Builds TRDdrew's build thread: lets build this one to keep

[TRDdrew]

Agreed! I'm happy to report that I am 100% road legal too. I just run them so I don't have to deal with visiting VEIP while I'm traveling.

I spend most of the year out of the state so I usually run into a situation where I'd have to drive all the way back for the emissions test.
I've been in New Orleans for over 4 months now and heading to Colorado from here, so no time to drive 1200 miles to MD.

ya no body got time for that nonsense

 

[TRDdrew]

Knocking out little stuff today, finished up the arb diff breather kit, and replaced the evaporator box seal. My wife will be happy not getting dripped on the ride down lol

 

[TRDdrew]

I've been living life on the edge for awhile now figured it was time to install a disconnect for the winch. Went with a BlueSea's 6006 single circuit switch good for a constant 300 amps which should be plenty. Dug through my misc nut and bolt drawer found an old engine cover bracket ( I think ) that with alittle modification worked perfectly to mount it on the wheel well

 

[TRDdrew]

Made it to TN Thursday evening, truck drove down the road great other than a balance issue on one of the tires. Truck ran at 193 of the most part and would only climb up to 198 on the bigger grades, but would recover back to normal temp quickly

Got to windrock around 10 this morning, Ran trail 22, 26, 27 and 41 and went to the overlook today( a couple orhers, gonna run some more difficult stuff tomorrow. Super dusty out there today.

I'll do my best to grab some pics tomorrow

 

[FamilyCamper]

Sick lineup!! Get some good shots of the 100 on the trails!

 

[TRDdrew]

Was a great trip, on Saturday we ended up splitting into 2 groups and we ran some more difficult trails ( can't remeber witch ones ) but we ended the day on trail 70 which was a ton of fun.
Sunday we all rented a boat and spent the day out on Norris lake. Made the trek home yesterday.

Truck continues to impress me. Only body damage to report was a bunch of pin striping and half tore off the drive quarter trim.

Time to clean it up and start prepping for Fall Crawl 24 in nov.

 

[FamilyCamper]

Looks like a great trip! Ill see you at fall crawl

 

[TRDdrew]

A couple more

 

[TRDdrew]

Small project I got to knock out, I had the National Luna smart battery solenoid mounted flat to the slee battery tray ( you can see the bolt holes in the tray where it was mounted ) and it wasn't ideal and need to move anyway for an upcoming project. Move the engine bay diagnostic port and used some rivnuts to secure the solenoid to the inner fender. Had to redo a bunch of cable management but all and all the free'd up the space for the next project. Planning on relocating the winch control box to the tray and hard wiring the the controls to the dash using the factory antenna up/down switch

 

[TRDdrew]

Main battery terminals where tired and needed replacement, just went with some mil spec terminals. If you do this you will have to make some form of a bracket to hold the efi fuse box. I achieved this by using a old engine cover bracket that I modified and welded a stud too. Much cleaner and I'm very happy with the outcome.

 

[TRDdrew]

Y'all tired of my updates yet. More 12v stuff

Added two mini ANL fuse holders on the inner fender and made a new harness for them . Top one runs back to the fridge the bottom is wired but no fuse installed ( pre planning for upcoming electrical) had a audio style fuse holder mounted to the front of the slee tray, you can see it in previous posts, that was starting to fail (cracks in the cheap plastic housing) that was the main reason for this upgrade and it's much neater IMO. Also took the on board battery charger and moved it from the front of the air box and mounted it to the slee tray

Made sure to wash out the air box from all the TN dust while it was out

 

[TRDdrew]

Working on relocating the winch control box

Also picked up this sweet cabinet for the shop so I can finally get the random mess out of the big tool boxes and organized

 

[TRDdrew]

Getting my final Fall Crawl 24 prep done as I leave on Wednesday. Yesterday I finally got the cell foam pro's install that I acquired from @TTViper the ride does seem a little better but the drive down to VA will be the true test

With that said I have the OME nitro chargers that came off my truck up for grabs, they have about 8-10k on them. Nothing wrong with them. If your close to southern MD You can have them for a 6 pack of your choosing

 

[TTViper]

Glad to see my parts live on.

