Toyota Gets Some New Welds

I’ve been working on this truck for a long time, but this is my first blog post about it. So I will do a short intro to the project;

A while back I had a Suzuki Samurai, and my dad wanted to go wheeling with me so he went looking for a Toyota Truck and found this thing.

85 Toyota EFI Stock(ish)

My dad paid $3500 and it managed to smog the first time. It’s an 85, stock EFI and stock solid axle. Buut the EFI that’s in the truck doesn’t seem to be the stock motor. It ran though so we left it alone.

Over the course of about ten years, the Samurai left and we worked on this truck together. We trussed the front axle, added lockers, picked up a dual transfer case (with a spare trans), an IFS width rear axle, sliders, and had caged-in-caged-out build us some bumpers and a lumber rack.

Getting shitty on Bald Mountain

This truck closed Dusy Ershim in 2018 with a big zip tie holding the battery in. We ran it backwards, and somewhere on Tompson hill I managed to shear every hub stud on the front axle. This lead to some pretty aggressive hill climbs and I ended up losing my big battery zip tie, at which point the battery found the motor and This was the beginning of the reboot of this project. But first, let me take a selfie:

Dusy Ershim Trip

After this trip the truck went on several more gnarly trips, all the while the battery acid (that I lazily avoided cleaning) ate away at the front end, frame, motor… you name it. I snapped the short side on the front axle, and was gifted a new one from a friends old setup. Around this time the truck had axle leaks, trans/transfer leaks, and a lot of other maintenance that needed to be taken care of.

This is not to mention the amateur welds that went into the front end. But on the road, it drove straight as an arrow, so I didn’t want to opt to do that work all over again. Instead, I just decided to restore our old baby.

First, my friend and I got the motor out:

Engine is Free

Then, we got the transmission and duals out:

Transmission setup is… heavy. Really Heavy.

And it was at this point I knew there was no going back, and that I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t fix the things I wasn’t proud of.

The next thing I knew, the cab and bed were off, and the frame was off to the sandblaster:

Sandblasted Frame. Whoops

At this point I’d already taken the shock hoops off. Those were some gnarly welds.

But actually even some of the stock welds are not passing inspection. So (after some staring and mild internal screaming) the grinding began. And then the welding:

That’s a little better (Peep the cross weld, where the frame broke D:)

Check out that stock weld :’)

Oh yeah, did I mention I broke the front passenger side of the frame clean in half? Our patch was decent, but it’s time to make sure it never comes apart again.

Currently the goal is to get the frame rolling again, with a fresh new front axle. The rear axle will come eventually, but at the moment it is still the most together piece of the whole truck. And I also unscrewed the drain plug on the Dusy trail… with rocks… and then hammer threaded it back in. So I’m going to save that headache just a Little longer. Plus it’s a lot simpler to get to, and there is a Lot less wrong with it.

The front end is moving slowly. Not super excited about remembering how to shim the knuckles. But not to worry, I have plenty of grinding and welding to fill my time. Right? :’) :'( :_( x.x

Axle Rebuild Time XD

Before Paint. Redid the spring keeps as well.

So now you’re all caught up. Stay tuned, I’m making slow progress every weekend. Hopefully having a blog will motivate me a little more. Haha. Ha. Ha. o.o