Capture Colorado 01 TRD Taco - GOAE build

I've really been wanting to see a m416 trailer on the back of a access cab as the bed. Then throw a rtt on the back with a tire swing out and it'd be a bad ass set up that no one has!

 

My plan (stupid plans change all the damn time) as of right now, is to sell the bedrug, topper, and rear bumper once I get the thing back together, to fund a new bed, possibly front fenders, hood, and hopefully be able to fund the building of another bumper (redesigned, sweeter). Flatbed isn't high on my list of desired outcomes, but it's been on my list of considerations.

I was thinking about this, with swingout etc.


Right now I'm thinking about replacing the bed, bobbing it to shortbed length, and likely doing something like this (or getting a fiberglass shell if I can find a deal).

 

Yeah pretty much lol but chaser is $$$$$ where as a m416 wouldn't be nearly as bad and I'd add a few little goodies to make it better

 

I'm back to seriously considering the Chaser style / M416 thing (same thing pretty much), I found a dude on CL locally selling replica tubs for pretty cheap, shot him an email so we'll see where that goes. It's cheaper than a new bed, and it's pretty much the same cubic footage of what I'd end up with, but with the ability to have stuff (gas, recovery gear) stored on the outside...

 

I think that'll be bad ass! Only thing I wasn't sure about and you may wanna measure is the distance from the from of the trailer tub to about mid wheel well and make sure it's gonna fit the wheel base

 

I can make it fit Also the tubs I found don't have tabs for, or include fenders, so I'd end up just custom building some.

 

Ahh sweet! And it will for sure fit in-between the tires right? I'm getting excited just thinking about it! And it ain't even my truck lol

 

It ought to, I'll have to double check the width before I move forward with any of this, but I'm pretty sure it'll fit. I might have to build the tub from scratch if I can't find one for a reasonable price - the ones I found on CL are 5', not 6'... I don't really want to do a 5' in case I decide to go back to a normal bed, the frame would be cut too much to really revert back.

One big thing that this concept lends itself well to for me - is the ever-appealing idea of compartmentalization, with all cargo secured down (this is more appealing after the roll, where a tool case hit my buddy's head). There's a dude on exportal that did this, and I came up with a quick idea that might work for my 10 gallon FrontRunner water tank that's like this.

 

Well, my back hurts.

Started the day off by removing the topper, rear bumper, and getting the bed ready to pluck off.


Once that was done, I got to work on the interior trim, I also had my windshield guy come by and pull the one from the donor cab, while he was here he pushed out the rear window for me. Turns out, the doors on these things are stupid easy to remove... like, way easier than my Jeep's doors were - yay logical construction!


This next image only reminds me of one thing...


Decapitated 'er so it'd be easier to work on and see. Turns out, it is.


Final resting place of the day.






Tomorrow I'm going to toss the seat back in, turn it around, and park it in its final resting place until everything is done, at which point I'll begin fully disassembling the rest of the dash wiring. Tonight I just removed the cosmetic bits, and non-critical things, so that I can still get it running in the morning.

 

Looks good, do you have an idea what you'll be asking for the rear bumper?

 

I listed it locally on CL this morning at $850, shoot me a pm if you're interested and we can talk doll hairs.

 

You are a MAN.
That's a heck of a big job. Congrats man, keep killing it.

 

The trailer bed is a really cool idea and unique, but keep in mind that the height of the bedsides will be much higher and make it more difficult to get to stuff inside the bed. Shouldn't be a deal killer by any means but just something to think about, especially if it has a lid.

 

Personally I was thinking throw a lid on it with some Thule/Yakima style bars and a rtt on top. Then you could do a drawer set up in the bed or do a slide out deal.

 

Good point - I haven't really been accessing the bed from the side save for the little, quick grab items, for some time thanks to the topper. I was thinking about building in some access panels on the side to pop open and grab smaller items if need be, in addition to having a similarly hinged lid as the TacoChaser. Your rack certainly has had plenty of influence over my thought process leading me to want to pursue this...

That, and I'm tired of not having a satisfactory way of carrying bikes on a hitch rack... no one makes one that I think works all that great, so some cross bars and roof bike trays on top should do what I need.

^ this. You hit the nail on the head! Rather than RTT, I think I'm going to do something like a fast setup ground tent, that I can leave set up when on bike trips, without having to fold it up every time I wanted to go to a new site.

Or maybe the Tepui Ayer will fit between 2 bike racks on top...

Funny you should mention a slide out - after seeing a friend's bed slide and how simple and [rudimentary] the design was, I realized I could easily build something similar without much trouble at all. By doing a row of inexpensive sealed bearings for the platform to rest on, and a few on top to help keep it pinned down and not tipping outward, some 1" square tubing could run between the two rows of bearings acting as a giant drawer slide for all of like $18.... $25 including hardware. I'll get detailed pics up when I get around to actually doing this.

 

Today's progress:

With exception of some confusion, and about an hour and a half of me being extremely.... well, this sums it up: Today went well, I could have gotten more done had things come apart the way they should have, when they should have... but hey - that's what I get for taking this on.

I started out by turning the truck around, so that the front end was facing outward... In doing so, I decided to brap around the block really quick for giggles. It felt like I was driving my buddy's caged and linked Samurai without the windshield (or anything very substantial feeling above the dash).



