Max-4_Yota's: 4WD 82' Toyota Pickup Build

Purchased a second hand poison spyder tire carrier for a good price, built for a TJ.

There are a few issues with the carrier, firstly being that it has a gigantic pecker bar that sticks up super tall... even more tall on my short bodied toyota bed.... The second issue is that the tire is designed to lay back on the carrier, which allows you to put just about any tire size in the carrier, the only problem is that it looks stupid IMO. And the last issue are the upper arms that hug the tire are designed to fit a 42" tire, so they go wayyyy out and around, which look fine with a 42" tire, but a 35" tire make these arms look ridiculous.


So, I ended up cutting off the top bar, and bringing it way down. I also cut the arms 2" short before the bend to hug smaller tires like a 38". Then I had to extend them to make it back to the body. I also made a plate to push the center of the tire upright instead of leaning back. The tire is bolted, but I am also utilizing the strapping system to keep everything tight and secure.



















And finished...

 

Finally finished the automated slider by adding on some better limiting switches. Ran a hot bus on the inner wheel well and rearranged a good amount of the positive battery ( I think I had around 10 or so wires attached to + terminal ). I kept the starter, winch, and one other large gauge wire hooked directly to the battery and ran everything else off a secondary bus bar. I then flipped the terminal over to try and get the wires away from the hood, my worry was a fire if they ever made contact (wouldn't be the first time ive seen a battery catch on fire due to the same issue).

But, finally the bed slider is finished. Since I was already running 12v to the back and on a switch, I went ahead and purchased some red LEDs to give some much needed light in the bed for camping. Obviously, your eyes don't have to adjust to red hence why I went with them. I will be putting one in the cab as map light.

 

Decided to try an experiment with hopes that it would help....

I had some good gas shocks laying around. They are 420n of force, which combined, is roughly 180 lbs. Of course, to keep clearance, I had to move them in super close to the hinging point of the tire carrier which really cuts back their strength... None the less, it helped... although very little... From the ground to about 90* they are awesome, but from 90* and up they lose their power. Both the angle and the leverage is working against me.

The heaviest the tire carrier is, is at 90* to the truck (half way down). At this point I weighed the tire carrier on a scale and got 95lbs... I then put the shocks on and reweighed at the same angle and got 79lbs... So, 16lbs less is better than nothing, although I hope to some day get the weight down another 14 lbs, especially when I plan on running 37" after these tires kick it.

 

It has been 7 months since I started driving the '82 as a daily driver and over 6000 miles have been put on the rig. I have gained a lot of confidence in this truck on the road.

In this time, I have been making the vehicle more road worthy (and law compliant). But in this 7 months, I had yet to take it out on the trails. Finally decided to make my way up to the notorious overland scene trail called hurricane creek up past Asheville for some easy riding and good camping.

Did the entire trail up to Max Patch, turned around and headed back into the woods around 8 pm to find a camp site back down the Hurricane creek trail. Set up camp around 9:30. The low was 38* so it was nice and comfy. The truck did very well, absolutely no issues. Did most of it in 2wd and no locker ( camping gear weight in the rear helped a lot). I would engage the front occasionally to help pull over the bigger stuff so it wasn't such a rough ride, but with the locker in front, the pump would start to get hot and wine a bit after about 30 minutes or so.

All in all, it was actually a fun little trail for camping. The only problem I can see is the amount of people going there. The weekend was rainy and cold and there was still a few groups of brand new overland jeeps and runners heading on through, so I can only imagine what it is like in the warmer months.















And a present for the truck (and for myself), picked up some short body 14" 7100s for the front. Ordered u bolt eliminators, shock hoops, and other odds and ends from Ruffstuff as well. Hope to get a bit more up travel in the front and a smoother ride.

 

Not too much new...

Received all of my ruffstuff stuff.. now to just find some time to dig into the front of the truck. But with spring/summer on its way, I am getting antsy to fire up the boat, so progress will be here and there on the truck. I am also debating on pulling the trigger on hydro assist and purchasing some 37's.... I planned on bumping up when my tires wore out, but they have a good bit of tread on them, 60% or more? so thinking about selling all 5 with wheels to fund the jump up.

On another note, still working the truck... had a local project and loaded up the truck. I have been pushing the limits of this sliding bed, and so far so good.

 

Decided to take the truck up to uwharrie. I haven't been up there in about 3+ years or so.

Last time I was there I had a purpose built crawler that walked thru all of it, hence why I never went back for so many years.

But as for a leaf sprung truck, 35's, and only a front locker, it was a bit humbling. I was actually able to pick most of the hard lines with the truck with very little trouble. The lack of a rear locker and less articulation definitely made it more challenging, but I knew that going into it when I removed the rear locker. I did the two trails I remember enjoying the most, Dickie bell and Daniel and I am very happy with how the truck performed. With a rear locker I believe I would have no issues with all of the hard lines IMO.

