1981 Pickup Build - Old Yeller

[Grronk]

April 2020


Put my half door on since its warming up here in CA, forgot how exposed it left the driver seat. Made a door bar to keep rocks out of my face when pivoting on them. It also opens, leaving it bolted in for now, will run pins to make it easier to open when light wheeling, will use the bolts when doing more hardcore trails like down at the hammers. Those trails like to bash my doors in...


Was going to do a fancy one like this, but I felt that if a rock came in and hit the lower bar it would tweak the whole thing and fuck it up, so I went with the one bar

Bar can swing all the way out, past 90 deg.

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Added a plate to the back side of the coupler dealio to help guard from the bolts shearing and sending the tube into the cab in case it takes a large impact.

Fender fits on nicely, need to touch it up a little bit but I am happy with it.

Got the fender cleaned up and looking better around the bar, also finished the passenger side but forgot to take a picture, looks pretty much the same so just imagine this side but on the passenger side

Also took the truck down in the river bed behind our house for a river day since it was finally hot here in CA

 

[Grronk]

May 11 2020


Finished up the Hydro Assist this weekend. Drilling and tapping the box was not as difficult as I thought it would be, that teflon seal is a bit of a pain though.

Box out

Tapping

Installed and hoses ran

Ram Installed

Got it out for a test on Saturday, did great, turning was super smooth and easy. Took it out on Sunday to mess around and I bent my tierod The issue was that I didn't fully weld the tierod to the tierod ends like I was planning on doing. I just tacked the tierod to the bolt, and not the TRE itself. Tires were jammed in a tight spot, ram pushed through and twisted the tierod forward and bent it a bit. Oops

 

[Grronk]

That's it for catch up from old Pirate, should be posting updates soon, just waiting on hearing back from Trail-gear to warranty a part, trucks been parked for a week.

EMAIL ME BACK ALREADY TRAIL-GEAR, ITS BEEN A WEEK DARNIT

 

[Grronk]

Redid the hydro assist ram mounts and also replaced the bent tierod. Did it right this time around, ran the truck a good amount of times over the line that bent it last time and it handled it no problem, no bending or twisting so I am happy with that. Only got pics when I was parked, so deal with it

 

[Grronk]

Changed out the center cap with a more appropriate one

 

[Grronk]

Ran into an issue with my PS pump, ran the truck hard and hot in the river bed a few weekend in a row, PS pump started whining a lot. Figured I burnt it up cause the truck got pretty hot each trip. Changed out the old water pump with a new one, and also put in a new PS pump.

Thought I fixed the whining problem, however I figured I'd save some time and re-use my old pumps drilled out restrictor. The whine was still there after I bled the system, which stumped me for a beer or two. Took out the old restrictor I was re-using, drilled out the new one and put it in, and bingo, no whine! Not sure why, but the restrictor on my original pump had a weird spring backing which caused it to be a pain in the ass to drill out, which is why I reused it to avoid the headache of drilling the new one (which turned out to be easy since it didn't have the spring)... the whining was the brass insert deal vibrating around in the small space it had.

Now both new pumps are working great, and the steering feels much better then before

 

[Aisin]

What are you running for fluid in the steering?

 

[Grronk]

What are you running for fluid in the steering?

Powersteering fluid

 

[Aisin]

Powersteering fluid

Toyotas don’t use power steering fluid. They use ATF. I’ve always used tractor fluid. My shit would boil over until I changed it. Tractor fluid will take heat better and will not foam up.

 

[Grronk]

Toyotas don’t use power steering fluid. They use ATF. I’ve always used tractor fluid. My shit would boil over until I changed it. Tractor fluid will take heat better and will not foam up.

The hydro assist im using says to use Powersteering fluid. I have heard of the tractor fluid though, i havent had any problems with the ps fluid boiling over yet, i have a bigger res and bigger inline cooler w/fan. If I have anymore issues down the line I will look into the tractor fluid some more though

 

[Aisin]

The hydro assist im using says to use Powersteering fluid. I have heard of the tractor fluid though, i havent had any problems with the ps fluid boiling over yet, i have a bigger res and bigger inline cooler w/fan. If I have anymore issues down the line I will look into the tractor fluid some more though

Didn’t realize you bought a hydro assist kit. I’ve always pieced mine together. You will be fine with ps fluid. I didn’t have a cooler on mine. Just a bigger reservoir.

 

[Grronk]

No tech to add today, just have been doing maintenance work on it. Worked on the timing a bit and get her running even better, hoping that will cut down on the propane consumption. Planning on getting the rear shock mounts welded in this weekend.

Here are some pics from the last few weekends

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Love this truck.

 

[Wulf]

I assume you're running a forklift tank for the propane. What kind of life do you get from a full fill?

If the gauge on the tank is accurate my last trip I used about a half tank for a half day on the trail and am curious about how that compares.

 

[Grronk]

I assume you're running a forklift tank for the propane. What kind of life do you get from a full fill?

If the gauge on the tank is accurate my last trip I used about a half tank for a half day on the trail and am curious about how that compares.

