La Puerca Plata - 2004 Toyota Sequoia Limited (1 Viewer)

[J4roe]

Love the build! And thanks for the inspo to use spacers and save a little coin on "Krautsteins" LOL. They will be here today and I will install this weekend. Easy peasy. I'll be looking through your work for more ideas, but mine is currently a 2wd pavement queen that sees "offroading" on my property and at my gun range, so the clearance is nice and we all like our vehicles to at least look cool. I had a 4wd that I sold because it was easier to sell and I only needed one vehicle. I don't "offroad" like some, I just explore down dirt roads and trails.

Keep going! Nice work.

Haha! The Krautsteins are nice don't get me wrong. I have 14" Krautstein 7100's on the rear of my truck and they do pretty well. I only knock them because people want performance but can't/won't spend money on good shocks so they rationalize and SELL themselves on Krautsteins being "just as good" as a performance shock and they are not. Also, more money gets wasted on the middle steps when you decide on adding things to your truck. I hate the term "mod" but modding the truck. You want SICK SUSPENSION BRO but you can't afford that right now so you get Billys and then start telling yourself that these shocks are SICKKKKKKK BRO. But they're marginally only better than stock. Until you get a performance series coilover and upper control arms or long travel you can never understand. How many suspension parts do you see on these SICK OVERLAND VEHICLES BRAH???? Well, after the $2069 roof rack, $1269 front bumper $1569 rear bumper, $1269 rock sliders $1600 tire carrier/swingout $1469 Ladder $2169 Awning $1069 LED light FOR A GRAND TOTAL OF $12,483.... And after all of that it would only be natural to spend $200 on the most valuable component to any OFF ROAD VEHICLE. Then after you've rationalized those BILLIES it's easy to get sucked into the complete BS of these marginal upper control arm companies using ball joints.

I better get off the box before I get banned... but yea if you're not off roading at all then definitely just go with the spacer lift. If you want to get semi serious about off roading but also have a budget the goal is always the same in the beginning. Uniball upper control arm, extended travel coilover. King, Fox, Radflo, Racerunner, EVEN BILSTEIN has a performance coilover. That would be true midtravel. Then long travel but that's a whole NOTHER can of worms...

 

[J4roe]

Got the fab on the D side complete. Rain tomorrow and Saturday in Phoenix so no work will be done but hopefully I can get these things cut off and fully welded back up, painted and back onto the truck in the next week or so.

Took the girls to the park earlier and got a few pictures of the D side... The Weld Through Primer roof rack is killing my OCD right now though... The sliders are getting paint right away. Satin Black.

 

[bbslider001]

Haha! The Krautsteins are nice don't get me wrong. I have 14" Krautstein 7100's on the rear of my truck and they do pretty well. I only knock them because people want performance but can't/won't spend money on good shocks so they rationalize and SELL themselves on Krautsteins being "just as good" as a performance shock and they are not. Also, more money gets wasted on the middle steps when you decide on adding things to your truck. I hate the term "mod" but modding the truck. You want SICK SUSPENSION BRO but you can't afford that right now so you get Billys and then start telling yourself that these shocks are SICKKKKKKK BRO. But they're marginally only better than stock. Until you get a performance series coilover and upper control arms or long travel you can never understand. How many suspension parts do you see on these SICK OVERLAND VEHICLES BRAH???? Well, after the $2069 roof rack, $1269 front bumper $1569 rear bumper, $1269 rock sliders $1600 tire carrier/swingout $1469 Ladder $2169 Awning $1069 LED light FOR A GRAND TOTAL OF $12,483.... And after all of that it would only be natural to spend $200 on the most valuable component to any OFF ROAD VEHICLE. Then after you've rationalized those BILLIES it's easy to get sucked into the complete BS of these marginal upper control arm companies using ball joints.

I better get off the box before I get banned... but yea if you're not off roading at all then definitely just go with the spacer lift. If you want to get semi serious about off roading but also have a budget the goal is always the same in the beginning. Uniball upper control arm, extended travel coilover. King, Fox, Radflo, Racerunner, EVEN BILSTEIN has a performance coilover. That would be true midtravel. Then long travel but that's a whole NOTHER can of worms...

Well said....I AM putting on some new 4600s because the bushing is blown on the cheapies I installed, but that isn't the answer. the levelers will still go on when I do the shocks.

Appreciate the education!!

