MTKID's IFS UZJ100 on 37's Build Thread (2 Viewers)

[MTKID]

Where to start?

In the early 2000's my wife and I were interested in some sort of SUV. We both liked what we saw of the appearance of Land Rovers and Land Cruisers. I can admit, I wouldn't have been able to tell you which one was a Toyota and which one wasn't at first, but thankfully we made the correct choice with my first 80 series.

After ten years, I wanted the V8 of the 100 series for towing my work trailer and in 2013 I purchased a 98' with around 135k miles from South Dakota. It would end up being a good vehicle overall but much more rust underneath than I would have liked

Before long, I wanted to get the 315 Duratracs on my new truck, and as much as I would have loved to have kept my 80 and build it for trail only use, I couldn't justify or afford to play with two trucks, so I sold it with around 275k miles. It had been a great rig!

 

[MTKID]

I think the first thing I did was the 1" body lift, then OME rear coils (850’s I think in order to get the height without the harsh ride) with a 1" coil spacer (initially this spacer was to compensate for the tongue weight of my trailer), OME torsion bars cranked up, and got the tires on. I found the tire fitment to be really close but not quite perfect so I ordered 3/8" Motorsport-tech spacers for the front which worked perfectly. There is a diff drop bracket on it. I also purchased one of Gamaviti's racks for my tent...

And then got started on the front bumper by making a cardboard template and had a local metal shop cut and bend this piece for me...

Then installing and test fitting my old Smittybilt XRC10 winch into it...

 

[MTKID]

Then I took what I had to that point to another friend and local fabricator who specializes in Rover builds but can create anything for off-road and told him what I wanted for the rest of my bumper. Throughout the process, I kept telling him "Um, no, not like that, like this. I kinda am wanting to keep everything up higher for clearance." So he continually made fun of me for being so concerned about "high-clearance" on such a big fat wagon. I understand, he makes real buggies including one he drove in qualifications for King-Of-The-Hammers, and this isn't exactly a rock-crawler, but I figured if I am doing something custom, might as well give it as good of approach angle as possible...

 

[MTKID]

At some point in time I had the same fabricator make an interior spare tire carrier since I wasn't ready for a rear bumper with tire carrier yet. This is what he came up with...

A really cool local company called Red Oxx that makes indestructible/lifetime warranty bags custom made the waterproof cover in case I needed to load a muddy or snowy tire in...

Also, before the front bumper was powder coated "Wet White", which seemed like a close match, my fabricator put on some corner hoops that he liked the idea of...

From this last photo, you can clearly see I desperately need to add some additional protection underneath the bumper and down to the dif. I promise I'll get around to that eventually. Oh, and an observant person will notice that the OEM washer bottle reservoir is missing since it fits behind the factory bumper on the drivers side. When I designed this, I noticed the connections/tubes were plenty long to reach somewhere else in the engine compartment, so I figured I'd find another smaller reservoir to mount somewhere else. Well, I don't know what the proper way is to find another one that uses the same Toyota connections without physically taking other ones apart at maybe a junk yard and examining them, so I am still without a washer fluid bottle. If someone has a good solution for this, I am all ears.

 

[MTKID]

So... my old 80 series was ready for 37's, but I hadn't ever done it. At some point in time I figured what I would do is purchase one tire every couple months and eventually get to install them on it. That never happened. I purchased one 37" TrXus tire but I have a family and a business and attempt to be responsible from time to time, so I never had gotten the other three or four tires for my 80. But I just couldn't let go of the one impressive looking tire that sat in my garage, so one day I mounted it on my spare wheel and asked my mechanic if we could just play around a little and see how it might fit. Just dream a little...

Boy it looked good, but turning wasn't going to happen at all. Major interference behind the tire.

The back wasn't bad. We were having a hard time flexing the back up as high as we wanted in his shop, so I pulled it out across his gravel driveway in front of his shop and up onto a dirt pile. Everything looked pretty good, although the fuel filler tube was a little close.

That was 2015. That tire has been sitting in my garage since.