Yep I'm running a 10 gallon forklift tank, the gauges are decent, I can run on E for a long while so I take it with a grain of salt. That said, I went through almost en entire tank in a day, it was constant higher rpms though in soft sand. That is what prompted me to look at the timing some more.

 

[Grronk]

Got the front bump stops fabbed up and put in place, they compress a good amount so I still get good enough flex and still maintain clearance. I can finally not worry about bumps at higher speeds which is nice since after a few beers my foot gets heavy Also got the rear shock mounts in place, took measurements, and ordered some Bilstein 5125 14" Shocks from Marlin.

 

[Grronk]

Got the rear shocks mounted, definitely makes a big difference in handling, on road and off road.

My exhaust hanger was broken at the time of this picture, which is why is so low and close to the axle, its fixed now

 

[Grronk]

Transfer case was giving me issues since the last time I took it out, was super hard to shift the front case from Low to High and back. Since I was dropping the cases to fix that issue, I went and ordered a set of 4.7s for the rear case. Wanted to go with marlin, but couldn't wait for them to get back in stock, so I went with the Trail Gear set. Finished most of the job over the weekend, all that's left is to put the cases back in the truck and take her for a spin.

Rear Case

The front cases shifting issue was pretty apparent, and kind of what I figured it was. The shifter rod had chipped and dirtied up its path, resulting in it not wanting to shift easy. I smoothed it down and chamfered it properly this time.

Checking the gears in the front case while im here, doing fine after a season, ready for more

Clearanced the case to fit the bigger gears

4.7s in place

Got both cases back together, still need to clean up the skid plate and then put them under the truck.

 

[Wulf]

Got the front bump stops fabbed up and put in place, they compress a good amount so I still get good enough flex and still maintain clearance. I can finally not worry about bumps at higher speeds which is nice since after a few beers my foot gets heavy Also got the rear shock mounts in place, took measurements, and ordered some Bilstein 5125 14" Shocks from Marlin.

did you cut off the factory bump mounts? I need to to the same and build a new pass side bump

 

[Grronk]

did you cut off the factory bump mounts? I need to to the same and build a new pass side bump

Yeah I cut them off when I was putting the frame stiffener plates in, probably could have left some of them in but I just cut them completely off. The new bump mounts weren't hard to make so it worked out

 

[Grronk]

​ Got the cases in the truck and took it out for a spin, thing is slow! Took it on some rocks out behind the house and the truck just idled right over them no problem.

Took a vid on Instagram, so you can just ignore the text and shitty quality

 

[Grronk]

Bent the driver side leaf this weekend, came down hard on a rock directly on the leaf and inverted it a good bit, oops

Planning on going with a heavier duty leaf this time around to replace these ones, these ones wore out pretty quick and sat almost flat in under 5 months. Figure its due to the weight of the truck and exo cage, paired with me beating on it pretty good.

Day of

Flat ( the leaf clamp isn't usually that close to the shackles, rock smacked it loose)

Underneath, you can see where the leaf took the impact right in the center of the bend

 

[Grronk]

Decided to finally replace my dented as hell oil pan over the weekend, found a nice little present on the inside waiting for me which halted all progress.

Definitely not a fun thing to find in your oil pan. Not sure how long it has been down there either lol

Pulled the valve cover and noticed a bolt for the baffle was missing

(I took all of them out before taking the picture, oops)

Apparently it fell out some time ago (hopefully), and on its way down to the oil pan it got beat up by the crank shaft a bit before settling down in the pan

Here's my slightly used oil pan

Waiting on a new valve cover gasket before putting it all back together, leaving the missing bolt out and putting locktite on the rest of them.

 

[Grronk]

Got everything bolted back together, have yet to test the clearance of the new 4wd oil pan but it looks like itll be just fine, I also painted the valve cover while it was off like all the cool kids do

I may have gotten a little messy with the RTV...

Painted Valve covers adds 10hp dont ya know?

The rest of the engine bay needs some help

 

[DutchVDub]

Really digging the build, I like how you did your cage. Gives me ideas to rework mine and get some more headroom.

 

[Grronk]

Really digging the build, I like how you did your cage. Gives me ideas to rework mine and get some more headroom.

Appreciate it man, I'm glad with how the cage came out too since I am not a huge fan of full exos but I'm 6'4" so I couldn't do an internal cage without it being too close to my head

 

[Grronk]

Had a plan to go to the Rubicon last weekend, but they closed it for maintenance the week before so we went to Hollister instead. Truck did good, didn't get too many pics

Found a jeep broke down on the trail, helped drag him down the trail to a flatter area to get his trailer to

 

[Grronk]

Some real fun stuff happened, snapped a rear shaft and twisted the other pretty bad. Broken shaft ate into the 3rd member a bit, now im waiting on new parts. Instead of replacing the rear shafts I decided to go the easy way and just swap out the entire rear axle with a IFS Rear axle from a 1995 V6 4Runner.

Going to build up this V6 third and then keep the 4cyl one as a spare

 

[DutchVDub]

Dang, how did you do that?

 

[Grronk]

Dang, how did you do that?

Going up a rock face, rear tire got into a spot where it was undercut and snapped is my best guess, then the diff got damaged cause I may have kinda kept wheeling on it the next day and the rear shaft just ate into the side of it