 

[J4roe]

Well said....I AM putting on some new 4600s because the bushing is blown on the cheapies I installed, but that isn't the answer. the levelers will still go on when I do the shocks.

Appreciate the education!!

For looks, that's the cheapest way to do it.

 

[J4roe]

NEW YEARS EVE MIDNIGHT BUMP!

Happy New Year Degens!

Here's something for you to FAP to at the STROKE of midnight.... SIX TO MIDNIGHT.

 

[J4roe]

 

[J4roe]

 

[J4roe]

SLIDERS

 

[J4roe]

The DEZ is about to pop. First grass is starting to sprout. With a dusting of rain last night and a little more this week the grass is going to start growing. It's just now starting to sprout. In a month this will all be green.

 

[J4roe]

Bump

So... I started this rear hatch ladder like two months ago and it absolutely kicked my ass. I wasn't really liking how these ladders are mounted to the truck. Basically, any company you look at they're all mounted the same on top and bottom of the ladder. The top mount consists of a "hook" that wraps around the edge of the hatch. To stabilize the mount from moving around these companies use 2 sided tape. So essentially your ladder is two sided taped to your truck. Not very PRO if you ask me. I wanted something that was physically mounted. I plan on using this ladder is slide my kayak up onto the roof rack with a hand winch or small quad power winch. The ladder needed to be semi structural. Two sided tape is pretty ghetto. I'm trying to be a semi-pro fabricator so two sided tape is pretty juvenile. So I decided I was going to reinvent the wheel and it ****ing bit me in the ass per usual lol. I knew there was a risk because after doing my rollcage in my Tacoma I know that Toyota uses like 22g sheet metal for their body panels. Some of the corners and certain areas of the cab have multiple sheets that are panel bonded together. I cut almost all of it out of my truck. It's basically a SARDINE CAN now.

Anyway.... I decided I was going to use either Riv nuts or Riv PLUS nuts to bolt the upper mount to the hatch in conjunction with the "hook" style mount. So instead of hook and 2 side tape I was going to use the hook and then bolt it to the hatch. I figured this would be a lot more structural than tape. The risk was how thick the Sequoia hatch sheet metal was/is. Well, as they say. I LEARNED TODAY. The first plus nut I installed came out like s***. It almost ruined the threads and scratched the s*** out of the paint. I had to tap the thread because it was all F'd up. BUT it was technically working so I moved on to the passenger side. This is in the center left of the hatch above the 3rd brake light. NIGHTMARE!!!!!!!!!!

Sheet metal in this area was 22g. For any of my sheet metal pros. Go to Home Depot and buy some 22g and then try and weld it. Lowest setting burns right through. It's a PAIN IN THE ASS! Ask TURBOYOTA on BadLinesGoodTimes how much he hates Toyota sheet metal. It's coke can thin. It's a joke. The Plus nut couldn't tighten down enough so it just kept spinning. The sheet metal heated up so bad that the plus nut basically was a 1" hole saw.

So now I had a hole in the sheet metal of the hatch. I was ****ing pissed. I knew it was 50/50 with the riv nuts. I should have listened to myself but the only way to learn is the scientific method which is DO. Just DO and find out. Well. I found out. The good thing was I had enough sheet metal welding on the Tacoma roll cage to be confident that the problem was fixable. So without making this 7 pages of writing. I hogged out the hole to exactly one inch. Took 1.125" hole saw and cut me out a 1" circle plug out of 16g sheet metal. 16g is actually weld-able but it can burn through as well but not as bad. Used a magnet to hold the plug piece flush with the surrounding hole that I had cleaned up. Got it welded in and then cleaned it up with the flap disk. The area had kind of dented in due to the initial heat from the riv nut spinning so I applied a small area of fiberglass filler to level it back out. Most of the "****up" will be under the passenger side top mount so not too noticeable. Definitely not happy but nothing I can do now. I just needed it fixed properly so no rust will form. I will worry about the paint later. Like I said it's almost entirely under the top mount so hardly noticeable but I know it's up there. It actually pissed me off enough to put the project on the shelf for a couple of weeks.

 

[J4roe]

This is the first iteration. 16g sheet metal. I used my plasma cutter to cut it out. It came out well but it was waaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy too hard to bend the "hook" into the top of it. Maybe if I had a press brake it would have been possible but with BFH it was too GHETTO to be happy with. I've come to far in my fabrication to go backwards and this part just looked like complete 16 year old homebuilt bull****.

