➡ The video is about a man who transformed a 2019 TRD Pro 4Runner into a robust vehicle for an 18-month road trip across the United States. He customized the vehicle himself, adding modifications for durability and functionality, despite having no prior knowledge about 4Runners. However, he faced issues with a shop on the west coast that incorrectly installed five major modifications. The video is part of a five-part series detailing his adventures and the vehicle’s transformation.
➡ The text describes the extensive modifications made to a truck, including reinforcing the suspension, fitting larger tires, improving the transmission, and installing a supercharger for more power. The exhaust was upgraded for better performance and the interior was customized with GPS, a better stereo system, and a custom-made storage system. The truck was also equipped with a dual battery setup, solar panels, and a variety of lights for off-roading. The modifications were all done by the owner, emphasizing the importance of understanding how everything works in a customized vehicle.
➡ The author installed a Safari snorkel and gull wings on his Land Cruiser, which he also wanted on his Forerunner. He had some issues with the installation due to cold weather and the complexity of the task, but he managed to make it work. He then took his newly built truck on a trip to the west coast, where he encountered problems with a shop that did a poor job installing five separate things. Despite the issues, he continued his journey, only to find that his truck was leaking oil and making a lot of noise. He had to return to the shop multiple times to get the problems fixed, which took a lot of time and caused a lot of stress.
➡ The author had a negative experience with Stellar Built, a vehicle repair shop in Sacramento. Despite promoting the shop on social media and spending a lot of money there, he faced multiple issues with his truck’s repairs. The shop made several mistakes, including installing the wrong steering rack and failing to fix other problems. The author felt the shop was unprofessional and took advantage of him financially.
➡ The text is about the author’s frustrating experience with a car repair shop. The shop took a long time to make simple modifications to his truck, costing him extra time and money. A young mechanic named Vadim, who no longer works there, was the only one who did quality work. Despite the shop’s poor service, the author managed to get his truck modified and is satisfied with the result.
➡ The author had a bad experience with a vehicle repair shop, Stellar Built, which failed to properly install custom parts on his truck, causing it to break down. Despite promoting the shop on social media and spending a significant amount of money there, he was left with a faulty vehicle and a feeling of being wronged. He advises others to thoroughly research and talk to previous customers before choosing a repair shop. He also hints at having evidence of similar experiences from other customers of the same shop.

Foreign this video I’m going to show you how I lived out of a 4Runner for 18 months. But I’m also going to show you how I took a bone stock 2019 TRD Pro and tore it apart in my driveway with zero knowledge of 5th gen 4 runners and built it into an absolute unit. This was the truck two months after I got it. And the truck next to it is what it looked like when I first got it. This truck was incredibly capable and it’s been on every trail in the United States and it’s done remarkably well on all of them.

But this video also has two stages. Stage one is two months of me building it. Stage two was me taking it to the west coast and having a shop out there perform five modifications that I didn’t even know existed. And the problem is all five of these major modifications, they screwed up completely. And I was never going to say a word about this, but for some reason this shop can’t stop badmouthing me. So I have all the receipts and I’m going to present them. So stay tuned. I’m Sam. I’m Amy. We’re from California and this is Jailbreak.

Nice. Thank you, ladies. You’re welcome. So last week I finished up an 18 month road trip. And that road trip took me from the east coast all the way out to the west coast and from the Canadian border all the way down to the Mexican border. And I’ve been every place in between. And in that time I recorded everything because that’s what I do. I lived out of a 2019 4Runner for 18 months solid. And I spent a good majority of my time in that Alucab Truck Generation 3 rooftop tent you see on top of my truck.

And because I have so much footage and I was in so many different adventures, we’re gonna have to break this up into a five part series. So in this first part we’re going to focus on the actual build itself. So I started out with a 2019 4Runner. Well, not this one. More like this one actually. Exactly like this one. A 2019 TRD Pro. Now the reason I got a 4Runner instead of a GX470 or a Land Cruiser 100 series or even the Land Cruiser 200 series, I could have got whatever I wanted, but I wanted to be able to customize it quickly.

And the 4Runner has the 5th gen 4Runner has more aftermarket support than any vehicle I’ve ever seen. And that’s why I did what I did just to get that out of the way. Now, I could have got a brand new 4Runner, but I wanted the 2019 because the transfer case still had the shifter as opposed to the knob, and it still used the car key instead of the fob. Do you see what I did there? Did you catch that little rhyme? Yeah. I didn’t want a key fob because I didn’t want some kid coming along with a laptop and electric scooter making off with my truck.

You followed, and I got a TRD Pro. So I could basically remove everything that made it a TRD Pro and replace it with better parts, you know, because why not? And because this was my last build. I really had to make this 4Runner into a beast. I had to. And literally within six hours of owning it, I was already taking a grinder and a sawzall to the undercarriage, right off the rip. And because I knew that I was going to be alone in really remote places, often times I tore everything down, including the original wiring on the worn winch, and just made it better and waterproof.

