Twin Toyota Part I - TUCSON II TRAIL DUST DAYS

It's one of the most popular swaps in four wheeling

ifs to a solid axle today on Xtreme 4x4 step by step. How to on this Toyota mini, we're off to Tucson for a look at one of the first modern crawlers and later in the show, Jesse's back.

Hey guys, welcome to Xtreme 4x4 and the build up that I know a lot of you guys have been waiting for based on the number of emails we get into the show and the number of people that stop us on the street to give us their list of project ideas. This is number one. The Toyota mini truck to say that the mini truck has influenced. Trail riding is an understatement. They've been around since 1979 and when they were first released, they had

a

axle, front suspension and a true gear transfer case. Everything you'd find in a full size truck in a smaller package could go more places.

But last good things have to come to an end when a truck like this becomes too popular for its own good. And engineers decide to put ifs inside the front end to improve it for the daily drivers now, independent front suspension, great for commuters, hardcore wheeling. Uh not so much.

This 1991 Toyota Sr five will be transformed from ifs comfortable daily commuter truck

into a hardcore solid axle trail monster.

We're stripping the bed off to perform two popular body mods,

a bob and a dovetail.

Now, you can see the rear frame section on this truck extends past the rear swing shackle mount to hold up the bed as well as the bumper. The problem is this can get hung up on obstacles when you're coming off them or backing up them. So we're basically gonna cut the frame section off here and then shorten the bed to match that's called a bob. Now, at the same time, we'll cut a pie section on the bed floor and bring the backside of the bedsides in to meet this frame with that's called a dovetail. The dovetail makes the truck narrower at the back. So when you're driving through the woods, if you have an obstacle on the tire, chances are I'll just carry on it won't get rammed up into the bedside, hang up

with the frame support.

I'm going to cut it two inches ahead of the swing shackle mount

that a new bumper is made from 316,

2 by four structural steel

with a new upper shackle mount made from an evolution machine and fab stage joint.

This will improve articulation on the rear action.

I'm going to cut the tail light sections out in order to graft them onto the new shorter bedside

before cutting 16 inches out of the bed length,

these modifications will help the trucks squeeze into places and keep the trucks tires on the rocks instead of the body panels.

Now narrowing, the front end of a truck is just as popular as dovetail in the rear. And depending on your make and model will determine if it's a hard job or an easy one. Domestic trucks like full size Chevys K five blades and dodges. The fender and the inner fender are all bolted onto the radiator support. So you simply have to unbolt everything, move it around, pull the fender in, it's that easy

import trucks like our Toyota, the radiator support, inner fender are all welded onto the cap. So if you're gonna narrow a truck like this, it's gonna be a little bit more work. That's what we're gonna do right now.

This is a little overkill. We could honestly run this truck without airing the front end. And most Toyota guys do

getting all this sheet metal out of the way would help with the next few modifications.

When this truck showed up, the motor was making some serious noise,

they might want to fix that.

Now, the timing chain is broken, it will not start. And really, I have no idea how much damage is done without completely tearing it apart.

Now, if this was a four cylinder truck and we had a bad motor. It would honestly be worth rebuilding. Those are great motors when you're running off road.

Now, the 3 L V6 is not, everyone's first choice has a lot of small problems with. It goes through head gaskets quite regularly because the aluminum head and cast iron block expand at different rates and tears the gasket. It's known to use a lot of water pumps and those aren't cheap to replace and the fuel mileage is not that hot. Now, behind the engine, we have a standard transmission.

I'm not a huge fan of running a stick off road. It's just honestly

personal preference. I find it a lot harder to climb hills.

You know, behind the standard, we have a chain driven transfer case that is definitely not our first choice. If you run on a Toyota, you want the gear driven unit. It's easy to tell them apart because the back cover on a gear drive has seven bolts on a chain drive like this, it has five. If we had a gear driven unit, it would be worth keeping the back half of this drive train because we could double it down and get a lot better off road use. But to be honest with you

with something that's weak here, something that we don't like here. And this thing being broken, the best thing to do is replace the entire drive train with this

A

GM performance parts, Ramjet 350 obviously, this will give us the benefit of having EF I out on the trail, which is great when you're off angle. But this 350 will give us a lot more power than we could ever pull out of that Toyota V6. Now behind it, we're gonna install a 700 R four

automatic that we got from our local parts store. And the 700 is a great off-road automatic transmission because it's not very long and the first gear ratio is just over 3 to 1. Now, behind the transmission, we're going to install a transfer case that's not here yet. But trust me, it's gonna be worth the wait. Now, we're not gonna install any of this between the frame rails quite yet because without it in there, it makes our next modification easier. And that is a solid axle swap.