 

[J4roe]

The rear hatch has too much compound bend in it with different planes and angles. The one piece without a press brake to bend the hook into the top was impossible. So after a week of deciding what I wanted to do I decided on the riv nut idea and then I cut this big piece that I made into two seperate mounts not conjoined.

That part of the idea proved to be useful. The riv nut however was an absolute disaster. The Toyota sheet metal is way too thin up there.

 

[J4roe]

I was so pissed I put clear gorilla tape over it for 5 or 6 days until I was ready to face reality and weld in a circle sheet metal plug. So a week later after I got it welded and leveled I decided that trying a riv nut again wouldn't produce a different result and that I would just go ahead with the ladder using the one riv nut that held and then double sided tape on the passenger side top mount.

I used the same material for the ladder as the roof rack. 1.5" x .095 wall mild steel tube. HREW.

 

[J4roe]

Finished it up today. These are mock up photos from yesterday so if the tubes aren't exactly lined up it's because it was getting broken down anyways before reassembly today. Tried going quick today so not too many photos but you get the point. I have it soaking in black paint in the backyard right now. The bottom of the ladder tubes and the lower mount stand offs were capped. The ladder is actually really stout surprisingly. With just one 8mm bolt up top. The bottom mounts are just like Gobi or whoever. Sandwich plates. But yea the ladder without the double sided tape and just one bolt and the bottom mounts you can shake the entire vehicle by the ladder. So time will tell if it passes the off road test. No doubt it's good for city driving. I will be putting a 200w solar panel on the roof rack soon hopefully. Then on to the tire gate if I get that far. Life is becoming more unpredictable but I hope to get to the tire gate and both bumpers. Might have to put a 12v battery system in the truck before bumpers or tire gate so that may delay any further fabrication. We'll see. I'm rebuilding a boat motor right now too and that's also going to take priority now that the ladder is finished. I have pistons and block ready to reassemble so my boat might be getting the LOVE next. Plus, Phoenix is flirting with 90 degrees today so I know the heat is right around the corner so boat needs to be back online PRONTO. MUY PRONTO.

 

[J4roe]

Tacked and ready to finish weld. Ladder removed easily as well. That was a plus.





Obligatory Close Up to weld sword fight...

 

[J4roe]

Got the ladder painted and re-mounted. Used Gorilla double sided tape under the top mounts. I also put it on the lower angle plate that rests on the paint of the hatch. I thought I did well not rushing the welding but the ladder moved a little at the bottom from the heat. I knew that if I didn't put a bottom rung down there at the bottom that it was going to distort a little but the design with the bumper right there would have looked stupid I think. But because of that the lower sandwich plates don't go all the way down now and the lower vice mount with the screws is barely holding it in now. It's an easy fix. I'll just have to re-work the lower vice mounts. You'll see. It will be easy. Couple hours of work and re paint those little bastards.

I've included photos of what NOT to do with the riv nuts. There may be a riv nut that can squish down to 22 gauge but until I know for a fact I'm just going to send it with this one M8x1.25 bolt and the tape. I found my paint code so I can buy a can of my base coat and spray that area. It will be decent enough for up there.

Otherwise, it turned out pretty good. The rear hatch has multiple bends and curves so it's more complex to get everything to be on right angles and look good in the end. Rock sliders are very straight forward. This ladder proved to be a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. In the end it looks good so I'm pretty happy. I will re-work the bottom vice mounts to be a little more sure that the ladder "isn't going anywhere".

Taking my bitches out to the DEZ tomorrow to run so I'll get a few more official shots of the ladder and see how it does off road. On road, first drive no discernable noise of any kind. No creeks, no wind noise with back window down and it didn't move. Time will tell.

Joe

 

[J4roe]

16 gauge with 16 gauge overlay for grand total of 1/8" for all the math guys. You can't make the "hook" part much thicker than 16g so the whole part can't be 1/8". You can also see the hole for the 8mm bolt. I bent the "hooks" with BFH and bench vice. They look like hell but WOTEVER.

 

[J4roe]

Capped the bottom tube mounts and bottom of vertical tubes...

 

[J4roe]

Bottom vice mounts... Drilled and tapped for 8mmx1.25 allen head cap screw. Stainless.

 

[Jgrauman]

Nice work! I made 3 iterations offset to the left side and got so tired of messing with those angles I went straight down the middle with my final version. You're a much more experienced fabricator than I am though