 

[MTKID]

Fast forward to 2017 and my Duratracs are finally getting worn enough to replace. I had sold my work trailer and no longer needed to tow with my truck. It was around 214k miles, so from an outside perspective, that sounds like it could be approaching an acceptable age to allow cutting of a little sheet metal. I finally had one of my five Duratracs die and I tossed on my spare, but another one would have left me stranded. Over the summer, a family member turned me on to a set of Rock Warrior wheels for a good price, so I had those sitting in the garage for an unknown tire. In a perfect world, I would have the space and funds to have 315 70R17 Nokian Studded tires mounted on RW wheels as my winter tires, and I'd run the 37" TrXus all summer and possibly for winter wheeling trips, throwing caution to the wind for the cost of the TrXus, weight, poor fuel mileage, noise, and hypothetically short lifespan of that stickier tire. But thats not reality for me, so I started trying to decide what to run next. If you are a gear head, and you have done a little autocross in your life and obsessed over every detail of sticky street tires, you know how hard it is to come to a conclusion on a new tire! But I knew I wanted to really figure out if I could make a 37" tire fit so a friend of mine and I installed it again in my garage and started crawling all over the front end with the front tires on wheel dollies and creating a game plan...

That game plan became removing 2" of sheet metal from the fender all the way around and including right behind the wheel. You should be able to see the hole that needed to be patched in the picture above. Now, this wasn't an exact science, obviously, because we couldn't turn the tire to check fitment until we actually had cut this out. But I knew I could cut more material and my friend could weld, so what could possibly go wrong?

Some things to note... By this time my truck is running 3/4" spacers on the front and I have moved the 3/8" wheel spacers to the back. I have the Nitro Gear UCA's installed. I have removed both front and rear sway bars a few years ago. I had already broken my antenna and plan on an eBay snorkel, so I removed all of the antenna motor from inside the fender (I have a new Tundra fixed one and am thinking of installing on the driver's side). As you can see, the plastic inner fender has to be removed and the grey outside molding needs to be removed, which I have cut the back edge off of to make it the correct length and will try re-attaching using only the 3m trim tape.

So after cutting out this material in the above photo, we disconnected the torsion bar and rested the control arms on the bump-stops and turned the tire to see how close we were. It was surprisingly close to clearing all around. I can't say this will be the same result for someone else, but with this tire and size of spacer it cleared the frame at full lock! We then began looking at where it was going to next hit when compressed further and determined that the next spot would be just above where you see the large hole behind the tire. There is a metal seam there that extends into the fender well that we decided to cut next in a bit of a curve. Here is a picture of the driver's side...

This photo show the A-pillar drain tube inside and the upper seam that we decided to modify with a cut-off wheel and my grinder. Its very important, though, that you try to modify the upper portion in the least invasive way possible. Whatever requires the least amount of welding the better for the upper portion.

 

[MTKID]

Here is where things can go sideways in a hurry. The lower hole is primarily just the rocker panel, but there are openings into the interior footwell area. It does have a small piece of foam that can easily be removed before capping and the inside portion (the smaller hole inside of the rocker panel) doesn't seem to lead directly into the footwell of the cab, BUT the upper portion of the seam that we modified corresponds directly to the lower corner of the footwell inside your cab. Inside your vehicle you have a black rubber material that acts like an insulation and sound barrier and is backed by yellow foam. Then your carpet that is backed by a thick wool-like backer in some areas as well. Then you have essentially what is all the critical wiring for your vehicle to keep running in both footwells. ALL of these things are flammable to one degree or another. Now, the proper procedure would be to remove the lower portions of the dash, all the carpet, all the wiring, and then the black rubber material and have only bare metal exposed. We may or may not have done that and the very minor fire that ensued is probably the fastest my heart has beat in a long time...

Keep in mind, this was in my garage, without even a wheel on this side when we were welding that upper seam back closed again and we thought we had everything under control when one little glowing orange light was not going away and was starting to smolder more than anyone wants to see when you are standing on your head and looking up under the dash to an area that is not easily seen much less reached. My recommendation? Remove everything that you need to to do this safely. It will be very time consuming, but the alternative is much worse! In fact, my recommendation would be to remove the carpet before you even cut the lower rocker panel out because there are some openings that lead up to behind the carpet and, as I recall, there were some sparks that could jump inside from even that area being cut.

We also chose to use a big hammer to pound back this area just inside of the upper seam. Doing this didn't seem to affect reinstalling anything in the passenger footwell (although, you will want to keep an eye on all the wiring), but on the drivers side, the lower interior panel that goes alongside my footrest is pushed toward the back of the vehicle now about 1/4" and won't stay clipped to the door jam at the top. I will cut the end of it off and I don't mind losing the one black plastic clip holding the front. As far as wiring on the driver's side, there is a white connector in mine that we essentially pounded the metal right up against.

Here is a picture of how the slightly nicer driver's side turned out welded and capped...

Another last note for this post is that I cut out little tabs to bend in as you see in this last photo to attach some inner fender well material to. I marked and cut one out at the same position of the original tabs. I am going to try to reuse the original inner piece first, but may purchase some other material if needed. And I plan to attach a flexible mud-flap also that I can remove if need be.