Oh,

now the front suspension on our Toyota is pretty typical of ifs four wheel drives in the 19 nineties, it has a simple upper and lower control arm and a two wheel drive truck like this would have a spring on this bottom control arm for the suspension movement. But you can't do that on a four wheel drive because obviously we have an axle to drive the wheel. So to get the spring in an ifs four wheel drive, we use what's called a torsion bar. Now, basically this is keyed into the upper control arm and then it's held stationary back in the frame. Now, the twisting and untwisting of this torch

bar is actually what gives our suspension its spring.

Now, you've heard of guys running up their torsion bars to get a little bit more lift. There's an adjustment bolt on the back end, they simply tighten it to twist the torsion bar and therefore raise the suspension up. The limitation of the system is it really limits the amount of wheel trouble you can get because you can only twist this bar so far. Now, here's a little tip for you. The next time you see someone doing a solid axle swap in a Toyota, take the torsion bars from them because you can use these as a low box sway bar in the back of your next link buggy

up next. A cure for boredom in the Arizona desert. We got a winner.

We're taking a break from our solid axle swap on our Toyota to take you inside our window to the off road world this week. The Southwest desert where rocks rule

once a year, hundreds of four wheelers come out to the Arizona Desert for the Tucson trail dust days. It is a pretty big event. We have very scenic, real nice two wheel drive trails

all the way up to these level five real extreme trails. The most popular spot isn't even a trail. It's a run.

We're out here at Charlotte Gap. We're about 30 miles outside of Tucson. It's got a lot of fun rocks similar to Moab

to go play on

Charlotte Gap has lots of granite like this. It's pretty slippery

and it's just a good place to come out and play. Even those without a rig. We're loving the gap. We call it the terrible

tide

turnover. Competition between Mitch and Rich Richard Beaman grew up here and is the defending roll over champion. Nothing like getting out and hitting the rocks and rolling your rig over. It's just what I built it for. And from the great state of Vermont was the challenger

Mitch

Burke. There's a little bit of nerves involved, but

when you compete with snowboarding, it's not a big deal. After all the pre

bout height,

these heavyweights were ready for the showdown.

So

roll over, Rich was first up

and didn't disappoint his fans.

That's how we roll out here. That's the way to do it. Rich's roll over,

give it an eight. I have to say it was a good seven. It was pretty good. He got up the side hill and I didn't think it was gonna go over.

Mitch wasn't thinking about pressure,

only strategy. I'm looking to uh hit the obstacle perpendicular, maybe turn the tires to the right. Who knows? We'll see what happens at this showdown. The underdog shot blanks

underneath, we broke the pinion cough, sheared it right off from the main bearing on the end trail carnage. We broke something. It's all about the effort. Accounts the Spectators wanted more than effort. I give it a two since it technically wasn't a roll over. We got a,

yeah,

I'm really happy to be the hometown guy and come out and win one for the fans

when it comes to four Wheeling

Wayne Jungin isn't interested in Youthful Tom

Ferry. Well, the reason I got hooked on four wheeling is it's a type of sport where it's just you and your machine against the world. He fights this epic battle between good and evil with a rig. Many consider to be the first modern crawler in its debut in 1997 it was listed as the state of the

off road vehicle and credited as starting the rock buggy craze. A decade later, Sonny Hollinger's

revolutionary design continues to dominate the rock even after 10 years. It's amazing that the suspension works as well as it does and the vehicle does as well as it does on these new trails. The key to its longevity has been a unique air suspension system. It has dual air bags on the front axle that equalize each other. The suspension

connected by a set of linkages that transfers weight through the chassis diagonal.

It maintains even pressure on all four tires independent of axle deflection. It's a little bit different driving style,

but it works very well. And it's a style that fits Dwayne's off roading philosophy. I kind of believe in the ballet on Rock's philosophy, make it look easy. Ballet isn't easy

and neither is the Rock at Charlotte's Gap.

Anything built can be broke and no amount of engineering can overcome the laws of P.

You can always have a good day. But sooner or later

Murphy and the Rock Gods show up and you've got idiots

later on our co-host returns from back surgery. See how Jesse's doing when Xtreme 4x4 continues.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 in the middle of our Toyota mini truck build. Now, so far, we've shortened and narrowed the bed on this pickup and pulled the entire drive train to replace with a Ram Jet 350. And right now, I'm in the middle of a solid axle swap.