Everything had to be. I made everything on this truck as bulletproof as humanly possible. And you got to remember, I’m used to driving a 97 supercharged Land Cruiser on 37 inch mud grapplers. So this truck had to be a beast, at least try. And because my idea of overlanding is slightly different than other overlanders, I had to make this truck as strong as possible. I didn’t want to destroy the thing, so I had to armor this thing up. And that’s exactly what I did. I went with serious armor and serious lights all the way around. So let’s start right there, I guess.

So right off the rip, I had to pull this plastic front bumper off before the rocks or trees did it for me. So I did. And then I hit up the boys at Metal Tech and they sent me over a front bumper incredibly fast. And I installed it. And I put rigid lights in it, and I put Baja design lights in it. And I also put a worn Xeon series winch in there that they told me wouldn’t fit. But with a little bit of grinding and welding, it all worked out. The only thing I hated with these flaps hanging under here.

So I ended up changing out the water reservoir for the windshield wipers, cutting everything back and making it look lovely. This was all within seven days of owning the truck. And on the eighth day, my skid plates from RCI showed up. So I got to it right off the bat and I ripped off that awesome TRD Pro skid plate. They give you that is junk. And replaced them. The RCI skid plates absolutely covered everything from the front bumper all the way back to the gas tank. So. And they went in fairly easy. They interlocked together and they were just a really good setup.

I like them. So now she was pretty well armored up. Up front. All lit up. I got recovery good to go. Gotta do some trimming. A little nip and tuck. But she’s good to go. And then I threw on the metal tech. Rock sliders on the side. I’m a big fan of metal tech. I’ve used them for years. But with all that armor in place, it was time to look at the ass end because she was looking a little vulnerable back there. And nobody wants their ass unprotected. Especially me. Cover your ass. Abbreviated Saya now the company C4 Fabrication makes a beautiful dual swing out rear bumper for the 5th gen Forerunner.

It’s phenomenal. But sadly it comes in well over a hundred pieces and absolutely bare metal. So you have to assemble it and paint it or have it powder coated. I decided to powder coat it just like this. I sprayed it all, each individual part because it’s modular and there’s a ton of parts. And then I cured it all exactly like you would. I didn’t want to build an oven so I made a makeshift oven. And that powder coat has held up since I did this back in 2022 I believe. 2022. 20, yeah. 2022 I think. Whatever.

It’s held up for at least two years so it can be done. And then I mounted the entire thing by myself in about an hour. And I’ve been at shops watching them mount the exact same bumper with like three of them. And it took all day. And I found that humorous. At any rate, I removed the factory rear bumper and then made adjustments. So then I set up this little rig right here in. Made sure everything was ready to go as far as the truck and then simply slid it right on. And it worked out like a champ.

Now there’s a lot of bolting. There’s a lot of work under the truck to make sure this thing is strong and secure, which it is. And then of course putting the swing outs on. And I gotta say these swing outs have held up unbelievably well in the last three years. 140000 miles. It’s been pretty astonishing. And after all that was on, I ran all the wirings from the S pod in the front of the truck to the rear because I’ve got two sets of rigids on the back of the truck as well as a transmission cooler underneath, etc, But I got it all done and I mean, I’m doing this fast, you can see the weather changing or not.

Because I knew I was going to add a lot of weight to the truck, almost, almost doubling the manufacturer’s weight. I went with power brakes in the front and I’m glad I did because they aren’t just hype, they aren’t just expensive. These things are a work of art and they absolutely saved my butt. These things stop the truck on a dime. No two ways about it, but being the way I am, kind of ocd. I also wanted to do the rear brakes, but power brake didn’t offer anything for the rear. So I went and found a company called Power stop and I installed their calipers and they worked pretty well.

But then they failed on the road, they just completely blew apart. So I replaced them again and I just ordered brand new factory 4Runner brakes for the rear. And on top of that, power brake just literally sent me new pads and new rotors that they came up with for the rear end. So those combined with factory calipers, I should be more than good to go foreign. So this is my fifth generation stage one suspension. This is the original suspension that I put in in my driveway. I knew nothing about long travel at the time and I was concerned that it was for off roading or Baja and I didn’t want it to affect my ride.

So I did. Total chaos. King coilovers, etc. I hated the tiny tie rod ends, but what are you gonna do? And the other thing that I hated was the incredibly weak little spindles. Well, I put reinforced spindles in and all was well. I replaced the tie rod ends because the truck was brand new anyway. So I took out brand new tie rod ends and put brand new tie rod ends back in. It’s just something that I do. It’s an OD, OCD thing and what can be done. So with the front end all squared away, I aligned the tires with string jack stands and a tape measure.

I turned my attention to the rear end because the front end was square but the rear end was lacking. So I put Dobinson heavy duty springs, upper control arms, lower control arms, all adjustable. And then of course I put the king shocks in. Bennett Filthy motorsports loves sending me king coilovers. Andy does it quite often. So if you ever need him, hit up Ben. He’s a. He’s the man. So with the front suspension, rear suspension, the brakes, the upper and control, upper and lower control Arms all squared away, beefed up, aligned, good to go. I was pretty happy.

