5Th. Gen Versus Land Cruiser Pt.2 Inviting Subbs to go Off-road Versus our Rigs!

➡ The text details the person’s experience with outfitting their Toyota Forerunner with an RCLT kit, alongside other custom features like lights and skid plates. After some hurdles with suppliers and service providers, the person was successful in fitting the car with enhanced equipment and voiced appreciation for Marlin Crawler for their assistance. The aptly named ‘part two’ mixes outlines of the project’s additions with opinions on safety and product recommendations.
➡ The speaker recounts their own experiences with a self-built dual suspension in their vehicle using Marlin Crawler’s kit. Despite it not originally supporting a dual shock setup, the speaker managed to devise their own system with some welding. Some shortcomings of the design were mentioned, particularly with the RCV axle and continuous issues with boot ripping in RCV axles. This led the speaker to switch to CVJ axles for regular use, only using the RCVs for tougher trails, such as the Rubicon. However, despite the problems with the RCV axles, the speaker praised the RCLT kit for its robustness and contribution to optimizing steering geometry.
➡ The speaker stresses the importance of understanding and working on your own off-road vehicles, recounting an instance where a loose bolt issue was self-diagnosed and fixed. He also discusses his preference for beadlocks and Toyos over Coopers tires due to balancing issues, and elaborates on the detailed adjustments he made to the suspension of his rig, including installation of a 3.0 rad flow triple bypass and a Dana 60 axle, to accommodate for weight and improve vehicle performance during off-road ventures.
➡ The speaker discusses their experience and satisfaction with their customized vehicle, highlighting changes they made like adding a Dana 60, airbags, and a long-range tank. They express dissatisfaction with overland shops and prefer to meticulously undertake vehicle adjustments themselves. Despite enjoying the final outcome, the speaker doesn’t plan on selling the vehicle or starting a customizing business due to the extensive time and effort necessary for each project.
➡ The individual discusses their strategic decision to alternate between 37-inch and 35-inch tires for their vehicle, depending on the difficulty of the trips, to optimize gas mileage. They also reference their admiration for Sherpa Motorsports and admit to gaining inspiration from their designs for their own modifications, like a secondary, lower piece for fitting the 35-inch tires.

Here we go. Part two. The ultimate fifth gen Toyota forerunner. Walk around. Part two. You’re going to want to sit back. You’re going to want to relax. And you’re going to want to check this out. So, from part one. I’ve already seen the comment section. And a lot of people are very upset. That I would say that a forerunner could beat out a Land cruiser. Well, here’s the deal, January.

We’re going to take one subscriber. One from Sandy cats. And one from jailbreak in your 80 series to Arizona with us. To prove in real time. That this forerunner will beat a Land cruiser with a similar build. 37 inch tires, three inch lift, supercharged, et cetera. But for now, on to part two. So, the front end. I mean, this is c four front bumper. I love it. I just like the look of it.

But it also holds a lot of lights. I added a custom bracket that got welded on. So I could hold more lights over there. You’ll see, like, a little scratch on this area. I actually used this section to slide off a rock once. And it worked. So this bumper is solid as hell. I have a smitty built. I believe it’s called x two or x 20 or something.

80 00, 10,000. That’s a 12,000 pound, is it? No shit. It’s a heavy truck. I have the winch. It has never failed on me. So I love it. I run all three of my trucks. It’s, like $500 on Amazon or something. And the only thing I really do when I’m really big on. Is I will cut off all the steel. And I’ll splice it back myself. Just using a pen.

Not hard. And therefore, everything is soft. So I use this with soft shackles and soft attachments. So when, God forbid, something breaks one time. You don’t have something flying in your windshield. So I do recommend everybody does this. And I kind of just tuck it in, put it on the clutch. And the reason why is because if I do it like this and I hit a rock. I don’t want to slice it.

You don’t want to slice it? Yes. Right? I mean, you’re big into. What’s the proper terminology? So, synthetic recovery gear. And you literally have yours made to your specifications. And you import and you’ve done the torture tests. This stuff’s worked out really well. And I’ve seen these things fail, too. Because I did so much testing on other products. That I’ve seen them fail. And I’ve seen how synthetic gear fails.

