RG7 GX460 Journal (1 Viewer)

[RG7]

Hey all,

Figured I should introduce myself and my GX — learning a ton so far here and thankful for the great resources on this site.

I hesitate to call this a “build” thread as the progress will be slow going as time and budget allows. No massive transformations here. I like to record progress on the rig and have something to look back on once the truck reaches its final state.

The backstory on how I ended up in a GX starts with a Bronco reservation that I made in July ‘20 that still has yet to be fulfilled (and probably won’t be this year). I’d been living in the city for far too long and wanted to get back to offroading and the Bronco was going to be the gateway to that. Unfortunately that turned out to be a huge fiasco with no end in sight so I started looking at alternatives —

I looked at a lot of vehicles and the GX popped up. After doing some reading here and looking at the capabilities of these vehicles once suitably modified I was sold.

Picked up a ‘17 GX in Nightfall Mica with 43k on the clock in September. All in all fairly clean vehicle, but the paint was in rough shape, we’ll get to that.

Now on to the purpose and future plans for the rig.

1) I bought a GX because of their reputation for reliability and comfort (as well as being one of the last body on frame V8 SUV’s with offroad chops you can still buy fairly new). No mods done to the vehicle will significantly alter comfort/reliability.

2) Once my Bronco shows up, assuming that will be sometime in the next decade; my fiancée will take over the GX as her daily. Gonna do my best to keep it useable and not hang too many offroad/camping accessories off of it that can’t be easily stored when pulling daily duty. This presents a challenge when looking at potential layouts for the interior to keep the truck useable as a daily driver but still handle everything else we throw at it.

3) Aside from daily duty, this truck will function as a hunting/camping/offroad rig that will be set up to tow a duck boat/motorcycle trailer when needed. Needs to fit my dog’s kennel securely as well.

Build plans:

I’m planning to build this thing out in two main phases in the near term.

Phase One: Basic offroad necessities
— Ironman Foam Cell Pro lift (have this)
— Wheels 17x8.5 Icon Vector 6 Titanium (on order)
— 285/70r17 tires (TBD)
— Sliders. Likely going with RCI here
— Victory Blitz bumper + winch. Winch TBD
— LFD crossbars
— trim front bumper

Phase Two: Increasing capability and protection
— sPod SourceLT
— Replace factory skids with ARB
— Additional underbody armor from Rago Fab, etc
— ditch lights/front bumper SR bar
— Goose Gear 40% seat delete
— possibly RTT (needs to be easily detachable when not going on a trip)
— rear bumper/tire carrier. Very undecided here as I’m not in love with the current offerings. Kaymar looks like a good option but the price makes it impractical for my needs and budget.
— Kaon table
— ARB compressor

That’s the plan so far and I’m sure will change as I get deeper into the vehicle. Will cover what I’ve done so far in the next post.

 

[tech703]

Nice excited to see the progress

 

[RG7]

After taking delivery it became obvious that the paint was not taken care of and had been subjected to touch auto car washes. This would not do. Step 1 was a full paint correction and ceramic coating.

As an aside, it may seem pointless to some to polish a truck that will get pinstripes and light trail damage. For me it’s about starting with a clean slate; plus, pinstripes aren’t what makes paint look bad, micro scratches and swirls from poor washing makes vehicles look worse than trail scars do IMO.

Here’s my correction/decon process for those interested:

1) Wash with a basic (pH scale) car soap. I use a foam cannon but it’s not necessary. The idea here is that this formula will strip any left over wax/tunnel wash crap left on the paint so we have a clean starting surface.

2) chemical decontamination with an iron remover. I use P&S iron buster. Word of warning this stuff smells terrible and if you spill it in a cabinet you’ll be chasing that smell for months. Ask me how I know .

The mixture turns a purple color when it reacts with iron. The GX was filled with it and I’m glad I did it — iron is difficult to remove mechanically and can cause problems when polishing.

3) mechanical decon with Nanoskin auto scrub. Can also use a clay bar for this but tried out the auto scrub this time and it was much easier to work with than clay.

4) final rinse and dry with microfiber

On to polishing — for this I used a Rupes LHR15 mkIII with a Rupes yellow foam pad and Jescar correcting compound. The plan was to do a second step with Sonax perfect finish and a white pad, but I stopped after step 1 as the paint already looked great and Toyota pain is historically thin. Figuring this translates to Lexus as well, I didn’t want to take more clear off and leave less protection on the body. Didn’t chase every deep scratch here as I was mostly focused on swirls and micro-scratches which really make the paint look bad.

