When looking for front suspension, I wanted something that would be a little more out of the norm. I looked at Total Chaos and Camburg suspension and it all looked great but I wanted something more. When I was building the truck, ESB fabrications was in full force and producing a lot of suspension kits. I placed an order with them and received my long travel kit after a few months (which was normal, everybody wanted them).

After bashing on the front kit for a while, and being very happy with it, I decided that there were some weak links that needed to addressed. There were 2 issues that I felt were most important. First was obviously the spindle, I knew that even with that small gusset, it was by no means a race spindle. Second, was to solid mount the lower control arm and use heims as mounting points for the upper arm. This would enable me to have a more rigid suspension set up along with not having to mess with my alignment as much since there would be no more alignment cams to move around while bashing on the truck. The following picture shows you the heimed upper control arms.

A friend of mine who I race with also has a Tacoma race truck. He had broken his stock spindle at a previous race even though it had some gussets. We both took on the task of building new spindles for our trucks, something that we have never done before.

It ended up coming out great. After a lot of thought and preparation, we were able to make it happen. Here is a picture of the final product.

I can go on for a while about what it took to build this spindle, but I’ll go over the few things that I feel highlight the build of this spindle.

First, we used a bolt on snout from a 4×4 straight axle Toyota pickup. We chose this setup because it has decent sized bearings where we are also able to use Timken brand bearings. Also, its made bolt on so that if we ever have any problems, we can put a new snout on, which I have had to do once already.

We contemplated the idea of having a single bolt go through the entire spindle or the use of two. After looking at other setups on trophy trucks and prerunners, we decided two bolts would be a better set up. We did something similar to what you would see on trophy trucks.

For the upright, we used a solid piece of 1.5″ chromoly round stock. We drilled out 3/4″ holes to a certain depth for our control arm to spindle bolts. We then notched out a square opening for our nut to slip in for our spindle bolts. This allowed us to use F-911 bolts that were around 5 to 6 inches long compared to trying to find a high grade strength bolt that was over 20″ long. It proved to be successful.

For the steering, we mounted the heim so that when the suspension cycles, it would rotate in a vertical axis. This way, the heim would not be able to bind and we felt there would be less wear and tear on the heim since it would be rotating around the bolt.

To go back to the mounting points, at the top of the spindle we machined out some material to let the misalign sit in the spindle as opposed to resting on the top. This will help hold the misalign and try to prevent shearing the bolt if it was possible. At the bottom of the spindle, it is double sheared.

In the process of building this spindle, we were able to eliminate a lot of bump steer. At the same time, the remaining bump steer that we had, we were able to eliminate most of it during usable travel. Most of our bump steer is at full droop so this helps eliminate any bump steer we may feel in the steering wheel since at full droop, the tires are not digging into the ground so hard.

Here are a few other highlights of the front suspension.

• Bump stop hits at the top of the spindle.
• King 2.5″ triple bypass shock and 2.5″ coilover per side.
• Cycles 15.5″ of travel after being bumped and strapped.

Overall, I’m very happy with where the suspension is at right now. Of course, valving is always something that needs to be dealt with for this truck, but besides that, everything is where I want it to be. In the near future, I will be double shearing the upper control arm bolt on each side to help add support to that bolt.

As far as the engine cage goes, this was one of the first I ever built. There are a few things that I would change next time around but overall, I’m happy with how it turned out. It’s easy to change out motors if necessary. I have two removable cross-members that make it very easy to do motor swaps.

I upgraded the radiator with a radiator that was smaller in dimension (so that it wouldn’t sit so low) but thicker and all aluminum compared to the stock one. I have had zero cooling problems with this truck related to the radiator. I know there are some people that have had very bad experiences putting any radiator other than stock in these trucks. I have not had any problems thus far.

Here are a few pictures of the engine cage.

In the next blog, I’ll go back to the inside of the truck. There, I’ll show how we set up the dash and what the interior components consist of.

The next step on the truck was reinforcing the frame in the rear and installing the 62″ Deaver leaf spring pack. First, I needed to plate the inside of the frame to add strength and rigidity. This also helps reduce frame flex when mounting the shackle pivots on the frame.

This picture depicts a few things that we had to do to install the Deaver leaf springs. First, you can see the frame plating that we did. The plate we used is the same thickness as the frame. Also, in this picture, you can see that the shackle mounts are mounted in the frame, along with the use of a 9″ shackle and the F-55 Deaver leaf spring pack. As I found out, this setup is not ideal for a race truck.

I had originally wanted my truck to sit as low as possible while still having a good amount of wheel travel. As I found out, it just did not work how I wanted it to. It actually sat lower than stock after it was all put together.

I went through 3 different shackle mounts before finally getting it right. Here is a picture to show you what our set up is now. You can also see where the previous shackle mounts were as well.

We thought moving the shackle mount back in the frame would make the springs work more as opposed to the shackle doing most of the movement. It helped a little bit but at the same time, we had swapped out from an F-55 pack to an F-67 pack which helped out tremendously. In the end, we ended up going with a 12″ shackle mounted on the top of the frame with the H-70 62″ Deaver Race pack. If you call Deaver, they’ll tell you that they don’t make the H-70 pack anymore. In a way, its true. They basically took that pack out of production and consider it a custom leaf spring pack now, hence the high price tag on the leaf pack.

