Dynamite Design - Tacoma T-Rex

I8AJEEP · Jun 7, 2014

Wanted to post up a little progress report. Shock hoops are going in. T-Rex should be standing on her front this weekend. David and I wanted to share these and show the customized version of our production shock hoops for the 05+ tacoma SAS kit we are developing. Every component already has a template made. Assembly jigs and install fixtures are made. These are ready to ship out now.
As the owner of this vehicle I am stoked at how these turned out and as a fellow fabricator i am constantly amazed at the quality David is able to turn out.
Stay tuned for an update tomorrow as we will be in the shop the rest of the night and tomorrow.

Dynamite Design · Jun 8, 2014

Your boy, Josh doing work....

I8AJEEP · Jun 9, 2014

As you can see we had a productive weekend. We managed to finish the shock hoops, stand T-Rex up, and fire the engine. The rear end is completely tore out now and ready for us to move back there when the front is tied up. We are waiting on some parts to finish the front up, parts to finish the drive train, and rod ends and other miscellaneous parts for the rear to be mocked up. I suppose that means we are in a holding pattern for the moment. Any ways here are some Progress update photos

Rear end completely clear. Ready to get a Dana 60, 3 link, and cantilever coil over set up.

This is the finished product of the shock hoops. The mock up building photos were posted last night. You can tell that the air inlet was obstructed by the shock tower. We felt the suspension was more important that air inlet location so we will be making a new air box/air inlet cap from aluminum

ridered3 · Jun 19, 2014

Glad to see and read some tech with explanations versus the randomness in the last build!

Why T-Rex?

Dynamite Design · Jun 19, 2014

Big thanks.... :dblthumb:

The kinks are working their way out.

There are powers above our power that chose the name of the truck.... :****:

Pretty excited about the truck and everything else that is going on at the moment.

I8AJEEP · Jun 26, 2014

As promised a much over due update.
We have actually been able to put a little time into T-Rex and make some progress, and we have a little time allotted in the near future to get the rear knocked out and get the rig standing up.
We have had some major advancements in the progression and growth of our business in the past few weeks. Some of you already know about this, but we have agreed to start building Ultra 4 Bombers for Bomber Fab's East Coast customers. We will be doing everything from a chromoly tube, laser cut, completely TIG welded Chassis all the way up to a turn key race car. We are also moving to a new, much larger 8000+ sq ft shop. As you can tell from the picture we also have a new toy to aid us in bringing down the fabrication time and thus the cost of the future SAS kit.

One of the goals with the design of this kit is to make it as easy as possible for the end user to execute the entire SAS with minimal tools and knowledge. In the beginning of the design phase there were a lot of problems that arose from trying to work around steering components that were already on the market, mainly the pitman arm. Nothing that was readily available for the toyota IFS steering box was set up for this specific application, which led to several issues when we tried to use off the shelf parts. We went around this by making a pitman arm specifically for this application.
Our pitman arm is double shear, uses a 1/2 or 9/16" thru bolt, and is fabricated from 1/4" P&O plate. the splined section is a solid piece of billet and the entire thing is TIG welded together

Another issue we had with my specific truck is the air intake location using the stock air box. I am a little extreme when it comes to the esthetics of my own person vehicle so I wanted my over the engine brace smack dab dead over the center of the engine. This doesn't make it any stronger than rolling the brace forward or back (so that it clears the air inlet) It is simply what I wanted. To fix this, we fabricated an air box enclosure out of aluminum. This also will allow for a more direct line from where the snorkel comes in.

With those two items done the only thing that is left for the front mock up is to cut and weld the bungs in on the drag link and permanently weld in the shock towers. We also completed the rear cut out. Thank goodness it was no where near as bad as the front (though it was still pretty hack-tastic) there was just not as much stuff to cut out. All of the wiring was pulled back to the transfer case, the bead was removed and out came the plasma cutters.

The rear as it sits is ready to build. We are waiting on a large order of DOM to come in tomorrow, and we will get cracking on it the next week or so. The first step will be to box the frame and add fish plates on the outer frame rail, then replace all the cross members that we cut out of the rear with new DOM supports. Then we will set up the three link, which will not take long at all with nothing to work around like an engine. Finally we will build the cantilever set up.

I8AJEEP · Jun 26, 2014

ridered3 said:
Glad to see and read some tech with explanations versus the randomness in the last build!

Why T-Rex?

the "T" is short for "Tacoma-Saurus". Rex…well that means "king"
way better than naming it after some item on the Taco bell menu…that makes we want to

uke:

Dynamite Design · Jun 26, 2014

My vote was for Dorito-Taco Juarez.... Or somethin

But no joke, from what I've seen out of the other Tacoma builds, I'd say this Tacoma has much chance of being King rock crawler Tacoma, and stuff....

Nuts · Jun 27, 2014

Isn't there some law against welded steering components? The pitman arm looks good, but is it legal for street use?

