Builds BUILD THREAD FOR THE "German Shepherd"

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

Rear cross member 2.0 is done. After how much work went into this, I'm kind of bummed I didn't gain any clearance, but someday I'll eventually cut everything off and do a full build. Last weekend I went home for a day and checked over the cruiser, added a brake light to my swing out bike rack, and put the roof top tent back on in prep for spring break. I was hoping to go out to Sedona but some of my friends work schedules aren't going to allow that so we are heading east to NWA

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

About due for an update....

Back in mid March, I went out to NWA for several days of biking and camping. Didn't get into any wheeling, but drove around one evening on some remote gravel-ish back roads.

My freshly built bike rack performed flawlessly.

After finishing my last class of the semester, probably 30 minutes after the test, I was on the road to Arkansas. My buddy Will and I met up with Caleb, Bryan, and Bill in Arkansas to spend Memorial Day weekend out in the OZNF. It was a pretty sick trip as I haven't spent too much time out there, but we did cross some familiar areas that I remembered from my time on the High Water Mark Trail.

Everything went great except for an intermittent issue where Bryan's would start bogging down until at WOT. 85 miles from home, Will and I were both exiting i40 for some gas when crap hit the fan. I was on the phone with my dad and saw Will's cruiser nearly roll in my rear view mirror while he was fighting all sorts of drifting and whipping around at the start of the off ramp while I coasted down.

As I applied my brakes to slow down and stop I started getting a horrendous shake which I thought was either a loose caliper or cracked and lodged piece of brake pad. I creeped it into the gas station and found that one of my front caliper bolts was gone and the top one was finger tight. While I found out that that was the issue, Will had walked down from the top of the off ramp to tell me what had happened to his cruiser.

He had a flat tire, shattered one of his new SCS F5s and had a partially severed brake line, along with some other damage. His caliper came loose and did a full 180* until being wrapped up by the dust shield thus locking up his wheel and shattering it in the process.

It was a long evening, but luckily we were okay. Super weird and the fact that it happened at the same time is very strange and makes me want to think we were somehow sabotaged by some side by side people as there were only a couple instances towards the end of the trip while we were out in the woods that I wasn't keeping an eye on my cruiser. It doesn't make sense why someone would do that, but it doesn't make sense how two separate Cruisers who have had brake work done independently from each other and at different times would have lost the exact same lower brake bolts on the driver's front caliper at pretty much the same time.

Mine after scavenging a brake bolt off Will's cruiser and putting the caliper back on.

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

Will's shattered Stealth Custom Series F5 while waiting for the tow truck

Just before that trip, I had replaced the battery and headlight bulbs. This summer will be dedicated to getting the cruiser dialed in and freshened up as it has been rather neglected lately.

After cleaning all of the Arkansas off the cruiser, I installed all new door seals, an oem hand throttle, and the FZJ80 front sway bar with fresh bushings from the LX axles I pulled.

The FZJ 80 front sway bar is 29mm OD and the FJ80 front sway bar is 25mm OD. The difference in handling is truly night and day. I am pondering installing the FZJ80 rear sway bar, but its 25mm OD compared to the FJ80's 23mm. I am tempted to just go ahead and grab a Whiteline rear sway bar since the cruiser can be pretty heavy at times.

Unfortunately, I didn't think about the sway bar mounts when I went to install it. The larger diameter pushes the mounting holes futher back and further apart from each other making my drop brackets useless. I just had to spend a little more time than I anticipated to get it installed.

At the same time, I also bought Wet Okoles, window felts for the inner front door contact points, new motor mounts, and body mount parts to replace the ones I had replaced with 90A polyurethane.

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

Which leads me to today...

I have been cranking on swing out kits over the past several weeks, but today while waiting for some more spindle caps to come in, my new Wet Okole seat covers came in since @LS1FJ40 couldn't handle the old "tan 17" colored ones. Decided to go with the "charcoal" color this time around and opted for the adjustable lumbar in both seats and the two little storage pockets on the front edges of both seats. Really looking forward to having those two little pockets so I can drop my wallet into one of them on longer drives where I would normally rest it against my transfer case shifter.

Extra extra comfort. Just about every time someone new rides in my cruiser, in the front seat, they comment on how comfortable my seats are. This is why.

I have one more swing out kit to box up tomorrow, but I will hopefully get all the body mounts replaced in a reasonable time. I can't remember if I have to deal with an access panel for the rear mount that will now be blocked by my drawers...hopefully not.