As long as you don’t have any metal attachments. In general, it’s fairly safe. If there’s even a little metal hook on this, that hook is just going to fly. Right? And we all recently saw that guy out in Colorado trying tow somebody or whatever he was doing. He took his own head off and died. It’s a thing. So you just have to be smart about what you’re doing.

And then I have RCI skid plates all around steel for me. Skid plates. I can’t say anything good or bad about it. I’m going to link. You did a video where you tested the durability real world. You didn’t do it with a hammer. You went to the rocks, you high centered your truck, and you tried to defeat the skid plates. So I’m going to post a link in this video to your video because that was a hell of a test.

I bought like over $1,000 of aluminum skid plates in one day. I ruined them so much, I couldn’t even put them back on. If you’re going to put steel, I mean, you need steel skid plates if you’re going to wheel. Aluminum is crap. It’s just a waste of money in my opinion. Unless you’re doing fire roads only and honestly, putting steel on the bottom and making yourself lower center of gravity versus putting 500 pound rooftop tents up top.

And no way down here you’re going to be more, way more. Totally agree, man. Totally agree. There is one. You should probably take a picture. The template. That kid, the ukrainian kid from stellar built me that piece for the second transfer case. You’re going to need that. I’m going to be putting that. It ties right into the ici. I do plan on doing that as well once I put the top.

That kid was a killer kid. So, yeah, then I have a bunch of Baja design lights. Are those all separately switched? They’re all separately. I mean, two separately switched. Right? I’ll tell you, the XL pros I love, they’re super bright. These are street legal. These are the same thing that aren’t street legal. So if I’m ever having to use this on a very dark, dark road. But I still have a street legal button if you get my gist.

And then this goes on the side. So it works like that. When I’m in canyons, I don’t like yellow light otherwise. I love yellow light. In canyons, I like wide light, so I put better. Yeah, I ran into that in Moab as well. I agree with you. Yellow lights make it glow. It’s a weird color. You can’t see depth. It’s bad. Yeah, and it gets a little scary.

But then after I left here last year, I had regular rigid ditch lights and ran into a storm, and I couldn’t see every one of my lights. All the lights were simply making the snow worse. So I swapped over to the XL Pros for my ditch lights and I’m good to go. Yeah, I’m happy with them. So, yeah, that’s pretty much it. I also have a bunch of lights in the back, too, which we can cover, but I don’t know.

You want to talk about the RCLT because you were one of the first people to successfully put this in and you did this yourself. There’s a backstory on the RCLT kit. I think I was one of the first people that ordered it, if not the first person. I mean, when they announced it’s going live, I was on their website, ready to press the button, and I pressed the button.

The second it went live, I was the first person that ordered it. And then this went to a shop, and there were just a lot of complications. Some of the complications, a lot of them were RCLT kit complications on their end, their fault. So the front end, I have the RCLT kit. So when they just came out, I was really stoked about getting it. There was another guy out there.

I forgot his name, Wyatt. He was supposed to do the whole install for me. Another problem with shops. I forgot something, toys, offroad toys or something. And I gave him, I think, like a $6,000 deposit to get a taco box installed. Our CLT kit installed, a whole lot of work done. And then he disappeared on me with my money. Then I went in the forums and it seems like he disappeared on everybody, and he just took everybody’s money and ran.

Luckily, I paid with Amex, so I got my money back. But that was another bad time with a shop. And he was big, and he was big. And honestly, at the time, he was doing all of Marlon Kroller’s installs in Southern California. So anyways, that happened, I couldn’t get the RCL ticket from him now because he promised he’d get me like three months early or something. So I just.

The second they went live on the website, I bought the RCL ticket. I was the first one that had it. I had it scheduled for an install at RPM garage. And when we got the kit, we had a lot of problems. It was supposed to be on the rack for a week. It was there for a month. Plus, I don’t want to throw blame around on anybody, but honestly, I was the first one installing it or having a shop do the install.

