Anthony y El Burrito Blanco

Thank you! Looking forward to seeing more APEX products coming out!

 

Thanks to SDHQ Offroad.

 

Picked up my front kit at Baja Kits today and saw some cool stuff:

They had just got back from the Baja 1000 and were continuing to work on their race vehicles:

FS: One Method beadlock with curb rash in one spot.

And a sweet truck was parked down the street. Not a huge Ford fan, but this one did it for me - mean looking.

Went to the deli to find the beef

Oh yeah and drove away with something new

 

Got home and did a little unboxing:

Everything was really cleanly welded and powdercoated w/ glitter and about two or three millimeters of clear lol. Looks great.

 

And to top it off I stopped by one of my favorite restaurants:

It means (roughly) Neighborhood Bakery (word for word I think it's oven neighborhood). Awesome pizza Arabic style with freshly made dough and amazing toppings if you're into a few new flavors - zatar is the spice that makes them taste so good!


My home-made pizza dough wrap. How much? How about $2.70 FTW.

Cucumbers, tomatos, mint leaves, olives, and zatar with a little olive oil = bomb. If you ever go there and the old guy is working tell him it's your first time and I bet he'll hook you up with some free food / drink. Super nice guy - remembers me every time I go there and it had been over a year since I was there. I used to go there every weekend when my friend lived in Anaheim on Ball by downtown Disney. The name of the spot is Forn Alhara and the address is 512 S Brookhurst St #5, Anaheim, CA 92804 between Orange and Broadway. Just look for Baja Fresh and park in the same parking lot. It gets my top recommendation

 

What a great thread! I read every single post. I love the build, very detailed and with great photos.

 

Thank you! It's kind of hard for me to know if what I post up here makes sense or not since I know all the details behind the pics and write-ups so it's nice to hear that I'm doing something right lol. Nice truck!

 

So no big updates on the truck, but in other news I had a new roommate for a couple months. My friend Isaiah got married last week and had needed a place to stay before he moved in with his fiance. The truck came in handy on the move day / weekend.



Here's the couple the day of the wedding. You gotta admit the groom looks like a Hispanic Colin Farrel lol.



These pictures were taken in downtown Pasadena - my first time being there and it was super nice - I'd like to go back sometime to hike and check out more of it!

And it worked out to be a bungee / oh sh*t handle hold the bouquet mod kind of day.

 

Had a bit of an adventure this weekend. Planned on going to Rainbow Basin near Barstow Friday night and camping out over the weekend - nothing too adventurous. Then I was contacted to get some new drums for church for a big Christmas extravaganza they were having this weekend. Well I didn't want to miss out on my plans since I had not had a single day to myself for four months since August so I jumped on Craigslist and found someone that would meet me that night. Of course I had to test them out before I left them at the church. That put me a "little" behind schedule...

I had been wanting to get my truck weighed when fully loaded down with camping gear so I decided this was the time to do it - rolled into Sunrise Truck Stop in Wilmington around 3:30 am. By four I was on my way to Barstow.



My truck is pretty light I suppose. $10.50 for the weigh:



Made it to Owl Canyon campground as the sun was rising. I read incorrectly that it was free to camp here so I was caught off guard that it was $5 / night. I technically didn't get there at night - and I didn't have any cash, but I wanted to make it up to the BLM so I cleaned up a campsite that was left somewhat messy by some people before I left that night.



Slept about six hours and was on the trail by 1 - got to try out my new 3V Gear backpack. I liked it a lot - really comfortable for carrying a pretty heavy setup (for me lol) - 3 liters of water, camera and extra lens, tripod, food for half a day, extra shirt, 2 headlights and a flashlight, moldable splint, phone, clippers.



Rainbow Basin definitely earns its name - what a beautiful place. It was not a great place to walk around freely like I enjoy because the ground is so soft and loose that you could easily slide into a place you couldn't get out of. Still a great place to check out from a trail that leads up to the top of the ridge.



My plans were to hike the mountain in the background, but wasn't sure how to get there... yet.



Nice sunset, but had to come back in the dark.



I didn't pack enough food for the next day and I didn't want to drive all the way back to town to get cash for the camping fee so made plans for a new spot for the next night: Black Mountain Wilderness Area. I had never been there before and boy was I in for a surprise. On the way there I got some bread at this place in Lenwood - great deal at $1.99 a loaf and the people there were super nice too.



I drove up to just south of Opal Mountain and slept there. It was a little chilly - about 26 degrees was the reported low for the night. After Opal Mountain the road gets sketch, but if you're headed counter clockwise around Black Mountain (the black line), then you'll be better off than trying to got the other way. There's a good map of the the trails that I should have taken a picture of at around T.10.5N. and R 46 E.



I entered via Hinkley Road (just take it all the way north and take a right when it dead ends) and came out on "County Road 20776" after circumnavigating the Black Mountain Wilderness Area.



While I would take my parents back to Rainbow Basin and show them around, it was a little too developed in my opinion although I was almost the only one there - there wasn't enough room to get out and be in solitude. There were dirt bikers, an RV, and some people running a generator which are cool with me, but I like it when I don't see that sort of thing when I'm having one of my rare opportunities to have an adventure. Black Mountain Wilderness area was just the place for me. Only saw one jeep passing through the whole day.

I aired down to about 28 psi all around. It was the first time I did this and I was a little nervous and probably could have went down to 26 or so, but wasn't sure how long of a drive it would be to the nearest place to air up after. I used some state of the art technology.



This is where I woke up in the morning after driving the night before. Again it's due south of Opal Mountain. That's also where I saw the Jeep. I went hiking for a couple hours before hitting the road again.



From the top of Opal Mountain.



Found a freeze dried Tarantula.



