1996 Toyota T100 and Phoenix camper

[incendui]

This build thread is going to be slightly out of order. I've had the truck for over a year now, but I've only just made it to the fun modifications. Up to now it's been maintenance and figuring out what exactly what I want out of it. I bought it after spending a few rough nights in the driver's seat of a TJ. I survived, but I decided it was time for a little more luxury. Fitting a camper was the plan from the start, but I wanted to keep the T100 reasonably competent off-road. So to start with the very latest, here's a short video of an add-a-leaf install.




The leaf is part of a 2" lift kit. The ball joint spacers will be going on soon, then followed by decently sized tires. The T100 has a terrible departure angle, so every inch counts. Once that's sorted, the Phoenix camper goes back on.





I had a FWC Fleet on it last summer, but I was never happy with the length of it. It required the tailgate to be down to fit and it made city parking miserable. The Phoenix is a wood knock-off of a FWC camper, as far as I can tell it's from 1993. It's noticeably heavier than the Fleet, but it's a good foot shorter. It's narrower also, so the sides are inline with the cab. I think it was originally designed for an Xtra cab Toyota pickup, but it fits the T100 perfectly.

It's taken a quite a bit of work to get it to this point, so I'll fill in more posts with the writeups as I get to them. I bought the truck cheap with a bad headgasket, but it turned out the previous (and original) owner had neglected any kind of maintenance. But, it was a Toyota pickup with under 150k miles on it that I could afford. Not a common find in Co.

 

[FJOE]

What was the price of the overall lift kit? (leaves and spacers)?

 

[incendui]

It was on sale for just under $200, I think they usually run for $220. If you call ToyTec talk to Drew, he's the T100 expert.

 

[FJOE]

Awesome, thanks. With ball joint spacers in the front, I wont need longer struts, but in the rear I need longer shocks, correct?

 

[incendui]

The beginning

I mentioned I bought the T100 cheap since it was pouring smoke out on a cold start. Not sure exactly how it happened, but the engine bay was covered in coolant and the radiator looked new. So time for a new headgasket. The truck was also trashed in general, here's a pic from when I picked it up:



I replaced the bumper before anything else, I hate an ugly truck. Only 142k miles on it though and around here it's near impossible to find a Toyota truck from this generation with less than 200k.

Onto the headgasket. I was working out of my apartment parking lot, so I had to sneak time in on sunny days. Found some surprises when pulling it apart. Looks like an original timing belt:



And there it is:



The gasket around the passenger side rear cylinder was deformed and letting coolant into the combustion chamber. The rest of the gasket wasn't in much better shape, looked like the prior had run it for a while after the radiator went. The head shop was barely able to pull enough material out to get the head flat again. But barely is good enough and it checked out fine. I threw it back together and it looked like this for about a week before I got a camper on it.

 

[incendui]

With only a 2" lift you should be ok with stock shocks. I went with stock length Bilstein 4600s. To get longer ones I think you have to go custom for the front, most aftermarket parts are for the 89-95 Toyota pickups that start off shorter.

 

[incendui]

T100 and Fleet

After I finished up with the headgasket I immediately threw a camper on the T100. I found an 80's era FWC Fleet for cheap on craigslist, but it was missing the interior, had a soft spot in the floor, and had all the usual old FWC camper issues. I spent a while fixing it up, but I was never really happy with the length. It was narrow enough, but it was designed for the older long bed 80s era Japanese pickups. It sort of worked with the tailgate down, but even with a backup camera parking it in town was tricky.



The other issue I ran into was leaving the campsite in the above picture. The 4WD ADD system stopped working just as I was on a steep gravelly up-hill trail. I had to make up for the loss of traction with speed and I ended up denting a fender and scratching the camper. Decided immediately that I wasn't going to trust the ADD again. I followed the instructions on 4x4wire and locked it permanently in 4wd mode.



Also picked up some manual hubs for the old school look (and to cut back on drivetrain wear.) Including disabling the ADD system, the whole swap took maybe a couple hours. I highly recommend it. Flipping the hubs to 4WD in the winter has turned out to be less than a PITA than I expected and that fear of "is my 4WD about to randomly cut out?" is gone.

 

[incendui]

I eventually replaced the Fleet with the Phoenix camper pictured in the first post. Fits the T100 great, but with a full interior and wood construction it's noticeably heavier than the Fleet was. My shocks were already in bad shape, with the camper on back it was borderline undrivable. Took it to Canyonlands anyway and bounced the whole way around the white rim trail.



So time for an upgrade:



Old shocks next to the new Bilsteins. I'm pretty sure they were originals, both had Toyota markings though strangely enough the rears were made by Koni and the front by Tokico. Also got around to adding a few toys. Installed a CB radio and new head unit. That was it until the lift kit. Really need to install the ball joint spacers, not liking the nose dragging look.

 

[ToyotaRoamer86]

Bags would help a ton with the weight of a slide in.

 

[incendui]

I thought about air bags but once the camper's back on it will stay that way until winter, so I'm not too concerned about adjustability. If I get a 1" lift out of the add-a-leafs with the camper on back I'll be happy, unloaded it's sitting exactly at 2.

 

[incendui]

Ball joint spacers

Got around to installing the front lift today, think it came out nice:



The spacers were an easy install, a dremel made short work of the control arm trimming. What did surprise me is the Bilsteins bottomed out at full droop. Even with a little over 1/2" worth of shims on the shock, the upper bump stop just starts to compress before the shock is the the end of its travel. Should be an easy fix with some washers under the bump stop. Bilstein claims the 4600s are good to 2" of lift, but for me they were near to maxed out at stock height.

And here's a video of the full install. I've been having fun with a 360 camera, hoping to get it out on some trails this summer.

 

[incendui]

Phoenix Camper

The Phoenix is now back on the T100, just in time for me to move into it full time.



I also ended up slightly modifying the floorplan of the camper. The Phoenix (and most FWCs of the era) have a side bench that eats up most of the floor space. It made the already small camper feel claustrophobic. I removed the lower bench and installed it on the higher lip instead. There's less storage, but I can fit larger items on the floor which more than makes up for it. The seat height is quite a bit taller as well, but the lower lip of the cabinet on the opposite side makes for a decent enough foot rest.



The cabinets themselves are in rough shape. It's hard to tell what was hacked on by the previous ownver and what was just built poorly by Phoenix. The layout works alright, so I might just reface the cabinets and replace the doors and drawers. Next step is to build out the electrical system. It came with a external 12V plug to connect to the truck's battery. However there were no fuses that I could see and no way to connect to AC power. I've already installed a second battery in the space between the camper and the truck bed, plan is to wire it to charge from the alternator and add a fuse panel along with the usual 12V and USB ports.

 

[Anota]

Such a fan of this build. Put the same lift on my truck a few weeks ago and ran into all the same problems. Your building my dream truck man ill be following closely

-Andrew

 

[rangerdogg]

Nice happy trail

 

[incendui]

Thanks, that lift actually sagged more with the camper than I expected. The ride height in the back came down 2". If I had known I might have skipped the front ball joint spacers and just kept it at stock height, it rides great with the extra weight and add-a-leafs installed. Since I already had the front lift it was easiest to add lift blocks in back to even it out. Here's another 360 video with that install.


The picture at the campsite was from after the lift blocks, the front/back height is now dead on. I still need to weigh the entire setup, I had trouble guessing how much the springs would settle so it'll be an interesting data point for anyone else looking at a heavy camper on a T100.