And I was able to fit 35 inch tires on there, which is what I wanted to do. A little bit of rubbing here and there, but hey, if you ain’t rubbing, you ain’t racing, right? And because the truck was a lot heavier than it was designed for, I removed the transmission pan and I put in a much deeper, better quality unit. I scored this tranny pan from a company called PML your covers.com it was much deeper, it held almost another two quarts of fluid and it had fins on it for cooling. But because I had skid plates, it kind of negated that.

So I installed a derail hyper cool where my spare tire used to be. I ran the hoses down the frame rail and I wrapped them all in fireproof Kevlar and they’re secured to the frame so there’s no issues. So now let’s take a look under the hood. When I switched from my 97 Land Cruiser with its inline six cylinder and supercharger from TRD, I was hoping the V6 in the 4Runner would have a lot more power. And it did. But like my Land Cruiser, I was going to add a lot of weight, so I had to remedy that.

And in order to remedy that, I turned to Magnuson superchargers. Isn’t that sick? And because I already did a seven part video series step by step on how to install the Magnuson into a 5th gen Toyota with the V6 engine, I’m not going to get into it right here. But while I was installing the Magnuson, I also installed a CSF racing aluminum radiator. And I also put in a massive, massive windshield wiper reservoir from Expedition 1. It was well worth it. And I also had to move one of the emissions pumps, but other than that, smooth sailing.

So with the Magnuson forcing more air in, I wanted the truck to be able to get air out. So I upgraded the exhaust big time with the sickest bolt on kit you’ll ever see, made by Underdog Racing Development, who also produce superchargers, mind you. So I’ve already had two complete stainless steel custom exhausts made from my Land Cruiser and both of them failed almost immediately. This entirely bolt on kit has lasted over a hundred thousand miles with no problems and it works phenomenally well. And it’s incredibly well made, in my opinion. With a few slight modifications.

It took me less than probably six hours to install the entire thing. And it has a beautiful dual exhaust tip on the end that used to come out of the side of the truck. But you got to remember this is all stage one of the original build. So with all that out of the way, let’s jump inside the truck, the cabin, the cockpit, the interior. So the interior of my truck has been set up twice. I set it up with GPS. I installed a much better head system because Toyota’s 2019 stereo system absolutely sucked. Except for the speakers.

I’ve got 2s pods and I run a scan gauge 3 as well as an owl cam that records inside and outside. I also made sure I set everything up so my vision wasn’t blocked at all. Plus I did all the wiring, all of it, because I wanted to make sure it was exactly like factory or better. I crimped, soldered and water tighted every single solitary connection. Plus I wanted the ability to know where everything was if something failed or something went down. So it works out really well, you know what I mean? If you’re going to go off grid and you’re going to overland in a customized vehicle, it behooves you to know how everything works in the truck.

Do you see what I’m saying? This was my stage one setup right here. Scan gauge three, my S pod, my Sony from Trail Grid Pro. A great shop. And my transfer case, my shifter. And then this is the rear end of the truck. Custom made drawers that I built myself. These swing these come out on 4 foot 500 pound sliders. I’ve got all my electricity back here. My refrigerator and freezer. I’ve got a rack up top from Raggo Fabrication that works out really well because you can store a lot of stuff that’s completely and totally out of the way.

And I use this large mag. I used magnets to hold this steel cover over my dual battery setup. You see what I’m saying? So it’s magnetic. You pull this down and then you have access to everything behind it completely, which is my WeBoost 5G, a 1500 watt go power inverter, two Battleborn Lithium, 100amp hours. So 200 total and a couple of other things are in there, you know what I’m saying? So it’s a really good setup and it’s worked out really really well over the years because this setup was in my 80 series as well. I had two Marlin 120 watt solar panels up top power and everything through a RedArc 1250 BC DC and everything you see I did myself because I’ve done everything myself.

It’s the way to do it in my Opinion. I took Kydex, the stuff they make gun holsters out of, and I heated it up and I fabricated in such a way that it would cover and protect the wiring on top so trees didn’t rip my solar panel wiring out. So let’s take a look at the lighting on the truck, of which there is a lot up front. I’ve got a 30 inch Baja design light bar in the front grille as well as a 50 inch Baja design up top on the Alucab itself. The Alucab is sitting on a front Runner Slim Line 2 that I heavily modified for this particular application.

And I also put a easy on awning from equipped one on the side. It’s bulletproof. I got two sets of rigids, one mounted where my fog lights used to be, the stock fog lights. And then I’ve got them on ditch brackets on the hood. They work out really well. On the rear bumper I have two sets of rigid lights, One large floodlight that I made custom brackets for and then another set of flush mounts that I worked into the C4 bumper. It wasn’t easy fitting those in there, but I got them in and it’s worked out really well.

