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I’ve been thinking a whole lot about the post I made a while back, and have decided to stick with the vehicle I have. The truck is just too cheap to maintain, too reliable, and I’ve grown pretty attached to it. So, instead of starting over on a whole new project, I’m going to put the money in the Toyota.

The plan will be to totally go through everything from the ground up. I’ll start with the axles, since they are in need of the most attention at this point. It has some leaky seals and could use a brake upgrade and hopefully some locking differentials as well. I’m going to plan on going with a full locking differential in the rear axle, and a selectable locker in front, but if I can find a couple of factory e-lockers for a good price with matching gear ratios I’ll definitely jump on that. Selectable locking differentials (especially in the front axle) will lessen strain on drivetrain components by acting as an open differential under normal conditions, but at the push of the button I’ll have a fully locked up differential that will not allow a tire to spin seperately of the other side. For a vehicle of the type I am building this is ideal.

Brake upgrades will include the common vented rotor and ifs caliper swap for the front axle, with a newer dual reservoir master cylinder to help squeezing them. The rear axle is a toss up at this point, because I will be swapping in a wider IFS rear axle with bigger drum brakes. I would like to swap to disc brakes in the rear, but I will only do it if I can get it done with a parking brake that will keep the original parking brake cable. I’ve used after market transfer case parking brakes before and I won’t do it again.

Suspension will get some upgrades, I’m looking for around three inches maximum of lift. I’d like to run two sets of tires. Wide 35′s in maybe Toyo flavor, for the trail and then keep the 33′ MT/R’s for the rest of the time. Most likely I’ll go with Chevy 1/2 ton springs in the rear and then swap the rear springs to the front axle after I add a couple of extra leaves to the pack. New shocks and a u-bolt flip kit will finish it off.

Steering upgrades will be huge. I’ll swap in a power steering set up from an IFS truck, then add high steer-cross over steering with 3/4 ton Chevy tie rod ends and billet steering arms. This will be a huge upgrade to the old manual steering box and push -pull steering arms.

From there, I’ll move on to the transfer case and transmission. It’s important to me to keep the bench seat in my truck, so the best conclusion I’ve come up with at this point is to get a tranny and transfer case out of an early nineties truck, and put a 5.0 to 1 gear set in the transfer case, as well as a twin stick shifter. This will give me the ability to have low range two wheel drive, and give me a fairly low final drive ratio. I’d like that ratio to be around a hundred, if I can. The newer transmission will give me a strong 5 speed tranny, a great swap that will make driving on the freeway at 4000 RPM in 4th gear for 600 miles much better for milage and wear.

The engine is still in great shape mechanically, so I’ll give it some upgrades and keep it simple. First will be a weber 32/36 DGV carburetor with a snorkel and upgraded air intake system. The only other upgrade I plan on is to the electrical system. A high amp alternator is a sound investment, I’ve been researching people who have swapped in GM 100 amp alternators and at this time I’m thinking that may be the way to go. Luckily there’s room in the engine campartment for goodies. I’ll be adding a second battery with solar trickle charger, and an air compressor. Hopefully I can find a good york compressor at the junk yard, then install an air tank under the bed and run lines forward and aft with quick disconnects to use air tools or inflate tires.

I already have a Warn 9000 pound winch, so in the near future I’ll fabricate up a front bumper for it. While I’m doing that I’ll go ahead and weld up a rear bumper and some rock sliders to protect the doors. Nothing too fancy here, the idea will be to keep it stout and simple. What I have in mind for the rear bumper is to set it up for the option of adding a swing out tire carrier with some jerry can mounts and a mount for the Hi-lift jack.

Lighting is great for those adventures that go into the night. The truck currently has three 12 volt sealed beam tractor lights under the body. One on each side under the door shining down and one facing aft hooked into the back up lights. This set up has proven useful and reliable. Additional lighting I plan to install will be two HID lights on the front bumper for off road driving, LED strip lighting in the camper shell for camping out, and one more sealed beam tractor light facing aft on the top of the camper shell for campsite illumination.

Camper shells are increasingly hard to find for this vintage of truck. I may have to spring for a new model, but I’m attempting to avoid it. For now I will keep my eye out on craigslist and classifieds for one that will work. Once I find one, I’ll add a roof rack to the top with some extra lighting to help out in camp and on the trail.

Moving to interior mods, The cab of the old truck needs some loving. I’d like to get a newer bench seat and have it re-upholstered in some canvas or other durable material. I’ll also redo the carpet and dash, as well us upgrade the control panel in the dash. The new dash panel will house switches for the lights and lockers, a stereo and 12 volt lighter type plug. I’ll also be on the look out for a good quality roll cage for the interior as well.

