Run to the Hills! - Jason's Glacial Pace Colorado GTFO Build

Good shit right here!

 

Thanks, broseph!

 

I like the sandwich bag on the inner diffs openings.

What was the black tipped things you put on the ends of the PS lines?

 

Heat is your friend..... sometimes My fuel pump comes in today from URD hopefully this fixes my issue. Shooting from the hip.

 

Gives me some hope that mine will be just as easy when I start to overhaul a bunch of maintenance stuff...

Those are vacuum plugs. Work great when you're leaving hard lines off for a while

 

Honestly, the bags didn’t do a great job, but that’s because I didn’t have any big rubber bands to hold them on. I ultimately ended up just draining the diff and stuffing some paper towels in there just to keep debris out.

And like Josh said, those are just vacuum plugs. They needed to be a bit bigger, but I forced them on there and they aren’t going anywhere! Those damn lines would have dripped PS fluid all over the LCA mounts if I hadn’t capped them.

Fingers crossed, bud! I hope that gets her back on her feet!

As always, much appreciated with the welding advice.

I hope it goes well for you when you get there! All in all, pulling all of the shit off of the front end wasn’t too bad. But the suck would be massive if you had to fight rusted fasteners and stuff.

 

Well, there’s been a lot of on-again, off-again, progress on the truck. I got the cam tab gussets welded onto the truck, and I learned very quickly that welding on the truck is obviously not like welding on a bench. What a gigantic dick pain. But all in all, I’m happy with the outcome.

I still need to do some grinding on some ugly welds and do some dremel work on a tab that apparently moved just a bit while I was tacking it in place. But that will happen after I burn in the coil bucket gussets.

The spindle gussets are ready to weld after a bit of grinding to get the fit dialed in. And the LCAs and the steering rack are both ready for their new bushings. The skid mounts at the rack crossmember need to be replaced with beefier material, but I’m not terribly worried about that.

All in all, I’m actually kind of surprised that I was able to get this far by now, given the holidays (fuck, I’m glad that’s all done...), puking my guts out for a few days, and also bad weather keeping me from working outside in the driveway. Still much to do, but it’s getting there. I’ll try to post up some pics later this week of the progress thus far.

Oh, and a question for @Squeaky Penguin :

Did you have to do much grinding to fit your coil bucket gussets? It’s looking like mine will need more than a little to get everything lined up...

 

Yes. I had them on and off a couple dozen times fine tuning the fitment.

 

Thanks, Brett. It’s looking like that’s the case on mine as well.

 

I had to also grind a lot on the set I've welded.

 

Yeah I also had to grind the coil bucket gussets to get them to fit flush.

 

Thanks, gents.

 

Oh, you're doing everything to your front end. Lol

 

Yeah, pretty much!

As always, stuff takes much longer than I anticipated, but it’s getting there. I’m bailing on the coil bucket gussets for now, but I’ll keep them for later when the opportunity presents itself. I just finished welding up the spindle gussets earlier this week, but I haven’t posted up any pics yet. I’m pretty happy with the results.

Oh, and thank for the input on the SPCs in the Wyoming thread. That’s exactly what I was hoping for, especially the firewall clearancing. I’m gonna have a Toyota master tech that I know align it for me after all of this, but I really want to learn how to do it myself at some point.

 

why are you skipping the coil bucket gussets? this is the best time to do it..

 

It's super easy to do yourself once you've done it once. Max out the cams for caster. Then set your camber with the upper bj. Then dial in your toe with the tie rods. A angle finder and tape measure are the only tools you really need. Toe plates and turn tables make it easier but not necessary.

 

Yep. Super glad I learned how to do my own alignments.

One thing to note though: I'm shredding the opposite corners of the whitelines with my cams maxed given it angles the LCA in the mounts. Two season on the current set and they look pretty beat. I'll keep running them for a bit and see what happens.

 

I'll have to keep an eye on mine.

 

The honest answer is because I’m being a little bitch and they pissed me off with all of the grinding that’s required for fitment. There’s still a good chance I’ll get them in this go around, but if not, it’s not the end of the world. Spindle and cam tab gussets we’re always the priority.

Thanks, gents! I appreciate the input as always.

Hope your trucks are behaving better these days, Ryan.

 

Got these dudes welded on! I feel really damn good about how they turned out.