Under the truck I wired up 6 KC highlight cyclone twos. And these things can take a beating. The headlights on this thing sucked, so I had to replace them and I went with Alpharex. And these headlights look completely badass. I mean, look at that. So not only did they look badass, but they threw a pretty good amount of light compared to the stock four factory headlights. But they still sucked on the road. So I ended up upgrading to Alpharex. Alpharex Novas, the ones with the four bulbs in the front. They’re the most powerful lights that they offer these guys right here.

And these worked out really well. But still the light seemed to be lacking. It is what it is. But I also swapped out the tail lights for Alpha Rex as well, so that pretty much wraps that up. So let’s take a look at all the just little bells and whistles and then we’ll head to stage two. So let’s talk about tires and rims. I put 35 inch Nitto Trail Grapplers on this truck just to give them a try. I didn’t think the drivetrain could deal with 35 inch mud grapplers because they’re a heavy aggressive tire big time.

And I went with 17 inch black rhino armory rims because I had them on my 80 series and I really liked them. They were. They worked out pretty well and I Needed to clear those power brakes in the front. So that’s tires and rims. The most obvious thing that I’m leaving out is the Safari snorkel that I installed. And reason being is I, I installed that with a GoPro and then destroyed the GoPro by accident mountain biking. So there’s that. But that was, that was easy enough. It was pretty straightforward. The only hard part was tying the cold air intake from the Magnuson supercharger to the TRD Pro box into the Safari and making it all work.

It hadn’t been done before and Magnuson and TRD didn’t really have any answers, so I winged it. But it worked. And this is what it looked like when I was done. One thing I had on my Land Cruiser was something I had to put on the Forerunner and that was gull wings. And a company named Velox off road sells them. And these things were beautiful. And after three years, I’ve never had a leak, I’ve never had an issue. They work like a champ. The installation wasn’t awesome because I did it when it was really cold out, trying to remove glass when it’s freezing out sucks.

It ends up like this basically. But with all that being said, the fit and finish is perfect. And these things are absolutely priceless because having a dual swing out rear bumper means every time you close up the back of the truck, you forget something. With the V locks, I can actually reach in the back of the truck on either side and access lots of things. So it’s definitely worth. Okay, that’s enough of stage one. Let’s head out to the west coast where I discovered things that I didn’t know existed and make a huge mistake having a, what I thought was a very well known, well set up shop, do the installation of five separate things.

In every single one of them. They screwed me on simply because they didn’t know what they were doing. So with my newly built truck, new supercharger, new wiring, new brakes, new suspension, new everything, I completely ripped this thing down, put it all back together and promptly headed towards, towards the west coast. I had a destination in mind. I had a subscriber to meet out there to talk about some things. The guy worked at NASA and I wanted to do a live stream with him. So I made my way straight out to California and the truck performed phenomenally well.

It was amazing. I had a bit of a problem with the sway bar links, but it is what it is. No big deal. It wasn’t nothing I couldn’t fix and just kept pushing forward all good, nothing to see here. And while driving on a highway, the guys that own this particular shop I’m talking about literally pulled up beside me while I’m on the highway in California and waved me down. And this is what got the entire ball rolling. Actually let me back up a little bit. What got the ball rolling as far as knowing I wanted to do some more changes.

I had asked a couple of buddies of mine that are master mechanics for Toyota, should I re gear it and supercharge it? They said with the supercharger you shouldn’t need to regear it. Well, on my maiden voyage, I made my way to Imogene Pass and I was doing it at night time and the truck did great. I didn’t record much of it because it was dark and it’s a pain in the butt. But on my way out of Imogene, if you’ve ever driven down that mountain pass, I realized that even in low gear, the 35 inch tires were overtaking the factory TRD Pro gears.

So I knew I needed to re gear this thing. So that was already in my mind. So now back to the shop. After running into these guys on the highway, I went back and forth with them on the phone and decided these guys were the best place to bring my truck to not only have it re gear down to 488s, but also to add a front locker because the TRD Pro only comes with the rear locker. And they told me, not a problem, no problem, we got this. Now remember, I’ve re geared my my 80 series by myself perfectly twice.

And because I was a machinist before, and with a little help from Zuck out in California, I got it done and it worked out perfectly. I even installed a new E locker. So I’m familiar with lockers and gears. You see what I mean? So before I tell you the story, let me remind you that I, as a disclaimer, I have everything backed up on video, text messages and social media so I can prove all of this in a court of law. But I decided not to. I wasn’t going to do anything until I heard that they were literally bad mouthing me like I did something wrong.

So here we go. Round one, they give me a call. After two days, I stayed in a hotel room in Sacramento. They tell me the truck’s ready. I come back, I pick the truck up, I drive it down the street and turn around. I don’t even make it down the street. And I come back and I say, guys, the rear end is incredibly noisy. And all I could smell is gear oil. Yep, that’s normal. Nothing to see here. And I’m like, okay, maybe this is a four runner thing because I never experienced this in my 80 series before.

