Completed Project Not a ranger but it is a "race truck"

I have my "whitey turns red" thread in here that I'm updating as my current expo build goes along but I've had enough PM's on info about the race truck and my prerunner truck I guess to justify posting this in here. Hopefully it doesn't upset the expo gods too much to post some japanese products in here. If it makes you feel better they're both running Ford rear axles! LOL


Race truck first... 99% built solo in my garage. It's a partnership deal. The actual owner of the truck is a 16 year air force enlistee friend of mine currently stationed in Washington DC working in the Pentagon. He's not rich by anymeans, he's just good with his money I guess! Unfortunately for our racing plans he's moving to London in a few weeks and likely to finish up his 20 years there and then move back here to Vegas. Our plans going into this were to race it 4-5 times a year, now we're hoping he can make it state side once a year and I may race it myself once or twice.

Enough jabbering... Pictures!!! I'll toss a bit of info between pics where possibly needed...

The basics, the truck started as his daily driver and was a fully loaded Tacoma 2WD prerunner model.

This is the day he brought it home used...

Wanting a little bit of safety he had a local shop here in Vegas do some basic cage work to protect him and his wife.

He then mounted some different fiberglass to make the truck feel more like "his".

The bumper just wasn't cutting it so this is where I stepped in finally on the build. This was the first thing I did on the truck. He was a friend of mine and I'm pretty sure he paid me in Pizza and Mtn Dew which is my typical garage use fee...

He then won some long travel leaf springs in a raffle or something and well, that kind of snowballed. Why put the leafs on without good shocks too? Need something to mount those shocks too so why not cage the back half? If we're caging it, might as well toss in a fuel cell also. Remember, at this stage this is still his daily driver here in Vegas.

All of that was to give us structure to mount some shocks too, this is where the leaf setup and shock mounts started. These leafs aren't direct bolt in so front hangers had to be cut off and refabbed and moved forward and new shackles were used that swung off the top of the frame rather then from under.

Not sure if there's a size limits on posts so I'm going to post this into seperate posts in this thread.

 

[sirhk100]

Next race planned at this point is likely to be this sept or nov. Couple things deciding which and won't know till they get closer but I should be running it in one of them. Jason unfortunately won't likely be able to make it. He literally moves to London in about 2-3 weeks and it's been a childhood dream to race the Mint 400. It's actually the main motivating factor in this entire thing becoming a reality. He's gotta wait and see how things work out but tentatively right now the Mint 2014 is his focus. I would imagine he'll win the long distance award! LOL I hope he can make it cause I'd love to do it and will make sure the truck is 100% for that one!

I should be taking it out in late April/early May sometime for some testing. I want to take it out sometime this summer when it's 105+ and make sure it handles the heat okay. Then whatever fall race I get it to. That's the plans as of right now. It'll just sit around looking pretty till then.

 

[inkjunkie]

Nice work. I am friends with the owner of ADD
http://addictivedesertdesigns.com/shop/fordadd/
......last we spoke he does not do cage work anymore, just bolt on stuff. But I spent enough time in his shop years ago to know how much time it take to pull off what you did...Congratulations on a job well done......

 

[Tbars4]

..Give us some advance notice and I'm sure a few of us could be out there as support team/pit crew as needed...I know we can handle the Media part for ya..:biggthump

...Hopefully Jason can fulfill his childhood dream and race the Mint 400 2014...

..Let us know how we can help make this dream come true for one of our active duty members and we will see what we can do on this end..

 

[Josh S.]

Awesome build man! Thanks for putting up the pics.

 

[College Student]

Nice build, sucks that he wont be able to run in more races too.
I have a question though, I noticed in the pictures that the wheel was turned, no big deal the tires were probably turned too. Then I watched the 9 minute testing video and noticed the wheel was turned about 30 degrees to the right, is there any reason for that?

 

[sirhk100]

Yep, reason for that is the video was all footage from our first 4 days of testing with it. I had it garage aligned to drive straight but hadn't had a chance to actually center the wheel or have a real legit alignment done on it yet on a rack. Between the testing days when that video was shot and our race we got everything centered up and the wheel straightened. Just kind of a lack of time sorta thing more then anything. Made it drive straight around the block and then moved onto the next iron in the fire essentially...

 

[College Student]

That's what I was thinking, having the wheel look correct is way less important that it having incorrect toe and it actually pulling in one direction.

 

[sirhk100]

Yeah, you can pretty much tell from the video it's driving straight, the wheel just hadn't been centered at that point. The build was basically a 1 man show and no matter how hard or little I worked on it, the race deadline wasn't going to change so I definitely prioritized things along the way. I actually never did have it professionally aligned... Not joking, the night before the race as we're loading the truck up on the trailer in the street I'd have the owner roll down the block and come back, I'd jump under and adjust it and he'd go again and tell me if it was good or not enough or what. Took I think 3 tries to get it good enough and we loaded it up and went racing. That was the very last thing I did at my house before we raced it now that I think about it. LOL

 

[Brian1]

Just got my Off-Road Magazine in the mail...Congrats on the cover shot and nice feature on this truck!!

