Tacodriver08s-Just another SAS in progress

Colorado Trip Photo Dump

Animas River in Durango


Waterfall Right outside of Ouray

We ran California Gulch out of Silverton, stopped by Lake Como then made our way up Hurricane Pass and down through Corkscrew Gulch to make our way to Ouray on the first day.

Yankee Boy Basin Pics

American Basin Pics

 

Made another trip?

 

Imogene Pass

Have to start with a poser shot, got to love the Cooper St Maxx tires, didn't skip a beat on this trip

Camp Bird Mine from IMogene Trail, this mine is still in use!

Dogs first time in the snow, needless to say they loved it!

The wife wouldn't let me go out any further, also she refused to get in the truck until I backed down

This is Imogene Summit, I dont have a pic on here but there is a fort called Fort Peabody that in on the summit of Imogene Mt, I hiked up to it and its summit 13,365, talk about take your breath away

View of Black bear Pass from Imogene Trail running into Telluride...next year...it shall be done.

Last Dollar Rd
Climbing out of Telluride, this part of the road has some pretty amazing views and well as some extravagant (and expensive) houses, phone next to the toilet kind of houses.

The Aspens are beautiful and abundant on this road, we hope to come back in the fall one day and catch them when they're changing colors
Poser shot cause why not

Red Mt Pass, we took this nice little route out of Ouray to Silverton. Pretty easy trail and very scenic, full of old mining stuff all over it, didnt take many pictures though.

Truck & Trailer poser, the trailer handled great on this trip, very glad that it turned out as well as it did.

Had to climb the big rock hill!

 

Sure did, got back in on Saturday, did some new trails this time as well as some we did last year. Did not want to come back to this heat!

 

No invite? Joking .. nice pics Chris.

 

Nice pics Chris. Definitely jealous!

 

Haha thanks! It was sorta spur of the moment, this place should be a big meet/trip for us.

Thanks Warren! Yall gotta go one day, super scenic and the trails are just tough enough to be fun.

 

Awesome pics and trip. Did you pull the trailer on some of the passes?

 

Great pictures!

That area looks strangely familiar
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/alpine-loop-and-ouray-area-7-22-7-26-15.384583/

 

Damn I should look at my own build more! Yep pulled it up over California pass and hurricane pass and all the gulches around it.

Yeah it does! Awesome pictures man, I love that area of CO

Glad it wasn't anything worse!

I was down under the truck and noticed my all pro transmission skid had bent some , I've had a for a while and probably slammed it on something in Colorado. Its a good skid plate for $99, but not the best design in my opinion. It created a pretty good hangup point on the cross member under the transmission and also lacked any support across the plate, so I did some modifying to it and this is what came out.

Cut some 1.5" tubing I got from some scraps at work, cut it in half then welded away. You can also see the the end with some fresh (ugly) welding on it, that end I scored with the grinder, bend it the opposite direction it was was facing which allow me to flip the skid. Now that it is flipped it I have a smooth skid to cross member transition.

 

Obligatory truck poser


Lunch time!


Highcenterd sitting on both my sliders


Aron coming down the start of Clydes Ravine


Bout to get flexy


Drive up out of Desi-Way I believe


Me and the wifey


Nox and his ball


Stormy and her ball


Stormy ready to go!


Going up Solihull


Looking down Dewoody, another day another time


Start of Greenlane


James's Truck


Arons truck


Sitting on top of Dewoody enjoying the view

 

Finally got my kit installed, very happy with the results from it. Not the best pictures but its all my phone can get. I ended up running one of the strips through my toolbox which turned out to be a great idea. Just in time for another trip up to Barnwell Mt Rec Area.

 

PIC dump from Barnwell - January 16'

 

After cleaning up from the last trip I found I put a nice dent in the front center of my ALl pro IFS skid. This is the 2nd time I've done this (I like to pick bad lines sometimes) so I thought I'd beef that area up.

Beat the dent out with a BFH and placed 3 gussets in the front middle. They're not perfrect or art, but its not bad for just using some cardboard to trace it and a cutoff wheel.

 

Been on alot of adventures lately but haven't updated this thread any. Said adventures and having 200k+ on the truck finally took its toll.

