2002 TuRD

gslander said:
Set out to tinker around in the garage today, you know grease some wheel bearings, driveshafts things like that, well that went sideways. Found this:
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For those of you not familiar with Toyotas that's the frame rail above the drivers side rear leaf spring, forward eye. So I spent my day fixing that. I have one or two more trips planned in the fall, then I'm cutting the back of the truck off. I'm done patching holes and cracks. I heard a pretty loud pop on pinball at Harlan, I wonder if that was this cracking.
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Am I seeing a broken leaf too?
 
I haven't updated this in a while, I have been wheeling it and doing some maintenance to it.

Wheeled hawks pride in Alabama a few weeks back, pretty sure that's now one of my favorite parks. It's terrain this truck was built for, long boulder filled rock gardens.
Video from the trip:


As usual, drove it 8hrs there, wheeled it with no issues and drove it 8hrs home doing 75+ with the cruise on getting 14mpg.
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I did kill one of my rear springs, it's sagging pretty bad on the pax side.

I'm getting ready to chop the truck in half and re do the rear suspension and get some frame rails built. They are going to be 2x4x.188 and the factory bed is going back on it. I'm replacing the rear springs with Chevy 63s, moving the shocks so they aren't poking through the bed, raising the fuel tank, adding air bumps and adding rocker type sliders in prep for an exo cage.

Step one measure for the shop to bend me new frame rails:
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This frame is all bent to hell and failing in multiple spots due to rust. It droops 4" in the rear, but somehow is level side to side. I have a few cracks and multiple holes I patched up, 17yrs of wheeling it has taken it's toll, time to replace the rear portion. I will have about 3ft of factory frame left after this LOL!!
 
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Picked up my frame rails from sschassisworx yesterday, super easy to work with, definitely recommend. I also bought some air bumps that were used for mockup only on another forum. All I need is some more steel, an engine hoist and I'll be ready to start cutting. Got the pre project grittiness going on, also well aware I'm going to be ready to burn the truck down 2 weeks into this project LOL!!!
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gslander said:
They keep rusting, cracking and bending.
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I was asked to quote repairing one a while ago. The front was as bad as the rear. The amount of damage made the vehicle unsafe.
 
WARRIORWELDING said:
I was asked to quote repairing one a while ago. The front was as bad as the rear. The amount of damage made the vehicle unsafe.
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Luckily most of my issues are contained to the rear aft of the cab and where the sliders were welded on when you look down the inside of the frame rails. I was sick of chasing rust holes and patching up stuff and the nail in coffin was when I found a bad crack where it bends up. I also bent the shit out of it at Harlan last year, like one side was 1ft lower than the other winching out of white tail crawl. I already chopped the front off at the firewall when I did the axle swap and replaced that with 2x3x.188 Realistically I'll probably have to build a new truck in 5yrs or so.
 
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I have been sick the past few weeks so work on this has been slow going, but I did get some shop time. I'm in the grinding, cutting measure, sit and stare repeat phase of this. I always seem to forget about this stage of a build for some reason LOL!!
Fish plating all this will be fun:
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Good times....
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Why I'm doing this, this is the rear most slider mount right in front of the spring hangar:
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I would have had a rail tacked on but all my c-clamps are bent or broke, so I need to pick some up. My goal is to make the CTB hurricane creek run as that's pretty close to my house. If not that trip I'll be shaking it down at GER or AOP whatever trip comes first.
 
Finally got some shop time today. I had 2 tool failures right off the bat, my laser level took a shit and a jack failed, so that set me back. I have been chipping away at prepping the frame rails and cutting off old frame repairs, so it's slow going. I did however get a rail heavily tacked on and it's all level!
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I'm going to fully burn it in one day after work and work on the other side. Should go much faster once that other rail is on.
 
Starting to look like a truck again, somehow everything is square and level. All the frame welding is done except for the fish plates as I don't have the steel for that or the cross members yet.
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My springs still aren't here yet which is frustrating.
Also made a front mount to raise the fuel tank
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This will be sweet if I can get it this high, won't know for sure until I get the bed mounted.
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I need to order some tabs and crap from Barnes this week as well.
 
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Looking good! Seems like now would be a good time to go to a fuel cell, and get it up out of the way. Any reason for sticking with the factory gas tank??
 
Kickdeez said:
Looking good! Seems like now would be a good time to go to a fuel cell, and get it up out of the way. Any reason for sticking with the factory gas tank??
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I still need to carry crap in the bed and don't want a fuel cell back there. One of my goals for doing all this work was to get the shocks out of the bed and get space back. Once I get that tank raised it will be a non issue from a ground clearance perspective. I did think about one of those small flat f150 aux tanks, but this should work out alright.

Also I want this done so I can go out and wheel, and I don't want to mess with getting the emissions system to work with a fuel cell, or making the motor happy deleting all that stuff.
 
