is broken in two places and she needs a massive surgery. Please consider donating to Chewie's surgery fund and share our page with dog lovers far and wide. Any donation helps. Thank you so much guys, it means a lot to us and will help save a good dog in need.

 

Thank you! We are both dog lovers and couldn't bear to leave her behind. Although this makes #3 and is more than I ever wanted or intended to have, it's hard to turn down a good dog in need.

 

What did you use to cut your bumper for your flush mount back up lights?

 

Drilled a 3/8" hole with a regular drill bit then enlarged it enough with a step drill bit to get a jig saw with a metal cutting blade in there. It actually worked quite well.

 

Thanks man i plan to do the same till i get a high clearance rear bumper

 

Another weekend another chance to get out! We were originally going to go camping this weekend but called it partway through the trip and ended up making it a long, 16 hour day in the truck. No matter, we ended up going to see the Crystal Mill as it had been on the to-do list for a few years now and given that we could hit it at almost peak foliage we took the trip out to Crystal.

The forecast called for a 20% chance of rain and we took a bit of a gamble heading out with that in mind. The only ways to get to the mill are rocky, shelf roads that can become very dangerous when wet. I did not want to add to the carnage/death toll of people who have bitten off a bit more than they could chew. This play almost came back to bite us when, probably 20 miles away from Crystal, we ran through a rain storm that gave us a bit of pause. We pushed on however in the hopes that it was just an isolated event and low and behold we popped out on the other side and it hadn't seen any of that rain. Perfect. The bonus of those stormy conditions was it littered the skies with plenty of picturesque clouds.

20161001-DSC_1773_HDR by Tim Souza, on Flickr

There were two ways to get to the mill that presented themselves shortly after rolling through the town of Marble. Luckily both were at the top of a steepish hill that wasn't too difficult walking up in 4 low, but it was enough to keep hopefully give those in Subarus and crossovers pause about the journey ahead. We took the route through Lead King Basin which, according to the research I had done, was either the smooth easy way, or the rocky difficult way. The truth lay somewhere in the middle, 80% of the route was easy and smooth with the 20% being rockier and rougher than the Crystal City option.

There was no denying it was the more scenic option however as it opens up to see the backside of the Maroon Bells Wilderness. The air was certainly crisp, Fall has most definitely arrived with snow not being too far off. We navigated the narrow shelf roads with relative ease meeting few folks along the way. The few times we did happen to run into people through the alpine section happened to be in the vicinity of switchbacks which luckily were wide enough to allow my long-wheelbase vehicle to manuever in in a fashion that allowed them to pass. A few pictures from when things got scenic.

20161001-DSC_1790_HDR by Tim Souza, on Flickr

Got a bit of snow up there!

20161001-DSC_1798_HDR by Tim Souza, on Flickr

Coming down the backside of Lead King Basin we tucked into the woods and things got a bit more technical. We wove through the trees, mud puddles, and through a near constant barrage of rocks and single wide trail. All was going well until we ran into a guy on a shelf road, as we were going downhill . I begrudgingly threw it in reverse and proceeded to put on a clinic for him and his companion in reverse wheeling as we had to go damn near 1/4 mile back up the trail. I know it doesn't sound very far but it certainly feels like it when you are going back through everything you just came down.

Luckily things were uncontested after that and the next few people we ran into were near the cut off for the Devil's Punchbowl where there was plenty of room for everyone to shuffle around. After that it was a quick trip down to the mill where we got the pictures we had sought after for a few years now. I did chuckle a bit when I passed by a group where I head a guy proclaim loudly to his friends that I had flat tires. I'm not sure about him but I wouldn't want to make that trip at street pressure.

I didn't know which one of the pictures I liked best so I shall post all 4 and you can select your favorite. But first, just a bit of info on the mill, which is purported to be one of the most photographed objects in the state of Colorado.

20161001-DSC_1862 by Tim Souza, on Flickr

And the pictures!

#1
20161001-DSC_1856_HDR by Tim Souza, on Flickr

#2
20161001-DSC_1828_HDR by Tim Souza, on Flickr

#3
20161001-DSC_1823_HDR by Tim Souza, on Flickr

#4
20161001-DSC_1805_HDR by Tim Souza, on Flickr

We ended up wheeling out in the dark with all lights blazing. It was fairly uneventful and I must say that if a smooth ride and expediency are your thing, going straight through the Crystal City trail is the winner. We aired up on the other side, grabbed a bit to eat, and hightailed it home.

I will say that I was very disappointed with the etiquette of several of the photographers I saw at the mill. While I understand it is an out of the way location that takes a bit of time and planning to get to, that in no way excuses their behavior. I saw several individuals breaking branches and trampling undergrowth in the name of getting a picture. So much for Leave No Trace guys.