And there was just so many problems going on from the instructions. All that was resolved eventually. Marlin Crawler updated the instructions. I have a good rapport with them. We kind of figured out all the issues and fixed them all. And I can’t say anything bad about them, except I learned my lesson, right. If you’re going to be the first one using the first product, you’re going to go, how many times have I run into that? Try to be the first one because you got the time, you got the money.

Why not? Being the first one isn’t always the best thing. But in your case, it worked out and you worked with Marlin to improve it for everybody else. Yeah, it worked out. So that’s awesome. Marlin did that. Now that I got their taco box, I’m waiting. They’re going to install it for me. I’m super stoked with Marlin in general as far as that, but you just got to know what you’re getting into.

And I wasn’t ready for that. And that’s kind of what led to this whole project. Because when I got my RCLT kit, my rig on the RCLT kit, there was other problems going on the rig. And I’m like, I just got to do all this myself. I tore the kit apart myself again, and I rebuilt it the way I wanted it with dual shocks. Marlin Crawler doesn’t and has never really offered proper dual shock setup.

So I actually, you’ll see on video later, but I bought a welder. This is when I bought a welder. I never welded before in my life. And I basically had it cut into the arm and I boxed it. And that was my first welding. My first welding was installing my dual suspension. It was crazy, but it worked. And the reason why I have two sets of limiting straps here is because I didn’t trust my welds on one set.

At least you’re saying, how many of us have paid professional welders? And you’re like, maybe we should put another one on. It’s all good, you’re good. But I built it out perfectly. I’m super happy. I don’t know if anybody else, even to date, I’m pretty sure nobody else is running a dual suspension. That’s not a 2. 0 smoothie. So with the Marlin crawler kit, if you have a dual shocks and you put a 2.

5 triple bypass when you go up, you’re going to limit yourself, like right here. That’s where it’s going to stop. You’re going to hit the shock. And I was able to take me months to figure out, but I was able to make the geometry work that I can get. Maximum up travel, maximum up travel. And I get great down travel, too. I think I limited myself to eleven point 75 inches of down travel.

I can get more. I could squeeze out more of this if I really wanted to. My limiting is the rcv axle. And I wanted so much down travel that at one point, you don’t even know this. I literally tried to build my own kit to lower my pumpkin so I can get more down travel. And I spent like $600 in parts. I spent like, I don’t know, God knows how much time I spent trying to lower my entire pumpkin down by about an inch.

So I can get more down travel. Because then my cv angles will be better. Well, I’m happy with everything. I’ve just tested the Marlin crawler everywhere. I’m super stoked with it. I did learn something. Everybody says you want to have like four degrees plus of caster or whatever with this kit, at least you want to be like a 1. 5. You want to actually push your tire back a little bit.

Because what Marlin does is they move the entire axle two inches forward. And by moving the entire axle two inches forward, you get a lot more clearance in the rear. And you make the Land Cruiser 200 rack work perfectly. I’ve tested this at my wife’s foreigner. I have a better steering radius than my wife’s foreigner stock foreigner. And you’ve got the Land Cruiser 200 in. Cruiser 200. Because I’ve got the tundra.

Because the Land Cruiser didn’t work in mine. Yes, but the reason why it works in this is because they pushed the axle two inches forward, in essence. So they figured the geometry out. They put the 200 rack in when I was still stock. Vehicle width didn’t go long travel yet. 200 doesn’t work with stock. You’ve got to be long travel. Yes. Then three weeks later, they put long travel in.

And then I had the tundra rack anyways, which I’m pretty happy with. But solo motorsports makes some cool stuff. Yeah. So I’m super stoked. Everything is great. Except for the rcv axles. To be honest with you, I’m in the same boat, dude. I can’t believe that I have to really pull my axles out again. Because the boots ripped. I’m an expert axle rebuilder and I never wanted to be one.

