The thread of The Frank (1 Viewer)

[Springs505]

I have been on the fence about starting a build/PM/experience thread, and where to post this thread, for a while. I figure it's a good time to start since the truck is actually beginning to seem "built".

I am going to back up for a few posts and start at the beginning. I will add some posts for past work, and then continue as I work on the truck more.

I bought the truck December 25th, 2012. It was posted on CL Christmas eve, I saw the post and talked to the guy. He had bought the truck about a year earlier and was in over his head in PM. He said that I could see it the next day, so I brought the wife and kid to test drive in the afternoon.

The truck ran rough, but I could hear arcing from the plug wires and associate the arcing sound with the stumble in the idle. The truck clearly leaked a lot, and had some imperfect body work in the past. During the drive, in the snow, we put the truck in low range, and checked to see if power accys worked, checked birfieds for leaking/clicking, and checked fluids.

After about 30 minutes, money changed hands and I was driving home my "new" 22 year old truck.

Here is a shot of the truck with our other Toyota's when I got it home:

 

[Springs505]

The Frank?

I had decided to call the truck "Frank the Tank", but soon realized that it was not very tank-like, yet. For this reason, I started just calling the truck "Frank".

However, I would drive with the kid in the car and she would hear me refer to the truck as "she". For instance, "I promise 'she' will make it up this hill". So my daughter called the truck "She Frank" for quite some time.

Some time later, my wife asked if I was going to work on "the Frank" in the garage. I thought it was funny to call the truck "The Frank" so the name has stuck around since!

 

[Springs505]

The swamp Frank

I started pondering running 33's or 35's almost as soon as I bought the truck. I became convinced that this was the ting to do when I realized that my wife's Highlander had slightly larger diameter tires than my 80 did.

I soon found a set of Super Swamper TSL's on CL for a couple hundred bucks. I started wheeling the truck soon after. In fact, the 2013 China Wall trip was my second time out in the truck.

I was worried that the 3FE would not push 33's without gears so this was a cheap way to test the waters with larger tires. Big surprise: It's still slow, but I decide that I can tolerate slow travel in mountain passes to gain better wheeling.

My super swamper impressions: pretty good off road on rocks and in sand, ok in snow, TERRIBLE on ice, and UNBEARABLY LOUD at speeds over 40mph.

Here is a nice pic of the Frank with the swampers. Bonus points if you know where this was taken:

 

[Springs505]

Interior tire carrier

During the China Wall run, I introduced my low hanging (33X1250) spare tire to the ground a few times, So I decided to remove my third row and fabricate an interior tire carrier. I cut a plate with the lug pattern, and pressed some studs (to mount the spare wheel and to have spare studs ). I cut some tabs to mount the square tubing to the factory seat mounting bolts and to the s#!t hande bolts.

Here is the result:

 

[Springs505]

Early PM and gaskets

Soon after I bought the truck, I resolved the ignition arcing issue (replaced a spark plug with cracked insulator, and 5 more plugs, for good measure). I set the timing, and adjusted the valves.

One serious issue remained: The truck leaked a quart of oil on my driveway/garage floor each month. Gasket time. I took a trip to Albuquerque, so I looked up Cruiser Dan while I was there. He is a very helpful guy, and got me a great price on an oil pan gasket and valve cover gasket. I wanted a pushrod cover gasket, but he was out of stock.

When I got back to CS, I bought the pushrod cover gasket and tore into the truck. I would have thought that wrenching on a truck this size would be easier than other vehicles I have owned -wrong- replacing these gaskets must have been 16-20 hours of work. During the job, I added some armor to my already dented oil pan, and added some fresh paint under the hood.

I spent some additional time getting the truck to run when the job was complete because I had installed the distributor out of position by one gear tooth. NOTE: Follow the distributor install procedure literally exactly as described in the FSM.

It's also worth noting that I had to re-torque the oil pan bolts twice before the leaking stopped. I still get a drip or two each month from the rear main seal, but I will live with it unless it gets much worse.

 

[Springs505]

Gaskets done, newly painted valve cover and pushrod cover in place:

 

[black95]

This is awesome. I had no idea you've done this level of work on that rig. Looks like you've got mad fab skills, I anticipate great things to come. Keep up the good work. Kind of makes me want to look for a 3FE powered 80 series

Can't wait to hear how much difference the de-smog makes in your power level.

 

[Fitzgerald]

While I prefer "She Frank", I'm glad you decided to finally start a thread for your beast.

But,??? ..... no preview of your rear bumper for us???

 

[Springs505]

This is awesome. I had no idea you've done this level of work on that rig. Looks like you've got mad fab skills, I anticipate great things to come. Keep up the good work. Kind of makes me want to look for a 3FE powered 80 series

Can't wait to hear how much difference the de-smog makes in your power level.

Thanks! The cats are out, but I need to get around to a proper de-smog...

While I prefer "She Frank", I'm glad you decided to finally start a thread for your beast.

But,??? ..... no preview of your rear bumper for us???

Patience, Travis. I will keep adding to the thread until I get there!

 

[Springs505]

birfy clicky

Soon after I got the truck, the birfields started clicking in hard turns. I decided to take the front axle apart, with the hope of swapping sides to prolong the life of my birfs.

I got the right side apart, and the driveshaft/birf removed. However, despite my best efforts, a shattered pvc pipe, purchasing a steel pipe, and making many craters in my garage floor with the steel pipe, I was unable to get the birf seperated from the inner.

I ended up cleaning out the grease, repacking and re-assembling. I would have liked to try swapping sides, but it looks like the PS birf will have to be cut from the inner, forcing the purchase of new birfields to fix the clicking.

