Thads Cement Grey Long Bed Build

5/2/22:

To fix the sag and carry more weight when the smartcap arrives I ordered a set of Icon RXT leaf springs and a U-bolt flip kit with timburen bumps from Memario1214 and they arrived on 5/5. I still have not put them in yet. Just need to find some time. Life has been pretty hectic recently. I'll probably install them on option 2 and see what kind of rake I get. Might have to go to option 3. Definitely wont start at option 1.

Also, some fuck door dinged my bedside at the post office a few weeks back. If I had a dashcam and knew who did it I would love to crowbar their windows. So one of those might be on order soon too. I live in a small town so they'd be easy to find.

5/12/22:

The weather is starting to warm up and Im trying to get out this weekend for a quick local camp. Hopefully it's finally done snowing.

I also desperately need to wash and detail the truck before summer hits hard. The truck has never been cut and polished and it has been long overdue. between moving last year, winter, and all the shit I just haven't had a chance. Most of the swirls should come out and hopefully detailing it will hide the dent a bit. Shooting to get that done Sunday. There isn't a local PDR guy so Im not sure when I'll be able to meet up with an out of town guy to pop the dent out.

 

5/23/22:

Well, the weather has been shit for the last few weeks. I have not detailed the truck and we have not gone out and camped at all. Spring has been super weird. We still have tons of snow. It did give me a chance to set up my RXT's for option 2. They are getting installed on Wednesday along with my u-bolt flip kit. I just used a ball joint press to clamp the springs together and swapped leafs around. pretty straight forward. Only took an hour. I have, however, received a ton of feedback on TW all for option 3... so I am pretty temped to pull em apart again set em on option 3. I just want to sit level. with the smartcap (200lbs), tent (100lbs), and bikes on the rack. Im ok with a little squat when I'm all loaded up. Im soliciting advice so if you have any, post below!









Here are a few recent photos from the weekend too

 

5/25/22:

Well, the leafs and u-bolt flip kit went in flawlessly on option 2. Cost me $300 but its done and done right. And I've even got 5/8" of rake for the topper. its sits perfectly to load up and take on trips. Option 2 was the right move. Im thrilled. I could fit a bigger tire. And at some point when the 285s are done I will go to a 295, 305, or 315/70 as the tires look super small now. It also depends how it settles out with the topper. I dont want to get a CMC done just yet. Id like to get the truck paid off first lol. I did originally plan the build around a 295/70 but when I went to buy tires they were $55/tire more! Not worth it. But for now I have checked one big item off of my list.







Now it definitely needs a bath. But that will have to wait til after the weekend. I we're headed to SLC for some riding/camping since the weather is gonna be ass here.. again.

Also, heres a dog photo cause I tend to post one with all of my updates!

 

6/17/22:

Finally got out for a night! We were finally home for a weekend and the weather was looking good. As you may have seen, the NW has had a wild spring with tons of precipitation so thats made camping quite difficult. Anyway, we headed up to the mountains on Friday after work for some camping and biking and hiking. We found a dialed spot right by the river near some hiking/biking trails. With all the spring snow melt, there were a 3 legit river crossings and lots of soft mud puddles. I had to throw the truck in 4-wheel-drive a few times and 4LO to tuck it into our camp spot. Even had to lock the diff to get it level on some rocks. The ground was SOFT.







The dog was having a great time and bounced back and forth from playing in the river which was over flowing a few inches on either side to chewing on sticks and longs. He went after the fire wood and was super thrilled that I was cutting sticks for him.





We made some Costco tacos for dinner and they were fantastic! They came in a "kit" and were super tasty and easy as hell to make



The next morning we made breakfast and went for a bike ride right from camp. Dog loved it. He has two speeds, standing and running. After our ride we packed up camp and drove down the FS road to a lodge and grabbed lunch then headed home. Til next weekend!

 

6/19/22:

The forecast for Sunday was supposed to be crummy which is why we headed home from camp on Saturday afternoon. Turns out, it wasnt. The weather was cool and sunny. The house/garage was clean and the lawn had been mowed. A perfect day for a long overdue wash/cut/polish/wax on the truck and tent. I usually try and do it once a year in the spring. We found just a bit of mud over the weekend so that had to come off anyway. Ya gotta seize opportunites when they present themselves!



Anyway, I got after it for a few hours with my Rupes DA. I cut a bunch of the scratches down and most paint/metal issues are finally pretty un noticeable.. at least to me I even got Sadie to wax the tent for me!









I also noticed that my tailgate plastic trim is starting to crack around the screw heads! Not sure how that happened but thanks Toyota! They definitely don't make trucks like they used to! At least its under warranty.