I could now pull my axle out. You could tie me, I promise, 15 minutes is what it takes me now to pull my axle out because I pulled it out 100 times. These boots rip like crazy all the time. Everybody’s having these issues, it seems like. And we even went to the step of going to Australia, not physically going there, but we got the boots every single size that they had.

And I just really wanted to use my $400 orange rcv boots one more time. And it’s still. I mean, when stellar built put them on, they tore every one of them on installation. I didn’t notice that. You actually did when I did it. If you’re careful, you can put them on because no big deal. But then it still tore wide open. And usually I would know I have an issue because it’s throwing grease.

I didn’t see any grease, but now I got a click in front axle, which really sucks. I’m starting to think that maybe rcvs aren’t the way to go, which bums me out to say. So I even went to the point where the front, the outer boots, I was able to get, I believe, from a tundra second gen or like a 2021 tundra. I was able to make the factory boot fit on this.

And I put that on and it didn’t work either, because the angles, so nothing seems to be working. I just ran the Rubicon finally. This is the first time that I did a trail and my front orange boots didn’t rip. And my inner boot is shooting grease. So I love my RCV axles because they’re solid. They give me a lot of confidence. But I got CVJ axles. Sherpa Motorsports runs them.

They don’t have any issues. And CVJ axles basically use Toyota, the Toyota factory parts, and they just extend the tube. And I’m throwing those in next week in here. And from now on, I’m just going to be running CVJ axles for almost everything. And I’m just going to throw the rcvs in when I go do super hard trails like the Rubicon. That makes sense. But it really does suck because I’ve given rcv performance a lot of money over the years and it’s constantly a problem.

I agree, but it’s because of your angles and this and that. Well, my pumpkin’s dropped as much as it can go. I’ve got long travel, so it’s not an extreme angle. It’s tapered out a bit. And I haven’t even gone off road this time around. And I could tell you it’s not the angles because initially, when I dialed the suspension in, I made it. So I went about a quarter inch above where it starts to click right.

And that was about twelve plus inches of down travel. I believe right now I went an inch above that. I have no clicking. And I could go lower with no clicking because I limited my down travel already by an extra inch just to try to save these boots. And that doesn’t even help. Wow. So I don’t know what the issue is, but I don’t want any more gray hair.

Me either. I’m getting sick of shaving my head. But I mean, I’m trying to be loyal to certain places. Rcvs, I ran them in my 80. I ran them in my forerunner. I’ve only had the forerunner for 100,000 miles. And I’ve already put three sets of rcvs. And every single one of them was the exact same issue. Stock height lifted, long travel right now. So, I mean, I’m not stressing out about it anymore.

For me, my head sucks. Rock crawler axle shaft. And then I have my daily driver axle shaft. That’s how I look at it now. From that perspective, it works for me. It’s cool. I’m doing the same thing. Let me be peaceful in my mind. It’s all good, man. But it’s amazing. It’s an amazing setup you did here. I had never seen the RCLT installed until I met you.

But I had already asked about it because I was already putting a taco box in my truck. So if I’m going to Marlin Crawler for the second transfer case and Stellarbilt told me not to go with Marlin Crawler, they told me to go with total chaos, which is a nice setup, but it just isn’t as heavy duty as this. It’s not. And I feel like what the RCLT kit, really, most people don’t see is I don’t look at it like a hardcore heavy duty long travel kit.

I look at it like the perfect fix of the geometry for the steering. Exactly. Well, two things. I don’t know how much total chaos has invested in the angle and where everything should be sitting, but I know Milan Crawler. And you can see it. You can see it from here. You know what I mean? But I’m not going to complain. I already put two complete front ends in that truck.

Total chaos. King shocks. But the longer I look at the RCLT, you know what’s going to happen every time I leave here. All right, well, it’s a beautiful setup, man. Based on your recommendation, I also double sheared my upper control arm setup. I saw that. Well, that was the ukrainian kid, Vadim. He did that all himself. He made it himself. It was a beautiful setup. I even told him to put his initials in there.

