Basically my goal with this truck was to have a fairly economical "trail truck" that I could thrash without worrying about it. I wanted a truck that I could roll over and not care. I also wanted a truck that I could toss the keys to a buddy, let them tear it up, and really not worry about it holding up. So, enter the $700 '86 Toyota Pickup. It's an '86 EFI/IFS 22RE powered Xtra cab w/ the auto tranny.
This is what I started with:
A buddy of mine had a set of 38x12.50 Bias TSLs that he wanted out from under his deck, so $400 later I had a set of tires and a call to summit later I had wheels. I removed the bed, and put the tires on(after we mounted them by hand. That was a BLAST
Thanks Baber and Leach) and this is what it looked like:
That was about all the progress I made for about 4 months. Late this summer I hauled the truck from my apartment parking lot at school to my garage in WV. Once there I decided to undertake the task of reparing the rust damage on the rear frame. After a bit of discussion and a few beers it was decided that the best method for repairing this damage was to cut the back half of the frame off.
So we did
Next we fabbed up a set of new frame rails out of 2x4x.188 rectangular tubing. We mitred and bent them into shape(cut 3 sides of the tube, leaving the 4th intact). Once we had tacked them up and made sure they would fit and work to my liking, we pulled them back out and gussetted them.
Then we put them in and started mocking up the rear suspension:
That's as far as I've gotten with the rear frame. I still need to weld the new pieces into the old frame and add a rear crossmember before I set the truck on its own weight.
I had John and Leach helping me out and it really only takes 1.5 people to do the work shown, so while I was fabbing and stuff John and Leach gutted the interior and did a tune-up on the 22re. We discovered a bit of floor rot in the driver's side footwell, but it's not bad, and is definately fixable. Here's the interior post-gutting:
That was done in preparation for a full interior cage and then a pair of these:
The seats will be tied into the cage as will a set of 4-point harnesses.
Lastly, I picked up an FJ80 front axle from a guy in AZ. Gonna do the SAS in the coming weeks hopefully. Plans include at least hydro assist, more likely full-hydro due to the lack of hy-steer arms for the 80 axle and the difficulty of getting a draglink to the passenger's side knuckle through the leaf springs. Regardless of assist or full, a double-ended cylinder will be used and will most likely be located behind the axle(stock tie-rod location for the 80).
Oh, and the axle came with these in it:
Those are 4340 Chromo Longfields and Polyperformance inners.
That's as far as I've gotten to date. The truck has 4.88s in the rear w/ a welded carrier. The front axle came w/ 4.10s welded which will be swapped for 4.88s welded. So far I've got about $4000 in the truck with about $2k to go to get it completely setup the way I want functionally, but without any bling accessories.
Future plans include either a tranny swap from an XJ w/ a twin-sticked D300(can you say front digs? I thought you could
), OR a small block/SM465/D300 swap. That's still up in the air. Depends on if I can live w/ the 4cylinder(As most of you know, I tend to like the pedal on the right :shock: ).Anyway, I'm sure I've forgotten stuff, so feel free to question/comment.
Thanks for looking.
Ary
