The S.S. TRDFerguson: Captain’s Log

Thanks!

 

How did you separate the lenses? Any tricks?

 

A dremel cutting wheel and huge balls… lol. The only way to open the tails is to cut them. And there isn’t really a good way to go about it. But sticking close to the gray interior plastic and far away from the lens is the main trick to keeping them looking ok when finished.

 

Rear diff breather mod complete! I followed @csuviper's writeup: https://www.tundras.com/threads/diy-rear-differential-breather-mod.5253/

The only thing that I had an issue with was the 6ft of fuel line was about a foot shorter than what I needed to route it how and where I wanted, but the breather still ended up in the tail light area, so it's fine.

 

Welp, I’m an idiot. I apparently pressed the front bushings out when I did this work, since I couldn’t quite tell which end was which.

The risk I took was calculated, but boy am I bad at math…

I didn’t figure it out until I had the passenger side leaf pack out and was comparing with the new set. On the plus side, I found out there are already poly bushings in the rear eyelets. New OEM front bushings should be here tomorrow and I’ll give it another shot.

 

Just went through the thread. Great work. It was nice meeting you and I'm glad you are happy!

 

It’s the perfect amount of bass for what I was wanting. Thanks again!

 

measure once..cut twice? Lol, happens to the best of us!

 

Definitely cutting twice this time. But at least I have a trial run of leaf spring removal out of the way!

 

I'm going to learn from the mistakes you made, so I will measure twice, cut once.

 

I mean, consider it a trial run!

 

If I included all the mistakes I made along the way with this truck, this would be a much longer thread…

 

Magic tap oil on your bits, difficult upside down, just oil with a drop frequently.

 

Yeah, oiled the bit. Just think it was the wrong bits and wrong drill.

 

Beautiful rig @TRDFerguson. Glad to see you got your WNOR sliders on. Mine are still sitting in the garage, some day they’ll go on. Life’s just been too crazy with the little ones.

how hard was the install? I’m thinking about renting a magdrill (I think it’ll have enough clearance) to do all the work for me. That and a whole bunch of fresh bits..

 

Use only magic tap oil and drill with smaller like a 5/16 bit first and then drill bits will last much longer. Smaller bits are cheaper to throw away.

 

Install wasn't terrible, except for the half inch holes into the bottom of the frame. They include some backing plates with a nut and guide wire welded together for the bolts by the gas tank, which helps but is still a pain to line them up blind. Having a second set of eyes and a flashlight holder is helpful for those. And when you take out the splash guard plastic at the front of the frame, make sure you leave the bolts in the second position out so you can put them back in... ask me how I know...

But I think the magdrill should help a lot. And someone recommended a set of Milwaukee bits for the bottom frame holes, but I'd have to look to see which ones specifically.

I also was trying to get my 5 year old to help out a little, but he lost interest pretty quick, lol.

 

Well I was able to get new front bushings for the leaf packs from a local dealership parts guy, so that was awesome. Installing them was way easier than pressing them out.


Then I also cleaned up the stock shackles I picked up from a member on here. They had some surface rust, so I hit them with a wire brush and soaked them in vinegar for a couple hours. Seemed to take care of the bulk of the rust, so then I wiped them down really well with alcohol and hit them with primer. Should be good enough for the elements here.

 

Just curious, why not go to a greasable shackle like the iron man version? Seems to me like a better ride. Just curious.

 

I’m just going for a marginal upgrade over the lifting shackles that I’m taking off in place of the new leaf packs. I’ll eventually go to better shackles, but for now I have no complaints about ride quality. Not sure if my bar is that low, or if the TRD Pro shocks just help out that much back there.

 

Leafs are installed and I’m really happy with the lift and ride. I feel like bumps are much smoother vs the shackles I had, but the poly bushings might help with that too.


Also picked up a couple more feet of fuel line and a breather filter to redo my rear diff breather relocation. I’ve read conflicting things on using a 2-way filter/breather, but I think it’ll be fine for what I’m doing.

 

Fun lifting those around, however I bumped up to Dobinson's HDs, so it made those stock packs feel light. Definitely glad I won't be doing it again anytime soon. Glad you are making progress and doing really good with it.

 

It was definitely a wrestling match.

 

Cut, primed and painted some unistrut for DIY bed rails. Just doing the sides for now since Home Depot seems to be out of half the shit I need anymore… should be a quick install tomorrow after they cure a little more overnight.

 

Bed rails installed, but not without a fight. @BiggHertz and @AT x AT can give me more shit about my measuring abilities. The unistrut slots didn’t line up, so had to drill 3 holes… but they were about 1/8 of an inch off.

Then I chipped off some paint and snapped the rear bolt on the passenger side… Probably should have just bought OEM I guess. But they’re in!

 

Not sure about oem, they seem a little bit on the weak side to me. Just my opinion.

 

I’ve never really looked at the OEM rails I guess, but this superstrut is beefy.

 

Hahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahaha

Glad to see that you aren't a fast learner.


That's ok, takes me a couple of tries too.

 

It’s less of a learning disability and more of a laziness issue lol. The driver side was the first and measured off a weld bead instead of the inside of the bed I guess was just enough to make that side a problem. The passenger side was measured perfect, then ran into an issue where I didn’t take quite enough of the bedliner off around the mount, then broke off the bolt when it bound up.