OK so I got the Toyota somewhat done, well wheelable, and what was a vision in May of '06 has become a reality much sooner than I expected. I had the 55 Willys Juggy thing for sale for 9 months on multiple ads and no takers, meanwhile I was in search of a 2nd gen Toy xtra cab with factory A/C to build my dual sport rig. In October of '06 I found the almost perfect candidate, not perfect because it wasn't an xtra cab, but in 6 months of searching I hadn't found any locally that were worth a crap. Most were already yanked south of the boarder or were imports from the midwest and rust buckets or still running and driving and out of the budget. So I found an 85 STD cab complete from the frame up with a junk 22r, (which I later sold as a core for $100) it was 4 hours away and at todays gas prices it cost me more to go get it than to buy it for the sale price of $150. Then the transformation begins. Parting this out;
Take the axles wheels, tires, suspension, transfer case, and alot of little parts and adapt them to this;
The original plan was to accumulate parts for the Syota over time, parts like an engine that would pull this thing around and still pass emissions, enter this '02 Chevy 4.3 with less than 9K miles on it, complete with reprogrammed computer, harness, Sanderson headers, motor mounts, Toy Throttle cable and P/S hose, aluminum radiator and Taurus electric fan.
and a transmission with an overdrive due to the fact that we are running 5.38's in the 60 axles and we plan on driving this thing on the highway at a reasonable cruise RPM, enter this rebuilt K-case 700r4 complete with torque converter, Lokar flex dipstick, and Art Carr shifter.
As we had planned to vacation in Washington with the Willys on Rimrock and Naches among other places. Unfortunately oppertunity or should I say cash knocked on the front door much sooner than anticipated. Word got out that I was partin the Willys and someone wanted the SBC and TH350 for their CJ7 project. Well cash was in my face in February and that changed all the plans. So apart came the Willys and progress on the Syota was excellerated and vacation to Washington was postponed until further notice.
Now the back in November I had already started to take the Syota apart to the frame so I could build from scratch. This truck was originally red with Brown interior and the PO put some non-skip **** on the exterior that was sorta white and painted the brown plastic interior pieces with some black crap that was just not going to be kept.
Here's some pics of the dis-assembly phase;
Meanwhile some more cleaning of the cab and engine compartment was done.
Next the engine and transmission were bolted together and set in the frame where I thought and my measurin tape told me they should be, then teh cab was set down over the top of the combo only to find out that my tape measure isn't a liar after all
Then a temp crossmember under the trans so I could raise the chassis to a reasonable working height. Once raised I added some other engine compartment goodies like the radiator;
Next came building a 2" b/l and bolting the cab down to the frame, plates were made and secured through the body mounts that will eventually receive a roll cage. the grade 8 bolt is the body mount the the 5's got through the floorboard. Sample of floor plate;
Once the cab was bolted down newly aquired gray interior [ieces could be installed, I got almost a complete 89 4runner v6 interior including the gage cluster from a local guy for the bench seat seen in previous pics.
Also got a free set of Civic buckets for free from a neighbor who though I could use them?? Hmmmmm Yup!
Next came the front suspension, which was going to be slightly modified from the Willys, the Willys had a 3 link in a lVl fashion but this was hell on the crossover steering and iduced a nasty death wobble on the washboard. So I was converting to a standard 3 link with 2 lowers and an upper torque arm and a panhard rod. This would be a huge benefit for streetability yet still allow good articulation offroad. Had to modify the mounts on the front axle housing;
Bein that I wanted this thing to be as low as possible with 37" tires, fnder trimming would happen and i also move the front axle forward from stock locale 5" to gain clearence at the rear of the front fender, also since I was coil/linking it I didn't lose approach angle by having the front of the leaf springs stickin out the front lookin all road warriorish. and when the suspension would collapse it would travel forward slightly to creat more clearence at the fender. My trusty tape measure came out again and link mounts were fabbed to the chassis, the lower links were re-used from the Willys and a new adjustable upper link was fabbed out of 1½" .250 wall DOM and a 1" grade 8 bolt and nut hot glued to a couple of RE joints.
finished links;
I mounted the lower link frame mounts under the frame to gain better street manners, even though it sacrificed offroad ground clearence. I figured they didn't hang down any more than leaf shackles and I tried to make them smooth so they would slide off rocks a little easier???
Next I wanted to build a panhard system, but in order to get that righ tI had to have a draglink to match the angle, length, and arc for the right steering and drivability. So in went the steering box, Toy IFS steeing boxes are the way to go but in my case it wasn't going to work since I pushed the front axle so far forward the Toy box would've been into the body mount, so once again I scavenged the saginaw box from the Willys which was harder to mount because it mounts inside the frame, but it's worth it in steering geometry and it has a quicker ratio than the Toy box as well.
Before a re-bearing and seal job on my stock Dana 300 case a rear crossmember had to be fabbed up to support the trans and t-case. In the Willys I had the t/c clocked up for ground clearence but had to run a 2 piece front drive line with a support bearing, well I didn't want the 2 piece front d/l anymore as the support bearing didn't like much more than about 25 miles per hour so I was willing to sacrifice the ground clearence for the normal front driveline.....here's the crossmember in place mounted to the Novak adapter I've had for some 15 years in 2 other Jeeps and still goin stong;
Here's a view of how far the t/c hangs below the frame. About 3 inches;
Back to the front suspension and time for front shocks and mounts, I got 4 new Rancho 9000x's while onsale for the price of 3, Part number 99012 with 13" of stroke. Did some inner fender trimming and out came the bender.
Passenger side with old Willys 9012's installed;
Drivers side;
In this pic you can kinda see the triple u-joint steering column linkage to the steering box.
Not completely certain how I was going to do the rear 3 link just yet because of the way a crossmember had to be fabbed around the rear d/l I decided to work on shifter instead, bein that the 300 shifter portrude the passenger legroom I modified them to come up the center of the floor;
Now for the rear suspension I finally figured out what I was going ot do and it was a long thought process and more work than necessary but it is prolly the one area of custom fabrication I am most proud of on this truck. I was using teh double crossover set up on the Willys and wanted to keep this setup on this as it prevents droop steer and locates the axle side to side as well. But because I wanted to use the links from the Willys and the truck was going to have a longer rear d/l than I had to do a crossmember loop thing to accomodate this set up. Here's what I came up with sorry for the poor lighting.
Since I am trimming the rear fenders to the max and the rear wheel wells are not centered to the axle I was able to move the rear axle forward2" to center them in the inner wheel wells so they wouldn't rub at full stuff, puts my wheelbase at 105".
