09 Yoter's Hoopty LT build story

Alright, the time has come.

4 years ago, I picked up this lil unsuspecting grandpa truck. (no pictures necessary, you know what im talkin about) First mod? Chopped the muffler off, gotta love highschool. Sharted around town like that for a good while, then realized I had just an ignorant grandpa truck; not a rAcE tRuCk.
Decided it was time for some new race ready shoes, and five months of bagging groceries later I got my grubby fingers on some fn's and coopers.
Looked nice and clean. Whipped around like that for a few months.

Ok, cool. Found some interesting instagram users and decided to become one with iced matcha, craft beer expertise, and 3 bedroom 4 bath kitchen condo expansion units built in to their trucks, and did some supporting mods. Yeah, you know who yall are. But thats not why the rest of you are here. Up next: how to build a bumper on a 200 dollar budget:



Boom! Welded some stuff courtesy of the best $99 spent at harbor freight and my friends' help. (Don't worry I cut holes in it for proper cooling) Honestly, I think this bumper was a miracle. I had a day to do it before driving to Moab. Measured everything precisely with 20/30 vision, and no previous bumper experience. Moab was everything you would expect. Minutes after that picture the bilsteins were sent to hell with a lil skinny pedal on the lower half of fins n things. Great. Upon returning I traded my pride and joy mtb for a full set of brand new ext. Travel kings. Ran them on stock ucas for their lifetime on the truck. No issues with alignment or contact. Maybe king mislabeled the tag. At the time of kings, I got a bit more handy with the angle grinder and began cutting. High clearance? Check. Flashy blue shocks? Check. Hater pipe? Loud.

Was satisfied with that for a while. In a matter of weeks and some dirt, the coopers were looking like manbearpig got ahold of em. With some cutoff wheels and a 9lb sledge I had some bald craigslist 37's on the truck for some god forbidden reason. Looked kinda good... I guess?



Too big imo, and no up travel... this thing isn't a crawler. Downsized to 295's some time later.
I wish I could've left the truck like that, cleaned up some things and had a nice solid daily/weekend warrior. Nope. Now is when previous owner gramps began to turn in the grave. By this time I had access to a Lincoln mig welder and my buddies tig welder, and shit got serious when the kings were sold. 18" FOA triple bypasses, bump cans, and lt spec'd 8" coilovers were on their way. Oh, and some special domestic 5.5" lift springs that happened to be 63" long. They all arrived as the pandemic lock down began. Perfect. All the time in the world. (Had acquired all supporting hardware and various kits at this point as well.) Sadly, I didn't take too many pictures during install and fab work, but enough to get the idea. Started with building the rear shock mounts and sua with the 63's. Straightforward and properly measured and leveled. Yadayadyada etc. Nothing is left of the original rear suspension, i mean nothing. All fabbed spring hangers, shock mounts, shackle hangers, etc. Had a 4x innovations shackle flip kit I made work, which was nice. I'm not by any means saying this was an easy task. It took countless hours of work to get it driving again, plus some driveshaft mishaps and such. This is very paraphrased. Its late now and im doin this off my phone, so ill just throw up the pictures on the next page.

 

well, these are the two pictures on my phone. I had to remove my axle shafts and replace them with some Bluetooth ones to fit the coilovers, for the time being

Will update when I'm back in town, currently not with the truck. (P.S.) if you've got a trailer harness, don't go with aftermarket taillights. Or thoroughly inspect the wiring and control box, the combined power draw fried the control box and shorted, causing an electrical fire in the cab. Thank goodness my whole truck didn't go up in flames, only the throttle and brake harness. (Or so I thought) The trailer harness was not installed by me, who in their right mind would want to tow with a 2.7? Haha. Rest in piece to every cent I had and my now negative account balance. I am still far from done with this build and will continue updating and answer any questions.
Currently the truck is getting some shiny new etcs wiring from the ecu back; its, gonna look so rad dudes you have no idea.