From Near Disaster to No Problem: The LIFE SAVING Overlander Mod You MUST Have!

➡ The author recounts exceeding a decade of traveling and recording diverse American landscapes while modifying a Toyota truck, which he lived out of, into an “absolute monster”. He transitions from the “Green Monster” to a new Toyota Forerunner, detailing numerous modifications and upgrades conducted himself, emphasizing the vital role of upgraded brakes in averting a potential fatal highway accident.
➡ After a near-fatal traffic accident during a 90-day, 20,000-mile trip, the speaker emphatically endorses investing in heavy-duty brakes for overland vehicles as a life-saving modification, hinting towards a walkaround video of their heavily modified four wheeler in the coming week.

That is crazy. I’m way down in the Upper Glades, as far as you can get in Florida. The birds down here are insane. But this guy over the last ten years, I have spent an inordinate amount of time behind the steering wheel of a Toyota truck. I have traveled from the East Coast to the West Coast, north to south, and everywhere in between, taking videotape of unique landscapes, beautiful skylines, mountain ranges all over the country.

I’ve spent a lot of time at the gas pumps. Driving a Toyota, especially a supercharged Toyota of any type, is going to cost you. And it has. I make up for these things by living out of the truck as much as I possibly can, and I find a lot of crazy locations. But one of the things I’m known for is taking a stock vehicle and turning it into an absolute monster.

And the reason I do that recently came into play big time. And to find out what that is, 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, SA it. But before we start this video, I’m going to ask you to hit that subscribe button as well as the little bell next to it. So you’re notified of all new videos.

Buckle up. Here we go. So before I show you the modification in the new vehicle, which I put it on, let me show you the truck that actually spent seven years on this channel making itself known. It was called the Green Monster. My ex girlfriend named it after the baseball field of the Boston Red Sox. From where I hail, this truck had been all over the United States, every which way you can possibly imagine, 260,000 miles.

I ended up putting a new engine in it. I changed this truck’s suspension I don’t know how many times, and this truck has been absolutely everywhere. And after driving the truck so extensively in all different terrains, all different temperatures, altitudes, et cetera, I made modifications that applied to how I was using the vehicle. If I made the truck bigger and heavier, I made more horsepower, I gave it more braking, I gave it more suspension, et cetera.

Because of all the rock crawling, et cetera. The truck was heavily armored, and that played out very well because more than once I tipped the truck on its side and my armor saved me, except for a driver’s mirror. But as the years kept passing by, I noticed that offroading videos didn’t really do much. People didn’t really care too much, and the truck was a 97. As many modifications that I could possibly do to the vehicle, it still wasn’t comfortable.

You still couldn’t hit cruise control with the air conditioning on and just roll the hundreds and thousands of miles that I was clocking. So it was time to let go of the Green Monster. Even though she did her job. Well, I sold it for half what it was worth because I didn’t want to be that guy that helped raise the prices of old Land Cruisers because that just sucks.

But now I had to find the new vehicle. And as life would have it, I was driving a Toyota Forerunner rental car while the Land Cruiser was getting a new transmission put in it. And that kind of sealed the deal. But how do you go from the Green monster to something completely new? The Green Monster had a cult following. How do you make the transition? Well, the only thought in my mind was if you’re going to go from a solid front axle to an independent front suspension soccer mom car, you better build it into the absolute ultimate Toyota Forerunner and you’re going to have to come up with a name for it.

So that’s what I did. Okay, this montage right here was just to quickly show you how many modifications I’ve done to this Forerunner. I’ve literally done every single solitary modification. Sometimes once, twice, or thrice because I discovered they didn’t actually work out when I was on the road, et cetera. But here’s the story. There is only one other Forerunner that is still independent front suspension that I know of that is equal to this truck.

And it belongs to a budy of mine. And I’ll be doing an extensive walk around video of not only his truck next week, but the final build on my truck the week after. So it is coming. But I just wanted to lay this all out so you could see how much time, energy and effort I put into this vehicle. And I did it all myself. And I did it all myself in a driveway in the wintertime in Boston without a garage.

And FYI, I’m not a mechanic. Never was one. But owning a 97 Land Cruiser for almost ten years, you tend to pick up a few things if you’re smart. JMO so let’s get down to the point of this video. After locating a 2019 Forerunner TRD Pro, I wanted one with no miles on it, which I found 2019. I wanted one without the key fob because I wanted to be able to open it with a key.

