Warthog Build and Adventure Thread

[2014 Warthog]

Been working on a new "logo" for my back window.

Not exactly my own design But I did set the pose and take the screen shot and do the separations on it. See if anyone can guess where it's from

 

[Keemonrunnin]

Been working on a new "logo" for my back window.

Not exactly my own design But I did set the pose and take the screen shot and do the separations on it. See if anyone can guess where it's from

View attachment 141372

Muuuuufffaaasssaaaaaa.

 

[2014 Warthog]

Muuuuufffaaasssaaaaaa.

Nnnnnnooooooo

The er... "extra" horns on the body give it away. BUT be happy if you don't recognize it! It means you have a life

 

[YetiX]

The Bilsteins allowed me to lift the rear end and serviced as regular shocks, and were at least digressive to match the front lift, but they had a serious problem with allowing the rear end to rebound, hard; even jump at times if I hit something hard. Not as bad as the stock suspension, but still bad. If the rear end got compressed after a bump or landing a drop off, the springs would just launch it back in the air on rebound

I totally agree about the Bilsteins. While they're a HUGE improvement over stock (especially blown stock), they need more rebound damping. Quite a bit more in fact. If I had plans to do anything serious in my T4R, I would get shocks with adjustable settings.

 

[Riddler6.7]

Awesome T4R. Your build is pretty much what I have planned for my TEP.... errr eventually as funds and warden allow.

Why did u decide to do remote resi rear shocks but not front? Also you said that the bilsteins dont have enough rebound dampening, did this become a problem only after adding the rear lift springs or even with the factory springs?

Our TEP will be my wife's DD for a few years so I am thinking about buying a full icon setup, the toytec boss setup, or just even the 5100 setup and pretty much just leveling it with which ever setup I buy. I would leave the factory rear springs on and It would stay that way until I take over the T4R and buy her something else. Then the real build up would begin.

Would you have done anything different then when you first had icon fronts and 5100 rears with stock springs?

 

[2014 Warthog]

Awesome T4R. Your build is pretty much what I have planned for my TEP.... errr eventually as funds and warden allow.

Why did u decide to do remote resi rear shocks but not front? Also you said that the bilsteins dont have enough rebound dampening, did this become a problem only after adding the rear lift springs or even with the factory springs?

Our TEP will be my wife's DD for a few years so I am thinking about buying a full icon setup, the toytec boss setup, or just even the 5100 setup and pretty much just leveling it with which ever setup I buy. I would leave the factory rear springs on and It would stay that way until I take over the T4R and buy her something else. Then the real build up would begin.

Would you have done anything different then when you first had icon fronts and 5100 rears with stock springs?

Thanks It's really come alive now that the suspension upgrades are mostly complete.

As for the front resis... I basically put the truck together one part at a time as I could afford it and more or less in order of importance. At the start I wasn't so sure I was going to really spend the money for the full icon setup. I had actually ordered a full set of Bilsteins front and back at first, but the fronts were backordered for weeks, I got the backs on and then ordered the icon fronts. Was a weird setup, thought worked ok. The Bilsteins bounced before the rear lift but yes was worse after as the compression travel potential was greater and I would increase the work on the rear end when offroading

If I had had the extra money after buying the runner at the start, and knowing what I know now, I would definitely jump right into buying a full icon Stage 5kit. Would have saved money too, oh well :/

Just a little warning though, at various stages of adding stuff to the truck the body roll and nose dive would disappear and come back. With the full lift and my current added weight, both are as bad as the stock truck/no HDSS was on the highway. But well it's a truck, and totally worth it when having fun with it

 

[2014 Warthog]

Woot! These showed up in the mail at work today



Going to have them installed and then aligned this Thursday.

This is the end of the suspension upgrades. Took and entire year piecemeal but is now a full Icon Stage 4 suspension. If I were to start over today I would get the Stage 5 off the bat, but this'll do

 

[Mistaken]

View attachment 141298

Awesome pic!

 

[mbash24]

Awesome build thread!!!

 

[E-ROCKER]

Woot! These showed up in the mail at work today

View attachment 141766

Going to have them installed and then aligned this Thursday.

This is the end of the suspension upgrades. Took and entire year piecemeal but is now a full Icon Stage 4 suspension. If I were to start over today I would get the Stage 5 off the bat, but this'll do

Those are nice! Congrats

 

[boyfester]

Funny thing is that Arches is the most "on the beaten path" area around moab but yes there is a single 4x4 only route that is fun and takes you to Tower Arch which is pretty nice and definitely missed by 99% of anyone going into the park.

Here are a couple GPS coords you can plug into google earth for come context. (Copy paste entire GPS coord into the search box)

Start of Arches trail (or end): 38°46'5.98"N 109°35'19.32"W
4x4 turnoff: 38°47'42.99"N 109°39'29.20"W
Tower Arch parking: 38°47'13.91"N 109°41'22.56"W
End of trail (or start): 38°42'6.10"N 109°34'0.63"W

Looking glass rock (Arch with cave): 38°16'29.39"N 109°24'19.39"W

Cave house: 38°14'26.70"N 109°26'8.85"W

Canyon Lands overlook: 38°24'16.30"N 109°42'29.98"W

Start of Shafer trail (inside Canyon Lands NP): 38°28'17.43"N 109°48'41.32"W Easy trail with hugely awesome views all the way down to the potash ponds anyway.