The truck stinks like gear oil and the rear end is making noise. You can hear it. So I take their word for it and I head to Mojave Road because I’m going to interview somebody in Moab. But first I want to do the 500 mile break in thing. So I head to Mojave Road, I get to Mojave Road and it’s leaking oil and it’s leaking loud as hell. First night on Mojave Road. Finally got this ironwood lit that fire did not want to light. Taking a few pictures of the Milky Way out here and watching a little Netflix because you can pull Internet out here, which blows me away already.

Eight had some tortellinis, cook those bad Larry’s up, set the truck up ready for the night. Portable bathrooms right there. Mountain bikes right there. There’s nobody that I can see on this road whatsoever at all. It is dark out here. Dark and windy. Col Mojave Desert, 8 o’ clock at night. So I text the owner of the shop and he says, yeah, this, that and the other thing. Okay, whatever. I change out the oil, the gear oil, and I, I head to Moab. By the time I get to Moab, it is so loud it’s unbelievable. My rear end is louder than my radio now.

So this sucks. Something’s wrong. I can’t four wheel. I blow up the interview. I waste all that time driving from Sacramento to Moab. I drive all the way back to their shop. And then finally, after two weeks of mentioning probably seven times there’s a problem with the rear end and mentioning on social media, which they follow, one of the guys drives it and comes right back and says, dude, we got to replace the rear end. This thing’s going to blow up. The gears were junk. They were falling apart, they were no good. And it took me two weeks to convince them to actually get somebody to sit in the truck and take it for a drive.

And when they did, they discovered they needed to swap it out. Now, bear in mind, I had given them the benefit of the doubt. I drove from Sacramento to Death Valley to Moab thinking that this thing would just break in or something, you know what I mean? I’m going off of their word. But by the time I got to Moab, it was so bad that I was scared to death to even drive it. And yet I Had to drive it from Moab all the way back to Sacramento. You know, much stress that is when you can hear your vehicle, something bad’s going on.

And then they finally, finally make it right. Another two days in a hotel room, driving back and forth in a Toyota that’s a tank of gas every 200 miles. But that was just the first problem. So before I get into the other four major issues that I had with these guys, let’s take a look of what I did to them. Let’s. Let’s see how I treated these guys. Besides blowing them up on all my social media platforms, of which I have 11 and over a million followers combined, these are some of the things I did for them while I was there waiting around, waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting.

I ended up spending two months in Sacramento just trying to get these modifications done. I did an extensive walk around video with the owner of the shop, Dimitri’s personal forerunner, Generation 4, or Gen 3, I believe. And that channel, that video garnered about 10, 000 views and lots of positive comments. But the thing that kind of backfired and the reason that I am making this video is a lot of people have contacted me through comments, DMS and emails because they took me posting about this shop as a recommendation, as many people do. I travel a lot, I deal with a lot of people.

And if it’s a good setup, I say so. If not, I say so. Well, apparently what happened to me wasn’t an uncommon thing because many people actually live in the Sacramento area. And if you bring your vehicle to Stellar Built, chances are you’re gonna have to bring it back again and then maybe again for them to fix it. That didn’t work out too well for me. But these guys at the shop knew my circumstances. I had a schedule to keep. I had a literal TV show to film and I had people to meet. And because of this entire thing, I wasn’t able to do any of those things.

When these guys were doing a toy drive and they asked me to put it out on my social media and invite people, I had no problem doing it whatsoever at all. Hey, what’s up guys? Just a quick video. Real quick. This 7 this Saturday, December 17th, from 1 to 6pm you can meet me. The crew from Stellar Built, some of the guys from Go Fast Campers. You can meet some of the dudes from Forerunner Nation. There’s a toy drive, there’s a giveaway, and there’s food and drinks from 1 to 6pm so you can come meet me.

You can come Meet them, you can come see me, you can come see them, you can see my truck, you can see their trucks. Some of the sickest modified four runners and Land Cruisers and Toyota Tundras and Tacomas you’re ever going to see. 1 to 6pm, December 17, 2270 Dale Ave. In Sacramento, California. And it’s a toy drive. So bring a toy, don’t be a dick. At any rate, I’m out. So not only did I invite people from my social media platforms and absolutely they showed up. I actually purchased the alcohol for this entire event. $600 worth of several kegs worth of micro brew beer.

The ironic thing about that is I don’t drink. But I had no issue with it. I still covered the cost no problem. Not even a shout out, not even a thank you, nothing at all. I never even got the kegs back either. But on that I will digress. And let’s not forget the fact that I literally hooked up the mechanics completely every single time. I am awesome at giving people’s gratuities and I left Stellar built 1225 $000 lighter when I got there. And still my truck was down for six months after the fact trying to fix things that they didn’t bother to fix when they did the installs.

I mean what’s better than a clean new installation? Well, an installation that you don’t actually know what you’re doing and don’t seem to care and then decide it’s a good idea to run down the customer’s name because of. Well, I’m still trying to figure that one out. Out. Round two. So the next order of business was to replace my Toyota steering rack with a Land Cruiser 200 Series steering rack. And they said they could do that no problem. They were experts at it. They’ve done it a million times. So here you go, drop the money. Ordered it up.

