The "I will learn as I go" 85 pickup build thread.

Hold My Beer & Watch This

My Truck Stays Broken
Joined
Oct 3, 2018
Messages
935
Age
38
Location
Fontucky and Kentucky
I never really did a good job documenting the process of building my 1985 Toyota pickup. I bought it stock, and with a bad motor. Here is was the day I bought it.

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My intention was to make this a decent rock crawler that is typical of these pickups, and to be able to drive it on the street if I ever wanted to. I will go through any old photos to see if I can remember any kind of timeline on how things happened.

First, I pulled out the motor and decided to replace it with one I found on craigslist for pretty cheap.

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I took the time to sandblast the "new" motor and clean it up a bit, as well as all the brackets that are attached to it.

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Everything was painted to make it look newish, and maybe fool a few people to think the red/orange block is Cheby V8. Nobody has been fooled to date.

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Hold My Beer & Watch This

My Truck Stays Broken
Joined
Oct 3, 2018
Messages
935
Age
38
Location
Fontucky and Kentucky
A major change I needed to do was switch up my steering to hi-steer.

Out with the old

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In with an IFS steering box. It required some new bolts through the frame and a welded on adapter plate. I eventually tapped the steering box to add a hydro assist ram.

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I found a killer deal on a used Marlin hi-steer kit on P4x4 and jumped on it. You can probably see that I also did the RUF at the same time.

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Hold My Beer & Watch This

My Truck Stays Broken
Joined
Oct 3, 2018
Messages
935
Age
38
Location
Fontucky and Kentucky
Since my brother was building his 2nd gen Tacoma, I indefinitely borrowed his stock TRD Bilstein shocks to mount on the front. They were limit straps, but they were free, so I can deal with it for a while.

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The RUF pack moved my front axle up several inches, which made my front driveshaft useless. I had plans on going duals, which would have made paying for a new front DS a waste of $. Square DS was the solution, and it would still work when I went duals.

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The other half of going RUF is using Chevy 63's in the rear. I went with the Ruff Stuff 63 kit, which is pure beef. No chicken shit steel. Had to French the frame a little. In hindsight, I shoulda gone a little more aggressive on it.

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It looks like a clusterfuck, but the leaf spring kit is being mocked up.

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Hold My Beer & Watch This

My Truck Stays Broken
Joined
Oct 3, 2018
Messages
935
Age
38
Location
Fontucky and Kentucky
At this point, I needed rear shocks and since the point of this build was to do it on a budget, I sourced out some pretty cheap 12" Bilstein 7100's on the Craiglist. Mounted them with Ford shock towers, welded to the frame and welded tabs on the rear axle housing.

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Since those shock towers were going to require work on the bed if I kept it, I figured "Fuck it", and decided to go flatbed. I had a shitload of 2" x 2" tubing lying around and used it as the frame. I was also trying to figure out how to integrate storage, and luckily, my friend told me he had this utility box lying around that was covered in surface rust, but otherwise great. This thing fit perfectly behind the cab on the stock bed mounts.

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Knowing this can be bolted in easily in a stock location, I thought it would be best to build the bed off of it to not fuck with the frame in a permanent way.

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Here it is, with the box wire-wheeled and painted, bed installed with some 1/8" aluminum diamondplate I had lying around, and a solid fucking piece of 3" x 2" x 1/4" steel as my rear bumper that is ready to see if it can make it to the firewall of any tailgater willing to play a game of break-check. Also, some cheap, LED tractor light as my tail-lights.

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Hold My Beer & Watch This

My Truck Stays Broken
Joined
Oct 3, 2018
Messages
935
Age
38
Location
Fontucky and Kentucky
Somewhere in the timeline of making the bed and before installing the rear leafs, I found a used set of sliders that were cut off another truck. It was not the cleanest fit, but I made it work and welded them on. I also had the 3rds built with the ARB's and geared to 5.29. After this, it was ready to wheel.

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Hold My Beer & Watch This

My Truck Stays Broken
Joined
Oct 3, 2018
Messages
935
Age
38
Location
Fontucky and Kentucky
I was able to make out to JV on Thanksgiving weekend when I finally got it running ok and meet up with some of the TW regulars for the first time. For those who were there, they might remember my grand entrance when the truck rolled off the trailer and damn near took out the camp down hill from us. No parking brake on this truck.

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