And I wanted one with an actual shifter for the transfer case. That’s why 2019. But the original weight of this vehicle was 47 50. Well, with all the modifications that I did, including armor skid plates, supercharger 37 inch tires, long travel dana 60 in the rear, dual transfer cases, all the overland gear, the rack, the Alucab, et cetera, et cetera, the weight of this truck went up exponentially.

Almost 33% from what the factory set it at. So one of the biggest modifications that I really, really wasn’t too sure about was installing brakes. And I went with power brakes for the front. And if you know anything about power brakes, they’re expensive. But when I did the front brakes. I didn’t want to leave the rear brakes alone. So I also put power stops, not power brake, but power stops in the rear rotors, et cetera.

Now, after finally driving the truck completely loaded down, I started to think, there’s nothing to these power brakes. This is just a gimmick, these are fancy looking machined anodized, blah, blah, blah. But all that changed three days ago, big time. So let me lay this out real quick. My suspension is all king triple bypasses, triple bypass coilovers in the front and in the rear. So it’s very, very pliable.

And I hadn’t really noticed much about the brakes, except that if I hit the brakes really hard, like at a stoplight that I didn’t see changing or et cetera, it would nosedive. But not I mean, not brutally, it would nosedive proportionately. So I did notice that there was some value to these brakes over the factory brakes. Plus with the extra weight from 47 to about 7000 pounds is substantial.

So they did have their merits. But I did not realize it till I was driving through the Mojave Desert. I had just left Calico Caverns, and I was actually heading to Oleg or Sandy Cat’s house to pick up some parts that I had shipped there a while ago. And on my way back, I’m driving in traffic and I’m behind an 18 wheeler. And we’re about to go up, up in altitude, and I want to catch up to the speed, which is, I think, 70.

Made the stupidest mistake ever because I’m from Boston, we don’t have freeways, we have highways. I pass him on the right hand side, figuring I’ll just go by him and continue on my way. But what I didn’t realize is the lane that I jumped into, not only was it a stupid move, but the lane merged. So I’m trapped next to an 18 wheeler. I’m doing 75 miles an hour trying to pass him, and I’m running into a guardrail.

The 18 wheeler doesn’t see me, and that’s all my fault, but I absolutely have no place to go. I have 37 inch tires, I have a long travel suspension in the front, so my front end sticks out four inches. And I align the front end of my truck, literally with jack stands, string and a tape measure. And I literally just had brand new 37 inch Km three S put on a couple of weeks ago in Morrow Bay, California.

I slammed on those brakes and I was absolutely expecting to crash. There’s no two ways about it. I have no place to go. I’m in a funnel, there’s no more road, the 18 wheeler doesn’t see me. And somehow, in the distance of an 18 wheeler, whatever the length of the 18 wheeler was, the truck stopped perfectly. It didn’t lock them up. It came to a stop, the truck nosedived a little bit, but it stayed perfectly straight and true.

There is no way in the world I should have made it out of there. And if I didn’t have power brakes on the truck, I wouldn’t have made it. The truck would have been at least been totaled. All airbags would have been deployed, or I would have got killed. I have no idea how it would have turned out, but it was such a bad event. After being on the road for 90 something days, putting on, I believe, 20,000 miles, this is the worst I’ve ever come close to ending up a fatality and a traffic accident.

And because of those power stops, no affiliation, no sponsorship, those things literally saved my life. So if you’re going to build yourself an overland vehicle and throw on front bumpers, rear bumpers, superchargers skid plates, bigger tires, mess with the geometry of the truck and everything else, you must invest in heavy duty brakes. And from my point of view, if you’re going to do the fronts, you might as well do the backs as well.

I just can’t leave well enough alone. But I’ll tell you what, that one modification, without a doubt, saved my life. And I do have a dash cam, and it’s an owl cam. And for whatever reason, I can’t upload the footage, which sucks, because I would love to see my face because I was scared. And I mean, the truck did it all on its own. It stopped beautifully and I was able to carry on.

So that is my story. Next week, there’ll be a walk around video of Sandy Cat’s ultimate four wheel drive forerunner. And then right behind that will be the last installment. So you can see all the modifications that I did to my truck. At any rate, if you enjoyed this video, hit that like share and subscribe and definitely leave a comment below and I will return the favor. I am out.

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