Top of Spring canyon shelf road: 38°38'39.26"N 109°58'46.79"W

Well those are some of the places in the photos. Maybe 0.1% of the awesome places you can go near Moab Definitely buy a book or two of moab area trails, there are SO many places to go.

There's another off-road trail that I took a couple of years ago in Arches NP that gets to dinosaur tracks. It is unmarked even on Arches visitor map but we found it. It's the road to Willow Spring.

 

[2014 Warthog]

There's another off-road trail that I took a couple of years ago in Arches NP that gets to dinosaur tracks. It is unmarked even on Arches visitor map but we found it. It's the road to Willow Spring.

Oooh, something to mark for next time, thanks!

 

[2014 Warthog]

I got the billet UCAs installed up front and got it realigned. Cost 300 total with tax. Yeah I wussed out and paid to have it done. Since it needed the alignment afterwards anyway...

I'll try to get a picture at some point. They are tucked up under there pretty well and hard to get a good picture of

The caster is at 3.0 and in fact was before too! ORW did a great job of alignment even with the regular UCAs.

 

[bimrunner]

I got the billet UCAs installed up front and got it realigned. Cost 300 total with tax. Yeah I wussed out and paid to have it done. Since it needed the alignment afterwards anyway...

I'll try to get a picture at some point. They are tucked up under there pretty well and hard to get a good picture of

The caster is at 3.0 and in fact was before too! ORW did a great job of alignment even with the regular UCAs.

You should be able to get over 4 with those. I'm almost at 5 with TC and can't see those being dramatically different.

 

[2014 Warthog]

You should be able to get over 4 with those. I'm almost at 5 with TC and can't see those being dramatically different.

Yeah I didn't tell them to push it. I'm sure they didn't adjust the heims themselves. Was happy with the 3.0, no wander, though the steering was perhaps a tiny bit sensitive...


Thinking of getting some new 275 tires, depending on the fit, may try moving the ball joint forward a bit using the adjusters and see what it's like

 

[BeachRunnerSD]

Hey There, Just drove a Barca Red TE home on Wednesday and I really dig your build. Also from San Diego area, I'll be looking to you for advice for sure! Look forward to spotting this beast on the I5 one of these days as well!

 

[2014 Warthog]

So the other day I was trying to get a picture of the installed Icon UCAs and I found a nice crack in the sheet metal in the inner fender.

Today I set up to fix it. Jacked up the front and removed the wheel. I finally got a decent pic of the installed UCA:



So this is the crack. I'm betting it happened when I took a little dirt nose dive on the dunes last year... Best not to let things like this go though, sho knows how bit it might get.




Normally I'm a passable welder under decent conditions, but under wheel well sheet metal... ugh. But at least I didn't blow any big holes!



Yes I sanded the paint off before welding, and yes I painted over it inside and out afterwards

While the wheel was off I did a little "clunk" inspection. Something I've had since the front icons were installed. I may have found the cause. Rather than repeating here, write up and pictures are in this thread:

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/5th-gen-t4rs/185200-trd-pro-clunk-4.html#post1899755

 

[2014 Warthog]

Diff Troubles

Much like a transmission, you never really want to open a diff. Ever. Very exacting and finicky piece of equipment.

I went in on an ARB locker buy in November and got the locker and the heavy duty single compressor. Mounted the compressor, super awesome for filling the tires!

Then it was time to find someone to install the locker. I'd already spent so much money on the compressor and locker I didn't want to spend another fortune on the install. Big mistake!

One place wanted $600, seemed like a lot, found another for $450 and went with that. I also probably should not have mentioned wanted to reuse the bearings if possible (Save another $150 on top of the $450). Should have left it up to the mechanic or better, just bought them myself and had them installed with the locker.

Initially everything seemed fine, even used the locker a couple of times for a short period on a trip to Big Bear. But after about 4 weeks I started hearing a whine from the rear of the car at freeway speeds. Stupidly I chalked it up to something on the roof rack/lights/highlift whistling. I'd had that before with some things on the roof.

The whine got loud enough over several weeks that I could tell that it would get louder when going up hill or gassing it hard and even when letting off on the gas. At that point I knew it was the diff :/

Took it back to the guy that installed it and had him take a look. He said he could hear the issue but everything looked fine, tolerances, preloading all seemed in spec.

The next week I took it to a gear specialist which should have been the place I went the first time. After a drive around they confirmed that it was the diff, the gears were not set perfectly and by this time have now worn a new pattern (an audible pattern) into them. It's nothing dangerous, not going to overheat or bind or anything, the gears just now make noise and always will unless I replace them.

Their best guess without opening it up was that the preloading was not right possibly because the carrier bearings were not replaced with new ones even though they were only 20k miles old.

So at this point I have a slightly noisy gear set. Whine starts at about 65 mph and peaks at 70 and gone mostly by 75. Course that is my MAIN cruising speed daily It's not horrendously loud, in fact the gear mechanic said most people wouldn't have even noticed it.

Trying to save $150-$300 on install is now going to cost me $750-$950 to fix if I decide I can't stand the noise and have to replace the gears and carrier bearings.

So lesson learned, take that locker to a real Gear/Drivetrain specialist or otherwise very experienced locker installer. The Diff isn't really something you want in anything other than very experienced hands.

 

[4Running Daily]

Avoid The Truck Shop

This is all I read.

 

[BrianSD_42]

sorry to hear about that. What was the better shop?

I'm assuming it wasn't ORW as I would hardly call them better.

Truck is looking great btw!