I had been having some weird front end happenings; sloppy steering, tons of bump steer and some dangerous swaying when hitting large sets of bumps in the road. Took the truck to get aligned thinking the steering was just off. Got called 30 minutes later and was told they couldn't do the work as my upper and lower BJs and my inner tie rod on the passenger were all bad. My first thought was that they were just pulling my leg; so I drive it home and pulled the tires off, low and behold they were right. In searching though I also found my driver upper bj and inner tie rod were bad as well. The upper BJ's were the original design from SPC and had roughly 85k on them, the inner tie rods were factory and the lower BJs were MOOG and roughly 45k old.

With all that said, I decided hell with it, lets replace it all. I did the work solo so I don't have alot of pics but I'll try and navigate through the happenings. For reference I purchased all parts from RockAuto except for the SPC uppers, I purchased those from Headstrong. I purchased 2 new Evotech Lower BJs, 2 new Moog Inner TR and 2 new Moog Outter TR, the new designed SPC upper BJs and 2 new CV axle oil seals (the ones on the inside of the spindle). While I had it all off I figured I would also get some TC gussets on the spindles.

Front end dissembled, was originally going to use a BJ press and keep the lCA on the truck, but fate had other plans which I'll discuss shortly.



New Inner and Outter tie rods. I highly suggest renting the tool for the inner tie rods. Makes quick work of it and it allows you to torque it to factory specs. Went ahead and added extra grease inside the and used a 3" hose clamp on the rack side of the boot since the factory clamp had to be cut.


Lower BJ time! The snag i hit here is the the Mood lowers that I installed 2 years ago had a larger foot print on the lower lip than the stock ones. Which meant that none of the BJ adapters from my HF kit fit it well enough. This led to me deciding to pull the LCAs and use a cutting disk to resize that lower lip until one of the adapters would fit around it. The removal of said LCAs were a chore in itself as they had never been removed and were almost seized in there. Got them out without having to ruin the bolts luckily though.

You can see the endges where I used the cutting disk to get it to size.

Yay HF shop press! pressing it on.



Pressed in, retaining clip and zerk installed


BJ boot installed and greased up


Before reinstalling the LCAs I took the liberty of drowning the cam bolts in anti-seize...fk you rust.


I lost all the pics of the TC spindle install unfortunately, stupid phone. But here you can see it sorta, everything installed and good to go...or so I though.

Also as a side note, if you have SPC UCAs and you install the spindle gussets, the top of the gusset adds to the thickness of the top of the spindle where the BJ goes through; this leads to having less threads for the nut to go up, nothing unsafe. It just meant that I could only get one leg of the cotter pin through rather than two.



So thats great right, everything is installed and were ready to roll woot. Yeah fk that, not that lucky. While laying on my back installing things I laid my head on the creeper and looked back to the rear diff, only to notice puddle of gear oil accumulating under it. Well shit says I, after doing some looking I narrowed it down to be leaking from around the pinion. Turns out there is a seal there (the factory one of course) and I just needed to replace it.

Too easy, 18 dollar part from the dealer, followed the steps I found online and it was done. I will say that I had to reuse the crush washer, while not preferred, it was my only option as I had neither the time nor money to rip the diff apart and install a new one and set all the pre-load and what not. Instead I took a calculated risk and just reinstalled the pinion nut in the exact location (turns and markings calculated) plus a hair more. I found a ton of articles online about people doing this and never having a problem so I felt good about it. So far after 50 miles there are no noise and no excess heat from where the pinion bearings are located...also no leak.

Pinion seal part#


Bad seal

No seal and cleaned




I didn't get anymore pics on the new seal installed but just picture the bad seal except nice and clean and black. So now the truck is rolling better than it has in a long while If you have any questions id be more than happy to help. Thanks for looking!

 

I have a set of aftermarket lowers I would have sold you

 

I like this build.

 

Some awesome trail rides here!

Nice work. I like doing my own as well.

BTW, what traction aides are these?

 

Thanks! I guess I should look in my own build more often as I just saw this whoops!

 

I think they're called portable tow trucks, about 30 bucks off Amazon. They've worked every time I've needed them, even helped get a f350 unstuck once. Not the fanciest out there but I'm more of a function over form.