[travisford83]

I picked this truck up about 6 years ago with a 4inch lift, 33's, and a blown head gasket. Trying to maintain a cheap budget my truck has been built with mostly parts off of my buddies truck's. Over the last year I have been making more money and there for my truck has been receiving a little more financial support. After spending the last couple of months rebuilding my frontend, new doubler and 4.7's, 38's, etc..... I flopped it onto both sides my first trip out. Since I just received a good size commission check I decided to dump some more money into the toy. I met Kyle from Driven Industries through a buddy of mine about six months ago and after seeing a number of his creations there wasn't any question where my tube work would be done at.

6 months ago

 

[travisford83]

The trip that CONVINCED me into tubing my truck

 

[travisford83]

To make things a little easier on Kyle I ripped off the bed, grill, headlights, fenders, sun roof, and rear window.

 

[travisford83]

The Plan: What started life as a reg cab longbed will be transformed into a 4 seater (adding a rear bench), linked rear(18" travel air shocks, johnny joints, and ballistic brackets), and cutting the frame behind the cab. The 3" body lift will be dropped, width will be extended 3" wider, and frontend will be relocated forward by at least an inch. I want a rig that is very capable and still has enough storage to run the 'con for a weekend. So I told that to Kyle and since Kyle always is creating new bad ass looking rigs I have told him to do as he pleases with the tube work, with that in mind.

Questionable:

1)Rearend....I can't decide weather to run an IFS toy rear with 5.29's(I already have) or the tacoma 8.4 rearend and swap some 4.30's into the front to match the 8.4 gears. I have dual cases with 4.7's in the back so the gear swap shouldn't be that big of a deal.

2)Width....I can run the tacoma rear and add 3 more inches over what I'm at now but then I have to run 3 inch spacers on each side of the front end. The other option is to run the IFS rear, 1.5" spacers in the front, and trade my 15x10's to a friend for some 2" back spaced 15x10's.



First things first......start cutting the cab, pull the cage, and remove the inner fender wheels.

 

[GRMhick]

A little birdie told me that the frame behind the cab disappeared today :flipoff2:

I am looking forward to seeing this truck roll over for the first time at the end of January.

BTW: Remember my IFS rear end next trip out to MoHill.

 

[travisford83]

A little birdie told me that the frame behind the cab disappeared today :flipoff2:

I am looking forward to seeing this truck roll over for the first time at the end of January.

BTW: Remember my IFS rear end next trip out to MoHill.

It was amazing....all the sudden the rear of the frame just fell off. I will post some more pics of that tomorrow....I can't post all the good stuff the first day.

 

[Hayes]

can't wait to see what you come up with.

 

[travisford83]

In order to clear the 38's, with the body lift removed, we decided to move the front hanger out another inch. I currently have been running 44044's but I think I'm going to swap a custom pack in to swing the axle out a little more. I just tubbed the firewall last month......there isn't much else I can do to clear the 38's if moving the axle isn't enough.

Before

After

 

[GRMhick]

FYI, on top of having that 4.30 elocker sitting in my garage, I also have 4 new 3" wheel spacers. :flipoff2:

 

[travisford83]

Cutting the rest of the cab to the floor board

The back of the cab gone

Sold the rear axle housing, shock hoop, shocks, shackles, and chevys......so started to pull it all out

Another angle

Rearend and suspension out of the truck

 

[travisford83]

Was able to sell the rear suspension and housing to a friend for enough to pay for a pair of 2.0 Fox Air Shocks from another friend. Here it is all loaded up.

This is what happens when you are extremely lucky. I pulled the rear third, which I welded about 3 years ago, this is what it looked like. I'd say about 4oz of sludge came out of the drain plug(looked like the consistency of a milkshake). When I ran my hand down the bottom of the housing I had enough broken weld to fill my hand and amazing enough my gears were in great shape.....good pattern and no chips.

 

[tortis]

you were lucky your gears were fine. how about the bearings? when i drained my diff's for the first time, the oil looked like milk. they lasted about two years, and waited till i was 1800 miles from home before they went out. cost me 2500 big ones for the dealership to fix it. i am still pissed.

 

[travisford83]

Starting to cut out the rear half of the frame.

One frame rail gone.

There goes the other.

Another angle of where the frame now stops.

 

[snook]

looks awesome dude, sick build

 

[travisford83]

The disassembling continues......seats are out of the cab.

When I installed the FROR x-member I mounted it the the t-case as high as possible. Now that the 3" body lift is off the floor had to be cut up a little to allow the body to sit on the mounts correctly.

Another view of the cut floor board.

Here is a few pics of the now capped off frame.

 

[travisford83]

Timeframe: I forgot to mention that this portion of project 3rd Times a Charm is, hopefully, going to be completed by the end of January. By completed I mean enough to get it back onto the trail. This means that the Corbeaus may have to wait and it may make its maiden voyage without a back seat. There is still a lot of work and even more coin to invest before it is anywhere near wheeling again.

 

[travisford83]

you were lucky your gears were fine. how about the bearings? when i drained my diff's for the first time, the oil looked like milk. they lasted about two years, and waited till i was 1800 miles from home before they went out. cost me 2500 big ones for the dealership to fix it. i am still pissed.

The bearings and the gears, believe it or not, ran very quiet. So, for now I'm going to clean everything up, re-weld the spider gears, and call it good. Keep in mind, not that you probably haven't guessed already, but this thing won't be seeing any pavement miles.

 

[travisford83]

I think I solved the issue of my truck gaining some width. I traded my 3.75" backspaced 15x10's for these 2" backspaced 15x10's. I'm pretty stoked that I won't be running 3" wheel spacers.

Ace and I were bored on New Year's Eve day so we took the torch to the old bed to clear some room in the garage. Thanks Ace.

 

[Jeffh555]

lookin good Trav... maybe version 3 will last long enough to hit the con with me this summer.

 

[travisford83]

Well my truck has been at Kyle's shop for less than a week and he has already mounted the winch plate.....I guess I don't need you to build that bumper Nickhead(inside joke).

Along with mounting the winch on this plate I was thinking I could mount a lazy boy. The plate will be cut down after Kyle starts to tube the front of the truck.