If that all goes smoothly and all the kits are shipped out Saturday morning, I might replace the motor mounts and start disassembling the cruiser for a buff and wax along with re-bed linering all of the rustoleum covered pieces with monstaliner. I am also going to fix one of the door jambs where someone shut the door on the buckle and then water got behind the paint and started messing it up as well as repaint my lower valence. I might also patch the two lower lights in the valence for a cleaner look.


I also have a sale pending for my locked axles, and have sourced a non locked full floater that I will be buying in the near future. I will be regearing, rebuilding, adding diff armor, and installing a harrop into that. At the end of the day, I couldn't justify the cost and time to get my locked axles into the shape necessary for what in my mind is an inferior system compared to harrops. I'll probably start ordering all the necessary parts for that this weekend.

 

[White Stripe]

The nice thing about the smaller away bar is it flexes easier offroad. The bigger front away bar, if left connected offroad tends to stress the axle mounts it connects to and rips them off and usually takes a brake line with it.

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

The nice thing about the smaller away bar is it flexes easier offroad. The bigger front away bar, if left connected offroad tends to stress the axle mounts it connects to and rips them off and usually takes a brake line with it.

Interesting. I've never heard about that. Maybe it's time to do some quick disconnects. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

Just ordered a rear Harrop locker, carrier kit, and diff rebuild kit from Cruiser Brothers! Lightened the wallet a good amount but I know it's money well spent. Super excited to get all of this stuff in and on the cruiser. I'm giving Cruiser Outfitters a call tomorrow to order fresh gears, rear axle rebuild parts, tie rods, a part time kit, and some other odds and ends tomorrow. I also have some new stoptech slotted rotors on the way with power stop pads. I'll be going and picking up a full floater rear axle here in a couple weekends when I get a chance. Then I'll start the fun!

I sold my locked axles yesterday and started disassembling the cruiser for a nice buff and wax along with fresh bed liner. This time I will be using monstaliner over everything. The rustoleum tends to crack and start discoloring after about a year or so in the sun, and it's gotten pretty nasty.

I also replaced the body mount cushions thus deleting my 1/2" body lift and polyurethane cushions. The ride is definitely better and small road chatter is significantly reduced. I replaced all 6 on the cab, the front two mounts by the radiator are NLA, and the rears were not coming off and out with the ability to lift the body a lot higher.

The snorkel took awhile to get off, but after removing found some interesting scratching going on. It might be due to debris or the shape on mine, but it could be a possible rust issue long term if left unattended so I'm going to clean it up the best I can and put paint film over the fender where the snorkel covers.

The snorkel definitely wasn't loose, and I had every stud tightened down so it wasn't due to the lack of installing certain nuts.

 

[The Eradicator]

Do you have any more pictures of you bike rack setup? I am thinking about building something similar for my 4Runner.

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

Do you have any more pictures of you bike rack setup? I am thinking about building something similar for my 4Runner.

If you look close, you can barely see one bolt hole for it. When I built the cooler swing out, I bent sheets of 3/16" steel at 90* and left a pretty good amount of space because I knew I could use it to attach other things. So basically this rack slides in between the two cooler uprights and bolts up with 6 bolts. I used two Yakima highrollers and bolted them down and welded the nuts on so they can't be stolen easily. I also fabbed up a rear brake light mount that slides into the slot on the bottom of the rearmost highroller since it sticks out ~40".

I also welded small plates onto every joint top and bottom for extra strength since this is all 1/8". It's pretty stout, but the highrollers wiggle a bit like they would on the roof. You'll definitely want a really strong swing out spindle and mounting design if you're planning for this much weight. With two bikes on and a loaded yeti 45, my swing out deflects about a 1/4" at the end where the stop pad is so I lightly have to lift up on it to slide over the stop pad.

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

The past month has been quite the grind. I’ve quite literally been working on the cruiser 10 hours a day almost non stop.

Full float rear axle swap deets
-Stoptech slotted rotors
-Powerstop pads
-Modified Moto Farkles diff armor blended into the factory housing
-Full Koyo bearing rebuild
-New lug studs
- Allen key drain/fill plugs
-Nitro 4.88 gears
-Harrop E locker
-Differential rebuild and locker carrier install all with Koyo bearings
-Sandblasted to bare metal and finished with John Deere Blitz Black
-Napa Reman calipers
-Shortened e brake cable so I didn’t have to replace mine with one from an FZJ80 model
-Harrop wired to factory “magic dial” and soon to be set up with custom locker indicators in the curved blanks on my dash.