I will tell you one story, though. When I was on the Idaho BDR, probably day three or four, I lost all my power steering, food. It all just came out on the trail. And I’m like, damn, I’m screwed. I didn’t know what it was, and I thought I was screwed. I had to get Stalin because I had no service. The closest gas station was 60 off road miles away.

And I’m like, damn. I don’t know what to do. Because I started working on my own rigs. And I learned everything myself, you know, where everything. I figured it out. It was a loose bolt. It was completely my fault. One of the bolts for the fluid that connects to the rack, it was a little bit loose. I tightened it up. I didn’t have extra oil. I pulled my transfer case oil.

I took, like, basically a big slurpee cup. Filled that up with transfer case oil, poured it in. I didn’t even have to refill my transfer case because I have, like, 1012 liters in there. You and I are an exception. I keep saying that because it’s true. The beauty part, even if you could find a good shop. If you’re going to do three weeks on trails with no gas stations for miles and miles and miles.

Knowing where everything is, what everything does, and what it sounds like when it’s not running right. I’ve heard my caliper bolt loosening my brake caliper was coming off in the blue Ridge mountains. That would have been bad. I heard it. I pulled over. I saved it every time. So learning how to work in your rig is a huge 100%. If I wouldn’t have rebuilt this kit, even though I didn’t have to at the time, if I wouldn’t have rebuilt this kit, I would have never known that ATF is the same thing as power steering fluid, right.

And I would have never had that thought. I would have never realized that I have twelve liters in my transfer case or whatever my transmission or whatever. You need to work on your own rig. You go out for more than a weekend trip. You need to work on your own rig no matter what. And if you don’t have to work on your rig, watch people working on your rig for things that fail all the time.

Just so you have an idea how about that. Or just pay a mechanic to come with you, tag along, make friends, brother. It’s very funny that all my friends somehow have something to do with Toyotas, Toyota repair or the like, at any rate. All right, so that wraps that up. Yeah, you got 37s on. Thirty seven s. And you change those around all the time, right? Yes. You mean I rotate them? No, I mean from tire to tire.

You got a whole stack of tires behind you. I do have a stack of tires. This is not an automotive garage, FYI. I just want to put that in there. So, first of all, I’m a humongous fan of beadlocks. I’ve always had beadlocks on jeeps. And then when I got into toyotas, I’m like, why don’t you beadlocks? I took non beadlock rims, and I was popping just by going fast in the desert.

I was getting sand in the lip, and it was giving me slow leaks. And I realized, okay, I’m going back to beadlocks. So big, big fan of beadlocks. I have black rhino bead locks on these. They worked great to 35s. They suck for 37s. So now I have other bead locks that I’m putting in. They’re beautiful, by the way. And then with the tires. I’m a big fan of Coopers, and I have Coopers on all my rigs that have 34 inch tires and 35 inch tires.

And the reason why I was a big fan of Coopers wasn’t because of their capability. It was because of their capability to weight ratio. So, with independent front suspension and a stock steering rack, you really want to worry about your weight over here. Right? Right. So, Toyos, in my opinion, have always been and are the best, but they’re heavier. They were always about 1012 pounds per tire. Heavier for a 35 versus a Cooper.

So that’s why I went with Cooper’s. In reality, with this rig, I could handle the weight. Now, at the time when I was shopping for tires, I ended up getting Coopers because I couldn’t get toyos. They were sold out. And I ended up putting these 37 inch Coopers on. They work great on the rubicon. No complaints. I got to say, I’ve got a brand spanking, two weeks old set of km three s on my truck, 37s.

Yours just look so much. They just look so much better. Thank you. For ten years, I was a mud grappler guy. Is, like, going to, but I can’t balance them. That’s my issue with these tires. So even though they were good. I could not balance them. And on the machine, they actually balance, but I still get shakes. And I seen that multiple people with Coopers, and once they go to past 35s, go to bead locks, they can’t balance them.

Toyota just released their new tire. I think it’s called, like, the RT or something. And that solves the weight problem, and it still gives you all the same capabilities. So I’m going back Toyos. Cooper’s not going to like that. I’m sure they’ll address it. Now. There’s a chance. I don’t know. But I am going to go back Toyos. It’s what I wanted to start with originally, so that’s kind of the tire situation.

