Fuzz's build thread
Ok, so it's not really "built" yet...in fact it's nowhere near done, but you have to start somewhere...and the transformation that has taken place over the last few days is pretty exciting. Special thanks to Loud for lending me his tools, his time, and his relentless strings of mockery and laughter while watching me work on my truck.
Plus, people have been bugging me to come clean about the little "oops" that occured a couple months ago, so I'll spill the beans here shortly. Read on.
The basics of the story are typical. Got the crusier bug towards the end of last summer and started scouring 'Mud for information. Started out looking at 80's, but decided on the 100 because of the extra creature comforts and V8
princess: and two munchkins make you prioritize some funny things sometimes). I found a black and tan 2000 at a local dealership with 134K on it, and snapped it up. In retrospect I probably should have held out for a car that wasn't from the rust belt...more on that later...but I LOVE my rig. I'll drive it until it dies - or more likely, until it falls apart. 
Starting at the beginning, here she is in stock trim, fresh from Mountain States Toyota:
Word to the wise, never test drive/inspect a car at night. I missed several chips in the windshield and the rear of the interior was covered in very fine pet hair that couldn't be seen unless in bright sunlight. "It's already been detailed...", yeah, my a$$ it has. Small issues in the long run, but had I seen them at the dealership, they would have been addressed before taking delivery.
First mod, those running boards had to be loosed....
After that, I decided that the stock Michelins were no longer required. Out with them, and in with some 305-70 Goodyear Duratracs.
I ran it that way for a couple of months, until I had a bit of an "OH
......
" moment. While pulling out from my house, I bent over to pick something up, and took the steering wheel with me as I bent over. I managed to drift the passenger front corner of the truck right into my neighbor's 97 Tahoe. The Duratracs climbed right up her running boards and planted the front corner of the Hundy sqaure into her drivers side door. Boy was that an embarassing conversation at their front door. My first accident in 10 years, and only the second one in my entire life. Here is the result:
USAA came out and did an estimate for me. Fender, bumper, corner light, headlight trim, front of the passenger side front door...they wrote up EVERY little scratch, and cut me a check for $2200. I took it to the body shop, told them to fix the fender and light, and leave everything else alone. Pocketed about $1000 of the payout, and promptly ordered an 03-07 ARB deluxe combo bar from my buddy at 4 wheel parts. He was about $100 cheaper than anyone else, but one week turned into two, two weeks turned into a month...all told, I had to wait for 2 months for the thing to come direct from ARB/Oz. I won't be doing that again. Now, I know that sliders would have probably been a better investment, but an ARB bumper is a rather big-ticket item, so I figured that with my modest salary I might as well order it while I can.
While waiting around rocking the "no front bumper" look, I decided to throw a few more little things on the Hundy. Trevor (Isotel) from Crawlorado needed a 100 series as a guinea pig for his new hood blackouts, so I shot down to the 'Springs one day and brainstormed with him. His initial measurements were pretty much spot on, so after a few very minor design tweaks we slapped the finished product on my truck:
Works great to reduce glare!
I also ordered an interior LED package from Paul, which turned out to be great (plenty of interior shots in the LED Madness thread - not going to bother putting them up here). Along with that I ordered a 55w 4500K HID kit from DDM tuning.
Stock:
HID:
Here's a comparison in broad daylight:
What a dramatic difference!
Around this time I also started the process of converting the outside lights to all-LED. Those funky vertical parking lamps next to the main headlight reflectors had to be changed due to the HID kit going in...I didn't want amber turn signals, yellowish-white parking lamps and bright white HID...it would be too busy. So, I decided to change the vertical lamps to amber LED. Bought a set of these:
And it cleaned up the front quite a bit...no more multicolor stuff going on. I thought about going with white LEDs, but I didn't want them to be mis-matched to the HID kit. This looks cleaner IMO. The shades of amber don't look spot on in the picture, but they are very close in person.
Ok, so it's not really "built" yet...in fact it's nowhere near done, but you have to start somewhere...and the transformation that has taken place over the last few days is pretty exciting. Special thanks to Loud for lending me his tools, his time, and his relentless strings of mockery and laughter while watching me work on my truck.
Plus, people have been bugging me to come clean about the little "oops" that occured a couple months ago, so I'll spill the beans here shortly. Read on.The basics of the story are typical. Got the crusier bug towards the end of last summer and started scouring 'Mud for information. Started out looking at 80's, but decided on the 100 because of the extra creature comforts and V8
princess: and two munchkins make you prioritize some funny things sometimes). I found a black and tan 2000 at a local dealership with 134K on it, and snapped it up. In retrospect I probably should have held out for a car that wasn't from the rust belt...more on that later...but I LOVE my rig. I'll drive it until it dies - or more likely, until it falls apart. Starting at the beginning, here she is in stock trim, fresh from Mountain States Toyota:
Word to the wise, never test drive/inspect a car at night. I missed several chips in the windshield and the rear of the interior was covered in very fine pet hair that couldn't be seen unless in bright sunlight. "It's already been detailed...", yeah, my a$$ it has.
Small issues in the long run, but had I seen them at the dealership, they would have been addressed before taking delivery.First mod, those running boards had to be loosed....
After that, I decided that the stock Michelins were no longer required. Out with them, and in with some 305-70 Goodyear Duratracs.
I ran it that way for a couple of months, until I had a bit of an "OH
......" moment. While pulling out from my house, I bent over to pick something up, and took the steering wheel with me as I bent over. I managed to drift the passenger front corner of the truck right into my neighbor's 97 Tahoe. The Duratracs climbed right up her running boards and planted the front corner of the Hundy sqaure into her drivers side door. Boy was that an embarassing conversation at their front door. My first accident in 10 years, and only the second one in my entire life. Here is the result:
USAA came out and did an estimate for me. Fender, bumper, corner light, headlight trim, front of the passenger side front door...they wrote up EVERY little scratch, and cut me a check for $2200. I took it to the body shop, told them to fix the fender and light, and leave everything else alone. Pocketed about $1000 of the payout, and promptly ordered an 03-07 ARB deluxe combo bar from my buddy at 4 wheel parts. He was about $100 cheaper than anyone else, but one week turned into two, two weeks turned into a month...all told, I had to wait for 2 months for the thing to come direct from ARB/Oz. I won't be doing that again. Now, I know that sliders would have probably been a better investment, but an ARB bumper is a rather big-ticket item, so I figured that with my modest salary I might as well order it while I can.
While waiting around rocking the "no front bumper" look, I decided to throw a few more little things on the Hundy. Trevor (Isotel) from Crawlorado needed a 100 series as a guinea pig for his new hood blackouts, so I shot down to the 'Springs one day and brainstormed with him. His initial measurements were pretty much spot on, so after a few very minor design tweaks we slapped the finished product on my truck:
Works great to reduce glare!
I also ordered an interior LED package from Paul, which turned out to be great (plenty of interior shots in the LED Madness thread - not going to bother putting them up here). Along with that I ordered a 55w 4500K HID kit from DDM tuning.
Stock:
HID:
Here's a comparison in broad daylight:
What a dramatic difference!
Around this time I also started the process of converting the outside lights to all-LED. Those funky vertical parking lamps next to the main headlight reflectors had to be changed due to the HID kit going in...I didn't want amber turn signals, yellowish-white parking lamps and bright white HID...it would be too busy. So, I decided to change the vertical lamps to amber LED. Bought a set of these:
And it cleaned up the front quite a bit...no more multicolor stuff going on. I thought about going with white LEDs, but I didn't want them to be mis-matched to the HID kit. This looks cleaner IMO. The shades of amber don't look spot on in the picture, but they are very close in person.
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