Then more of this.


Stupid thing FINALLY came out, didn't seem like it would. It didn't help that the non-factory cruise control was really, really poorly installed (no logic). Once I figured out what went where, I just labeled the bits and yanked 'er out.

This is what makes your truck work:




Still need to:
- drain the radiator so I can pull the heater core out, hopefully draining the radiator empties that a bit...
- disconnect the AC lines - depressurized them tonight
- figure out where/how to disconnect the parking brake and pull that through
- figure out what the best way to access the coupler for the steering dingus
^ that's all that I need to do for the passenger compartment.

For the engine bay:
- remove radiator
- disconnect fuel line (trying to figure out the best way to catch the spillage)
- move the brake booster and clutch out of the way - not sure what the best way to do this will be. Might just open up the bleed valve on the back and let the system drain itself out.
- make sure all the hard lines and important shit is safely out of the way for the new cab to be lowered over it.
- cut old cab into bite-size pieces and remove

Then:
- weld some relay bracket into the passenger side of donor cab - it doesn't have one for some reason...
- drill holes for clutch master cylinder on new cab, prime.
- enlarge / make the hole for the shifters work, drill mounting holes for the boot bezel
- drill 2 holes in floorboard for the rearmost center console bracket
- begin reassembly (hoping I get to do some of the wiring reassembly prior to putting the new cab in place)

That's about it...

Also I noticed the VIN tags were held into place with your standard aluminum pop-rivets, so that issue has been resolved. Even gave the thing a fresh coat of factory-finish flat black to cover up the scratches from rocks and broken windshield.

 

Oh yeah! If nothing else you could make your own cross bars and make them a little wider then mount the bike tray. But I completely understand the rtt thing, I like the idea of having everything at base camp and not having to pack/unpack. I've looked at oz tents many times.

Also the trails my truck often sees have a few very low trees/limbs that if a 4runner were to come through they would rub. Just ask jake (hhirunner), his roof has a big dent on it from a low lying tree. But I am afraid a tree may damage the rtt if it was to high.

 

Oof, that's certainly a consideration, but most of my camping trips are pretty much limited to the desert (I feel at home there) so not a lot of trees. I think the height of the Ayer would be juuust about even with the roof if I went that route, the bikes would stick up though..

I think I'd ultimately do my own crossbars, simply because they're not hard to fab up, and commercial ones are outrageously expensive. (I was thinking 80/20 extruded ) My biggest concern would be not having the crossbars stick out wider than the cab, but with the Ayer at 42" wide when folded, I'm pretty sure I've got plenty of room to spare.

 

so you're swapping cabs eh?

 

Yep, how'd you guess?

Today, I started out with the goal of making these two switch places.


I succeeded.

Started out with just a small handful of things to remove, but a seemingly laaarge list of crap to take care of today... here's my list from last night:

Got the radiator out, that took a good while to drain - good news is that it looked pretty clean in there. While that was draining, I also got to work on draining the brake MC and shortly after the clutch so I could disconnect those.


Once I was able to walk away from the old cab, knowing everything was disconnected that needed to be, double and triple checked (I even found a pair of cables going to the back bumper that served no purpose! got rid of those...) I moved on to the new cab, I had to transfer measurements for the tranny and t-case holes over to it - I'd have pictures of these except they're on my actual camera, not my phone, and I don't feel like getting up. That process went smooth, yada yada, cut some here, welded in a filler plate there, drilled some holes (total of 8 needed to be created), welded in the little tab dingus on the passenger side and boom. Ready. While it was sitting waiting for the transfer, I picked up some epoxy paint and shot the wheel wells with a few good coats of shiny black goodness. Looks good.

At 5:30 I had a handful of folks come by to lend a hand for a quick second, we had 6 total which worked out perfectly. The old cab came off easy as could be, the new cab with more height and sheetmetal was a little more difficult, but we got it done.


After that, I sat for a bit in the garage feeling kind of surreal, and then got to work.





All in all it was an incredibly productive day, worked from 9-10 almost nonstop... I don't remember having lunch, either. But I managed to get the wiring harnesses both back in, the passenger side of the interior is all connected, it's ready for the cross brace to go in so I can move on to the center console and driver's side. The passenger side of the engine bay is 100% complete minus my aftermarket switch panel. The radiator is in now, as is the main fuse panel.

Tomorrow morning I need to get the holes for the clutch MC drilled and ready before I move on to anything else on that side, once that's done I can reconnect all of that, bolt the brake system in and reconnect it, then the evap dingus, once those three items in the bay are complete, all I'll need to do is route throttle cable and that'll be it for the engine compartment.

As soon as the clutch MC is able to be installed, I'll begin reconnecting the cabin fuse panel and all that stuff, and should be able to get the dash reassembled, etc. shortly after. I fully expect to have the thing running by the end of the day, possibly earlier, and pending the replacement of a particular body bolt and bushing (it was seized), it should be drivable soon.

I've also decided to stick to the white. It's in really good shape, with no rust - just needs a few small spots of touch up, which might entail me giving the roof a quick scuff and spray down of paint to keep it smooth, or....not. I need to figure out the best paint to use to match the OE color so I can do the doors, I'd like to keep it cheap and rattle can, rather than buying expensive automotive paint...