The Rattlesnake - Quicksand 2019 Tundra Build

Well guys, I figured I'm far enough down the rabbit hole at this point for my truck to warrant its own build page. Honestly, y'all have taught me more through personal conversations and reading through the vast knowledge base contained on this website than I thought I would ever know about my vehicle. You guys have also cost me a S**t load of money in the last 6 months . To those of you who gave a young guy guidance on how to build a vehicle and who answered way too many stupid questions, I appreciate it 1,000x over.

I figure I'll start from the beginning and just work through to where I am at now so as to show the progression of the vehicle.

I purchased the vehicle new back in February of 2019 and unfortunately lost my phone a few months later without backing it up so I don't have any photos of it 100% stock.

Fast-forwards to August of 2019 and after reading I felt comfortable changing out my own chrome door-handles and running boards with some black door-handles and black Tyger running boards (shown below, sorry I don't have a better picture of this).

 

After this I started really getting into how to make my truck perform better off-road as our family ranch has some very gnarly terrain which is perfect for short wheeling sessions, and I have been wanting to take my truck and my pup out to some of the large national parks up in the NW to hunt/fish/and explore on my days off/not spent at work.

Around late September to early October I had been researching my ass off on what the right call was in terms of flexibility, reliability, and quality of truck suspension components, and then a large group buy was orchestrated by one of our fellow members, and I was able to purchase a set of front and back shocks from ADS at a largely discounted price.

Now, I will say this... ADS has a great product from what I have seen/felt so far, however, it took them 14 weeks to produce the shocks and get them shipped to me. There was a fair amount of lack of communication going on for a few weeks from ADS which was discouraging to say the least, but I do have to give credit to Marie with @HeadStrong Off-Road . She was an actual angel when it came to getting updates and pushing the envelope to get these things out and without her, none of this would have come together the way it did so many thanks to Marie and Headstrong Offroad for the phenomenal customer service!

I ended up purchasing front coilovers w/700lb springs and clicker adjusters. For the back I decided to go with a piggyback smoothy shock (there's a reason I didn't go extended/bypasses which I will get to soon!). See pics below.

 

Install day was actually this past Saturday, and it was one hell of a time for someone who has never wrestled with Coilovers before...., getting those bastards in there was a serious challenge. We jacked up the truck, pulled the tires, and then went ahead and disconnected the knuckle from the spindle on the UCA. Then we tied off the spindle so that we wouldn't have any parts pulling or falling out of socket (ahem this may have happened once on the drivers side...).

We then went ahead and, with an extreme amount of effort and no lack of bitching and moaning, got the new ADS coilover mounted into place after removing the stock coilover.

Now I know what many of you are thinking "Why the hell do you still have the stock UCA's in there!?", well the short answer is I haven't received them yet. I purchased some from MCM fabrications a couple of weeks ago and once they get in I will replace the stock UCA's with those, however until that happens this is how it's going to have to ride, thankfully the hoses seem to clear alright as is.

 

After the fronts were done on both sides it was time to make a run to discount tire and have the new wheels and tires put on, but first, a test fit up was necessary on the rims as I had yet to see if they actually fit correctly and cleared calipers in a passable fashion. Thankfully, everything went on smoothly without a hitch.


Then it was off to get new shoes at the greatest tire store on earth, Discount Tire.


I decided to go with 17 inch Icon Rebounds in the Matte Black option with a +25 offset, with the tires being 35x12.50x17 Nitto Ridge Grapplers. I am honestly ecstatic with how they turned out, and no CMC required! I am having to trim some plastic and will end up having to heat form the mud flaps but, nothing too major needs to be changed. Plus I will be putting on a C4 Fabrications Overland Front Bumper in the near future so the front rub problems will be a mute point when that happens.

 

Now for the fun part of the exercise, and honestly some serious redneck ingenuity from some South Texas natives. We headed back to the garage and prepared to install the rear. Now I want to preface this by yes I did get shackles and a standard length shock, but this truck will not stay this way. As soon as @papasmurf & @osidepunker get their larger SOA brackets and springs in production mode (has this happened yet? I haven't checked in a while ) I will be switching to that for the rears. So until I make the transition, I went ahead and went with an ADS piggyback shock and Toytec Shackles for the rear.

Putting in the smoothie shocks was a breeze, simply pull one out and mount the other one in its place.


The shackles were a different story however. This truck only has 24.5k miles on it but those suckers were freaking in there. We beat on them, lubed them, and finally ended up strapping a come-along from one leaf spring to the other in order to both remove, and replace the stock shackles with the Toytec shackles. We also opted to use a jack under the axle to help with finding the best point to reduce binding on the shackle when removing and fitting it up. We also used one other jack to move the body up and down, and this two attack style approach seemed to net us the best results. See photos below.


