**Lots of Pics** 04 DC "Totaled"

What a mess. Finally sourced a fender after striking out 3 times with online orders (they sent me AC/RC fenders), and two salvage yards.


Waiting for paint to dry now. Fender flare needs more bodywork before it can be painted sadly or else that would be done too.

 

Did you just settle with insurance or still fighting?

 

Ha! Funny joke. “Settle”. Not hardly. My attorney is involved at this time. I’m not confident we’ll settle in 2022 at this pace.

 

I went wheeling with a local group this past weekend. It was fun

Well… at least up until the point where my truck nearly overheated. I ended up getting water out of another guy’s rotopax.

I spent most of Sunday and Monday trying to find a functional cooling system pressure tester. O’really?s and autozone were both a bust. I ended up bumming one off of the mechanic with the neighboring shop.

Thankfully, my cooling system held 13~ PSI for 13 minutes without issue. It appears that my radiator cap was faulty. $105~ at the dealer later, and I had a new cap and 4 gallons of Toyota Super Long life coolant.

I serviced my cooling system last night, and it seems to be fine now.

While I was getting down to business repairing stuff on my truck, I decided to throw on some modified SpiderTrax spacers, and pull the Ranchos off to get custom bushings made.



P.S. Bench vise makes for a pretty crappy press.

 

Do you mean new radiator? The OEM caps are normally around $20. Or you paid them to flush the coolant?

 

$105 price tag included 4 gallons of coolant as well at roughly $20 apiece.

 

Read the thread and man I'm sorry that happened to your sweet rig. Question: why did you modify the spacers?

 

Initially, I had wanted 1.5" spacers because I thought they made the truck look better and I was willing to live with the fitment issues. When I first received them, I had T6 6061 Aluminum hub-centric rings custom-made and pressed into the hub bores. Since I wanted to do my shock bushings, I decided to have them machined down to 1.25 since I've been rubbing heavily due to blown-out suspension and would have to remove the wheels anyways.

 

No PPE, guard up, someone must really hate having eyes

Sometimes you can do things 10,000 times, it only takes one fluke and POOF, 50/50 chance you're taking flak.

 

At 26 I was promoted into a management role at a factory, including the machine shop. The machine shop supervisor had more than 26 years on the job, personifying the notion of someone who had been doing his job longer than I had been living! (There's a longer, albeit irrelevant Management 101 discussion here...perhaps another time). The relevant discussion is this...the guy had one fucking eye! A carbide twist drill shattered and flew into his eye as he was "eyeballing" its progress. So he had a nice glass eye to replace it (which an attentive observer could detect from across the room).

Now I have literally dozens of glasses, face shields, and other PPE that I employ quite religiously, having been sensitized at an impressionable age. If only I'd had a similar catharsis to help me learn to keep my fingers out of the machines...

 

I have a very similar background. At 27 I was given a management position at a manufacturing plant where my employees used nail guns all day. We had countless injuries. In one case, the nail ricocheted back and hit the employee above his eye glasses causing a nasty wound that may have taken out his eye. Despite this, I still had to remind employees every.single.day to wear their eye glasses. It was exhausting.

It made me realize that a lot of people have more tolerance for risk than I realized. I also think it's a macho thing for some guys that want to look tough. That was also the worst job I've ever had. I was managing people with more years in prison than years of work experience.

 

Not all of us convicts are bad.

 

For some reason, I seem to befriend people that don't wear their PPE. I'm pretty good about at least wearing a face shield/respirator when the situation calls for it though.

 

Sorry this happened, hope the insurance pays what you need. Great job making lemonade out of this lemon!

I'm a nervous old guy with all his fingers toes & eyes, please use PPE!

 

Someone needs to start making lightweight chainmail gloves that cover the entire forearm with the kind of stuff I do, and then do some more.

There's a reason I preach about the PPE. Let's just say on that 50/50 ratio, I'm favoring one 50% more than the other.

@scooterprint on other topics, where are you on getting that driver's side fender in?

 

I’ve got the fender painted and ready to roll. As we speak, the fender flare itself is drying from paint. No photos of it right now though.
My goal is to have my truck completely back together by this weekend, since there’s an arkansas wide Toyota meet happening Saturday morning.

Also just made plans to tub my cab corners Friday afternoon.

 

Decided to swing by the shop to take a peek at the flare since I was out for a late dinner.


Darn bug, get out of my paint!

 

Whew. Spent all of today tubbing my driver's side cab corner to clear bigger tires. I also got my fender assembled and on the truck. As it turns out, my core support is a bit taco'd, which I didn't see originally.
I also successfully managed to get my friend to wear PPE (not gloves though ).


In hindsight, we probably cut too much off the corner, and not enough further in, but oh well.



Edit: I finally settled with the insurance company. I didn't get quite as much as I wanted, but fighting for more would end up inflicting lawyer fees, (my friend is the lawyer dealing with this for me. I'll treat him to a nice lunch and probably slip him a benjamin as thanks. I received $6,740.11 and I get to keep my truck.

 

IS the truck being totaled, so you'll need a salvage title?

 

Yes.

 

I had looked into that a long time ago, I feel like GA makes it really difficult. You can't register a vehicle with a salvage title here. They require you to be a licensed rebuilder, then to rebuilt it, then pay $120 or so for a state inspection to confirm it's safe to drive. Then you can get a rebuilt title. I can only get full coverage through USAA if the car has passed that inspection.

I've heard some people on here and another forum I'm on say their insurance companies would only offer partial coverage, no liability, or was it no comp? I don't recall. How bad is Arkansas on that stuff?

 

I'm not really sure. Most of our stuff is usually really lax. You can build something out of angle iron and as long as it has lights and you said you made it, they'll title it and let you drive it on the roads.

 

Ya salvage title in Tennessee is no big deal. Sounds like you have a lot of great friends helping you.

 

Today was a home run. I found an ARE camper shell/bed cap for $250 on marketplace.
It's in decent shape, with no cracks in the fiberglass and all the windows are there. The cap only has a few problems. I spent some time tonight addressing some of them. I glued down the lower trims that were coming off, as well as one of the window trims. I also spent some time vacuuming out some debris and spider webs. There appears to be mold on the roof carpet, so I'm probably going to take the cap to the detailer and have him detail clean the cap inside and out, including the bed.

Spoiler: Images

 

Well, as it turns out, I haven't solved my overheating issue. New Denso rad and Aisin fan clutch on the way from rock auto as we speak. Hopefully, this eliminates the issue for good.

 

Fan clutch ... is it overheating when at a standstill, but not moving? Have the t-stat been removed or replaced any time in recent months?

 

Thermostat has not been touched since I don't know when. It's overheating at an idle, but not while moving.

 

Is the fan clutch kicking in at start, and staying on?

 

Honestly, I haven't been paying enough attention to it. I'll pay more attention next time I take it for a spin.

 

Typically mine makes a shitload of noise at first startup. As soon as the engine kicks over, you can literally hear the fan spin up.