It took about three hours to cut off all the ifs brackets

and grind the frame rail smooth

and we can put on a coat of paint to keep it from rusting.

Now, when you're talking about Toyota parts, one name always comes up and that is Marlon Crawler.

They've been servicing the Toyota rock crawling community since 1994. So we knew that was the place to go for our solid axle swap kit.

Now, you can do a solid axle swap without a kit, but really it's worth the money because not only do you get all the brackets bump stops, U bolts, new flex lines, swing shackles. You also get a high steer kit, you get wheel spacers

because the newer Toyota ifs axles are actually wider and we're putting in an older axle. So this will match up the track front and rear. You get shock hoops, four new Bill Stein shocks

and then to match the height of our front to the rear, we're going to also be installing a Maryland color four inch leaf spring lift. Now, these multipack leaf springs actually flex really good when we're out on the trail, which is what we're after in this truck. All we have to do now is take all this and put it on that truck,

use ac clamp to support the front spring hanger. Even with the front edge of the truck's frame

with its center right to left,

it can be welded into place

and then the supplied gussets installed.

A template is used to locate the swing shackle mouse with its centered between the body mount plates,

slide the frame tubes inside the frame, so they're even on both sides, then push them a quarter inch further to the outside and weld them in place.

Hang your new springs off the front mount

and raise them up to the rear swing shackles

in the rear,

remove the axle assembly

along with the stock springs,

the new springs are longer,

so new front mounts are welded to the frame

and the new leaves are bolted in place.

Now, any Toyota axle out of a 79 to 85 pickup or forerunner will work in this solid axle swap.

Now, this particular junkyard find is from a 1983. And you can tell that because it has this gusset that runs from the pumpkin

to just short of the driver's side spring perch

and eight four and 85 axle assemblies have that same gusset running all the way to the end of the tube. Those gussets actually add strength to the housing itself.

Now, we're going to go ahead and install this underneath the front of our Toyota so we can finish up the solid axle swap, but we're definitely not going to leave these things in stock trim before this truck hits the trail

with the housing in place.

We can install the upper shock hoops.

We'll use the shock to make sure that the mount is directly over the axle and we can go ahead weld in each hoop.

You want to have five inches of shock shaft exposed with the weight of the truck on the axle

yet to come. Look who's back. Jessi returns to extreme next.

Now, there's no question that a Toyota axle all by itself from the factory is a very stout unit,

but go ahead and add a small block Chevy like we have an aftermarket transfer case like we planned to and 37 inch tires and you've reached these axles limits.

Now, you don't have to do everything that we've done here today to turn your Toyota mini truck into a great trail.

You could just do a solid axle swap. Leave its stock run on 33 inch tires, do the engine upgrade later if you wanted to and the transfer case upgrade when you have the cash,

most guys who build a truck like this would spend almost two years doing it, bumper to bumper in small steps. But I know you guys don't wanna wait two years to see that thing on the trail and I'm not waiting two years to drive it. So we're going to do all the axle upgrades in one shot and it's going to start right here. Alloy USA Precision gear 520 nines in the front and rear mounted on Detroit Locker lockers. Now, the Detroit Locker is a great stand alone unit because we don't have to add anything else like a compressor or an electrical source to control the locking action

in the rear poly performance. 4340 axle shafts,

the tapered and polished design as well as rolled spines make these the strongest axles for the Toyota mini truck.

The front will also be using poly performance 4340 chrome

moly

axles and their upgraded Burfield joint. It has a redesigned cage that makes them 30% stronger,

full lock, which is usually where a Burfield joint fails.

And then the last piece of the puzzle is a PSC tap steering box that allows us to run a six inch ra M mounted on the front axle to take the effort out of turning these large tires.

Now, you've seen us install many gears and axle upgrades and pretty much all of our projects.

So I'm gonna go ahead and do all this

tomorrow.

Well, look who decided to come back to work? Who says breaking my back has to keep me down forever, huh? Well, it's good to have you back. How you feeling, I'm feeling really good, feeling really good. I'm going through all my physical therapy and it's getting harder and harder every day. But in the same turn it feels really good to actually be doing something and move.

And because being in bed for three months sucks.

I could think of something to do. But anyway, um,

and, uh, when are you back full time? I actually, I'm coming back next week but I'm still on super duper heavy restrictions. No lifting, no bending, no twisting. So

you're still gonna have to hold all the weight of doing all the work as usual.