 

6/23/22-627/22:

Alright, so we had a wedding in Glide, Oregon on Saturday 6/25. We hit the road early afternoon on 6/23 and made a pit top in Boise to get my oil changed. The truck rolled 20k on the way to Boise. Thanks you Toyota Care! We also stopped and test drove 4Runners for my girlfriend and ended up putting a deposit down and ordering a pretty stripped out 2022 4Runner TRD ORP in Army. We should have it by Christmas!

Anyway, we ran a few other errands, returned some shit at REI and ran to Trader Joes for wraps for dinner, grabbed fuel and pressed on. I was getting shit fuel economy going into a 19MPH headwind. The dash was reading 10.5MPG and that was a buzzkill with these gas prices. Honestly, it was rough. I fueled up 4 times on the way to Bend, OR they were 1/2 tanks or so and only $60ish but still it definitely sucked.

We found a pretty good dispersed campsite about 15 miles west of Burns, OR. We ripped up a pretty rutted dirt road and pulled in around 9PM. We took some photos and passed out with coyotes crying in the distance. We had a great sun set!

 

The next morning we woke up and got the dog out of the tent. He immediately started eating grass and started to have an allergic reaction Sadie was insistent that we need to hit the road to an emergency vet so we made coffee quickly and hit the road at about 6:30AM. He ended up drinking about 2 bottles of water in the truck and was fine





Once we got into bend we hit the river for a while and let our 4 legged water whore swim.



We also went for a bike ride in the afternoon with dog as well, just a quickie before we checked into our hotel and went to dinner.

 

Wedding day was good, minus the heat. we got up early made breakfast and went for another, longer bike ride, ran back to the hotel to clean up and pack up before we hit the road west.

The wedding was actually on a family ranch so a lot of people were camping... trailer camping that is. We got there at about 4PM, got set up and it was 100 degrees with no shade. FUCKING MISERABLE.





We have decided to RSVP to future summer weddings "pending the weather but if we show, there will be two"

 

On Sunday we planned to head to crater lake to hit the water and go on a few hikes Sunday/Monday. We pulled in to the ranger station hut thing and they said that with their above average snowpack 1/2 of the roads were closed, camping was still closed, and most of the trails still had snow. So we bagged that idea and headed back to the cascade highway to blow up the paddle boards. It was a great afternoon on devils lake and we just tossed the boards on the roof and headed into bend for a smoothie when we were done. We also hit a few open houses while we were.. living in a trigger state definitely has its draw backs



After those open houses, we headed back up the mountain and found a campsite near phils.. it took us a while to find a good site, but there were a lot of people trying to live out their van life dreams in their meth rigs. Not the greatest feelings IMO. We did have to throw it in 4lo and lock the diff to get up a few rocks.







We made great quesadillas for dinner and hung out around the fire for a while. The sky was super clear!



The next morning we packed up camp and hit the road for the river around 9:30 the sun was already baking hot. We paddled around for a while and let the dog swim. He loves the water. We grabbed more fuel and hit the road home around 1PM. It was a great trip. We always love coming to Oregon.

 

7/7/2022:

So y'all may or may not have heard about my alignment woes. I am now on my now 4th alignment since the beginning of march and it finally steers straight. It went in for its 4th alignment today, the tech spent 3 hours messing with it, but the numbers are good. 0 camber, casters set at 2.8# both sides. Toe is set at .08 each side. Hopefully this alignment sticks for a while! I do rip fire roads and mildly wheel it. The tech added 1.8# of total camber back in to get my wheels straight up n down. el oh el.

The first one was pretty good. But then the truck settled a bit I had the tech check it a few weeks later and he said everything was still good (even though it didn't look good.)
In may it went back to the same tech probably cause I was ripping dirt roads and it was wayyyy out. That same tech said he couldnt adjust camber even though I have SPCs so he set it up mostly correct, the exception being it had like -.04# of camber each side.

We decided to make a last min weekend trip to the Tetons so I really needed the truck straight and done before that trip.

I also heard from Mikes Custom Toys about my smart cap. Sounds like they are going to collect final money from me in the next 2 weeks and ship the topper shortly after. Ill get it assembled just in time for our trip to colorado!

 

How are your cam bolt tabs?

 

they looks straight to me, not bent or mangled yet. I always thought it became more of an issue if tires were larger than 33's

 

7/9-7/11/2022:

Alright, so I mentioned in my previous post that we decided to take a quick trip to the Tetons last weekend. I hopped on campflare and was able to grab 2 nights at jenny lake, Saturday and Sunday nights. I dropped the dog off at my moms house i the morning and drove over during the day and went for a ride in Jackson, in the heat before picking Sadie up at the Jackson airport at 5:45. We ran back into town and went to dinner at this horrible sushi place. literally got an app and looked at each other saying fuck this and went to the cowboy bar instead. After dinner we drove back up the road, bought our annual NPS pass and pulled into camp around 8:30. The sun was still out so we got everything situated, cracked a few beers, and hung out by the fire for a while.