Now originally I had asked for them to go with the Solo Motorsport steering rack, but they convinced me that the 200 series were rack from Toyota was the way to go. So that’s what I did. So they order up the 200 Series rack from Toyota and it’s for a Land Cruiser 200 Series and good to go. I’m stoked. I’m psyched about this. They threw it in, they installed it and then remember in my interior I have an owl cam. This is a camera that records 24. 7 audio and video. So when the mechanics took my truck for a ride, remember these guys are closed on Friday.

They finished this up on Thursday. Three different People that worked there drove my truck and apparently forgot there was a camera inside the truck because while they were driving it, they were doing things like, oh, and making faces like, what the actual f. This, that and the other thing. So before they hand me the keys, they all huddle up like a football team talking to each other while I’m standing there like an idiot, like, I can’t see them. And the owner comes over and gives me the keys and says, well, it handles like a 200 series now.

And I have no clue what he’s talking about. So I go back to the hotel room and while driving the truck, it was like an absolute clown car. This thing was a literal death trap. So much so that I had to set up a bunch of cameras all weekend because now I can’t drive any place except in the parking lot right next to the hotel because this truck is dangerous. The steering wheel does no longer controls the front tires properly. That’s an issue. So I had to videotape it all. So after waiting for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and for them to open open again on Monday, Monday morning, they say to me, oh, wait a minute.

The 200 series rack is only for vehicles with long travel, and you’re not long travel. So we have to put in the solo motorsports tundra steering rack. And I go, okay. And they do. So they order it from solo motorsports like I asked them to do in the beginning. They rip out the 200 series series rack and then they put in the tundra rack. And after that, all was well. But while I was waiting for this entire thing, the owner comes up to me because this seemed very planned. I told them what I wanted to do the minute I got there.

In a real shop with two guys out in the front office, the owner of the company walking around a bunch of technicians. When somebody that they flagged down that they know from social media and that they warned their technicians that be careful, this guy will put us on blast. That’s a fact. They still did this. They seem to have dragged it out in order to extract the most money because they did things in the wrong order. For instance, after putting in the 200 series rack, which is only for long travel vehicles, they realized their mistake on my dime and on my time.

They put in the correct rack that I asked for in the first place. And then afterwards, the owner sidles up to me and says, hey, did you know that you can put 37 inch tires on this? And I went, what? And right there. And then it was on. After doing all. After doing both of These steering racks, they explained to me that if I did long travel, it wouldn’t A, affect my steering in any way or my highway travel, but B, it would allow 37 inch tires. And I mean, come on, I’m all about it. So I said, should we go with marlin crawler and get the RCLT kit? And they said, no, no, you don’t want that.

That’s what they said. Actually, Dimitri said that. They said, you want to go with total chaos. So I said, hell yeah, order it up and send it. So the entire 60 days I ended up being stuck in Sacramento. Not once did they ever sit down and say, these are your options. This is what we can do for your forerunner to make it the ultimate forerunner. Instead, they dragged it out, did things backwards to basically extract the most amount of money. Real professional stuff. But here we go. Now we go with the long travel. So they install the long travel.

And something I forgot to mention is when they did the steering rack, I also had them install RCV axles while I was there. RCV AX axles. Okay, great axles. Unbelievable. But here’s the rub. After they removed the entirely brand new front suspension I just put in, I literally gave that suspension to the kid that installed it for me. I gave it to him because I’m thinking I am. I’m not carrying this thing around. I’m in California, I’m not going to sell it. So I gave it to him. That’s seven grand. I handed it over. No big deal.

I had no problem with it because I was being grateful. That’s how I roll. That’s a fact. Instead of using the solo motorsports heim joint connector you’re seeing right there, they use their own, which promptly rusted to. Which pisses me off, but whatever. But when they installed the long travel, now I had to spend another thousand dollars for the extended axle shafts for my brand new, not even used yet RCV axles. So instead of the axles costing what they should have, it costed an extra thousand bucks. What are you gonna do? But do you notice anything strange about this long travel? Because remember, I’m a rookie to long travel.

I don’t. You know, this is my first time. Do you notice that giant sway bar? Doesn’t it seem to you that a sway bar would negate long travel? Well, you’re right, because it does. So after talking to a couple of the techs that they had that worked there that actually knew what they were doing, they’re like, what you want to do is put triple bypass secondary shocks on this thing and that way there you can run without a sway bar. And that’s what we did. Now bear in mind, I paid 800 for that extended long travel sway bar.

That made no sense because I’m not getting any consultation. They’re just throwing parts at me as they find them here, there and everywhere. And speaking of that, they’re telling me they can’t install the triple bypasses because they’d have to order them and because it was Christmas time. Yes, they couldn’t find them. So after a couple few days of me saying, listen, if I can get these things, can I hire one of your techs on his own time to install these? The owner finally said yes. So I ended up paying a kid incredibly well. A kid named Vadim.

