The Glorified Tonka Truck

[BadAssEddie]

You're going to get stuck on a turd at Big Dogs and get frustrated then you'll come over and "lock" your diff. Or at least that is my prediction

Little did I know how accurate this would be...

Funny, that is exactly what happened.

Hahah!

[YellowDodgeBrian]

Update on Patches:

So prepping my truck for Big Dogs this year I had originally made a list of things to do but the more I went into it the more things I found.
List of things completed:
Replaced hub seals on rear Dana 70
Installed outer axle seal on Dana 60
Clearanced skid plate mount for front drive shaft
Re-wired front light bar/ Cleaned up wiring under hood
re-routed CB wire so it wouldn't rub on body
Replaced steering box

If you don't want to read a lot the next paragraph summarized is: old steering box was crap and I need to replace a track bar bushing

The steering box was not originally on my list but it had about 2" of tire play before it would even engage the steering wheel so it had to get changed. I was planning on waiting to do a hydro assist after rebuilding but that would have taken too much time and wouldn't have been completed before big dogs. Before installing the new steering box I had no clue just how bad my steering was. The difference was night and day and I can easily steer with one hand now opposed to trying to wrestle the wheel to say straight. After replacing the steering box I took my truck on a drive and hit a pot hole and had horrible death wobble forcing me to hit the brakes until it subsided. It was fine driving home but after checking all the suspension it was obvious that it was my lower track bar bushing. I have ordered the new bushing and will be installing it today on my way up to big dogs. Hopefully that is the last suspension problem I will have in a long time. Should be since I've literally replaced everything on my front axle.

This weekend will be a good test for patches since it has been a long time since I have wheeled it hard with everything working right. Im also curious to see how my new front two Cooper STT maxx's do off-road. If all goes well I will have no issues with suspension and I will have blown a rod through my hood after mud-bogging on the last day.

[BadAssEddie]

Post pics of all the stuff you've been doing. Doors are schweet!

[Mr.WJ]

Post pics of all the stuff you've been doing. Doors are schweet!

Seriously!

[FJCcrawler]

Yeah! Update your build!!!!!

[Mr.WJ]

He's on a cruise ship though. Lots of

[YellowDodgeBrian]

Ok guys, enough waiting, its Tonka time. Hopefully after these couple of updates y'all will be all caught up. Since last update patches has a few subtle differences, such as: new engine being built, half doors, and tube fenders. Let me know if I'm missing anything.

[YellowDodgeBrian]

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A LITTLE DOG, and that little dog went to big dogs, and fucked his shit up because trees are hard. He was so hard when he hit the trees that he busted out his passenger window while it was rolled down; now even though you'd think little dog would have been sad, little dog was secretly giggling inside while his father scowled at the carnage. Little dog knew this was the perfect time to do something stupid and that is what he did. May I present to you, my thread on my half doors.


First thing I did was take my dented door off was to just mark out the lines of what i thought would look good. This was probably the hardest part mentally because Im dumb but also because I had no context of what would be a good height. I finally decided after corresponding with the elders that I would go down to where my door had the rib. This would give me an easy reference point for copying to the other door as well as give it some rigidity. Once I had that part down I just played with how drastic of an angle I wanted on each side. Instead of explaining more I'm going to go all dennys up in this bitch and say look at the picture. Insert picture here.

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Bottom photo was the final depth

For the lip of the door I have a ton of 1/8" plate steel so that's what I used; Probably a little thick but I didn't have to worry about warping and it was free. Fight me. Turns out it worked perfectly as it was thicc enough to mount a cup holder and the door handle. Anyways, enough talk, here are pictures.

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Before I knew it I was hootin and hollerin thinking yeehaw this shit is cummins together! Basically what I did from here was grind down all the edges and did some sheet metal werk to patch the hole where the handle was, I just used the sheet metal I had cut out for this. Slapped sum bondo on it, sanded her down and painted it. I didnt bother taking out the dents as they were the battle scars that made all this happen but I did my best to smooth everything else out. There are definatly flaws in the body work but I had to keep telling myself that there is no point in making it show room worth as long as there are trees in this world. I had some paint and primer left over from when I painted my trucc so I just used that. Here more piccs

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Here are the Doors in their final form, Added a bar for protection and something to grab when I make any kind of turn. Cup holders working nicely.

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Pretty much how they sit now, they are much lighter than before without any of the internals. I ended up just bending the bar that operates the door latch so it would be pulled from the top instead of the side, honestly wasn't that hard, Id like to do something different for the handle tho, thinking aluminum beer cans melted down into something Still need to finish hooking up the door speakers and figuring out inner skin. Thinking a think sheet of aluminum would work well as long as it was siliconed down to prevent vibrations, let me know if y'all have suggestions. Anyways that's enough typing, here are the rest of the piccs

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[YellowDodgeBrian]

Also meant to post pictures of when I changed all my other shizz so here is just a photo dump without any description whatso ever. good luck figuring it out.

