Toyota T100 "The Blue Beauty" From bought to built in a month (hopefully)

[Traveling 2gether Journal]

My wife, Amie and I are stoked to be the new owners of this 1995 Toyota T100. We have had the truck for about 10 days and plan to leave on an overlanding trip from California to Panama in about a month, so I have a lot of work to do to turn this truck into a rig.

It's a stock 4x4 extended cab with a manual transmission and 194000 miles. She didn't come with many records, so I'm changing the engine, transmission, transfer case, and diff oils, flushing the cooling system, and keeping an eye out for any other issues.

I replaced the torn CV boot and the front shocks were shot, so I replaced them with some Bilstein units.

I scored this camper shell on craigs list for less then $100 and plan to customize it with a sleeping platform at bed rail height and a ply and glass cab-over extension so we can fit our surfboards inside.

We also got a SnoMaster fridge/freezer, a Renogy 300w solar system, and a dual battery to hook up.

In addition I plan to convert the 60/40 bench to bucket seats and build a storage box/dog bed in the extended cab as well as more maintenance and fixes as I continue to find them.
The reason for the short time line is that Amie, our dog, Jagger and I just moved off of Maui, Hawaii with the intentions of traveling from California to Panama over the course of two years and even though we are crashing at family's houses, California is not cheap, and the longer we are here, the less money we will have when we hit the road.

Expedition Portal has been a wonderfully valuable resource in our preparation and continues to be an inspiration as I reinvent the wheel with another home-built overlanding rig. Thanks so much to the hosts and all the members here. It's a great community to be a part of. All suggestions and questions are welcome.

 

[AaronK]

Looking forward to watching your build

Sent from my OnePlus One using Tapatalk.

 

[huntsonora]

Sub'd

 

[character zero]

awesome - looking fwd to it!

 

[Lawn-Dart]

sub'd as well.

 

[Traveling 2gether Journal]

Progress has been slow the last couple days. We pulled the plastic bed liner that came with the truck out of the bed and found that the bed was badly cracked.

Luckly my brother is a good welder, so I did the prep work and will have him patch it up tomorrow.

We also started having an issue with the transmission popping out of first gear. So, I ordered a new shifter bushing and seat from Marlin Crawler today. I also realized that the tail pipe had been hit pretty good by something because its pinched off pretty well.

So add fixing that to the list.
On the plus side I made a bit of progress inside the cab. I pulled the driver's side seat out of the extended cab and pulled the back rest off, cut the drivers side foam off of it and stapled the upholstery back on.

The reason for this is because i am going to build a storage box in this part of the cab and am trying to get all the space I can.

 

[ToyotaRoamer86]

Good to see another T100 build! Best of luck. Love my for the last 46k in 3 years!

 

[theBullfrog125]

T100's are solid rigs. Even in stock form they are fantastic rigs.

Make sure the timing belt/water pump gets done soon. Chances are it's only been done once and should be done every 90k miles.
I am envious of the blue color! I searched high and low to find a clean blue T100 but none were to be found when I was shopping.

 

[Traveling 2gether Journal]

Thanks for the input. One of the selling points on this truck for me was that there was only about 10,000 miles on the Tbelt and water pump.
Got the bed welded back together today and gave it a fresh coat of paint.
Also took the windows out of the camper shell and started taking out the carpet kit, but man did they use a lot of glue on that carpet. Any suggestions on good chemicals for removing large mounts of thick gnarly glue from fiberglass?

 

[Arclight]

Try careful use of a heatgun and a paint scraper. On another note, have you seen my T100 build tips?

http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/91893-New-Build-T100-SAR-and-expedition-rig

One of the best mods I did was adding the low-voltage cut-off to the battery. Also, that tiny compartment under the jump seat is perfect for a fuse box.

Arclight

 

[Traveling 2gether Journal]

Thanks Arclight. I have read through your build thread. One of my favorite things about this forum is that there are so many good build threads with useful ideas.

I actually decided to just remove the back seat on the driver's side. Our dog likes to lay behind the driver for some reason, so I'm going to build a storage box in that space with a pad (dog bed) on top. Plus it opened up the perfect space for our huge 155 amp hour house battery to fit snugly in the corner here.

I made a support that provided a level, flat area for the battery to sit.

I also did the positive side of the wiring for our dual battery system, which includes a solenoid with a switch in the cab jumped into the radio-fuse so it will disconnect anytime the radio normally shuts off(auxiliary power off and during starting) and i have the ability to manually control the solenoid as well.



I also replaced the "60" portion of the 60/40 bench with this bucket seat. I got it for free from a friend of a friend. it either came out of a Tacoma or a Toyota pickup. Either way it definitely didn't just bolt in, but some brackets made of scrap metal from the back yard did the trick.

 

[Traveling 2gether Journal]

sorry I didn't keep up with the thread. I had a series of set backs that put me way behind on my build.
Any way, I did get it done and am corresponding from Baja California Sur, Mexico. I know I have more build pics somewhere, but figured i would post what I have and if anyone wants more info I would be happy to share the details of how I did anything.

I previously mentioned that i removed the drivers side of the stock bench and replaced it with a random bucketseat. I then removed the rear seat and metal support under the seat on the driver's side and made storage box/center council out of metal brackets and plywood. This gave us a ton more storage and gave our dog a place to sleep during long drives(behind the driver on top of the box, his dog bed fits perfect)


I divided the box behind the driver's seat to create accesable locations for my house battery, charge controller, and meter.

 

[AaronK]

Clever idea using the steel angle stock as a frame. You could add a lock to those and have reasonably secure storage.

Sent from my OnePlus One using Tapatalk.

 

[Traveling 2gether Journal]

thanks aaronk. I do have locks on both boxes. I figure its one more thing to slow someone down.

Here is the camper in its finished state.

It started off as a hi-rise campershell that i purchased for $90. I cut the roof off and extended it 2 feet taller and about 3 feet over the cab (at the longest point). The original shell is fiberglass construction and i made the extension out of 3/16" plywood, epoxy resin and 6oz fiberglass cloth.
You can see the ARB awning mounted on the passenger side. I like the awning, but the bug net attachment could use another door or two.

Here are a few pics of the inside.

We have most of our gear pulled out of the truck right now, so the stuff thats left is kind of scattered around, but you get the idea.

The sleeping platform is at bedrail height. Its made of 1/2 inch plywood and the main divider wall/bed support is made of 1/2 inch ply and 1 inch steel angleiron and is tied into my homemade fridge slider.


I also installed plenty of 12v and usb outlets in the camper, cab, and for outside of the truck.

I built a 300w mobile solar array that plugs into an outlet installed just behind the cab. I chose to do this instead of mounting it to the roof with the idea that we would want to park the truck/house in the shade if possible and then walk the panels out to the sun. I still feel like this a legit idea, but if i did it again i would probably split the panels and do some on the roof and a smaller portable array.


That is the basic rundown. I chose to leave most of the truck stock due to budget/time restraints and the idea that finding parts would be easier with a stock truck.
We are currently on the east cape of Baja and have drove about 400 miles of dirt on the way down. So far everything is holding together with the exception of my upper shock bushings on the front end. not sure why but the new bilstiens have gone through 5 upper bushings. Still trying to figure this one out.

 

[AaronK]

I spy...a spear gun. Do you scuba?

Sent from my OnePlus One using Tapatalk.