Overado 2010 Tacoma Build

[Overado]

A few updates on the truck!
First off tires!

And a shot of them mocked up

And finally mounted!

The refurbished FJC rims really changed the look of the truck and the tires have already proven themselves during the first annual JD Wilderness Fest! (An event me and a few buddy's put together more on that later!)
As you can also see in that picture my front skid plate has been finished and mounted! It is made out of 1/8" steel plate...unfortunately my old phone holds all the pictures of the build process on that and is lost forever oh well.
I also threw together the bed rack that was eluded to in a couple pictures from a previous post I don't have any good pics of it, but you can see it in the following pictures. It is still a work in progress but it did what I intended it to on last week's trip!
A little on last week's trip my buddy JD and I organized a trip up into the north Maine woods. It was quite a trip with many lessons learned but I will be doing a separate write up on that for now I will share a couple pictures so you can see the truck the orange TJ belongs to JD and the XJ to my buddy Matt unfortunately they are not on here (yet)

Started of with some maintenance before hitting the trail. Then met up with JD to kick off the party!

And a few teasers



Really happy with how the truck performed 800 plus miles in 3 days with half of them off road!
More to come soon!
Cheers!

 

[shabba]

looks awesome man, did you end up with treadwrights? what size it looks perfect

 

[Overado]

looks awesome man, did you end up with treadwrights? what size it looks perfect

I did indeed end up going with Treadwright Guard Dogs in a 285/70/R17 i love them so far they are a bit noisy around 35-40mph but you don't here them once you hit highway speeds. they are very well mannered in the dirt with a few pounds of air let out. more adventures on the drawing board right now for next year that will surely test them out!

 

[Overado]

Been super busy lately but finished up work early tonight and figured I would document some updates on the Tacoma!
after months of driving around with a half primed half rusted tube style bumper (that raised a lot of eyebrows in question in the Boston area) I decided to add a bunch of plate and close it in and add a winch and mount my lights properly.


primed it and mounted to make sure everything lined up and was going to work out;

I then decided it looked too open in the middle and added a final piece of plate and painted it. I then mounted and plugged the KCs back into the wiring harness, I still have not wired the two middle lights, they came off my 4Runner but I can't find the wiring harness but that will be taken care of in the near future.


Another recent project was swapping my rear springs. I picked up a set of Tacoma HD springs for short money. I pulled the Dakar AAL from the old springs and bolted it into the HD springs (not shown in either picture). I now have a 4 leaf pack which has helped the load carrying ability in the rear. I am considering a shackle flip kit to bring the rear end up and to increase the travel of the rear end.


I have a few more projects under way (some big some small) at the moment but I can't upload any more pictures in this post so you will have to stay tuned for more!
Cheers,
Kevin

 

[wrenchMonkey_]

Nice work on the bumper, looks sweet.

 

[Overado]

Nice work on the bumper, looks sweet.

Thanks wrenchmonkey...that's a sweet tundra you have going!

 

[shabba]

how are the treadwrights holding up?

 

[Overado]

The treadwright seem to be holding up great! I've put about 7k on them and they have not skipped a beat, the treads are holding up still like new I'd say and they run great in this snow we are getting too. I am really happy with them can't wait to get them back on the trail soon!

 

[shabba]

awesome man! I'm thinking about a regear and some 35s. local group from tacomaworld are doing a run tomorrow.

 

[Overado]

I kinda wish I had gone for 35s but the 285s are great for the DD...I'm working tomorrow or I'd try to meet up for the run have a blast maybe I'll get in on the next one, I gotta set up a tacomaworld account I do a lot of reading on there but have never set up an account

 

[Overado]

UPDATE!
I have been super busy lately working 6-7 days a week with little time to myself. However I have found some time here and there to build not one but 2 rear bumpers for my truck. I wanted something high clearance with a swing out that could take abuse and after being rear ended I wanted protection from other drivers as well. Originally I built an over bed rack to house my spare and other accessories but after driving around for a few months with it on it had to go because I could not see anything behind our beside me. That's where I decided a tire carrier was in order so without further delay VERSION 1.0:
Started by cutting the bedsides

I then prefabricated the bumper and installed(no pics of prefab)


Next came the swing out arm

Then I drilled in the 1-1/4" spindle from ems offroad and tacked the swing out to it for fit up


V1.0 complete and primed

I liked it but didn't love it and after showing it to a friend of mine who used to be a big fabricator building race cars and heavy equipment and discussing a few things I had over looked I revised my design and chopped up the V1.0 that night and began V2.0:
I had a 10' section of 6" channel in the garage and tore right into the new bumper reusing some parts of the original

Making use of the high lift even when fabricating

Finished the structural welding

Continued in next post reached pic limit

 

[Overado]

I was able to reuse the original swing out with one minor modification for fitment

and here she is in all her glory on St. Patrick's day before I headed up to ski for the weekend

A little slice of heaven from yesterday!

Cheers!
Kevin

 

[shabba]

looks awesome man!

 

[Overado]

looks awesome man!

Thanks! I'm pretty excited about it myself! Hopefully more to come soon