Now, something I almost forgot is after several days of basically giving me no answers, this, that and the other thing, getting a set of King triple bypass shocks built would take quite a while. Well, after a few days, turns out they had the exact set that I needed sitting on the shelf the entire time at Stellar built. So I bought them from them and, and then paid Vadim to install them Christmas Eve. Priceless again. I almost forgot that he doesn’t work there anymore. And to, to be totally honest, he was the only person with any actual skill besides the fabricator kid named Adam, I believe.

Kid did phenomenal work. Phenomenal work. But Vadim ended up installing my long travel for, for me. And it worked out incredibly well. The kid was a really great kid. He had vision. He invented things that Stellar Bill took credit for. And then of course, he doesn’t work there anymore because they would always break his balls because he was always thinking instead of just jiffy loving it. You know, get him in, get him out, even if they have to come back two, three, four times, who cares? That’s a fact. So there, as they say, is that my long travels in.

And now finally, finally we’re going to put triple bypasses in. Now, instead of just letting this kid Vadim cook, just let him do what he does. This kid actually cared if he put in 37s. He made sure they didn’t rub and cause any issues. See, he’s working on my rear end right now. He also built the triple bypass upper supports, but because the kit that they had that they left me with on a holiday after hours didn’t fit my truck at all, which just amazes me because there’s two people sitting in front of computers in the office.

This should be organized like, you know, heart surgery. But instead it was Organized like a watermelon launching competition or whatever, I don’t know. But at any rate, this kid did amazing work and sadly, he doesn’t work to see there anymore, which doesn’t surprise me. Whatever. So finally, the truck looks like this. Now, there’s a couple of things I added on myself that I’m not going to get into because the video is already getting really, really long. But there’s one more thing, and I think this was done before the triple bypass, but it was done after the open house of which lots and lots of my subscribers showed up and turned into potential customers.

So it worked out well. I had no issue doing it. Like I said, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, guys, this is. I think this is Richard from Boston’s car right here. That’s crazy. My wife’s still there. This is RFB’s rig. You guys, I’m right here. I finally got to meet the legend, Richie from Boston. So what makes no sense to me is why would you give somebody that you are well aware of before you even meet him? I’m a YouTuber. I’ve been on social media 15 years. They know who I am. Why would you give me full access, complete permission to film everything in your shop? Take 6, 60 days, 60 days to do these simple modifications.

I could have done all of these in my driveway in a week. And so could have they, but they decided to string it out, costing me 30 plus days in a hotel room, which was expensive. It just blows me away. Why would you burn somebody? Not even a follow up. Never a call like, hey, we heard that your truck was leaking. Hey, we heard that this was wrong. How can we help? Never. And this cost me so much grief. And I’ll get into that a little bit later in this video. That’s getting really long. Never once.

So with me not saying a word, they decide running my name down would be a good idea. I don’t get it. Impressive. The other thing they did was the dual transfer case while I’m sitting in the office one day. You know, because I’ve been there for two months now. It took them as long to do adjustments to my truck as it did for me to build it originally. But whatever, I’m already into this. I want this all done before I roll out. Is that too much to ask? I’m not asking for any special favors. It’s actually quite the other way around.

I left them with an enormous pile of cash, parts, prizes, new customers and tons of juice. On screen social media in every different form forum. You know what? I’m saying, I discovered that they had a mar. They had a trail gear dual transfer case. I didn’t even know you could do that to a Forerunner. So with Marlin Crawler being right down the street, I hit them up and I went and picked up my second dual transfer case straight from Marlin Crawler. Now, this is right after the toy drive. And we had two weeks to discuss this.

And the kid that worked in the front office kept telling me, we’ve got this dialed in. We’ve taken all the measurements. We know what’s up, we got this. You are good to go. We’re gonna whip this thing in and it’s gonna be perfect. Awesome. So they set it up. I get a Trident shifter from Northwest Fabs. We get it all hooked up and they install it. And as it’s on the lift and they’re telling me it’s all set, ready to go, I realize that it’s leaking. And again, this is their number one answer. Why do I smell gear oil in my truck? Oh, the differentials must be overfilled.

Why is the transfer case leaking? Oh, the transfer case must be overfilled. Filled. What am I an. You can’t overfill any of these things because Toyota builds it into the formula, man. You fill it up to the hole and walk. But that’s what they said. But here’s the kicker. Here’s the kicker. With all this time passing and them telling me how they have got this down pat, when this thing shows up, they’re going to whip it in, no problem. They have got the blueprint. Do you know what they didn’t realize or mention until after they had to cut out three feet of my Underdog Racing Development exhaust.

Now that sucks, right? Well, I guess what sucks even worse, they cut out the exhaust and then hand me the keys. I now have a truck with open headers that I have to drive 40 miles to an exhaust shop on Christmas Eve. Priceless. O’ clock in the morning, still dark out. And I’m at Muffler Tech in Sacramento putting the last touches on this truck. I hope she’s changed a lot since the last time you’ve seen her. Big time. She’s bigger and better than pretty much any vehicle you’re gonna run across in the four runner category. So hopefully these guys can put my Muffler together because some of the modifications caused us to have to cut out a three foot section of my Underdog Racing Development exhaust that I was loving.