I’ll give a quick break-down of how to install the leaf springs.

First you want to break down the leaf pack to the main leaf and bolt it to the axle. Next, you have to compress the rear end up to the frame to show where it will bump out on the frame. You can try to center the axle in the wheel well and at that point, you can tack the front leaf spring mount to the frame.

At this point, you can figure out where your shackle mount will be. I learned that you want your shackle to be at around 90 degrees from the frame when its fully drooped. This equals out to about 52.5″ from front spring hanger mount to shackle mount when measuring from bolt head to bolt head.

Here you can see the leaf spring pack fully drooped. You can also see that our shackle mount is not correct since its not fully at a 90 degree angle compared to the frame.

This is also a good time to figure out your upper shock mounting points. You can do this by securing a sheet of wood against the frame. Next, you’ll bolt your shocks to your axle and use your shocks as a compass and make marks against the wood board through the upper shock mount. You’ll do this with the suspension fully compressed and fully drooped. Those two lines will intersect at one point and allow you to know where your upper shock mount should be. You can see the plank of wood that we used in the first photo in this blog.

We also added some plate to the front spring hanger mount just for peace of mind. It’s a pretty crude gusset but it gives me peace of mind in case that hanger would ever want to rip off.

Next we moved on to making the bedcage. Here are a few pictures as we made some progress. Overall, this bedcage has gone through about 3 or 4 tear downs and I’m pretty happy with the latest set up. I don’t expect to make any major changes from where it sits now.

Here is how the bedcage turned out after everything was done. It obviously was not a race truck with the stock gas tank and permanently mounted cooler, but it sure did come in handy for those hot days out in the desert.

Here are some pictures of the changes we made on the bedcage through the build-up of this truck.

Shocks mounted on the outside of the frame rail.

Here’s a few pictures of the bedcage being torn down again.

Here are the latest pictures of the bedcage. It’s still a little dirty from the last race.

In the next blog, I’ll go over the engine cage and front end of the truck. The front suspension has gone through quite a few changes as well. Mostly changes for strength and handling.

When I began this build, I was doing much of my learning along the way.  I had never caged a vehicle, in fact, the only type of fabrication I did before attempting this was a few prerunner bumpers on friends trucks here and there.  In all honesty, I was probably not 100% prepared to take on this task, however, I was determined to do so.

I did a lot of reading and research before I began caging the truck.  All in all, the welding may not have been the best, but unknown to me, this truck was going to go through two rollovers with this cage.  After each roll, nobody was ever hurt and only cosmetic damage resulted.  The cage never bent or even dented and so with that, I know the design was at least done right.

I spent a lot of time working on this cage.  Firstly, I was new to this so it took time no matter how fast I tried to be.  I would recommend taking your time on these types of projects anyways.   Second, I wanted to make sure I did things right and so I made sure I had a plan and stuck to it.

Here are a few pictures of mocking up the cage in the truck.  In the process, many tubes were scrapped to make sure the fitment was correct.

I found it easy to use ratchet straps to help hold the tubes in place before tacking them to make sure I was able to get all the tubes in the right way.  It was similar to putting a puzzle together since you had to make sure you put certain tubes in first before others to fit right.

I began welding the tubes together once everything was correctly in place.  I was also able to drop down the cage so that I could get 360 degree welds on almost every tube.

After dropping the cage, I was able to position the cage in its final position and weld it in.  Here are the rest of the pictures of the cage after it was correctly positioned.

In the next blog, I will go over the many changes that took place for the bedcage.  It took several setups in the rear for me to find what worked best.  I’ll go into a little more detail about why one set up worked better than the other.

This truck was purchased in September of 2000. I had an accident offroading my previous Tacoma and vowed to never offroad again. Was I so wrong! I purchased this truck with 140,000 miles on it. It’s a 1995 Toyota Tacoma, 4×4, 3.4l v6, manual tranny.

Not too long later, I had already begun taking the truck to local offroad spots, hitting up any pond of mud or dirt I could find. Well, after beating the truck for so long, it was only a matter of time before I had some type of carnage.

After destroying my front end, I decided that the cheapest way to get the truck looking half way decent was to slap on some Glassworks Unlimited fiberglass fenders.

Here are some pictures of the truck after its reconstruction from this small accident. I also installed a Swayaway Racerunner coilover lift as well.

After a few years of abuse, the motor got tired on me and I blew a head gasket. I basically drove the motor to the ground till it couldn’t go anymore. At this point, I had a decision to make. Should I get rid of the truck and buy a new car, or dump all that money into this truck and make it into the truck I’ve always dreamed of having.

I decided long travel front and back would be the way to go, however, I never planned on fully caging it at this point. Withe the persuasion of a few friends of mine, I realized caging it would be a smart thing to do and, heck, why not?? I had the tools to do it.

I began a tear down of the truck. Here is how it stood before being hacked in the garage.

In the next blog, I’ll begin showing the steps in which this truck was built from the ground up. Luckily, I was smart enough to take pictures as I did the build so I’ll be able to somewhat give everybody a view of the build up of this truck. Stay tuned for more updates. I’ll most likely be very general with the “update story” blogs so if there is anything you’d like me to try to go into more detail with, please let me know and I’ll make sure to address those requests.