The bed is going to be my home on many occasions, so I’m going to try and make it pretty comfortable. I’ll do a sleep shelf of some sort, with drawers underneath, but I want this to be easy to remove and place in storage so that I can use the bed for hauling when not in use. Insulating the camper shell and running a couple of stips of LED lighting make sense, as well as installing a power box with a power inverter to run a laptop or blender.

I’m excited about the prospect of actually getting to do some good quality things to this truck. It’s been so great to this point, I’m sure it will last for a long time.

Today I start my first trip as chief engineer. All on my own, here I go.

La Paz was beautiful today. It’s such a great city, I still would love to have a home here. Maybe part of my retirement plan I’ll set something up. It’s been a super long day, so I’ll be brief today. We started at 0300 with fueling, 5900 gallons of diesel, and had a whirlwind of a day from there. It’s 2030 now and I’m so tired! Ah, the life of an engineer. I sure do like it, the gratification of knowing you got some good stuff done at the end of the day is a pleasure like no other.

We’re headed up to Isla Catalina or there abouts tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll have s a bunch of great pictures to show you tomorrow. For now…..I’m off to bed for much needed rest.

Another amazing Baja Sunset, how can you be upset when you see this every day?

We started the morning out with a stop at Los Islotes. While this is one of the more popular places in the area, it’s one of my least favorites. I like sea lions and all, and there are tons of them here, but swimming with them is not high on my priority list. A couple years back we had a guest get attacked by one and ever since then I’ve had no desire to swim with these guys. They are just way too used to human interaction.

The rest of the day we spent anchored in the cove of Isla San Francisco. Like Los Islotes, this is a very popular place, but I do like it here. The I shaped island has a very cool beach, too bad there’s always people there. I have seen some really nice boats at anchor, though.

We made it back up into the Sea of Cortez today, and it sure is nice to be back. Sperm whales were waiting for us once we got up to Puerto Gato, which is a pretty rare sight for us. I’ve only seen them a few times, so this was a special treat. I still only got pictures of nothing…… maybe one of these days here I’ll have a nice whale picture for you.

Puerto Gato is pretty cool place, with very nice desert landscape. This is a nice place to hang out and go for hikes or what not. We also do some snorkeling here, though I haven’t tried that one yet, and I hear it’s quite nice.

What I expect when we steam into Cabo is huge Cruise Ships, Pirate Ships that have been converted to floating party bars, extravegant yachts and sail boats complete with a Disney Style light show. Luckily we only got a little of that stuff today, but we did get something far better. First, while we were leaving the marina we were greated right off the bat by a couple of breaching hump backs. Of course my fine photo skills produced nothing but splashes and empty pictures. I’m going to start bugging some of the photo geeks on board for some tips. After that we ran into more humpbacks, one of which proceeded to breech for 20 minutes solid in front of us. Still……no good pictures.

After the whales, it was starting to get dark, real dark. A huge bunch of clouds rolled up and an insane lightning storm started over head. It was only going from cloud to cloud, but it lit up everything for hundreds of miles. After the show, I decided it was one of the best thunderstorms I’ve ever seen. I did, however, miraculously end up taking a few pretty good pictures of this. I won’t let it go to my head.

Now we are off to the Sea of Cortez. I’m ready. I miss it.

The last couple of days I’ve been training with my boss/mentor Perry and we’ve been going along pretty good. I’ve got about as good of a handle on how this new boat works as you can get in just a couple of days. Now I just have to hope that the National Geographic Sea Bird is kind to me for the next six weeks.

One of the things we’ve been doing to get a bit ahead of the game has been to go through and rebuild a bunch of pumps that we got in shipyard so that we would have good spares on board. The pump above is an all bronze bodied sewage pump. We got kinda silly with it and decided that it would be funny to have a shiny poop pump and the above picture shows the fruits of our labor. It’s probably an engineer joke at best, but I had to show the world anyways.

The trips going great, we’ve had some great weather and the whales have been pretty good. One grey whale put on quite a show earlier breaching twenty something times and putting on a pretty good show. Now we are headed over to the Sea of Cortez, so we should get to see some other cool wild life, too.

I hope to get a little fishing in the next few days. I’ve finally got a pretty good set up, and after pick up a couple small things in Cabo tomorrow I should be set. Hopefully I’ll have pics soon….

Welcome from those that are coming over from the survivalblog. JWR’s blog has been a milepost for a long time, it’s great to see that he likes my “lists”. Pretty cool to see. You can find a the download that JWR was talking about in my downloads page under “Vehicle Kit”. There’s some other great stuff there as well. Enjoy.