Needless to say the shackles were eventually put into place and the bro-lean was corrected. Now the truck has rake like stock but it simply sits higher.

 

And that was a wrap! We got the truck aligned, and got the remote resi's on the front mounted into place with hose clamps which are not pictured in this photo as it happened after this was taken. (and yes I used zip-ties as well, sue me LOL).

 

Then we have the final product which I am super proud of. Like I said, I plan to add a front bumper, cab lights, and ditch lights at some point, but a broke post-college grad can only afford so many truck parts at once . Hope y'all enjoyed the progression and the read!

Best,

Clint

 

Very nice looking ride.

 

looks great !

 

Well done man! Truck looks badass. Perfect stance. Now go tear up some dirt!

 

Nice!

 

Looks awesome!

 

So I've been driving this for a couple of days, question for you guys. When going over a drop or hole, lets say 5-10 inches of depth, the front end is noisy as hell. It almost sounds like steel on steel or a steel being stretched sound. I've gotten out multiple times to investigate, however there appears to be nothing out of place and everything looks/feels normal on the shocks. What could be causing this loud metallic sound?

 

I dont know but mine has done it a few times in really deep potholes on the side of the road. I swore my suspension had exploded but it was fine, dont know what the noise is

 

Also, bad ass truck man

 

Update: After running it at the ranch, I have come to believe that the UCA's are at fault for the loud noise during suspension decompression. Hopefully putting new UCA's with more adjustability will allow for a quieter and better aligned ride. I think that right now the stock UCA's are under a bit of duress, causing them to be loud when moving up and down.

Also still figuring out how much/when to adjust the clickers, I feel that perhaps actual shock tuning may be in order but I'm thinking I'll wait until UCA's are on to really make a decision.

 

That was my thinking too, maybe the stock uca was hitting the coil at drop, bought some aftermarket Uca's and installed them, then purposely went and hit the same pothole it had done it in before and it did the same thing haha, I dunno, is what it is I guess. Hopefully yours will work itself out

 

Well gentlemen it's been a couple of years and I still stalk the forum often, but I swapped out my UCA's today and I also have a shock question so I figured I'd post an update. Went with some new Total Chaos UCA's to replace the stock ones I beat the shit out of. Question on the shocks: is it possible to check shock PSI while the shock is on the truck (if i jack up to full droop would it be possible)? My initial intuition is that it is not possible, however if anyone has a golden egg of advice up their sleeve then please share. I have a feeling that if I pull these shocks off the truck, I'm going to end up replacing them with Kings and so I'm trying to protect myself from myself lol. Reason I'm asking is that when I change clicker adjuster to firmer/softer, I don't feel that I can tell any real difference when hitting a big bump at 25-30mph (using this bump as my test road). I'm thinking it's one of 2 possibilities, either my shock has lost its fluid making the shock perform at such a low level that compression adjusting isn't doing anything, or 2, the 700lb coils are keeping the shock from doing any real work since I have not yet gotten around to spending a F*&k ton of money on a replacement bumper. Thoughts are appreciated.

UCA Pics below...

Step 1.) Get the old girl off the ground and break spindle loose from stock UCA. Little tip, spray that spindle with some WD-40 and knock the shit out of it with the biggest hammer you own. I tried babying it for about 20 minutes to get it off there and in the end you just gotta smack it to make it come loose. Don't forget to tie off spindle otherwise you're in for a baddd time.



Step 2.) Remove the driver side batter so you can see what you're doing to remove UCA bolt. Honestly you may not have to do that but my battery needed to be cleaned up and it gave me tons more room to operate through the engine bay.



Step 3.) Put new UCA in, screw around with bolt and too much other shit for one guy to hold correctly and tada you now have your new UCA installed. I used the floor jack on the LCA to move the spindle up slightly on this side as I couldn't it to line up just right. ALSO, those TC Uniballs are stiff as hell when you first get them, I recommend a punch that fits through the uniball and some cheater bar to articulate the uniball joint so you can get it re-attached to the spindle without tearing up the bolt or nut by forcing it. Just be careful with punch and cheater bar, you don't want to tear gouges in your uniball.




Step 4.) Rinse and repeat on the passenger side except now you get to undo the windshield fluid box and the power steering fluid box so that you can jimmy the UCA bolt out. Also for whatever reason when putting on the new UCA, I could not get this damn shock to compress to get a good line up to fit everything together, so I had to jack this girl way up to finally get some freaking compression (blocks advised).



And bam, new UCA's are on. If any of y'all can answer my shock question at the top of this post it'd be much appreciated!