Well, too many fuel pump problems last night and the truck is not drivable at the moment. But it's on the trailer and we are taking it.



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Well, at least you won't need all the tools I was going to suggest you take.

I travel with a full set of tools to remove of course all metric wrenches 8-19mm 3/8" drive even if I don't need all of them others with me may. I will now also now carry the same in standard for all the bolts on the suspension which are 1" and 1 1/4", as well as some smaller ones I need to confirm.

torque wrench
rubber 4# or 6# (don't remember) mallet
impact wrench
plenty other miscellaneous hand tools, allen wrenches, knife, scissors, zip ties (multiple lengths).
spare hydraulic lines for both high pressure and low pressure for steering and oil lines, as well as brake line.
Spare link which can work for both upper and lower links
Spare tie rod for steering

Finally toying with the idea of carrying a 12v welder for trail fixes.

Once you get this beast sorted out you shouldn't need too many I wouldn't think!

No, I will not need a lot just have both standard and now metric. will most likely keep the few metric I carry (8,10,12 etc.), and one large adjustable wrench for the suspension. The allen wrenches, etc will stay along with the spare items mentioned above. I also like to have some other socket sizes I may not need but other will. Also not listed above is my jumper cables.

We had an issue last week on the buggy in the picture above where the alternator died and we had to jump it 3 times to hold enough charge to get back to camp and go buy a new one along with fan for trans cooler which also broke on the trail.

Well I know it's been a little while and here's the little and rather boring update.

Of course it went to ATR last week and had it by the Budbuilt booth and spoke to a lot of people about it. It's certainly not fun winching it onto the trailer with a nearly dead battery. It was an adventure getting it off the trailer yesterday.

In any case the new fuel pump from aeromotive will be arriving today along with the required fittings etc. So within this week and early next week it should be finished at this stage. I also purchased the appropriate fitting adapters for the hard lines on the lockers. I will be so happy when this is done and we have no more fittings issues.

to finish we have:

1. exhaust needs to be completed.
2. reroute steering feed lines to Ram as we do not like them sitting next to exhaust on driver side link.
3. fix remote oil filter mount and block off plate. Correct fittings for this arrived yesterday.
4. tig weld bung onto gas tank to ensure no leaking
5. tidy up rear wheel wells with sheet metal to close it up and re-install the factory plastic.

My travel schedule this month is crazy but hopefully we can take it out on a shake down run next Thursday or between 27-29 Sept, as I'm hoping to take it back to Windrock the first weekend of October.

I do have a short walk around video of the hydro steering system I'll try to upload later today.

In hind sight given all of the planning we did we still missed or didn't buy enough or correct fittings but to start (day 1 of cutting) and nearly finish this build in less than 8 weeks is simply amazing.

The atlas should arrive in mid October so be installed after I return from Windrock.

So, I forgot to mention something very humorous from ATR.

When we arrived to the park last Thursday afternoon we had to check in to get keys to cabin. While waiting in parking lot a line of FJ's came up the hill and drove very slowly by. My 4R was of course sitting on the trailer at this point and the first FJ stopped and said "holy ...." I wish I would of had my camera on to video that because the look on his face and then what he said was priceless. As the builder/fabricator said we could of packed it up and gone home at that point.

Now going back to what someone asked a while ago about how much this costs and if I had a budget etc. I think I already said that yes I had a budget and now that we are nearing the end of this phase, I can say we have just about stayed within in except for the small overrun on the larger tires.

Today they gave me the total hours spent thus far on it and while I didn't add them up completely the two main fabricators spent 291 hours on it. The main one spent 201 hours in 27 days on it. So in total with all the various people we had helping it's close to 375 hours not including my own time spent on it.

So looking at what the total parts cost was and labor I can say it's nearly a 50/50 split between parts and labor.

