Ever ruined a perfectly good truck before? My build thread.

Im going to slowly add to this build thread. Ive been building this truck in my shop for over 2 and a half years at this point and havent posted on TW in years. I figure tacoma guys might be interested in what it looks like to completely destroy a perfectly good truck and rebuild it from the frame up. Ill add in more photos and descriptions later, but enjoy the sneak peek.

 

Watching!

 

Beautiful shop.

 

Now this is a proper build thread.

 

I began devising the build thread and writing down captions for photos in chronological order from beginning to present. I just want to prepare everyone, its very long. This truck has seen many phases and it has all been documented in photos thus far.

 

Ok

 

Why replace the engine bay sheet metal with structural tubing? Are you planning on covering it up or just running it open?

 

OP, start a build thread in the build thread section. That's where most of us prerunner guys are.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/forums/1st-gen-builds-1995-2004.102/

 

Following

 

On TW that’s like throwing chum in the waters.

We love it.

 

Very excited for whats to come

 

In for all of this!

Your flag is technically hanging wrong. (found that out the hard way from my father in law)

 

I'm very interested to see where this goes

 

Whats up

 

Whats up lol

 

Lets hear the right way. I didnt know it was wrong.

 

Does it really matter? Idk man, I havent posted on here in forever.

 

I got a second gen, but DAMN! That's a HELL of a build so far! I would love to do something like that to my second gen. Maybe some day.

 

So in 2019 while on vacation with my family, I finally decided to stop pestering my family by doing at-home work on my truck and to get a shop. I received the keys on August 1st, 2019. I figured that the space was cheap enough for my budget and I wanted a place to be able to work on side projects, and my truck as a whole.


First thing I did was start shopping around. I got a couch on craigslist for free from an older couple (which I of course cleaned), I found an enco horizontal/ vertical bandsaw on craigslist, and i found an older JD2 Tn-100 and JD2 model 3 bender with a floor mounted stand (which i still use to this day). I then proceeded to move everything into my shop.






Next was to collect some parts. Trigo on here (TW) is one of my good friends in real life (probably one of the most dependable individuals I know). He has sold me plenty of things second hand that I somehow make work. First on the list was a motor/trans which came from his V8 tacoma (RIP). It was a stock 5.3l/4l60e which eventually got torn apart along with the rest of my truck. The 4l60e was sold to try to make up costs of the shop tools/parts thus far.

Sidenote: The 5.3 block from Trigos v8 tacoma is still in my truck for mockup purposes.





Moving on. So I ended up getting my truck into my shop on September 12, 2019 after I was somewhat situated with tools, etc. By somewhat situated I actually mean I didn't have hardly any tools, and almost no light beside one set of shop lights directly above my head that didn't help. By the 15th, the interior was completely gutted and the motor/trans was pulled.







Just as a side note, I only vaguely remember what I originally intended to do with my truck. I believe my original goals were a v8, 4-link, cab cage, and a-arm kit. Which is pretty simple compared to the snowball.


Ended up rigging up some harbor freight lights so that I could see the back half of my truck while I was working on it and this was a game changer for a broke guy in a shop. It's the little things that count when you put your money into a shop. Also a valuable lesson: you can never have too many lights.



After the motor/trans was removed, the bed cage was next to go. It sat in my shop taking up real estate for a while before I realized nobody wanted it and I cut it into pieces and tossed it. Next was that I completely cut out the interior sheet metal of the cab, which ultimately meant that it was real and there was no going back now. There's also some photos of my OCD kicking in as I filled in cut marks to later grind down flush even though they were getting plated over. I cut off the stock shock towers, because who needs those when you have the idea of a cool LT A-arm kit?









I found a sweet deal on a full floater 3.5” camburg housing that was too wide for the A-arm setup and I bought it anyway lol (76” WMS). I just remember thinking how am I supposed to get the front as wide as the rear without wheel spacers (part of the snowball).




After spending hours grinding and cutting pieces away on my chassis, i realized how unstable jack stands actually are, so i got some material from my work at the time and built a chassis table stand that had bolts to level the frame on it (I still have this if anyone has a use for it let me know and we can work out a deal lol). Also, you can see my OCD in the grinding/sanding procedure that I had going on. I also had not much of a clue of what I was doing, but used the body mount center as the tube center for where the C-Pillar tubes would land in the rear (it worked out fine).











At some point, I found a shop workbench on sale at lowes as well as a white board which you can see in the background of this photo of an overlay plate for a tube landing. Also, I decided to tig weld these plates and the overlay plates I add later on the front of the chassis.




Here are the first set of trailing arms and link mounts I went with and then changed my mind later. The trailing arms were also tig welded for whatever reason lol.





Using a large homemade t-bevel, I laid the first few tubes on the chassis with a little motivation from my buddy Jake to get over my anxiety of messing up. Over the next two weeks I got the main structure tacked up and welded. I had my first “shop party” which is code for “I need help” and my buddies helped me lift my cab off the chassis and move it aside for the welding.





















I don't know if any of you guys know Tommy (TT Motorsports). In November 2019 he was in a bad crash with his then-wife and he was in the hospital for a while. Well, I originally intended on using his kit on this truck. Originally, I didn't have the money for the kit. When I saved up and Tommy got in the accident, I thought that it was still possible to run the kit until I realized that he would be out of commission for a while. Well, my friend Clark talked me into a beam kit and so I started the demo and all of the overlay plates on the front of the truck.









I then acquired a 40 gallon fuel safe fuel cell from Vance (andersenoffroad) and started the fuel cell cradle for the rear of my truck while my beam kit was being assembled by the builder.





It ended up that I got a free set of WIY trailing arms from the same guy that built my beams. So when my beams showed up I got to work on building those.







With some basic measurements, I tacked up my beam mount and did my first mockup with some smarter individuals than myself.



After that came motor/ trans mockup. The 4L80 case and mid-plate was courtesy of Maximum offroad transmissions. (Timeline at this point is about July 20, 2020)





To be continued...