 

[sirhk100]

Thanks! I haven't even seen it yet myself!!! LOL Funny part is I heard they spelled Jason's last name wrong! Whoops, at least I think they got mine correct! LOL

 

[sirhk100]

Well, I couldn't leave well enough alone... I sold my personal toyota a few weekends ago and picked up it's replacement. Not the race truck in this thread but the one I showed in post #16 . That was my personal truck also 100% built by me. The thing was, I'd built the TPF race truck and it kinda depressed me with my own truck cause while it was fun and all... It just wasn't representative of what I could actually build and so I kinda lost interest in it. For years now though I'd been drooling over a truck my friend had built by a professional shop that was about 90% complete. He came into some financial needs and well, we struck a deal and I took it home.

It's a square body style standard cab F150 but that's where the normality of it stops. Under the hood is a 100% brand new never been started 6.0L Chevy LQ9 backed by a brand new Culhane race built 4L80E which is a 4 speed auto. Both need wired and plumbed still. The chassis is also 100% new and never touched dirt. It's got a currie rear and and giant motorsports suspension components which all have seen use in a previous life. I've got the shocks for it and everything, coilovers and bypasses on each corner. Work wise, it needs wired, plumbed and a driveshaft to be running. I need to purchase all the body panels and mount them also. I am going to have to move the pedals inside the cab as well as it's setup for someone much shorter then me right now as well. LOL

Anyways, just thought some may appreciate the next project in line... And again, while it's not a ranger, it is at least a Ford chassis... LOL

LOL, how do I move a non running truck into my garage? Well it's race powered of course!

What's behind all the panels?

Gonna spend the next few weeks tearing it fully down to bare chassis, cleaning it up and reassembling to make sure it's all good. Probably won't be moving forward with finishing it up till I recover my savings account though.

 

[Tbars4]

..:scratch:..What's the dog guarding?...half an a-arm he pulled off something?..

..Btw...another trade show going on this week and I'm waiting for a call back probably tomorrow..

 

[sirhk100]

LOL, he's probably just staring at me for food!!!

Right on!!! I actually am finally replacing the ones on my exploder that failed on me thanksgiving day this sat! My jerry rigged setup seems to be holding up for street use for the time being. Actually until this spring when I can afford to pickup another street legal ride my expo is grounded to street cruising only. I can't afford to break it and not get to work on mondays. LOL

 

[Tbars4]

..Did you find that link on the spindle nuts cost useful? You can't beat $11 in stock for better parts..:biggthump

 

[sirhk100]

Yeah but I'd actually already bought thru ebay at that point unfortunately. Wasn't too bad but not $11 cheap either! LOL I'll know for future if this other deal doesn't workout for whatever reason.

 

[bats]

What a kick ass read to go with my morning coffee. My hat's off to you for doing all this in your garage on week nights.

I saw you had Sidewider gate shifters on both your trucks. I put one in my BII build after I kept snapping the column shift cable. They're a bit spendy but worth the $$. Solid product and I've never had it pop out of gear.

 

[sirhk100]

Glad you enjoyed it! While not very much explorer related it definitely is offroad related and I've never been the brand loyal type. I prefer something that works not matter the make/model. My expo is a blast! Heck, I put 1000 miles on it over the past few days and will be putting about 400 dirt miles on it between now and the 1st of the year.

The shifter is hands down a great investment!!! The Tacoma's stock setup is notorious for ghost shifting just from a hard bottom out suspension hit due to the shifter handle just getting moved from inertia.

I took the race truck out last sat for some filming... My computer isn't cool enough to process the high res stuff so I appologize for the 5+ y/o resolution quality but here's a sample of what we got on the in car cameras. We were doing external shots also and should've got some decent stuff! Each forward shot is followed by the pretty much the same looking out the back in these.

 

[Tbars4]

...Who is the really short person?..

..:scratch:..You ever think about building a vehicle for King of the Hammers?

 

[sirhk100]

Do I ever "think" about it... It has crossed my mind... Honestly, if I was starting with an empty driveway and a blank slate I 100% would be building one! But I really like my expo and I'm an atlas and rearched set of leafs so it sits level and gains some more uptravel away from being "done" with it. And well, this new truck is literally an extra cab away from being my "dream truck" so I'm going with it. If I hadn't had the lead on this truck in particular... I may have gone KOH style. The problem with KOH though is to legitimately be competitive, the budget for components is just flat out outta my reality. I know I could build one heck of a fun crossover rig though! Instead, I'm building a very purpose built go fast rig and a good all around rig in the expo in my opinion that doubles as a pretty "original" daily driver, at least in Vegas...

Oh, and the spindle nut... I've got word of a competitor in the works at about the same price point. Different design/function but same end result... As soon as I hear if they've succeeded I'll pass info on. It's blitzkrieg motorsports doing the part if you know the name...

 

[Tbars4]

..They do have a stock class and a stock modified..just saying..

..and I know them...I will be following up next week on the other deal to see what's up ..