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Looking like a truck again:
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Moving a bed by yourself with an engine hoist is tedious and sucks up a ton of time, my entire Saturday was putting this on and taking it off 10x's LOL!!
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I built some body mounts for it, and next week want to get the suspension all setup, stretch goal being fish plates done and gas tank in....
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I can't wait until this all done and I can hit the trail, I have a bad wheeling itch!!!!
 
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Yesterday was suspension day.

Broke down the leafs:
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Make sure you screw up the shackle placement formula when tacking on your shackle mount:
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And then overcompensate in the other direction:
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3rd ish times a charm:
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I made a shock mount/crossmember out of 2x.120 HREW and some barnes tube mount things.
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Hammered it home and welded on the shock tabs. They fit under the bed, which if you are familiar with Toyotas "people on the internet" say you can't fit 12" travel shocks under the bed, and idiots like me fall for it, hence the holes in the bed. It looks like I won't lose any travel and they aren't at any sort of a crazy angle.
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Next weekend I'll be making fish plates, barf, installing the fuel tank, and then figureing out where to stick the air bumps back there. Home stretch!
 
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Nice work man. I’m curious what those frame rails cost you. It’s nice to see someone dedicated to what they got even when it means a bunch of work. That’s a job that would intimidate me for sure.
 
ProbablyBroke said:
Nice work man. I’m curious what those frame rails cost you. It’s nice to see someone dedicated to what they got even when it means a bunch of work. That’s a job that would intimidate me for sure.
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$250 a rail. This project is totally stupid, but I have owned this truck since 2005 and I'm emotionally attached to it. It's an intimidating project for sure.
 
Been slow going with making fish plates and making fuel tank mounts. Man it seems like the little brackets take FOREVER to make, at least for me lol. The suspension and just about all the fish plates are done and welded in, this was dropping it on the tires to check shackle angles, bump stop clearance and pinion angle:
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Air bump may be tight this was at full bump, I may turn it almost 90* to keep the bolts away from the tire:
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Pulled the bed off yesterday to weld in a ton of stuff and make the fuel tank crossmember:
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Suspension totally burned in minus the air bumps:
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Brake and emissions crap welded on:
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The list is getting smaller. The brake system just needs to be hooked up and bled, the fuel tank rear and skid mounts made, and hook all that crap up, add some more gussets and build a bumper and it should be ready to cut the rockers out and weld in some square tube!
 
Nothing too impressive photo wise today but the truck runs and can drive if need be. I wrapped up the fuel tank lift from hell, all I need to do I make a better mount for the skid plate. All the emissions stuff is hooked up, test fired it and no CELs. I did infact have to move the charcoal canister as my dumbass welded it on last week right where the fuel tank was going. Pro tip actually measure before welding something on, it was "yea that's good" and welded it lol.
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Made a cross member out of my old sliders. I figured having the first mod I ever did to the truck in 2005 live on would be kind of cool, and it's the only steel I had laying around.
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I spent the rest of the day hooking up brake lines, adding zip tie tabs and painting.
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I still need to:
Put a muffler on it
Bleed brakes
Build a rear bumper (started that today)
Mount air bumps
Finish a pax side fish plate
And the last big project: cut out the rockers and weld in 2x6 tube.

Almost there!
 
I'm ready to burn this fucking truck down. Went out to the garage today to build the bumper and get the exhaust done and button up all the other little shit and hit the road. So I bolt the tires on and notice the driver side tire was crooked, like 4" closer to the frame in the front of the tire, vs the rear. So I measured from the horse collar to the leaf spring hangar and was off by a lot on side to side WTF. So my wife came out and we measured the wheelbase and I was 2.75" off side to side. This is where I made my first mistake, I should have went horse collar to the spring mount and not used the wheelbase. Anyway I dragged it out for the garage and tossed the bed on it.
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Pulled it back in the garage and measured and figured I would move the driver side spring and shackle mount 2.75" forward. Cut that shit off and welded it back on as I luckly had an extra spring hangar. Got done, brought my wife out we measured and now the wheelbase is still off by 2". I measured the horse collar distance and it was right around 1" diff, so I moved the driver's side spring 1" forward on the perch holes and called it done. I called a friend and confirmed I wasn't going insane, both agreed that if it drives fine, send it and fix in the future. After that I hacked together the exhaust and a TON of little stuff that sucks up time. My wife wasn't down for brake bleeding so I didn't get to drive it, but once thats done it's test drive time. I tried gravity bleeding but they wouldn't. With the luck I was having today, I probably would have hit a cow that got out bombing around the back roads of Alexander county doing a night road shakedown run LOL!!
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So now what's left is a rear bumper, the rocker sliders and change one of my tires out with a new 37 that doesn't have the cords showing.

The wheelbase shifting HAD to be because the tire was slightly turned or something. It just sucks because after so much wheeling and how old the rest of the frame is, I don't trust any of the measurements lol.
 
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