We planned a pretty cool, lengthy, hike for Sunday and we tried to get going early but that didnt happen as planned. I rolled out of bed around 7. I got breakfast, coffee, and lunch made but Sadie was out cold til almost 8.



We started our hike around 9am, rather than 8 and about 3 miles in we missed a crucial turn and basically said fuck it and changed plans. My knee was still tweaked from a month ago and I didn't need to do any more damage with the amount of other trips/activities Ive got planned. We can always come back another weekend. We ended up going for a pretty flat, 12 mile hike and ate lunch about mile 8. We were back at our campsite around 2:30 and hit the lake for the rest of the day. It was actually super nice and relaxing.



On Monday we rode at JHMR then hit the river around 4pm and headed home right after. Great quick trip.

 

hm ya that's weird. Maybe ur lube tech isn't torqueing the cam bolts enough

 

thats what I assumed after the 2nd alignment. The guy was just fuckin lazy who did my 3rd alignment and didnt want to reset the camber.

 

7/16/22:

We went out for another night in the Sawtooths, swam and paddle boarded in the lake. It was like 90 degrees in town. Dog loved it. The little water whore loves swimming and full sail jumping in the lake. I got fried and Sadie got fuckin chowed by bugs. They were baddddd. We got up early and headed down the mountain for breakfast instead of sticking around with the bugs. Fuck em. I only took one picture. Dog decided to take up as much space as he could in the tent when he passed out. Enjoy!

 

Nice build! Subbed. A fellow 'Cement DCLB' owner!

 

Nice! Cement is one of the best colors imo. Quicksand and army are up there as well. Im happy with my choice in cement as I'm sure you are too!

Same with the long bed. I knew I wanted a long bed coming from a bigger tundra. But the dealer was actually going to give me a substantially better deal on a short bed. Not sure why. My father in-law gave me the classic "you cant fit a 4x8 sheet of ply in a 6' bed so whats the point", but my dad said to stick with a long bed. "You'll use the truck, you'll need the extra space." Glad I took his advice on that one!

 

8/15/22:

This summer has been super tough with camping. We've had tons of family and work shit going on and I know its no excuse, but nonetheless we have so far only spent 14 nights under the stars. We have also made another big life choice. I will talk about that in the next post.

Thankfully we were able to escape for an afternoon/night/day at red fish lake. We grabbed a spot in the early afternoon then went to the lake for a few hours. The dog loves the water and loved jumping in the lake. We paddled around for a little while.



Anyway, it was a Monday or Tuesday night so we just pulled in and grabbed a spot. It was super easy. We were thrilled that redfish was vacant. We hadn't been up there in so long just due to the tourism and crowds. It was a nice surprise. we had a great spot with a solid view.







The dog was beat from swimming for hours lol

We had a great night and woke up pretty early to go for a lengthy hike. It was a super cold morning which I really enjoyed.











12 miles, 2 boat rides and 6 hours later we got back to the truck and the redfish lake lodge. We hung out at the lake for a few hours and grabbed an ice cream. We hit the road home around 5pm and stopped at Grumpy's when we pulled into Ketchum around 6:15. It was a great way to end our almost 2 years in Idaho. We'll miss parts of it a lot, others we won't. We realized we love living in Ketchum, just not working in Ketchum.

 

8/21/22:

Alright folks we have moved! We (I) packed up a 20' uhual, threw Sadies tacoma on a trailer and moved our shit 7 hours away to Bend, OR. A ton has happened in the last month which is why I haven't posted/camped/hit any trails etc.

Work for both of us was never great. It was insanely expensive to be in the outskirts of that ski town-like living in Hawaii, Sadies mom passed on 7/4/22, and her dad was really needing and wanting us closer to him. Then there was the whole RvW trigger state thing that certainly would have made us leave ID in June of 2023. All things considered we were leaving at some point. On 7/29/22 we both had rough days at work, looked at each other when we got home, and said WTF are we doing here. So we dropped the dropped the price on our lot that we bought a year ago, and both scrambled to look for jobs. The lot sold 10 days later and we both had better jobs lined up. So we quit our jobs, had a week to hangout and play then packed our shit and hit the road.

So far, everything is going so much better here than it was in Idaho. We kept feeling like it was a constant fight to get things to go our way. Here, we both took major pay increases, fuel, groceries, etc cost less, and we are actually under contract on a house. Best part-my truck fits in the garage. Finally! Dont get me wrong, its still a little ski townish. Things are more expensive than in a bigger city but there is a lot going on, a lot of things to do and we love it here. Also, there are tons more sick Toyotas. Here are some photos from our first week. Its been a fuckin ride!