 

[MTKID]

Everything seemed to be working with my test wheel and tire so after too many hours researching tires I decided to order the Pro Comp A/T Sports in their 37 x 12.5R17 and mounting them on my Rock Warrior Wheels. I was trying to keep the total weight down as much as possible so I removed the fake beadlock rings and had the wheels re-powder coated "Pewter Bronze", same color as my original wheels. Thankfully, once they were mounted on the wheels, they were almost the exact same size as my test tire...

I'll use the TrXus as my spare tire in an emergency.

 

[MTKID]

Now, I posted most of the following already but I guess this thread would be an ok place to repost a couple photos and links...

These were from a New Year's Day run to do some snow-wheeling. So far they have driven surprisingly well on the highway. Smoother and quieter than my Duratracs. Power difference was immediately noticeable since I haven't re-geared yet, but not bad at all. it ran 70 down the road without a problem. I don't drive fast anyways. Braking wasn't noticeable yet, but many of our roads are under snow still and I haven't needed to do an emergency stop yet. Steering seems unchanged so far. It is noticeably more top heavy. Not too much for me though. My perspective was from my old 80 without sway bars and this still feels better. Speedometer is about 18-19% off. I want to put Timbren bumpstops in and possibly space them down a little both front and rear. I may even have a taller spacer for the rear for snow days that allow me to run chains on the back because I don't think there will be any issue at the front or rear of the rear fender, I just need to limit up travel more.

The list of other things I plan on or want to do is rather endless but I'll share other things in this thread as I accomplish them and am happy to answer any questions as well as I can.

Thanks,
Micah

 

[pjess50]

I really like the little hoops at the corners of the bumper. Awesome truck!

 

[reznunt]

Man 37's look perfect on the 100. Nice job and thanks for sharing!

 

[Bama4door]

Great write up and the 37s look awesome!

 

[cruisermatt]

I've meet your fabricator Jordan a few times...he does good work

 

[MTKID]

I've meet your fabricator Jordan a few times...he does good work

Yes, he does! I was wishing to put him to work on my rear bumper before now but it will have to wait a little while. It’ll be “high-clearance” though when it happens

 

[Bripars40]

This is awesome! I saw your front bumper in a picture recently and I saved it for future inspiration. Makes me want to dream a little about 37s. I drive mine for work so I’m running 32s and it’s setup for 35s

This also gives me an idea. I have some rust on the edge of my front wheel well. Cutting to remove rust and open up the wheel well makes a great option.

 

[MTKID]

I know most people are fond of the Rock Warrior wheel and rightfully so since they are such a quality light wheel but I’ve been dreaming of a true beadlock too.

If you look on OMF Performance’s website, you’ll see a photo of a Tundra running these RW wheels that are modified with true beadlocks. So after a couple calls to Bones @ OMF I got the ball rolling to make mine true beadlocks. The best part, in my opinion, is the total weight after they are done is still very light.

I would highly recommend OMF Performance after working with them on these ones and really look forward to this winter’s snow trips. These are just single beadlocks, not dual (like Hutchinson’s) which I am fine with to keep the overall weight down.

 

[ikarus]

I know most people are fond of the Rock Warrior wheel and rightfully so since they are such a quality light wheel but I’ve been dreaming of a true beadlock too. View attachment 1806209

If you look on OMF Performance’s website, you’ll see a photo of a Tundra running these RW wheels that are modified with true beadlocks. So after a couple calls to Bones @ OMF I got the ball rolling to make mine true beadlocks. The best part, in my opinion, is the total weight after they are done is still very light.

View attachment 1806215

I would highly recommend OMF Performance after working with them on these ones and really look forward to this winter’s snow trips. These are just single beadlocks, not dual (like Hutchinson’s) which I am fine with to keep the overall weight down.

View attachment 1806216

That’s sick man! Looks great too. Definitely nice to have half the weight of Hutchinsons

 

[MTKID]

I finally got around to creating a skid plate under the bumper to protect the radiator. A little cardboard template...

And the final in aluminum...

Sorry, the after photo is terrible, but you get the idea. The radiator is protected from damage and this should help a little come winter when we get into deeper snow.

 

[cruiserintn]

Nice! My 100 series isn’t a show piece and I was thinking of moving to 35s, but now I feel like I need 37s.

 

[yotasavg]

Man, I love this thread so much. At 20 years old, I'm feeling the same about my truck and while I still DD it, I'm getting to the point where some cutting makes a LOT more sense to get toward 35's, especially for my kind of usage. Keep up the great posts!