In the short term before my first trip with this, we are going to install a trans temp gauge and I want to monitor the temps to see if an auxiliary trans cooler will be necessary or not. We all believe it will be but that's unsubstantiated so no need to spend the money on one regardless the expense if not needed.

Today we started talking about what to do next after I start getting several wheeling trips in both before and after the atlas install. We to start I have a spare 10k winch lying around since I sold my LC200. So thinking of moving my 12k from it into the front of the 4R and putting the 10k in the back on a new tube bumper.

Longer term is a hybrid cage to be done before the TX Jamboree and maybe replace the glass behind the C pillar with lexan if it doesn't break before then. By that point I hope to be done.

A ton of people are pushing me, while mostly joking to do an LS swap and I'm just not interested even if it was free at this point. With the atlas this beast will be plenty capable. I've never been about matting it to the floor and hitting the rev limiter all the way up a hill.

I forgot to get a shot of the cooler which is installed behind the grill. I'll be sure to get that in the full walk around soon. The lines are disconnected from the ram as we had to steer it by hand to get it on and off of the trailer last week.

Sorry it's been a little while since I've updated this. Been busy with work.

The truck is just about done. Here are some flex pics from today. Ended up trimming the front and rear fenders a little more to get the maximum flex.

I will take it back to windrock the end of next week and hope that the atlas transfer case will be here about two weeks after. This is going to be an amazing vehicle and beyond my wildest dreams and terms of capability.


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This will be awesome

Hope to see some video soon of this thing in action!

Must be stumped on something? Maybe too many mods at the same time?
Give us an update.

What an awesome build. Most of us can only dream of, you are making it happen.
Can hardly wait to see this thing in action, should be an internet sensation!

Sorry for delay in any updates, I've been busy with work.

Last Wednesday night I took it out for a short run on some private land close to budbuilt. It's a small 500+ acre plot of land. Did a single rock garden and some other hill climbs and it performed great.

On Thursday late afternoon we loaded it up onto the trailer and headed out to windrock. Arrived a bit late to get any riding in that night, but started on Friday morning. I went out with a small group and rode trail 2 and 16. I aired the tires down to 15 and they performed well. I made a stupid move on a V notch and busted my drivers side mirror off. I don't care as they were coming off anyway for something smaller and far less expensive. Further up 16 I tried to go an a very large and slick undercut mud / dirt wall. Let's just say it didn't go well and I got a small dent in driver door. I could have avoided it but wanted to try it. I will do it again next time.

The rest of 16 was a breeze. I have a video of the top of 16 and I will load it up to youtube later and post here.

Friday night after putting in on the trailer I discovered a fuel leak between the tank and fuel pump. I went to lowes and got that fixed rather quickly.

Saturday was a different story for some reason which we need to diagnose. My steering over heated and blew a lot of fluid out of the reservoir which was begging of a long day. Over the course of the day things got worse but fixed it and got off the trail and home. My belief is that as the reservoir got very hot and purged a lot of liquid the main outlet (16 an) down to steering pump expanded, then when it cooled it contracted and became lose slowly draining all of the steering fluid. I couldn't see this immediately but let's just say without fluid a full hydro system does not well at all. Once fully diagnosed a simple wrench to tighten that and then purge the air out. However at same time the steering joint also failed which we do not understand at all. that too was fixed and all is well but let's just say it was a long day with some great people who assisted me.

Also the only other issue was that the rear passenger bump stop kept sliding up allowing the tire to travel to far up. So now we will cut a little more..

Despite these issues which i'm not concerned with since this was the first real test of the truck we will diagnose and correct. It was a great weekend away in the mountains regardless.

Next time my camera woman will do a better job.

Here's a short video going up the last hill climb on trail 16 at Windrock. I was aired down to about 15# for this first day out. I did drop to 12# on the second day but as I wrote above it was not a full day so can't say much other that I was able to drive over a V-notch with driver tires on the wall and passenger on other side on V at 12#. Again my camerawoman was not on duty so no video.