Not in the budget for now, so the plan is to wheel it anyway and avoid mixing throttle and steering

 

[Springs505]

CNC recovery point goodness

I got the bug and had to do some "government work" on the NC cutter. The result was this recovery point fabricated entirely from 1/4" plate. The recovery point is 3/4" thick, fully TIG welded and the base plate is 1/2" thick. The recovery point is "keyed" so that It could not be pulled out of the base plate. All welded together and mounted with grade 8.8 wardware, it ended up pretty beefy. I haven't made a pull with it yet, except for pulling our work forklift out of an ice covered parking lot depression .

I feel good about the strength of this piece, but I want to test it in a controlled manner before putting it to actual use. I'm thinking I should connect to a sturdy tree and pull away before any actual use.

 

[Springs505]

Dura-Tracking

After one of my TSL's became BADLY unbalanced on the Medano Pass run, I decided that it was time for a tire upgrade. In the running were the following types (listed with my perceived advantages/disadvantages):

BGF AT's (least expensive, long wearing tread, OK off-road performance)
BFG KM2's (most expensive, great offroad, still poor on ice)
Goodyear MTR Kevlar (great offroad performance, "bullet proof" sidewalls , questionable ice performance, very expensive)
Goodyear Duratracs (good offroad performance, excellent snow and ice performance, rumored poor sidewall strength, less expensive than MT's, more aggressive than other AT's)

In the end, I opted for a set of 33X1250 Duratracs. The sales guy at discount told me that they would not mount to my stock 7" wide wheels, so I hunted for some inexpensive 8" wheels. I ended up buying a nice set of Dick Cepek DC1 wheels from a guy in monument. I was happy to have them since, I was worried about the extra weight of the steel wheels I had been looking at.

Funny: I put the new wheels in the back of the frank and dropped it off at discount. When I came back to check on the truck, they had installed 3 of the tires on my old wheels, completely neglecting the new wheels in the back of the truck! I told the installer about the mistake and they unmounted/remounted on the correct wheels. It was a bit frustrating that the salesman insisted on wider wheels, but the installer didn't see a problem with the old ones.

Of course, I had to immediately test the new tires, so I took a quick run up Mt. Rosa:

 

[Springs505]

The Duratrac/DC1 combo worked out well, and I was still able to stuff each tire without rubbing. My initial impressions of the tire were excellent. However, I did notice that the tires picked up a lot of pebbles and then released them when I would reach highway speeds. I think I broke a guys windshield on I25 on the way home from Mt. Rosa. :whoops:

The pebble pick up/throwing stopped after about the first 200 miles.

 

[Springs505]

Spacing out

I had thought that the truck was looking like a "stink bug", so I fabricated some 1" spacers for the front. I think that it leveled the truck out nicely. Sorry, I don't have pictures, but I borrowed the idea from here:

https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/357008-coil-spacer-dimensions.html

FWIW, if you need spacers for the 80, the dimensions in the drawing worked out nicely. This spacer does mount on top of the bump stop, so you might find it limits travel a bit.

 

[Springs505]

Towing with the 3FE/7pin

I took a trip to camp and boat with one of my NM buddies at Vallecito. The truck did well towing the trailer on the highway for the most part. On the way, I had to travel over Wolf Creek Pass. This was a real pain in the a$$ in my underpowered rig. My camper weighs about 1700# and The Frank would barely tow it up the pass and was constantly shifting between 1/2/3rd. It was a slow go.

On the way home, I remembered that I had done the 7pin mod, allowing me to run the truck in AWD-low range. So when Things slowed down, I pulled off and put it into low-range. Way better. It just stays in 4th gear and pulls up the pass like a champ. Only about 35mph, the same as before, but without all the ridiculous shifting.

I stopped at the top of the pass to put the truck back into high range and snap a photo:

 

[Springs505]

bumper ideas

The plastics on the rear bumper had been loose since I bought the truck. So I decided to remove them and start coming up with ideas for a rear bumper build. I got some cardboard and started mocking up ideas on the truck. Eventually, this is what I came up with:

 

[Springs505]

I decided that the cardboard was not neat enough to make good patterns to cut from, so I transferred the design to some 1/4 fiberboard and added a touch of black paint to get an impression of how the bumper wings would really look.

After the fact, I realize that this stuff was too heavy to tape together and hold perfectly in place. Once I did get it in place it was a bit easier to make nice patterns, since I could sand the edges nice and straight. I really don't think that this step of the build was worth the trouble.

 

[Springs505]

Wish I had a plasma...

I disassembled the patterns for the bumper wings and traced two of each piece onto 1/8 steel plate. Time to start cutting.

Cutting with just an angle grinder in the garage is tough work. I have done a fair amount of this sort of thing before, but all that cutting adds up to lots of dust and a really messy garage. The process was much slower and messier than I had planned. Here are some of the pieces I had cut part way through:

About now, some of you will say "wait a minute, 1/8" steel isn't thick enough." I am trimming the bottom of the wings in 1/4 inch and adding some braces to strengthen in case of contact with rocks, trees, etc. The "bent" piece will be used to attach the wing to the frame behind the rear wheel well for additional support. I will have to fabricate some bent tube for this later on...

 

[Springs505]

Here are a couple shots of my work getting tacked up and adjusted to fit the truck. I realized that the thickness of the fiberboard I used for mock-up had caused fit issues with the pieces I cut. The ideal material for mock up would probably be some sort of craft store poster board that is very close to the same thickness as the material that will be used for the build.


I soon realized that my original plan to use the factory wing attachment points on the rear crossmember was not going to work. I cut off the brackets for the original plastics to make way for more stout attachment.

 

[Fitzgerald]

Lookin' good!