the revamp of blue betty.

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Joined
Feb 21, 2008
Threads
136
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1,608
Location
SW MO, NE OK, and NW AR
I'm typing with the thumbs tonight so we will make this quick.

I bought blue betty as a gas saver in high school. My grandmother, Betty, was displeased at the idea. So I dubbed the truck BB.

I quickly put in a 4.7 kit and Aussie locked both ends. It was a true sleeper. College comes around and I was making an easy 80 mile commute round trip daily. Not bad, but the lack of space was horrid. I bought a Taco and retired BB as the DD.

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A few weeks later I had a shipment of hysteer, shackles, 5.29s, and had sourced some 63" chevys and an IFS box locally. Built a custom TBI system based on a friends and programmed it. Blue Betty rode on 37" mts on recentered H1 wheels. She even served as the commuter for a few months this way.

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Fast forward 3 years...

I have driven the taco everywhere. I've wheeled in AZ, AR, OK, MO, and NM. I realized I had way more fun doing mild trails with a rig I could cruise anywhere in with the AC on. I had ignored BB for almost a year at this point. I ripped the rear frame apart on a trail called FUBAR and shattered a hub gear. She also needed a new brake booster.

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I went to start her and noticed the floorboard was soaked. It hadn't rained in a week or so and I was puzzled. Pulled open the glovebox and it was full of water... With my tbi computer sitting in the bottom. This sucked. I still had the saved files on my laptop to redo it, but I would have to source another computer which is harder now than 3 years ago.

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So I made my decision. BB was going into surgery. I pulled her to the bare bones. Found that the bottom seal was leaking on the windshield in the process.

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When I pulled the cab, the amount of rust hidden under paint was frightening. I knew that I wasn't going back to the same Blue Betty that I had left with... So what did I decide?
 
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I wanted a few things...

No computers
Lower suspension
Smaller tire
Long range capacity

So... I cut the new rear perches off and mounted some taco springs to the factory ones. I then took the twisted frame and cut/reinforced it and landed the shackles where they needed to be in the rear. This took almost 3" off of frame height. Scary.

The front was a different idea. I kept the RUF pack I had made. I cut the frame out and installed some custom built slider shackles.

Edit - won't let me upload photos via mud mobile.

I finish welded the front in and had a few hundred psi left in the tank. Thought I'd finish it out by making the dual tank mount. Second tank is from 83 lux short bed 4wd.

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