On the road again.



I didn't take many pictures since I had no map and no idea how to get back minus the fact that I knew there were no roads going into the wilderness area. Once I made it around to the other side I took a couple more.




And the sunset.




Back on pavement and back to reality... but I stopped to gas up in Rancho Cucamonga and saw this place - just had to take a picture. I couldn't do the place justice without my wide angle (forgot it at my parent's house this summer), so this is just a taste - the whole house had this much decoration all the way around (and Christmas music playing).



Turned out to be an awesome weekend!

 

Spent two days watching Speed_Freek install my front kit. He welded in all the gussets and gave me a "farm alignment" to get home and have it aligned.



Here's a short montage of the process. He really spends his time on his work. If I hadn't said something the first day he probably wouldn't have stopped to eat and he worked without eating or taking a break the whole next day as well. I'll probably do something a little better in the future:



A hiccup appeared when I went to get the truck aligned and they couldn't get the toe in spec. I went out of town for a week, but after a few days I got a call back from Baja Kits and Jordan an engineer had a couple shorter steering extensions shipped out to me. It might have been because my truck's so light and it was up about 3.5 inches or so without any preload on the coils!

Here's the before:


And after:


Here were the two different length extensions:


One of the things that the kit was lacking in was quality accessories. I had to get creative with zip ties to make the brake lines stay in the brackets since they had no place for stock clips.


Also the limit straps were unadjustable and unfortunately they don't offer a lot of options for locations on the frame to mount them due to their length. I think I'm going to spend a little more and get clevis ends and some shorter straps so that I get the perfect amount of droop before metal hits metal.

While I was installing the shorter tie rod extensions I decided that the brakes could use some touch up. It was a lot easier than the first time. I just hit the side facing out for aesthetic reasons. The rest of the paint was holding up well.


My tie rod ends were blown out in the grease boot. They weren't showing a large amount of play so I think I'll keep them until it's time for my next alignment and check the inner tie rods in case they need changing too.


One more thing that was an issue was that the coilover reservoir hose was rubbing on the UCA at ride height. I figured out a way to fix this and made use of some industrial strength zip ties and some shower liner to keep the hose off of the coils and UCA's.


I also made some gaskets for the reservoir hose clamps out of the liner - probably unnecessary, but it was a thing I had been thinking about for awhile. Figured I'd give it a shot.


Did a toe adjustment following this guy's process:



I used two jack stands and some twine. I'll add to the video that the process should be this way for maximum efficiency.

Set distance you want to use from back edge of rear wheel, then use the front anchor point (front jack stand) to make your line parallel to the car. This will make it much easier to fine tune the measurements rather than moving the rear anchor, which is much closer and will be harder to adjust with small increments.

So far I'm liking the suspension. Look forward to working on the rear so it'll be evened out on uneven terrain!

Thanks to @rmahoney2013 this is in the works:

 

Made a new friend last night - @Raxman80 - thanks to him I got a spare battery for $10!

 

That LT kit looks good, now im jelly

 

Truck's looking tough man - I'm digging that soft topper. Where was that pic of your truck flexed out on a rock with the flag in the background on instagram?

 

Pshhh tough for stock.... I need that long travel kit . I like the soft topper I'm enjoying having an unobstructed bed right now .... nice to use my rear view mirror .
Believe that was Johnson Valley , super fun place especially for us prerunners

Edit: Think I'm going to creep around your build thread , sorry in advance for the drool

 

Thanks man - I've always liked having a stalker j/k lol.

I have had good times in this truck with it completely stock other than the TRD replacement shocks and coilovers which are basically still stock just from another model. It's handled a lot of dirt roads and flown around on freeways with awesome capability (minus driving into strong headwinds #4cylproblems lol).

I like that you do stuff with your truck even if it's not on 35's with arb lockers and $15k suspension - it's all about adventures. A nicely built truck sitting in a driveway or mall parking lot won't bring the feeling that a basic truck can bring someone who takes their truck on offroad trips!

 

I don't know if I'd call myself a stalker.. more like lurk & jerk
Definitely agree with you there, Tacomas do pretty damn well in stock form... Even our 4bangers . Have you ever gone to Hungry Valley OHV? There's some hills on the way there that my 4 cylinder doesn't like ... No big headwinds or hills and we're .
Its crazy how much I've done in my truck, definitely lots & lots of fun, keeping my fingers crossed that I don't break something. I'm probably on my way to an expensive suspension though... Long travel is cool

 

lol at least you can't get arrested for stroking it vs calling and hanging up 30 times a day and sneaking into the garage and sniffing it's used motor oil.

Never been to Hungry Valley - looks like fun. Yeah there's some good reasons to install a locker (and a turbo ) despite what I said earlier - hills are definitely one of them. I was driving up around the Black Mountain wilderness by Barstow and I came to one section of the trail / road that a one tire fire probably wouldn't have worked out - luckily I didn't have to go up it, just down it.

I've been looking at maybe starting a first gen build and selling the burrito. The MCM fab long travel kit is a great deal. I have to see what comes my way first - a nice first gen or the same model as my truck just in 4x4 - been online hunting and there's some cool trucks out there. Theres a sweet red first gen regular cab in Fresno. 95 4x4 regular cab with a rebuilt engine and trans.

 

Well it happened - El Burrito Blanco's days are numbered - going back to stock.

Meet El Frijole Negro or the Black Bean as I'm leaning towards since it's so roundish lol. Drives like a Cadillac - great in a straight line and corners like a boat. #thiswillchange



More back to stock progress - sold the campershell to a young guy on CL from Massachusetts:



Traded the LED pods for some stock fogs - little wet sanding and clear coat brought back that showroom shine:

 

Out with the new, in with the old: