JakeJake (and Dale!) 's Camper Truck |2000 AC

Disclamer: Words are hard, and I'm not much of a writer.

I purchased this truck for $3000.00 last July to replace my 1979 Toyota RN42 that was covering camper hauling duties.

Dale and I spend a lot of time outdoors, and building the camper was a game changer in terms of quality of life. If we are in the truck(camper) we can live comfortably almost indefinitely.

You gotta admit, this setup kills it in the style department.

I loved the idea of traveling the country in that old Toyota, but in practice it was not ideal. It was slow, loud, had low ground clearance, lacked 4wd, cruise control and A/C. The seat sucked and it had limited interior space. Because of this it kept us from doing any trips longer than 300ish miles.

I wanted something that we could load up on any given day and be somewhere far far away 8 hours later. Reliably and in comfort, and that corrected all the previous shortcomings.

The camper:
I designed and built this foam core fiberglass camper. 300ish# completely empty and double that plus some when loaded with all the gear for an extended trip. 100Ah lithium/200 watt solar/ full size bed/ Slide out kitchen/ Insulated and dry home away from home.

Enter the 1GT:

I found the 1gt platform and it was a perfect fit.

Efficient&reliable v8 power
Factory A/C+Cruise Control
4WD
Access Cab with added storage space

And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. And I sold the '79 for a handsome proffit. And I waited.

This truck popped up on FB marketplace one Sunday afternoon in July. Priced at $6000 and just around the corner from my parents place. The previous owner said it had been sitting for a year + and it hadn't seen any maintenance in a long long time. He was a nice guy and we had an easy negotiation (cash money on a Sunday makes that easier)

This is what a $3k tundra looks like in West Texas. Rode hard and put up wet.

July to September 2023: I only put about 400 miles on the truck. I was busy with other things and slowly working to fix all the easy details of the Tundra when I had a little free time. Things like cleaning the interior, replacing the climate control knobs, flushing the green coolant, oil change etc.

September 2023:
I took the truck to the post office, upon leaving I T-Boned a 2021 Tiguan (not at fault). The truck was totaled by insurance. I did an owner retained salvage and got a nice check to put towards repairs and upgrades.

November 2023:
I built the bumper, built retrofit headlights, and wired/installed hella supertone horns. Salvage yard hood/fender. Snowflake wheels.
https://www.tundras.com/threads/jak...k-bumper-build-extravaganza-pic-heavy.133689/

January 2024:
Still going after low hanging fruit on the repairs list. The Tcase output shaft was leaking and I broke a chunk out of the case using some questionable pinion leverage to remove the nut.

March 2024:
The new rigs longest trip to date. Amarillo TX to Terlingua TX, about 1100 miles roundtrip. The tundra blew me away. High teens for fuel economy, and all the creature comforts.

June 2024:
Cam seals
Crank seal
Timing belt-tensioner-tensioner pulley-idler pulley
Water pump
Thermostat
Front water crossover and gaskets
Radiator
A/C Compressor
A/C Condensor
Hayes 678 Trans cooler
Valve cover gaskets
Throttle body cleaned and new gasket


June 23: I wrapped up getting the last few things together that I need for my suspension build
The Loot

I really just came for the leafs, but I couldn't resist.

Front-
Completely strip/prep/ospho/paint low gloss black

OEM upper&lower ball joints
ARP hardware
poly upper&lower control arm bushings-Daystar
poly steering rack bushings
poly sway bar bushings
Billstein 5100
OME 2884
KYB top hats 5442
KYB isolators 5413

Back-
Completely strip/prep/ospho/paint low gloss black
Bilstein 5100's
Airbags+fittings/tubing
Airbag cradles
Bastard leaf pack 5 leaves no overload
-new leaf bushings
-new leaf isolators
u-bolt eliminators with integral bag cradle mounts

Shock relocation?
LSD swap?

Going to clean up the shop tonight, Pressure wash the underside of the truck, and get ready to dive in first thing tomorrow.

