Lefty's golden taco.

So far so good. They are working well together. The steering was super tight in the beginning, I thought they were causing a weird handling issue but that just turned out to be my shocks.
If I was going to do it again I would have looked a little harder at the total chaos lowers. I believe they have one now that moves the tire forward 1" also."they weren't disclosing that when I bought mine" and I believe you can run 2 shock with the TC. As far the the LBJ's I whish I would have gotten the heim compatible ones and got their stock length Heim jt steering. My stock tierods are the limiting factor of my front.
Also my truck rattles a lot now, you can hear all the joints moving. So I guess keep that in mind. Race car parts make race car noises. It doesn't bother me ,except my rear leak pack squeaking ove ever little bump for whatever reason bugs me.
Otherwise super happy with it. I think the suspension definitely articulates better now and I was able to fit the 34’s without having to tub the rear... I do need to relocate by battery and tub that area and fold the front corner seams in a bit.

 

I guess I need to update this a bit.
Did rug road with the AZ TW group. That was a fun trip.

 

Stacy and I look forward to seeing you on our September trip Chris!

 

Some of the many streams we crossed leaving.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3jIcu0vLSA/?igsh=bHBoZ3lmb3A0ZmZ1

 

Thanks me too!! Getting to go on trips and hanging out with you guys is what makes it all worth while!

 

I made a drawer to go between my carpet kit. It's the same length as my largest upper section. This still allows me to have storage in the front. The idea is to be able to get rid of totes that have to be removed every time I want to sleep and the replaced when leaving. While it worked out great on my last trip I think I'm going to revise it to a dual drawer. With one side dedicated to my stove and food prep. My last trip showed that cooking in one big open drawer sucks. It makes a mess and provides no wind protection and it was kinda cumbersome to use in that manner because I still had to take a bunch of stuff out and had it sitting in the bed of the truck,which defeated the whole purpose. Also it was supper windy out and if I cooked on the tailgate it was a pain to get something that was Inevitably at the back of the drawer.

Also I tried out a new sleeping pad it was a 2.5" memory foam pad. Which unfortunately was a little to thin for my larger stature. But the concept worked out well as I was able to sleep diagonally in the bed of the truck. I just kept all my blankets on top of it and rolled the whole kit up and a couple of straps helpd it in place. Easy peasy packing and unpacking for on the move travel. The pad was inexpensive as I picked it up used so the cost didn't hurt to much. I did buy a fancy new pad that's almost dubble the thickness that I can't wait to try out.

The last picture is from the end of a trip you can see the roll up front . All that really left out is my chairs, my toiletrie bags and a blanket I bought at a gas station. It was a good deal. Lol

 

So rug road was ruff on my tires and put a pretty big gash one of my tires leaving me with 2 bad tires.
My spare had a pretty decent cut in the sidewall from moab..I've been super happy with the preformance of the geolanders they've never left me stranded or wanting for traction. Although they do chunk pretty good.

I bought them in 2020. Man I miss thoes prices.

Discount tires honored the warranty on the 2 bad tires. And when asked side that they would be willing to warranty the to the next size up .so I bought the other 3 in the same size to complete the set. 3 tires and 5 warranty's was pretty close to the original price I paid.
New tire size is 285 75 17. Old was 285 70 18. That change from 70 to 75 makes a bit of a difference.

Thankfully the solo arm moves the tire forward and I was able to clear the tire without any major bodywork. But they do rub my fender flares like crazy. Some trimming is needed.

 

So a camping trip came up wich was the cause for the new tires. With just a day or 2 left I to the truck over to my alt aliment shop. Firestone won't go past stock parameters,and I want to try and move the tires forward a bit to make some room. I'll look and see if i can find what the #'s were. Anyways got the truck back snd loaded up ready to hit the road on time for once..... it didn't happen but I was pretty close so it's a move in the right direction.

All loaded up and hitting the road at freeway speed and the truck ia a handful to control again.... so I guess it's time for confession. Ever since I've changed out the front end the truck has been a handful to drive on the road. Supper twitchy and easily over corrected "i thoughti was gonna roll it a few times". I've been dealing with this for over a year and hundreds of white knuckle highway miles. I thought it was the alignment. The alignment guy said everything is just super tight and needs to break in. They were sort of right . After a second alignment from that shop I ended up going to Firestone and getting a factory spec alignment, and it was mostly better..not really,but more manageable. Well the new alignment brought all the issues back to front and center. I guess I should have prefaced this with offroad the setup was awesome as long as you were paying attention because wherever I looked that's were the truck was going.
So, on this trip we stopped for gas before hitting dirt, and knowing that we were going to be dune running I thought I'd take the opportunity to stiffen up the shocks and it was interesting to find that I had 1 sock all the way open and the other at about the 1/2 way mark on the clickers. Must have been lit and playing with the shocks before installing.
Well with both shocks set a little bit more that 1/2 way I was extremely happy to find out that the trucks handling had massively improved. All of the twitching and diving was gone and she tracked like a dream. Duh!! Lessons learned.