And sadly, we had to chop some of it out of the way, which Sucked. I wish I had known before the installation began, but here’s what it is. You guys are going to be stoked when you see this thing. It is ridiculous. So Muffler Tech did a great job, but it just blows me away that nobody mentions to me at all until everything is said and done that they have to remove the entire exhaust and that I have to go take care of it myself because certainly they don’t have the technology to weld a piece of pipe back in that they just cut out.

They’ve got an entire fab shop. There’s only one guy working in there, but still. So it is what it is. I deal with it. And the entire time I was there, they kept telling me about this legendary Dana 60 that I could put in the rear end. And this is what they did. They’d keep telling you about it and telling you about it, but then they would just never. I’d say, great, pull the trigger, and they wouldn’t do it. So I hit up east coast gear supply myself and drove from California all the way to North Carolina.

And when I got there, I decided discovered two things. Well, I discovered one thing. East coast gear supplies discovered the other thing with the dual transfer cases, they had to put in custom. They had to get custom drive shafts made for it. Well, when Stellar built installed them, they didn’t put the grease zerks in. It’s not that they didn’t grease the new drive shaft, they didn’t put any zerks in. So by the time I made it to North Carolina, a, the U joints were destroyed, and B, the new transfer case they just installed that they overfilled, which is why it was leaking, was dead nuts empty.

There was no fluid in it. There’s no gear oil in it whatsoever at all. How the marlin crawler continued to work without any gear oil is a testimony to marlin. Rest in peace. But that’s crazy, man. Absolutely crazy. And a couple of other things. While I was there, Dobinson hadn’t come out with their new heavy, heavy rear springs, which they have since then. And I’ve installed them since then. But at the time, Stellar built installed airbags, but of course they didn’t install them correctly. So they didn’t put the little protective plates under the bags that sits on, on top of the axle.

So I, I made it to like the next state over. One airbag popped and then the other airbag popped. But hey, what can you do? It’s off road, you know, off road, that’s the, that’s the excuse for everything. And the other thing I found strange was while they were doing all this, you know, dual transfer cases, long travel, heavier coils, new King Kit coilovers, blah, blah, blah. I said, can you put in the new extended brake lines because I’m going to need them. They couldn’t because they didn’t have a flare nut wrench. I mean, really, you don’t have a flare nut wrench to remove brake lines? I just found that really strange.

You know what I’m saying? Just really strange. So I guess the long and short of it is make sure that when you go to a shop, you don’t base your decision to go there off of their Instagram or Facebook profiles. Talk to people that have dealt with them because not only can they do you wrong, but then they’ll talk bad about you to everybody that’s in the business. Everything that I just said absolutely happened without a fact, without, you know, without a doubt, no two ways about it. And the beauty of it is, is if he wants to make, if he wants to continue doing that.

I have 80 through 84 emails and direct messages from other customers with the invoices that are in the same boat. I could do this nightly for at least four months. You know what I mean? I don’t plan on it, but I could. So that’s all I’m saying. Plus, I’m not showing the dms, the, the text messages and other pieces of quote unquote evidence because I don’t think that’s right. I’m just putting this out here because I can’t understand how in any way I’m the bad guy. I’m the bad guy. These guys totally put my truck out of commission.

I made it one state over and the airbags blew out. That’s a problem. I tried to go to East Coast Gear Supply and had massive vibrations all the way there because there was no gray grease in the U joints at all in the brand new drive shafts. You feel me? I left over $30,000 in cash at that shop. I left $10,000 worth of parts. I paid for the beer for their party. I got people to come to their open house and toy drive big time. I did a video walk around and I posted all over social media about them.

How is it I’m in the wrong here? I’m in the wrong because there isn’t one thing wrong that I did. Did I allude to them once in a while in a text? Yeah. Yeah. When you’re trying to do things, meet people and be places and you can’t because your vehicle is leaking or not working properly from somebody else’s hand. Yeah, believe it or not, it’s okay to elude. Do you dig? At any rate, this brings part one to an end. I just wanted to explain the build and I felt that I had to actually clap back because I’ve kept my mouth shut the entire time.

I’ve never once put stellar built tagged on anything. Okay? Me complaining about bad service or bad work that cost me months and months and months of pulling my transfer cases in and out, having to put in new U joints, having to put in new springs because the airbags pop. Things of that nature. You see what I’m saying? And then spending 60 days there because there was no game plan. It was just basically winging it. And when I look back at it, and I look back at how they act, I’m pretty sure it was to extract the maximum amount of revenue.

Period. What else could I possibly think? At any rate, hit the like, hit the share. Leave a comment below and I will return the favor. Part two is coming and there’ll be no, it won’t be like this, it’ll just be overlanding. But I had to put this out here because apparently I’ve been called out. So here’s my answer. I’m out.
[tr:tra].

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