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[YellowDodgeBrian]

My phone decided that swimming was too hard so I actually lost a lot of my photos of the seal and track bar change but i still had a few on the Patches_O_Hoonigan Insta that I posted up.

[BadAssEddie]

Never fails to bring the lols

Should show your slick cup holder drain

[Mr.WJ]

B-rain when Yacht style with the stainless steel cup holders and appropriate drain "overboard"

Good shit.

[YellowDodgeBrian]

B-rain when Yacht style with the stainless steel cup holders and appropriate drain "overboard"

Good shit.

The drains have since filled up with mud, I don't think the yacht companies thought that mud would be an issue hahah.

[YellowDodgeBrian]

Sorry boys its been a while since I've posted last. I didn't realize my build thread was so far behind and being in commie land Wheeling and Wrenching has been on the back burner. Anyways, here is an update on my build thread. over this past summer I haven't really accomplished much except for starting a roll cage and almost finishing an engine rebuild. Ill start with the engine:

If you don't want to read much, the summary is how I snowballed my engine into costing way more than it should have with minimal performance gains. Scroll to the pictures

Ya'll will hate me but of course in Brain fashion I didn't do nearly enough planning and now a simple rebuild has costed me $1500 on what was suppose to be a simple re-ring. Basically what really screwed me is I disassembled the entire block and then didn't touch it for a month allowing for a nice surface rust to accumulate. At this point I said screw it and decided to get the block machined and bored .030 over. Once I did this i figured now that its become more than just a simple re ring and Im actually dumping money into the engine I might as well make some performance gains, basically all I did was buy a new cam.

Turns out with the cam I bought the stock springs will not work and there is only one set of springs on the market and for 16 of them they will cost $330 and the spring retainers will cost another $200. Also, since my engine runs on EFI I would have to purchase a scanner and a tune for the engine to run right. (I haven't looked much into this as I will explain shortly) Basically the computer and tune will cost an extra $350. This total would cost $880 for maybe 80 more HP (just guessing on that HP, going off of no actual data or research to support that claim)

At this point the machining of the block has costed almost $500 (keep in mind I bought this running engine for $200), a rebuild kit for $450, new head bolts for $67.99, and a cam for $325. Total $1529.16 (what my excel sheet says)

Now these haven't really been stupid purchases except for the cam, but I could have spent the money on more worthwhile things, like a 5.3 lol. Where I am at now is that I just really want to go wheeling and that the new cam is just going to add more costs and frustrations; I've decided to just throw in the old cam and get my truck running. Considering my engine hasn't ran on 8 cylinders in a while and has over 230,000 miles on it, just this rebuild will probably feel like 1000HP. I would much rather spend the money that I would spend on parts to get the cam to work on other things like a front locker and hydro assist.
Anyways, here are pictures; feel free to roast me on being an idiot.

[YellowDodgeBrian]

Ok roll cage time; spoiler alert I managed to fuck this one up too.

So last summer Alec and I entered a more intimate partnership than marriage and bought a tube bender together and set it up his garage. Since at this point patches is a 6 cylinder pile of shit, I trailer it down and we get to werk on it on the last weekend I have in America. At this point I muster up all my Brian cells I have left and try to remember all the roll cage building YouTube videos that I've binge watched for the past month in preparation. Of course I forget everything except the part where you make a sample piece to use to see where your bends will start/end. Other that that Alec had to hold my hand through the first few bends and set up then proceeded to crack a beer, said good luck, and walked away. At this point I continued to bend and prey that with each bend I didn't just throw away $50 worth of tubing. Inevitably I did mess up and it was a good bit of tubing but i honestly expected to mess up much more than I did. I was fine with the 1 and 2 plane bends, it was the 3 plane bends that got me.

I ended up deciding that there wasn't really any good spot for a B pillar inside the cab so I decided to just do an A and B pillar along the existing structure. The original plan was to have the node that connected the roof spreaders to be located in the back but after burning in all the joints i realized that it wouldn't work as my head had about 1" of clearance.

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I ended up cutting them out and going with a center node design (still haven't finished it) This was one of my many fuck ups. Other than that its a standard roll cage with with a dashboard spreader, kickers, ect. I haven't decided if I want to add the windshield spreader as it wont pass inspection; might figure out a way to make it more or less removable or just say F it. Anyways final goal with the cage is have it tie into the bed (similar to Alec's) to add more support and eventually tie it into the front frame and maybe make an engine cage to protect that as well. As for frame mounting, not entirely sure what I want to do. I was pondering the Idea of making boat-sides since I want to replace my sliders with actual metal that wasn't originally designed to corral horses. If I did that I could tie the cage into the sliders which would be easy and then tie the sliders into the frame.

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I don't have any more pictures of it but I'll be sure to keep y'all better updated now that I'm about to be back in 'Merika