All right, so the rear suspension, this was like, I don’t know, months and months of work to try to figure out how to package this. So I got a 3. 0 rad flow triple bypass on this. And I did copy you. I got kings, but same. Go ahead. Yeah. And the reason why I wanted a 3. 0 is because of all the weight, man, that compression weight, the triple bypasses.

I’ll be straight up with you. First time I’ve ever had triple bypasses. Adjusting them is such a pain. It takes months, dude. Yes. And let me just throw this in for people that have never met Oleg or watched any of his really extensive videos. When someone else takes two months to dial something in, you take four. And dial it in for the size Coca Cola you have in your hand if you happen to be drinking a coke.

You love suspension. I do. Well, it shows. Go ahead. That’s all I wanted. So I hooped up here. And the reason why I hooped up here is because my biggest issue on the forerunners was how low the lower mount for the shock sat when I had the stock axle. This is a Dana 60, by the way. When I had a stock axle, I broke that mount twice. I also copied the Dana 60.

I knew about it when I got here. But once I saw it, I went straight from your house to east coast gear supply. So, yes, I stole both of this. So I cut the lower mount off. I raised the lower mount by about four inches, and therefore, I had to raise this by about four inches. And you could argue with me all day long. I promise you, I get maximum down travel until my upper control arm hits the gas tank.

And I do not plan on three linking this. And I kept my coils. I’m sitting on Dobinson seven forty nine s. I made a mistake because Richie told me to get the away. I didn’t listen, you got to say, every manufacturer says, this is the ticket. The 849s are the actual ticket. And he bought the a. Then I had to wait six months because they didn’t have anymore.

But I finally got them in yesterday, actually, and then had them powder coated and had them powder coated. That’s how you roll. I have airbags in here. We’ll discuss that in a second. But then I have the bump stops, the hydraulic bump stops, which I love because it lets me fine tune my adjustability. I had to get rid of my sway bar. Had no room for it anymore.

So I put an anti rock by tk one racing. And let me ask real quick. You didn’t have room for the sway bar because of the overlaying gas tank? No, because of this packaging. So the sway bar goes over here, but because of all this packaging, I couldn’t get the sway bar connections over here. My bad. My bad. Okay. All right. Because I don’t have limiter straps on my day in a 60, I got them up front.

Okay, my bad. So, yeah, I put the limiting straps just to save the shock so I don’t bottom out. Shock. I hear you. And for those that have never. A couple of us have four wheeled with Oleg. Oleg, four wheels. Like, he’s trying to keep up on the freeway. He does not mess about. The rest of us are crawling, and he is hauling. I mean, I bought a Toyota because I heard it goes fast in the.

So the anti rock for me, is like a love and hate relationship. I love it to death. It works great. It is a little bit noisy, though. That’s the one thing I don’t like about it. I’m joint noisy. Squeaky joint noisy. Gotcha. But it’s fine. I mean, it’s the best solution I found on the highway. I do feel a difference, but when I was on the Rubicon, that’s where I really saw a difference.

It really did perform. Just an anterox supposed to perform. So that’s pretty much it over here. Like I said, I’m sitting on a Dana 60 that’s five inches wider to match my front. I know we have different opinions of that one, but you’ve had several forerunner and 470 builds under your belt already, right? No, just my wife’s in the GX. GX 460. My bad. This was my first one, and I liked how it handled.

Once I put long travel, I was like, this is perfect. It tracks perfect. I didn’t see any advantage to doing the Dana 60 any wider. In hindsight, I would have gone wider. And they recommended it, as did you. It is what it is. I just went with what they told me because I don’t know either, honestly. This was new. It was more about the tracking. But anyways, I got the Dana 60 here and then I have airbags and then I have the long range America tank.