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

After removing all of the previously bed lined parts, I went through three stages of buffing on the cruiser and then waxed it with Meguire’s Gold Carnuba wax.

Beige does a very good job of hiding scratches but I was getting sick of not seeing a deep shine. It also hasn’t really seen a serious buff and wax since we painted the cruiser 100k miles ago.

I decided to redo the drawer faceplates set up and side wings. Last summer I was pressed for time and ran out of 1/2” birch so I wasn’t able to do them how I wanted. After living with the drawers for the past year, the only problem I have had with them has been having to fold up the middle seats to flip up the side wings. I fixed that by separating them into two pieces and making metal supports that bolt to the third row seat location. I was also unhappy with how the rubber diamond plate was sitting on the edge of the drawers. I never could get it to stay flush and the edge of my drawers kept getting chipped up from use. I found some 1/2” angle iron and trimmed it to fit.

The little front panel just Velcros into place and underneath it, I have a little charging area for things

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

Monstalined Parts
Flares (stripped to fiberglass and new fender flare gaskets installed), hood vents, snorkel, rear hatch wind deflector, wheel wheels, rocker panels, tire swing out, cooler swing out, removable fender liners, new drawer wing components, new drawer faceplate, new drawer fronts, and angle iron top drawer edge protector.

I also sandblasted and wirewheeled my sliders, rear FZJ80 swaybar, and hi lift track down to bare metal along with the rear bumper trim.

I also modified the center caps to fit on the full float rear hubs by removing more material on the inside. The snap rings no longer fit. I also trimmed the front faces off of the front caps to fit with the part time hubs.

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

Everything recoated in VHT Graphite and then coated with PPG clear
Sliders, bumper trim, CNC machined spindle caps, center caps, Hi-Lift jack handle.

While I was spraying the rear axle with JD BB, I sprayed the fzj80 rear sway bar that I had from the LX axles I pulled. I also painted the mounts for it along with all parts of my hi lift jack except the mechanism with the pins. I thouroughly cleaned and lubed the hi lift mechanism.

I had also missed having a reverse camera. I had to lengthen the harness coming off of the camera in order to be able to feed it through my swing out arm. This was extremely tedious as the wires were the smallest I had ever dealt with. They were so small, the wire strippers wouldn’t strip them and twisting them before soldering was very difficult.

In addition to a new reverse camera, I tinted a new set of LED lights for the bumper wings. I used less lens tint (but they are still nearly impossible to see into) this time around so they appear much better in daytime conditions. I then wired them up with weather packs to have a cleaner and easier to use set up than I previously had.

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

It’s a minor thing, but I also removed all of the parting lines from the snorkel’s manufacturing process for a very clean and smooth surface for the bed liner.

This is how much the old rustoleum bed liner had discolored and cracked over the past 4 or so years. My cruiser is garage kept or parked under an enormous car port that’s almost fully shaded.

Locker wiring to oem dial without using any Toyota wiring that might work with dash indicator lights (since I have none of that). The Harrop supplies harness was enough to do it all and I even ended up with several feet of extra wire.

I drew up a curved dash switch blank in solid works and my friend printed it out. I will be having a switch label with the rear locker indicator on it as well as diff lock on it. I also have some red led lights and I will be putting one in each. Along with installing the part time spool in my transfer case, this is the last thing that needs to be done. Obviously I will be finishing the indicators to have a smooth finish.

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

And some final pictures of everything back together. My Kenda tires are also cracking again at 30k miles. I will be talking to my tire shop here within the next several days and figuring out what will be done since they are a hair over 2 years old. I may just end up biting the bullet on a set of KM3s if I have to. After doing all of this work I would hate for a tire blowout to ruin everything.

 

[White Stripe]

Man your cruiser is awesome. I am copying a lot of your cruiser's look in the build of my 80.

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

Talked to a guy at the local tire shop this morning. He seem d surprised to see dry rotting cracks before the tires have been worn down. Especially considering my spare has never been rotated in and it still looks new. I’ll know more from them on Monday. In the meantime I’m looking at other tires.


BFG KM3s are up there, but no white letters which I kind of want.

Nitto Ridge Grapplers. Seems like an interesting tire and perform well.

BFG KO2s are a little further down on the list. I feel that they will probably end up looking like tiny street tires under my flares.

Looked at a couple others but not really sold on anything if I do have to buy a set. Any suggestions for a 35x12.5r17?

Few little projects today. Drawer faceplates are now all screwed on from behind, and I installed my fridge.

