1st Gen. Lunch Table - General Discussion

All the angles appear correct, so someone did understand the importance of the geometry involved. Not saying it's well-built. Hard to say from images, but someone did/does understand some important stuff. More than I can say for many better looking trucks.

 

Tires appear to be wearing evenly

 

actually has a front driveshaft. Thats a win.

 

Yep, and the pinion & shaft angles look good at both ends. All the angles look good everywhere it matters if you look closely. The condition and quality of all the components is a different matter.

 

Wonder how they attached the outboard rear shocks?

 

Hard to say from the image-resolution I'm seeing. My guess would be perches welded to axle and frame rail.

Edit: the upper mounts could just be holes drilled in the frame and spaced and bolted. Idk.

 

Do an Archive relocation and there's plenty of room to mount more shocks if that's your thing

 

Having spent time in the Jeep world (XJ's specifically), I've seen a lot of beat-up looking rigs that would be easily dismissed due to their visual appearances, but were some of the most-capable and hard-core in the real world and easily put "eye-candy" to shame consistently. Never judge a book by its cover is all I'm saying. Having said that, I'd be hard-pressed to want to go over 50 mph in that truck, but I could be incorrect. Just trying to be fair.

 

Camber appearance may be part optics of camera angle and simply illusion. Plus, it's a live-axle and no longer IFS. Very different set-up required.

 

@KNABORES Is this the topper with windoors everyone keeps talking about?

 

That’s just a door it appears

 

Them’s windoors

 

Sexy

 

Yeah, that’s a indoor, but not the slider type

 

Heads-up, for the next 6½ days, Toyota is (in my area at least) doing another 25% off sale, but with a slightly different flavor: It's $50 off when you spend $200 or more.

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Related but unrelated, Carfax only shows accidents that were reported to the police. If a person pays out of pocket for collision repairs then you'd never know, unless you know what to look for on the car itself.

 

This is what I think of as a windor

 

That's a windoor slider to me. Two variations, center slide or top-half slider, which is the bottom/middle example here. That's what I wanted to buy for my shell but the damn things were like $375/ea.

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I know this has been addressed...but search isn't helping me. Seems like they're fairly equivalent, and I've seen posts by people wondering if all the different inexpensive leaf springs on the market are made by the same factory...

General Spring vs ATS vs Michigan Truck Springs

Are they all the same? I also see Husky Springs. Pricing is all very similar. Seems like I hear more about ATS and Michigan Truck Springs lately. Does anyone have particularly positive or negative things to say about any of them? Are they all the same and it's just a matter of who's offering the best price and shipping? Or what.

 

I had to talk with an ATS technician directly, on the phone, for a solid 10-15 minutes because they couldn't fulfill my order same day. He indicated to me there was an issue that prevented their shop from assembling the springs same-day (I think it was a friday), and it was late enough in the day they'd need to do the assembly on Monday and ship out that afternoon or Tuesday AM (or similar) He basically indicated they had most of the parts, but I think they were missing some required bit, like the rebound clamp or something?

tl;dr version being, ATS apparently makes theirs in-house. It's interesting because I know Dorman was using the exact same part number (Dorman does outsource sometimes), and I think General does too, pretty sure that's what @KNABORES ordered, whatever brand he ordered had the same part number as my ATS springs.

Is ATS making the ones for Dorman and/or General? I dunno. But from talking to their people, it sounds like they warehouse, bend, and assemble their leaves in-house.

 

Mine are Husky brand I think.

 

I think im still wanting deavers, but gonna order extra lift & extra weight. 10 thin leafs sounds better to me.

 

I have the generals.

 

Cool, thanks. And no one has any complaints? I had Generals on my Tacoma. Only complaint is that they rusted real fast, compared to OEM. Just surface rust, but I'm sure it continued to progress...

 

You giving up on the bastard packs, eh?
I really think the Toyota 4+3 Icon AAL bastard packs we made would be perfect.
If you aren't going to use em, I might be interested in the AALs for my Alcan bastard pack.
I wouldn't mind having options, just in case the Deaver AALs I got from Beau isn't a good fit. Those Icons are thinner than the Toyota leafs, the Deaver AAL, the Wheeler's AAL and the Alcan leafs. I bet I could fit two and be more picky about the lengths. Maybe even one icon plus the Deaver and use one on the T3, when I swap out the 1" (lift) lowering block for the SOS 0.5" lowering block.

 

Gonna try the bastard packs first, but after running down a washboard road a few nights ago, i'd a little concerned about adding stiffness.

 

Nah, remember how flexy Frank's bastard packs were? Those progressive AALs are intended to be less hard than the single AALs. The icons in particular because they're thin. Anyways just let me know when you want to fuck around and find out. I been itching to get your truck built. Plus we'll be ditching those hard OEM bumpstop for the superbumps. I think your going to like the results, of nothing else to hold you over until you go Deaver.

 

This is a cool build on YT.

https://youtu.be/EG5GBwwbDjM?si=Z3KXD7OIziSAR66m

 

I've got a standing offer for any forum member that's been here at least 1 month, and one other stipulation.

I replaced what were surely the original lower control arms with new Toyota ones. This means I now have a set of Toyota lower control arms that need cleaned-up (they are 100% rust-free) and bushings pressed in. If you are genuinely in-need of quality lower control arms and are willing to remove the old bushings, I will ship these to you, free, if necessary. Just hmu with details. All I ask is that you are truly in need of them, and, you be a good human when another forum member has a need you can meet and you do the right thing and help them, no matter how big or small. Could be you have emblems or a piece of plastic they need. I don't care. LMK.

 

best of both worlds