Totaled to Long Travel: An Ongoing DCLB Story

Been driving these trucks for around 10 years. Wont get too much into back stories besides the pertinent details with this particular truck.

-2014 DCLB SR5 purchased in 15' as a Certified Pre-Owned vehicle from a Toyota dealership for around $26,000 with 30k on the ODO. All highway miles and in wonderful shape. Like the vehicles that came before it, it would serve as a light duty work truck 5 days at a time, and then be my fun machine on the weekends. My hobbies include MTB, Snowboarding, Camping, Photography and the obligatory "overlanding". Not too much good wheeling here in NJ where I live, but the main use of the truck is to get me up into the mountains of Vermont to play. She has been across the country 3 times and up and down both coasts in their entirety.



-First order of business was an ARE DCU aluminum cap for work/camping and a toytec 3" lift, 285's, bumper, normal stuff. Rocked it at this "size" for 5+ years and put around 225k miles on her. She currently sits at 270k.



-Once I started getting into pretty much living out of the truck on the weekends to avoid having to pay for hotels while traveling, in came the roof tent, awning, dual battery setup with solar, fridge, ipad mount, lights, DECKED unit, sliders, swing out rear bumper, center console safe.



-Had to upgrade the suspension as needed to keep up with the weight. Went through 2 sets of Dakar HD leaf packs and eventually switched to Deaver stage 3 with Icon 2.0 shocks and coilovers, UCAs, skid plates, regeared to 4.56 with Truetrac rear LSD. Dual sPod light controllers, SCS wheels.



-Went through a few different sets of tires. K02's, Duratrac, Toyo, Nitto, and even Nokian studded Hakka's for the winter.



-Full coolant flush, diff service, trans service, brake fluid change, plugs, etc etc etc done at recomended intervals. Only "reliability isues" ive had are either A/C based, or one time I blew a coil pack but was able to limp to a dealer to get that resolved.



Anways, this past winter while driving home from work up in Vermont after a morning of rain that turned to an afternoon of snow, I understeered right off the road, through a guard rail, and then 100ft down a drainage ravine. Studded snow tires couldnt help the fact their was ice right under the snow and that I was driving to fast for the conditions. It ended up taking 3 wreckers to pull it up out of there. I was very lucky I was okay. No airbags deployed, just some bruises and headaches. So I had them tow it to my apartment and figure out what was next. The local insurance wasnt able to make a confident appraisal so I rented a Cummins 2500 and towed it back to NJ where it would end up sitting at my body shop for nearly 6 months before a wrench touched it.



In this crazy market, I had to fight tooth and nail with my insurance company. But eventually with all my reciepts from my build, and all my research on replacement cost, especially because replacement would need to be an identical truck so that the parts could transfer over, I was able to get them to place a valuation on the truck for more than I initially paid. They wanted 5k for the buy back and I jumped on it. Weighed out the options with my shop and came up with a rough gameplan for the rebuild and mods. In the meantime I picked up a 1 owner, garage kept and rust free, 02' 4runner SR5.




Loose plans for the truck going forward are as follows, already took all summer to get all these parts together with all the delays:

-JD Fabrication +4" LT up front with LCA relocate and 934's
-King 2.5 Shocks and Coils with Resivoirs and 2.0 bumpstops
-Double sheer UCA, Double sheer/heim steering, Gusseted spindles
-Rear suspension TBD
-McNeil Racing +4" Glass fenders and Bedsides
-37" X 12.5" X 17" BFG K02's
-Surface rust remediation on frame/body. Its all in really solid condition, but 6 New England winters, even with regular washes, leaves a mess on all the welds and such.
-CBI Moab 2.0 Aluminum front bumper

As you can imagine



Current questions I have/need to figure out:
-Best way to re-route air intake from inner fender area.
-Should I do a shock relocation to get 12" rear travel with my current deaver stage threes, or should I switch to spring under? The truck isnt going to the desert, just needs to be able to hual some weight in the bed and fly down wash board roads and be able to articulate on the trails. Bed cage is not an option, even if I forgot my DECKED unit I still need to put sleds and gear in the bed.
-How am I gonna carry a 37" spare
-4.56 felt ok with 33's with the weight I was carrying before. Im sure im not gonna like the 37's with that gearing. Wondering if ill be okay wheeling in low range at 4.56 for now.
-I did my original regear via ECGS. If I do regear is it worth doing it locally to retain the truetrac? Also considering just selling my third members to a buddy who needs a regear and then using his for my corecharge through ECGS. Sounds like for my use it would still make sense to continue using an LSD in the rear and have either an e-locker or ARB up front for when im trully screwed. I drive so much in the snow and Id rather not have the rear be either fully open or fully locked.
-What is the best bare bones no nonsense 10k winch out there. Not a fan of wireless controllers and such.
-Am I gonna be able to run my ARE DCU cap with the glass bedsides.



I guess thats a good start. Ill post some better photos of the truck doing its thing. Just did a little iphone dump for whats here in this post.

 

saved

 

Sooooo……

 

Update time!

After 10 months, were rollin!

-JD Fabrication +4" LT up front with LCA relocate and 934's
-King 2.5 Coils with Reservoirs and 2.0 bumpstops and straps
-Double sheer UCA, Double sheer/heim steering, Gusseted spindles
-Archive Garage Shock Relocation, Hammer Hangers, High Clearance Cross Tube, Ubolt flip with bump stops.
-King 2.5 X 12" Smoothie Shocks with Reservoirs
-Deaver Stage 3 Leaf packs
-McNeil Racing +4" Glass fenders and Bedsides
-37" X 12.5" X 17" BFG K02's
-Warn Evo VR 8-S Winch
-CBI Moab 2.0 Aluminum front bumper
-All surface rust removed from frame, inner fenders, etc and rhinolined.
-Full OEM respray

Need to get some more real photos and testing, but in the mean time I couldn't be happier.

Still on my list:
-Come up with a new lighting plan and wire that up
-Come up with a plan for my exhaust, my stock muffler is rusted out.
-New wheels with a full size spare and way to mount it in the bed.
-Swap out rear leafs for something with a lighter spring rate. My original use for the truck had me carrying way more weight in the bed, but I'm going to move away from that as i now have more unsprung weight and I want to keep performance decent