 

[Bripars40]

Talked to a guy at the local tire shop this morning. He seem d surprised to see dry rotting cracks before the tires have been worn down. Especially considering my spare has never been rotated in and it still looks new. I’ll know more from them on Monday. In the meantime I’m looking at other tires.


BFG KM3s are up there, but no white letters which I kind of want.

Nitto Ridge Grapplers. Seems like an interesting tire and perform well.

BFG KO2s are a little further down on the list. I feel that they will probably end up looking like tiny street tires under my flares.

Looked at a couple others but not really sold on anything if I do have to buy a set. Any suggestions for a 35x12.5r17?

Few little projects today. Drawer faceplates are now all screwed on from behind, and I installed my fridge.View attachment 1754738

Cooper STT Pros.

Truck looks great! I need to try and catch you next time you head out for a wheeling trip.

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

Little update

I ended up buying a set of new Yokohama Geolandar G003 tires because I didn’t want to take any chances. The tire people basically said my tires were safe to drive on for the time being but that I should definitely keep an eye on them. They weren’t sure what was causing the cracks, but they were trying to tell me that gravel would do that sort of damage...

With new tires on, two of my friends, my brother, and I made a quick weekend trip out to Bentonville for some mountain biking and a shakedown run to test all of the newly completed work.


The following is purely about my vapor locking issue:


For the first time ever, my truck vapor locked in Oklahoma on 100% gas after a late afternoon drive to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I had driven to Tulsa and back the previous day pretty much non stop so this was weird. After letting the tank vent and cool down for 30 minutes, it started right up and we continued onto Bentonville problem free.

Weekend was awesome and the drive home was uneventful...until I dropped my second friend off at his house. Half a mile down the road the cruiser vapor locked. I let it cool and vent for 30 minutes and all was fine. This was late afternoon on Sunday with plans to leave early Monday for Red River, NM.

I greased the drive shafts, changed the oil, installed the RTT and cb antenna, unpacked and cleaned the stuff from the previous trip and got it ready for the next.

I checked the line going from the fuel pump/tank to the CC and it was free. Everything seemed normal so we set off for NM anyways.

Driving mostly third gear through some of the biggest headwinds I have ever driven in, the cruiser was worked hard and barely managed 7mpg to Amarillo. Filled up with 100% again there and didn’t have any issues with fueling until reaching Clayton, NM. The nozzle kept clicking off early despite only needing a 1/4 tank. An hour or two later and the cruiser stalled out going down a downhill at 2400 RPMs. Waited awhile, then it shut off two miles later. Then waited some more and tried bypassing the CC and check valve, then it died again. Waited more, reset it back to how it was and proceeded to Red River where it died on main street after idling for a few minutes.

We had dinner, then drove up the mountain to our campsite issue free.

 

[SUMMIT CRUISERS Jr]

The next day, after driving for several hours and about 15 miles from Pagosa Springs the cruiser vapor locked again. I pulled over, let it cool down and vent, and then started it up. It shut down a couple miles later. I had been pulling 2nd gear around 42-45 mph up a hill around 3500 rpms. At the top, I shifted into 3rd and it died again. This made me think the issue was fuel related. Needless to say, I waited awhile and then held 2nd gear at 45mpg the remaining distance into Pagosa so I could change out the fuel filter. I couldn’t find a strainer for the pump so that will be a couple more days. I also had the Durango Autozone order me a new VC120 charcoal canister.

Which leads me to earlier this afternoon. We had stayed at my neighbors’ from back home place here in Pagosa. We left late in afternoon for Durango to get Gazpachos, pick up my charcoal canister, and then head to Ouray for the Solid Axle Summit. 15 minutes from Durango, I felt a clunk and saw debris in my mirror. I was fairly certain I didn’t hit anything and then I thought maybe a center cap had come off, but it was apparent there was a larger issue at hand. I immediately pulled off the road and into a nice shoulder to find my radiator puking it’s guts out. I opened the hood, and saw that the fan had grenaded itself taking out the shroud and punching holes in the radiator.

I guess they get old and should be replaced as part of preventative maintenance.

Luckily, our neighbor up here has a car hauler and duramax so he came and picked us up. Currently sourcing parts and I will be investigating more into what caused this issue. Luckily all of the belts and hoses survived untouched and I don’t think anything was flung up from below especially considering that I still have the oem splash guard/skid plate in place.

The pieces that were still in my engine bay.

Fastest and most effortless the cruiser has pulled these hills out here. Honestly amazed at the torque of this duramax.