And let’s discuss that really fast. That’s the tank which is over there. It holds an extra 24 gallons of gas. And I fill everything up from one, like the factory fill location, it fills it to my factory tank and then it starts going to that tank. What we’re doing, we’re not building rock pros or desert bombers. We’re trying to do those things maybe a little slower with like Toyota.

Toyota wolf. Exactly. With like 2000, 3000 pounds of added weight where everybody tries to reduce their weight. We’re adding the weight and we’re still doing it. So I’m happy. I’m really happy with how this performs. The biggest thing for me here was packaging. There’s just very little room here, to be honest with you. And the biggest headache turned out to be my panhard bar, track bar, whatever you want to call it.

I had to box it and customize it like crazy. So when I have my full up travel and I stuff all the way, just so you know, he’s just throwing that in there. It actually doesn’t hit anything. That was a pain. But yeah, I also trimmed this. I cut this back a lot. I don’t know if you noticed. I saw that. Yeah. So I cut back over here to maximum stuffness where I felt, if any, maximum stuffness, though that’s a very technical term, you might want to look that up.

You’re not a builder, you’re not a mechanic. No, you’re just like me. You’re just doing this because you can’t find anybody else to do it. And pretty soon you’re doing this out of your garage for a couple of years and you’re getting invited to see mean. Yeah, that’s pretty cool. That is very cool. And the way you boxed in YouTube, baby, I learned everything on YouTube. Don’t believe everything you see on YouTube.

But if it makes sense, do it. But yeah, same thing. I never owned a fifth gen in my life. I knew nothing about. I never knew. I mean, you installed the supercharger. I’d be scared to do that one. No, it’s just a lot of steps. But the way you boxed in that panhard rod is beautiful, man. Yeah, I was very proud of that one I can tell you.

You are from the Ukraine. Your job is very detail oriented. I’ll leave it at that. Your job has nothing to do with hand tools and such. I’m a private investigator. Okay. It’s not my place to say, but you’re a private investigator. Big time. Big time. The amount of time, energy and effort. I was here for a while and I left and I came back and you were still dialing in your shots.

And it wasn’t like he works real slow and sits around drinking beers. You’re just meticulous. It’s amazing for me. Where do you get that from? I have no idea. Work ethic. I grew up in Brooklyn, man. In Brooklyn, you know how it is. Twelve years old, you’re working, you know what I mean? But the suspension, for me, it’s like I want to know that I’m getting 100% maximum use out of it.

So I am literally pulling my shocks out, I’m going up and down, cutting, putting them back in, I don’t know, 100 hours just to get. Just of measuring my travel, to get it dialed in 100%. It’s work. But I mean, I don’t know, I just want the best truck ever. There’s nothing wrong with that. And the sad thing is, especially since the pandemic hit, you mentioned around 2016, things started falling off.

People were getting so much overland work, it was, fuck you, pay us and wait. Well, I don’t mind doing that. And I just recently did that. You leave 30, $35,000 in a pile on someone’s desk and say, just do it, and I’ll even make a video. So not only am I paying you, but I’m promoting you, and you fuck it all up. I had to go home and do it all myself.

Are you ever going to do this? No. Okay. Because I’ve already been asked numerous times, Richie. I’m like, do you have $250,000? Because look what I built in my driveway. Imagine what I could build in a garage. I know, but honestly, I’ve had so many people reach out. I know you have. At least once a week, once a month, somebody reached out for a build. And the amount that I would have to charge you is insane, because my time is worth my money, right? But it is what people are paying for.

People are paying for it, but I’m paying a half a million dollars for 80 series. Fine, if you pay me half a million, I’ll build you one for half a million. But that’s the thing. I’m so meticulous that’s the problem, right? I mean, with these shops, they need to have rack space. Takes money, right? They have a car in a rack for three, four months. To do a build like this, that’s going to be an insane amount of money that most people probably aren’t even willing to pay.

And if they are willing to pay, I think these shops probably don’t even have that in their mind because they just want to go through fast because they want next customer shop that I took my truck to. If I had to generalize it in a sentence, they look amazing on Instagram, but they’re literally the jiffy lube of overland shops. I’m going to leave it at. And you saw the results as soon as I left there.