TBItoy · Jun 27, 2014

Re: Re: Re: Dynamite Design - Tacoma T-Rex

AdamF said:
Isn't there some law against welded steering components? The pitman arm looks good, but is it legal for street use?

If you read the law in TN, any and all steering modification is "illegal"...

Dynamite Design · Jun 27, 2014

I can't tell you if it's legal or not, but I can tell you who's going to drive it on the road.

Dynamite Design · Jun 27, 2014

There were a couple things that had to happen with the pitman arm. With this thing being a rock crawler, it has so much droop, we had to angle the joint in a way where it wouldn't bind up at droop.

The other thing was all of the other Tacoma builds are notching a massive amount of steel out of the frame to compensate for the pitman arm bolt swinging around, etc.

You can tell that thing is totally functional.

Dynamite Design · Jun 29, 2014

The measurements look good with 20 inches of axle housing travel with 8 inch shocks. 5 up and 15 down.

Dynamite Design · Jun 30, 2014

Dynamite Design · Jun 30, 2014

Time to move

I8AJEEP · Jul 20, 2014

Time for a long over due update.

the shop move is for the most part DONE!!!! It was painful at best. we still have some issue to get taken care of. We have to figure out where all the current machines are going to go and what machine we plan to have in the future will go. The they must be wired. The lights…well all but 3 are not working so I am going to spend a day changing ballast and adding more lights. and we still have to build a ramp to get rings in and out of the shop.

AS far as T-rex it was not easy to get it in the shop with out a ramp, with no brakes, the steering not being completely dialed in and the no engine power…pretty mush it was a really big, heavy roller.

So that was sketchy at best. Hopefully our ramp will be in very very soon. as soon as we got T-rex in (since it was the very last thing we moved in) we started work again. We cut out the tiny temporary axel, cut off all the old bracketry on the rear, and eliminated every bit of the rust . Clean fresh slate. First thing we added was a new crossmember built from .120 wall DOM and 1/8 plate to support the rear of the fuel tank and all the EVAP equipment that is required in these newer trucks.

then the snorkel was modified to hook up to the aluminum air box we built earlier and miss the shock towers completely

we also gave T-rex some teeth. They look cool but they are mainly to reinforce the seem of what left of the original frame and the repair plate and fish plate up front. Two large teeth on the top row, toward the rear, on both sides have been added also but I failed to take a picture after that was done.

http://i1219.photobucket.com/albums/dd428/priest0321/IMG_0949_zps57fcbb43.jpg[/IMG]

Next we pulled the front axel out for final welding, assembly and paint. We haven't gotten that far yet but we are heading in that direction. the Trans/TC crossmember was pulled for finial welding, sanding and paint. All of those task are complete. During disassembly of the drive train we found a rattling in the rear case…turns out the "stop foot" on the high low rail had snapped off and was casing sloppy shifting and engagement. the part has been ordered and should be here mid week. We'll up date you on that when we get the part and do the repair.
The rear axel was also se and we have the lower links in place and the up link's brackets mounted. We wanted to have the exact same link measurements in the rear as we had up front for simplicity and while this worked for the lower links it did not for the upper link.

these last two pictures are a little shop tour. though it looks like a bomb went off these were taken about a several days ago and I assure you the shop looks much mooch more organized now. Pay attention to the shop back ground pictures from here on out and you will see some interesting builds. We have the very first East Coast Bomber chassis that will be coming in this week from Bomber Fab. we will be putting together chassis for Randy.
We also have two custom chassis that will be built in house in the very near future. Both designed and built by Dynamite Design. One is a two seater Ultra 4 with plans to be at KOH this coming year. The other is a larger four seat version of out new chassis that will be built for a hard core trail rig.

Next on the list is to finish the rear 3 link. then we are in a little bit of a holding pattern. The next major project is the cantilever set up. the way we designed it, the just a lot of stuff getting framed into a tiny space. So until all the parts get here we have elected to wait on that part. we want to ensure that the link don't interfere with the cantilevers, and that the sway bar doesn't mess with either one of them and the air bump are in the right place as well. needless to say a lot of stuff hitting the axel and running out of real estate really really fast.

I8AJEEP · Jul 20, 2014

Re: Re: Re: Dynamite Design - Tacoma T-Rex

TBItoy said:
If you read the law in TN, any and all steering modification is "illegal"...

this is correct. I was in TN about a week ago and ask a DOT officer what the law reads. He informed me that ANY modification from stock was illegal. I asked him if that meant that steering components could not be welded and he said all modification is illegal. I am not a rocket scientist but I am pretty sure that cutting out an IFS rig with rack and pinion steering and replacing it with a solid axel and crossover steering would qualify as modification of the steering.
This same officer also told me that unless you were doing something stupid that troopers really don't have the time to write you for modification infractions unless you were trying to make their life suck. He also started that you are more likely to get popped by the inspection man and recommended that you find a small rural shop :****: