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My new toy truck


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  • 2 weeks later...

Here are your pics sir! I'll email them to you as well, but wanted to post 'em here first!

 

Thanks, Hugo. It was great meeting and hanging out with you. I especially like the rolling shot.

 

As always, JCCS was a blast and we had a great time trailering out to Lawrence's, enjoying his family's hospitality and cruising to the show in the morning. Here are some highlights:

 

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Grandfather Hilux being towed by grandson Tundra... We all came down in my friend Ben's Tundra. He was the guy who brought the '86 Honda Rebel rat bike.

 

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After the show we cruised over to Shoreline Village to hang out and have dinner. Lawrence thought the best place for our cars was in P.F. Chang's valet. They parked us right in the front, my son promptly aired out the Hilux and then all the valet guys pulled out their phones and started taking pics of our vehicles. It was a fun sight.

 

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I was surprised to have won best Toyota truck/SUV at the show. Guess the judges liked the truck. :o

 

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And it has been fun google searching the truck to see what comes up since the show. Its cool to find it on other websites like Speedhunters, etc. and have some nice photography of the truck.

 

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In the mad dash for JCCS I haven't posted my latest updates. I got the front shocks installed and it made a huge difference. This was my first attempt at remote located shocks and I am very pleased with the results.

 

Armed with a 2004 Air Ride Technologies catalog and a tape measure and one left over 7.75" compressed eye/stud shock from a previous project I figured out the placement for the shocks. I took some leftover 3/16" square tubing, cut it in half diagonally, made some side gussets and welded the whole assembly to the frame.

 

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For some reason I had kept just the one shock (I think the other rusted out from daily driving in Utah winters). This shock still works well so in true Ratsun form I found 1 remaining Gabriel shock in Rock Auto's inventory for $18 shipped. I believe they are form a late '70s Chrysler Cordoba but they are the shortest shocks I could find. As you can see by the markings on the red shock, these are old school. The box it came in was trashed, had no website on it and looked like it had been banging around for decades. I bet they were happy to get rid of it. Who buys just one shock, right?

 

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Grade 8 bolts drilled and welded to the lower A arm completes the settup. Not perfect but not bad for my first attempt.

 

The air system works well and its lots of fun to get strange looks from the moms in the minivans when I come to pick up my son from school and air out the truck. :D

 

Oh, another little thing I did. The passenger door panel is in great shape but the driver's was trashed. Since the truck was originally white, taking the panel off revealed white. Only two major holes in the door itself led me to just clean it up and put a couple of my older Utah license plates from my collection to cover the hole. Put some JB weld on some rare earth magnets and stuck the plates on the door.

 

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please dont move those fender lights as you said you would. them iz beetchin i wanna get those on my truck lol

 

Don't worry- they are not going anywhere. I love them actually and they define the truck so it would be a crime to remove them. I have actually been thinking of a tasteful way to attach mirrors to the back like Goki mentioned a while ago. I am open to any suggestions.

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i dunno if the positioning of those lights would lend well to mirror placement. you might just be liiking at yourself :P but i havnt seen it in person so maybe thats not so. you could some of those sticky back square fisheye type mirrors from oreillys or something but that may not be as tasteful; as you are thinking.experiment! are you going to leave those 240sx hubcaps on dere? that is what they are right? or are they late model toyota pickup caps?

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^ Yeah, not quite sure on the mirrors. They are on the back burner at the moment so we shall see.

 

The hubcaps are stock Toyota off my '94 pickup. They are hanging on my garage wall now and no plans to put them back on since I have the gold 192s. I need to change my signature picture. :)

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oh yeah i guess i was looking at the signature picture when i said that, weird since i just got finished showing a friend how those rims looked on your truck. if only they came in six lug... i has to change pattern soon or i shall keep suffering

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Before JCCS, I cut off the exhaust at the muffler to give a little more clearance to the axle. I'm amazed the sound difference a bend in the pipe makes. Even though I still had the muffler, it was LOUD and had resonance that was annoying. I recently fixed the resonance and quieted it a little by putting a bend and having the pipe exit before the rear wheel.

 

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Right before JCCS, I decided I needed some sort of storage for stuff. I happened to have a cheap old Sears metal tool box and the blue was really close to the truck color. The only problem is that the box was nearly perfect and shiny. That would not do so my son and I played kickball with the box and took a DA and assorted sandpaper to it. I went on line and learned how to rust metal with bleach, salt, vinegar mix. Within a day it was looking good. I put an old Toyota emblem on it and it was done. Bolted it to the bed with the latch to the inside. Looks like it was supposed to be there.

 

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A couple weeks ago my buddy tipped me off to a '76 Hilux at Tear-a-Part here in Salt Lake. As I said a while ago, that generation is hard to find here in town. The spindles and hubs/rotors are a direct swap. I can even use my '71 master. The weather was decent that day so I dropped what I was doing and went to get the parts. Looks like the truck had a brake job right before they junked it. :blink: Hopefully I will have some time soon to clean them up and get them installed. I have held off getting new ball joints so now I can get the front suspension completed correctly. More to come.

 

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  • 1 month later...

I have all the new parts (ball joints, tie rods) for my brake swap but have been distracted with other things so I have not completed it yet. I have a few things to reveal but am waiting for one more item and then I will get some nice photos.

 

In the mean time, I changed my seat cover to an actual Mexican blanket and clamped it on tight. Big improvement and it doesn't slip any more.

 

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I bought a can of the Krylon stained glass paint and colored my inner head lights. That stuff works great!

 

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And I pulled a pair of California black plates from my collection and put them on the truck for the heck of it. I'm from California and so is the truck I think so its all good. :D

 

I put the license bolts on backward so I can quickly put my Utah plates back over the Cal ones but I thought they fit the truck well. The black plates are fairly rare aren't they?

 

 

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Those plates look good on there. You might see if you can license it with those plates. In WA you can run old plates if the were issued during the time the truck was new.

 

I'm running the original plates that came on my truck. :)

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2eDeYe' date='01 February 2012 - 07:57 AM' timestamp='1328111825' post='624783']

Those plates look good on there. You might see if you can license it with those plates. In WA you can run old plates if the were issued during the time the truck was new.

 

I'm running the original plates that came on my truck. :)

 

 

thats a good idea...my buddy has this truck but in green ... never seen this body style till i seen his.... love the wheels on here... like how clean your work space is .. .i wish i could keep mine that way but seems as it always gets cluttered back up...love the stance too ...

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I don't think they will let me register Cali plates in Utah. :D but seriously, I have some old Utah plates and actually registered them on my goon but we have the "Vintage Vehicle" plates here now that don't require yearly inspections and are $10 a year so that trumps the cool old plates where I would have to pay $70+/yr plus $40+ for inspections. These will be for show and pics only.

 

With the vintage plates and Hagerty Insurance it costs me less than $200/year for my two nostalgics.

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