 

I started reading this and thought to myself, oh no, I just ordered T/C LBJ's and BTF LCA's, I hope I don't have the same issues as Chris.
But reading on, I am glad it has worked itself out for you. Have fun!

 

lmao. oops

 

Thanks , I'd be a bit leary too.Thats a fair chunk of chang to dish out and have the truck handel like crap. Thankfully it was user error. Did you look at T/C stock length steering kit to go with the lbj's?

 

Right, not the first time and probably not the last .

 

So this trip we went through the south eastern part of California . We hit the Superstition HOV area and went through portions of Anza-Borrego state park as well as the salten sea and ending on part of the Bradshaw trail..
It's always interesting meeting new people I never met any of the people that I was about to embark on a 4 day adventure with. Wich can be part of the adventure. There was a pretty good mix of rigs and experience throughout the group. Thankfully everyone one was pleasant and was just looking to have a good time and a fun adventure. After meeting in west Phoenix we made our way to Yuma to pick up the last of our group and get some gas.
This guy was kinda the mvp of the trip.he tool this pretty much bone stock 1500 though places I for sure though he was gonna damage some sheet metal or worse. But nope it just kept trucking. Definitely a strong argument for keeping your vehicle as close to stock parameters as possible. His cheese rack did rattle apart but he got him going again with some ratchet straps.

After gassing up it was a short trip to the Imperial sand dunes where we stopped and looked at the old plank highway and then over to the US and Mexico border fence.

 

I didn't want to go with the heim joints.

 

Afterwards we headed to El Centro and Brawley for gas and a lunch break. So this all take place in the beginning of March and the west coast was getting hit with some storms. Needless to say it was pretty windy so windy that part of the group split off ,the wif saing that she will camp in all kind of conditions except for wind. Lol gotta keep the misses happy I guess. Anyways we get to the Hov area and it's so windy you can only see about 4 car lengths ahead of you.i unfortunately did snap a pic. All aired down we went around and over a small mountain range and a massive dune. If you've never driven on a sand dunes your missing out. 4low and 3rd gear and she'll eat !! I had a blast !

 

If you don't mind, what's your reasoning for wanting to stay with the tierod ends?

 

After the dunes we headed towards our first camp site. We had about 20 miles of dirt road that had a nice mix big open areas and a lot of little whoops . My truck was handling great. Supper squeaky and the new tires were rubbing the flairs on hard hits but otherwise soaking up everything else. The chevy 1500 developed an issue with his tent rack,it had pretty much vibrated 90%of the bolts loose. It was crazy to see the tent jump off the rack. So myself and the other chevy helped get him all put back together . Further ahead the rest of the group while waiting ended up having a 3way drag race between a 2nd gen raptor a super charged 5th gen 4runner and a basically bran new defender 115. Apparently the Landover is twin charged. A turbo and an electric supercharger. I believe it won by a car and 1/2.
We finally found our campsite for the night next to a huge wash...not gonna lie I parked up as high as possible and made sure that I was packed and ready to move quickly. Desert flash floods are no joke and we were close enough to a big mountain range that I felt it was a definite possibility. As rain was a high possibility in the forecast. Luckily we never saw a drop but man was it windy. It was so windy I had a hell of a time cooking and in the middle of the night I was woken thinking I was being pranked by people rocking my truck vigorously,but it was just the crazy wind .

 

Mostly because I want to be able to purchase replacement parts locally and not be subjected to specialty items while out on the trail. They may be stronger, but you are at the mercy of a specialty company for replacement parts.

 

Your trip looked like a fun one. I need to hang out with you guys some.

 

So the next morning we set off towards the town of Ocotillo we followed some track called the old overland stage route. We tested out metal driving up a big hill. That had 3 or 4 routes to the top with the far right being the easiest and the far left was pretty much impassable. I didn't try the far left. After watching the supercharged 4runner struggle and only making it about a quarter of the way up. A few tried to take the 2nd left line and didn't make it. I felt I was obligated to show them how it was done. I easly sailed up to the top. I think what held the others from making it was there traction control cutting power near the top. Eventually everyonemade it up most just crusing up the far rightside..there was a bus and a flag pole with a memorial up top.

We then continued on and ended up in Ocotillo around noonish,where we got gas had some lunch used a clean bathroom and aired up our tires for the extra short pavement section to the next dirt portion.