Sluggo: The 4 banger build

Sorry I missed you on your way back through, sounds like you had an awesome trip.

 

Actually did a thing today! For the first time in 2.5 years i have wind shield wiper Fluid. It's a super tight fit with my skid but I'm planning on building a new skid in the spring anyway so I'm not worried.
2 pieces of pipe, under 2ft. Cemented together with the 1/2" reducer at the bottom, zip tied to the frame and ps lines, and i extended the 2 wires for the harness a bit. Thanks to sir monte for his lil write up on these.

I'm pretty skeptical on how long it will survive considering how rough I am on the truck, so maybe if done again I'd leave off the horizontal piece and just have the vertical piece and set it higher up and only use it sparingly but we shall see

 

I recommend trying to fit 6'' hose clamps to the frame to hold it. Will work much better.

 

Actually did some things to the truck! WOA!
On top of the basics like fluids and filters, the truck got:

New Upper Ball Joints
King 2.5" Coil Overs
New Head Lights
New Rock Lights
Front Seat covers
Some Fresh Paint

Pressing the upper ball joints out was easy with a 2 jaw puller, but without a ball joint press (none existed to rent or buy in jackson) I had to take them in to get them pressed by an auto shop so I could get back to boise on time for a wedding.

Installing the kings was a breeze, except that they gave me a tundra top hat for one of them, so I had to have king overnight a new top hat so I could swap it out. I havn't had the truck off road yet but from driving through drainage dips on my street...it seems to handle them well!

Tired of replacing a crappy sealed beam headlight every 4 months i ordered some 5x7 square LED head lights and a wiring harness from low range off road, since LED and H4 lights arent plug and play for our trucks. These lights are nice and bright, and render my 2 front LED square pods basically useless so I need to move them. They fit right into the factory bracket and the new harness plugged into the factory harness plug and to the battery. I just had to drill a few holes to mount the relay. Ive passed a few cops and haven't been pulled over sooooo, i think im doing good so far!

The rock lights are 2 marine LED bars. They were nice and cheap, 25 bucks for the pair shipped (i orded 2 pairs, one pair for the truck and one pair for the sailboat). They feel very solid and tough. I was tired of the stupid led strips, i always ended up smashing them or ripping on the wires so i figured 2 bright LED lights was better than some dumb led strips all over the place. I drilled a hole through the bed, bolted it in and cut the extra bolt off. Boom, done. The other one im putting on the frame on the drivers side pointing down. Should light up the truck under the front and rear where it counts nicely and I wont have to worry about these things again.

The seat covers were a set from car covers.com...pretty basic, but damn it looks so much cleaner inside without the stupid dirty ripped up factory seats.

Last but not least for the last weekend... I moved the bed rack mounting back about 1.5 ft so I could put the heavy ass tool tote in the front of the bed and not to one side. Then I hit the bed rack with a fresh coat of paint, and sprayed 5 coats of bed liner on the bed rails to clean it up a lot and give the bed rack something to scratch.





Also if anyone was curious if a 1st gen could pull a 2 ton sailboat...it can...it just sucks ass, and I did about 45 the whole way lol

 

Not sure how I'm just now stumbling upon another awesome 4 banger build! Truck looks good! We definitely need to meet up at RT

 

With my newly acquired garage in our newly acquired rental, I’m putting in a big push to do ALOT of maintenance and upkeep that’s been neglected, so hopefully I can just use the shit outta the truck this spring and summer and years to come and not worry about it.

Before going to Boise for Christmas I put in a new rack so it was actually drivable, turns out th brand new bushings were jello, and the alignment cams were seized and it couldn’t be aligned in any way (this has basicially ruined my new MTRs)

So as soon as I got back from Boise I put the truck on jack stands and took the rack mostly back off, ripped out the new bushings, and went to work ripping out the control arms, and my failed cv, that spun some splines on the drive to Boise.

Control armss came out the standard way, I just took out the actual bolts, and hacked at the cams and cut them off till the control arms dropped out. Then I cut out the sleeves, luckily my new 1 1/2” hole saw I got fit right in to cut some bushings. I pressed out the sleeves then took a sawzall to slice and hammer out the outter sleeve. I’m now waiting with my steering rack bushings and white line bushings in the freezer til my cam tabs and bolts show up. And I can put it back together.

 

At the same time I took off a door panel to pop out a dent and saw my door speakers were cracked and destroyed, so I figured it was time to get some new quality sound. I ordered th kicker CSS654 6 3/4 component speaker system. It’s got separate tweeters, and passive crossovers, which should make for a good sound.

The kit comes with everything basicially plug and play. Really cool kit. I just have to pick a place to mount the cross overs and tweeters since my truck didn’t come with them. Since they wire directly from the factory speaker wire I elected to screw them into the door pannel in the little cubby so all the wiring was hidden but still close to the factory wiring. Then I took the hole saw and just cut a hole in the door to put th tweeter through.

 

As soon as the essentials are back in to make it drivable, the truck comes out for a bit to let my buddy use the garage, then as soon as he’s done it’s going back in for the next round of parts im ordering. Next Round of fun is engine maintenance:

New radiator (top of mine leaks)
Install stacked fin aux trans cooler
Drop and clean tranny pan
Rear brakes
Modify bpv
New belts
Replace water pump
Fix/rebuild washer fluid pump

I don’t know how close the water pumpis to needing it...but I’ve had the truck for close to 70k miles and I’ve never done it. Since the whole front end is taken apart, might as well.

Once that’s all done, I’m moving on to my second attempt at fab work lol. Woohoo!

 

I'd highly recommend throwing those spc Cam bolts in the trash and using OEM.

 

Im done taking apart the front end for a while. Guess if it goes to hell I’ll replace it in the future.

 

You will be replacing them in the very near future.

 

Why? Can’t hold an alignment? Cuz I’m also sick of paying for that

 

yeah they are know for not doing their job. at all.

 

Fantastic

 

X2 pieces of shit.

 

should compliment both the truck and myself well then

 

LOL, don't sell yourself short.