Finally is the ceramic coating. I used Gtechnic for this — 1 coat of crystal serum light followed by two coats of EXO. Properly maintained this should last a while.

Don’t have any good before/after photos but suffice it to say that the difference was dramatic.

Also added the newer style grille around this time (stock unit for sale in classifieds)

 

[RG7]

Next up was building a nice foundation for future rear storage/cargo. For me the first choice was Goose Gear’s rear plate, but at $800 shipped I couldn’t justify it and decided to to make my own.

I don’t remember the exact thickness plywood I used but from memory thinking it was 3/4” for the base and 1/4” for the wings. Could be mistaken here.

Removed the rear seats (for sale in classifieds) and lined with Dynamat knockoff.

Test fitting the base plate

Final product installed and coated with roll-on bed liner.

Pretty stoked on how this turned out! Plan for mounting drawers/kennel/other accessories is tee nuts mounted on the underside. The benefit to making my own is I can select exactly what mounting points i need and not have any unused holes.

Food for thought for anyone looking to do this and areas I could have improved on:

1) use better grade plywood. The Home Depot stock I used basically broke apart when using a spade bit to drill the recesses for bolts and washers. It functions fine but looks kinda jacked up.

2) I’ll likely end up attaching a piece of corner stock to the rear edge to protect the plate

3) I could have done a better job mating/sealing the rear edge to allow less of a gap to the body and electrical. I may end up revisiting this in the future. Any ideas on what to do here please shout.

4) the corner plastic that used to connect to the factory trim center section looks unfinished. This is probably a job for a 3D printer. I chose to terminate the wing uprights before this point but the downside is that those corners look bad and leave a passage to the underside of the plate. If/when I get a 3D printer I’d like to whip up some caps for these.

5) I missed an opportunity to put the wings on hinges so that space could be used for small storage. Don’t know how practical this would really be, but would be nice to have access to.

 

[Rednexus]

How difficult are the GTechniq coatings to apply without ending up with high spots? I'm going to DIY coat both of our vehicles this spring/summer, and my GX is going to get a paint correction as part of the process. There are quite a few ceramic coatings on the market, so I'm still not totally sure which one is going to get used.

 

[RG7]

How difficult are the GTechniq coatings to apply without ending up with high spots? I'm going to DIY coat both of our vehicles this spring/summer, and my GX is going to get a paint correction as part of the process. There are quite a few ceramic coatings on the market, so I'm still not totally sure which one is going to get used.

They’re pretty easy to work with now. The flash time and removal process is very user friendly. I never felt like I was under the gun for time on a panel.

This is the third vehicle I’ve done with Gtechnic and couldn’t be more pleased.

 

[Roody]

Welcome to the GX world. Looks like you're off to a good start! How is the noise with the 3rd row removed and sound insulation / platform installed?

 

[r2m]

Welcome to the forum! Looks like you wasted no time in moding your rig!
Keep the pic's coming!!

 

[Rednexus]

They’re pretty easy to work with now. The flash time and removal process is very user friendly. I never felt like I was under the gun for time on a panel.

This is the third vehicle I’ve done with Gtechnic and couldn’t be more pleased.

Great! Looks like they are reasonably priced for enough product to complete both of our vehicles. Definitely a good writeup on the detailing process (and great-looking GX!).

 

[RG7]

Welcome to the GX world. Looks like you're off to a good start! How is the noise with the 3rd row removed and sound insulation / platform installed?

Thanks — overall not too bad. Didn’t do any before measurements on sound but it’s maybe a tad louder. Could be imagining it though.

 

[RG7]

Wheels showed up this week which means adding to the pile of parts boxes waiting to go on the GX. That also means I’m ready to install the suspension.

If I don’t get the lift done this weekend it’ll be awhile before I get the time to do it. Ironman’s install video seems pretty good, and despite spending the first part of its life in Brooklyn, the undercarriage is pretty rust-free. Not anticipating any frozen/otherwise difficult bolts but I might eat those words later.

 

[Stickgunner]

Might as well spray the bolts with penetrating oil now, and then again the night before you start pulling it apart. Like you said, it might not be an issue, but you never know.