But I will say, it is hard looking at a specific obstacle and telling yourself, no, this is my daily driver.

 

Had the day off and figured I would dive into the rear 3 Link frame side design. Finally have some hard numbers to go off to build the cardboard copy and test fitment. Everything is 1/4".

 

Good to see you're taking care of this thing. Miss the old girl sometimes.

 

Hey Michael, hope all is well. The truck has been taking care of me.





I believe the Uwharrie trip was the last straw on the steering gear box. I knew this would happen eventually and have been putting it off for as long as possible, but now that the gear box is dishing out more fluid then what it keeps in. I have decided to go with hydraulic assisted steering like mentioned earlier in my posts. With this being my daily driver and on a time crunch trying to get PSC to the door, I decided to go with Trail-gear. All of the bad reviews were from half a decade ago and much of the TG system has changed significantly so I am hoping I won't have too many issues. Pretty much every complaint out there has changed on the systems they sell today...

I ordered their pre tapped box, the hydraulic ram kit, and the 2.7 pump kit. I really wish I did my homework months ago and started gathering parts to cut costs, but I was also secretly hoping my current set up would make it throughout the year. I plan on rebuilding and tapping the box I pulled and selling it for cheap just to recoup some cash and give someone a cheaper way into doing assist on their own project.

Also, down the road, warranty dependent, If I have any failures I figured I will just upgrade parts to PSC.



Ran into a few interference issues with the setup. Hood clearance is one of them which I figured would happen (my old PSC setup actually went through my hood)... with this set up, I will just have to trim a little bit of one of the inner hood ribs to clear part of the reservoir cap. The gear box itself is pushed so far into the front core support that I had to a bit of trimming to make the new box fit and cut out a section of the body mount to make room for the hydraulic line.

Also went through and cleaned out all of the lines and reservoir of debris. The reservoir, even though it is designed correctly now, still had aluminum shavings inside from welding and so on.

Filled her up with some royal purple as recommended by TG and have been cold priming the system. Let her sit over night full of fluid before initial start up as well. I am still getting a lot of air of just by circulating the steering back and forth without actually running the engine so this morning I will keep doing this for a while. I was also thinking about hand spinning the pump to help prime it a little more before initial start up.... not sure if this is really needed or would actually help any... I just want to make sure there is no priming issues with the pump for the first fire up.










I also have to build a new mount for the reservoir, the mount I built was a quicky just for getting the right positioning for the reservoir. I tried making the 2.7 mount work but it was just too low. Then it comes down to protecting and securing all of the lines and should be good to go.

 

Finished up the truck this evening. Spent a lot of time wrapping the lines in high 'wear' areas.

Started it up and had no issues. Took for a test drive and drives like a Cadillac! The only issue is that it pulls to the left a bit, almost as if there is always a little pressure on that line coming out of the box. Not sure if this is common or maybe I am one tooth off the pitman/gear box. I was thinking about adjusting the drag link a little bit to see if the box will self center better.

 

Drove the truck to work and still had that annoying slight pull to the left. Drove back home, unhooked one side of the ram and fired up the engine. As I guessed, the ram is slowly pushing out without any steering input. At a very low idle, it stops moving, but any RPM over that and it begins to push out... and of course, higher the rpm, the faster it pushes.

With the tires off the ground, the ram hooked up, and the engine running, the ram is unable to push on it's own without steering input....

So imo, I believe the ram is applying a very small amount of pressure that is only noticable while driving. And again, it's a bit annoying but not terrible.

I'll try a few different bleeding procedures but I really don't believe that to be the issue. My alignment is also toed in correctly and hasnt changed from prior. The box is brand new but I suppose could still be faulty and having one port leak past (but from what I've been reading it's some what common to have the ram slowly extend on its own).

My other idea is resistance. I feel like if I was able to add just a little resistance to my steering that it would be enough to counter act the slow extension of the ram.

 

Shot a quick video of the truck on a high idle. I also decided to attach my buddys rough country damper (not shown in the video) to the arm to see if that was enough resistance to stop the extension, but only slowed it down to a short creep.

I guess my next trick is to throw a gauge on both lines to get the actual pressure difference. Then at least Ill have something to give trail gear as far as a potential problem.

My main concern is going through the head ache of returning the box just to get another box that does the same thing, as I have read that a slow ram extension is common.


I also checked my caster angles... right at 9* - 10* degrees which is perfect in my book for re centering over sized tires.

 

Just found this thread, and this truck is awesome! Can't wait until I pull the trigger on my parts. Need to learn how to weld first though.

 

Any updates?