 

[TRDdrew]

We'll fall crawl 24' was a success, truck did great pretty much lead blue groups, The Cove never disappoints. Only thing to note is there is an inconsistent clunk in the front end that is annoying the crap out of me, gonna dig into that this weekend. Just saw a post that @Patassa had said their diff drop bracket had come loose and from the sounds of his symptoms its exactly what mine is doing.

Help with Front end Pop-Solved! Finally.

Symptom: When the weight of the vehicle shifts to the front while braking, I get a pop/thud that I can feel through the floorboard and can hear. When I let off the brake to accelerate and the weight shifts back, it pops again. I can get the same pop when turning sharply left or right. I've...

forum.ih8mud.com

I'll get it in the air this weekend for a good undercarriage clean as FC is probably the last wheeling trip of this season

Couple photos from the past month

Gotta remeber to stake down the tent before the

 

[TRDdrew]

Well turns out that was the culprit, all 4 bolts on the diff drop appear tight but the second i grabbed them with a wrench i could move them pretty freely. Tightened them up and at least from this mornings commute the clunk i was having under hard acceleration and hard braking is gone. Next off road trip will be the true test but as of now I'm very pleased.

Since the ASFIR skid was off i spent the next hour or so heating damaged areas of it and reshaping the aluminum. Came out pretty good and bolts up a lot better now, ill be fabricating new brackets off the steering rack crossmember to more evenly distribute the load on the skid plate. I've never like the single bolt with spacer design especially since that the area the usually take some of the biggest hits

 

[TRDdrew]

As mentioned earlier in this thread I have a good friend that owns Steinworks, a fabrication shop in the Annapolis area of MD. The man is a beast behind a tig welder and we knocked out some welding projects today

First up was the rear control arm bracket sliders to welded on. We spent some time modifying the brackets that I got from @cruiserpatch. Welded the inside and out on the side plates before we put the top plate on. We added a drain notch at the bottom as well as a small opening up top to allow me to blast as much paint as I can through the top hole the to be followed up by some cavity wax that will ensure that it stays rust free for some time

These things are stout and should help protect the frame mounts from additional damage. And yes, I'm fully aware that mig would have been just fine but tig is what he does so that's what it got. Told him the welds are to pretty to to go bash on rocks lol. I'll grab some more photos when I finish painting them tomorrow

Also welded the rear most hanger on the exhaust and added a bar to the top of my swing out pins. This is a HUGE improvement that will make life a lot easier. If your hands are muddy, greasy or just wet it always made those little release pins hard to hold on too so I'm excited about that little mod

 

[cruiserpatch]

I like the drain holes and the small changes to the shape. Did you bend them at all or just cut away a little material?

I also added drain holes to mine when I installed them. Ideally I’d like to make these a little more streamlined/tune up the design before selling them in larger quantities

 

[TRDdrew]

I like the drain holes and the small changes to the shape. Did you bend them at all or just cut away a little material?

I also added drain holes to mine when I installed them. Ideally I’d like to make these a little more streamlined/tune up the design before selling them in larger quantities

The inboard side plates fit dang near perfect, the outboard ones we had to trim some material off and put the bend in them to match the curve of the factory mount. Then we remove a bit of material from the cap plate to match the bend. For a mig welder the fitment would have been fine right out of the box, but as a custom fabricator he wanted them to be as close to perfect as he could get them

 

[cruiserpatch]

The inboard side plates fit dang near perfect, the outboard ones we had to trim some material off and put the bend in them to match the curve of the factory mount. Then we remove a bit of material from the cap plate to match the bend. For a mig welder the fitment would have been fine right out of the box, but as a custom fabricator he wanted them to be as close to perfect as he could get them

Thanks for the feedback!

I’d love to make it either a bolt-on (would have to be super strong and use a lot of thru-bolts) or a single-piece weld-on but my hunch is that most of the guys who need these won’t mind welding them in place anyway.