 

[RG7]

Little mid week update:

Fronts are done, but the front sway didn’t go down without a fight. Not sure if my KDSS system fully decompressed or not but I couldn’t get the passenger side LCA to drop low enough to get the coilover assembly in. I ended up having to drop the sway bar off the LCA’s completely which turned into its own set of problems. Thankfully that’s over though and I just have the rear shocks/coils/panhard bar to take care of which should go much easier.

Will do a full post-mortem on the install once I get everything buttoned up.

For now though, anyone have a recommendation on alignment shops local to Charlotte NC?

 

[Rednexus]

Most any alignment shop can handle a lifted GX . I use my local tire shop and the GX drives great with their $50 alignment. Just take the Ironman alignment sheet with you and have them use that instead of the OEM alignment specs.

FYI I'm still loving my Foam Cell Pros after ~18 months.

 

[xychromosome]

Most any alignment shop can handle a lifted GX . I use my local tire shop and the GX drives great with their $50 alignment. Just take the Ironman alignment sheet with you and have them use that instead of the OEM alignment specs.

FYI I'm still loving my Foam Cell Pros after ~18 months.

Is this alignment sheet available on their website or did it come with your lift kit?

 

[xychromosome]

nevermind, I see the specs listed here

 

[Rednexus]

nevermind, I see the specs listed here

Pretty sure that's the same one I used. They should have included a printout too. One knock on the Ironman kit is that the instructions kind of suck and don't differentiate between the minor 120/150 platform differences.

 

[RG7]

Alright, lift is done, truck is aligned, wheels and tires are on and I am a very happy camper with how this turned out.

Perfect amount of lift and luckily no KDSS lean after install.

Also took the opportunity to refresh the inner fender guards with the Rad Rubber kit. Shocking how crunchy the old ones were after only 44k miles.

And had to christen the new setup on dirt with some easy FS roads in Pisgah:

Now onto the technicals of the install:

The rear went on like a charm, knocked out the whole thing in about an hour and a half, including the adjustable panhard and KDSS spacers.

The front was trickier, and the passenger side LCA put up more of a fight than I expected based on the Ironman install video. No idea as to what the underlying factors are here, but looking in the comments of that video and on their reviews for the kit, several others have run into this issue.

Driver side went on with relatively few issues, but when I got to the passenger side I couldn’t get the LCA low enough to accept the Ironman coilover. So against my better judgment I unbolted the sway bar from the pass side UCA.

Naturally I couldn’t get this back on with everything else connected after fighting it for an hour, so I ended up undoing the swaybar links, then mounting the ends to the LCAs, then jacking the middle of the bar into position on the end links.

IMO this is the preferable way to go about the install. If you’re encountering serious resistance on the pass side just unbolt the bar entirely, install suspension, then mount to LCAs, then reattach to the links.

Like every other automotive job, now that I know the process, I could probably do this in about a third of the time next go around (so anybody near central NC feel free to hit me up if you’re tackling this job — happy to lend a hand).

All in all the install went pretty smoothly all things considered, and in addition to saving a ton of money on the install, I now have a pretty complete understanding of the suspension on the truck so I’ll be able to spot if something is wrong on the trail.

Next up: sliders and continuing to wage war on the chrome. Have a guy lined up to paint some pieces so we’ll see how that turns out.

 

[RG7]

Detail on net weight gain:

(These were taken on a scale meant for people so the sensitivity to lower weight parts was pretty bad, take them with a grain of salt)

Factory coilover: 15.9 lbs

Ironman coilover: 28.2lbs
Net weight gain: 24.6lbs for both sides

Factory UCA: 6.2lbs

Ironman UCA: 6.2lbs (iffy measurement)
Net weight gain: 0


Factory rear shock: 6.4lbs

Ironman rear shock: 12.8lbs
Net weight gain: 12.8lbs


Factory rear spring: 8.6lbs

Ironman rear spring: 11.5lbs
Net weight gain: 5.8lbs


Factory panhard bar: 7.7lbs

Ironman panhard bar: 15.2lbs
Net weight gain: 7.5lbs

Total suspension net weight gain: 50.7lbs
Factory wheel + tire: 66.1lbs

New wheel + tire: 86.0lbs
Net weight gain all 4: 79.6lbs

Total weight gain for the job: 130.3lbs

All in all this is not a terrible trade off. Could do with less of a gain in rolling mass but that’s to be expected.

 

[r2m]

Alright, lift is done, truck is aligned, wheels and tires are on and I am a very happy camper with how this turned out.

Now that you're a happy camper, time to go CAMPING!!!