You were finding things like, hey, all your boots are ripped. And I’m like, that’s not possible. They were just put in a week ago. They’re brand new. You saw it. I am not exaggerating. And I got the videos to back it up at any rate. So you wouldn’t build these. Would you sell this truck? Not for another year. Okay, fair. A crazy offer in my opinion. It was a crazy offer.

Yeah, but it was a crazy offer. But you’ve got 180. Somebody offers you a quarter of a million, a quarter of a million for a fifth gen. But again, Toyota isn’t going to build this for you. They can’t. For me, it’s the amount of time and effort. And you know how it is, the amount of time and effort you put into your blood, sweat and tears into a truck like this, you spend a year plus probably two years building it like this.

I need to enjoy it. I don’t care how much. For me, I need to enjoy it for at least a year or two before I even consider selling. And I mean, you enjoy it, but the problem is, after my enjoyments, it’s probably going to be worthless. You took this on the three week trip, took this to the rubicon. No damage. No damage. Yeah. And you got a chance to test the titanium.

That’s awesome. That is awesome. It’s awesome to hear that. So what else we got here? I mean, that’s pretty much it for the rear. I don’t know if the creeks don’t rise and the good Lord’s willing, in the next few months I am going to have this exact setup. I do have the king triple bypasses in the rear. I do still have this factory sway bar and the Dana 60 Panhard because I don’t have the expedition tank.

But I do want to swap this out. Because the main difference between our two trucks. The way it stands now. Is your rear end set up for your shocks. Because I lost an inch of down travel. Going to triple. Did I tell you that? No, you didn’t. But that was what he said. That’s the only way we can give you triple bypasses. For the rear. With the mounts that you have now.

Is to take away an inch of down travel. And I said, then do it. Because my kings that were on there. One of them was blown out from the day I put it on. No, that makes sense. Yeah, this is tough. I guess the other thing I would say is, if you go this route and you put this in. The reason why I built it all. Is because this piece goes all the way up to here, dude.

Stops right here. Stops right here. See what I’m doing right now? I’m videotaping right now. I got this. I got this. I can reproduce this. But, I mean, dude, it’s a work of art. And then over here. So, just so you know, we’ll talk about my tires in a second. But I do plan on running 35 sometimes. And I already prethought all that. Why? For long trips, honestly, the Idaho BDR.

I should have done in 35s. Gas mileage and just ease of driving. It’s a little bit easier to drive. Yeah, but you can’t not run the 37s. Well, I’m going to Alaska. There’s no way I’m running 37s. Why burn so much gas mileage for a trip? No, I meant the three week trip. Because that was your first. Oh, no, of course. Yeah. But I want to say in the future, on these long expeditions.

That you could technically do in a fairly stock vehicle. I don’t need 37s. I’m going to be running thirty five s now and then on the harder trips, that’s when I throw on the 37s. That’s my mindset. Just to save gas. Because I have the ability to do so now. So, basically, I made this secondary piece over here. You see that? So this is like a little lower.

I do, I see. And I made it so I could literally just pop this out and bam. Good for 35s. That was all your idea. You didn’t steal that from anybody. No, I have not seen anybody do that. Both of us did. But you turned me onto it. You lean pretty heavy on the knowledge that Sherpa motorsports. Sherpa Motorsports. What a good setup those guys have. And they seem to really love doing what they do.

Yeah. So I studied a lot of what their build. Their build is more race specific. But I loved everything they did, including we’ll talk about the front end, including their axles. But yeah, I tried to steal everything I could from them as long as it was usable, right? It’s not like you’re reselling it. And I think their rear is very similar to this. I think I stole part of it from them.

I forgot about that. I’m pretty sure I stole from them. Thank you, Sherpa. Absolutely. All right. Is that it? Yeah, that’s it. All right, that wraps up part two. Part three will be out in another few days and then after that will be the final walk around of my truck. All the drama, all the blood, sweat and tears, et cetera. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you hit that.

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