 

I’m in.

 

Following.

 

More please.

 

Is this a TIG weld repair?

 

Yes, there's a thread maybe? Or just some posts on the lunch table

Clean and dry to this day.

 

June 24-28

Front suspension rebuild:

Before I really tore into the truck I made a few parts to compress the strut assembly in my shop press.

Press plate
I cut this out of an extra 8x8x3/8 baseplate I had on hand. Some tricky geometry going on, but CNC makes quick work of it

Shock eye adapter
3x3x1/4 capped on one end with 3/8" plate. Bolt hole drilled to accept shock bolt.

In use
Load the parts, clock the assembly, and pucker that butthole. Plenty safe and way better than the screw style compressors, but working on that much potential energy is a different kind of focus.

Okay, now I have all the parts together, and specialty tooling built. maybe.

Heres our starting point
Tore up from the floor up. Complete with blown bushings, torn boots, plenty of dirt and grime, and possibly some original components 200k+ miles later.

Everything was going smooth until I encountered a stuck cam adjuster on the drivers side. No pro bob, I'll just use this fancy OTC ball joint press.
Had to throw the impact into the mix too. Safety squints engage.

At this point I had swung the 5lb sledge around under there like an angry gorilla and voided the warranty on my ball joint press. You goin' learn today.

Whats left of a chrome socket that the ball joint press was able to press into the sleeve.

After this the passenger side was a cakewalk. I had all the tools out all ready and @bmf4069 stopped by to talk world domination while I wrapped things up for the day. He was also there to bare witness to the ceremonious torching of the stuck cam adjuster on the passenger side

Driver side stripped

Passenger side stripped

Drivers side parts

Passenger side parts

This gives a good idea of what we are working with here



Dale Break

Tuesday: Lots of cleaning-not very exciting.
From here I used a detail brush and some Dawn Power Wash soap to scrub every inch of exposed frame from the front bumper to the rear of the cab. Crossmembers where accessible too. I rinsed well with a spray bottle of fresh water and soaked up the mess with a couple of thick microfiber towels that were destined for the trash. One "Dirty" and one "clean" working in sections and doing two passes. I then let this air dry before going back over everything with a 4 1/2" angle grinder with a wire wheel, and finally ospho'd everything.

I torched out the OEM bushings leaving the metal sleeves in place

JakeJake Pro Tip.
I keep a scrap of concrete backer board around to do "hot work" over. Saves the floor or driveway from molten metal or in this case burning rubber. Just throw it away when it gets to be ineffective. It lasts damn near forever.

A small diameter (1") wire wheel on a drill cleans up the bores nicely

The control arms then received the wire wheel/ospho treatment.

While the Ospho was choochin' I masked off either side of the frame, the fender gap into the engine bay, and used aluminum foil over any fidly bits that I didn't want to paint. Things like brake lines, fuel lines, the parking brake cable, the front axles, and steering rack

I mixed up a quart of Rustoelum low-gloss black, catalyzed, and reduced with acetone 16:1:1. I sprayed this out of an hvlp gun with a 1.8 tip.
Wet Paint !

Wednesday:

I set off to get everything assembled only to discover a flaw with the Daystar KT03012BK bushing kit. That story/the solution is detailed here

Heres a shot of the modified bushings in the control arms ready to install.

I got the Control arms loosely bolted into place. A guy might have even tacked the crunchy knockoff cam adjusters he got on Amazon

Not dealing with this again.

I detailed the knuckles and hit them with a little paint before calling it a day

Thursday:
I got everything assembled and loosely bolted. The steering rack to shaft coupler fought me for longer than I would like to admit. Do that from the fender well and save yourself the punishment. The steering rack received a Prostar poly bushing kit, as did the swaybar.

Friday:

Weight/torque/test drive/torque. done.

I still have a few odds and ends to button up.

String alignment. I set the cams dead center in their adjustments all the way around and honestly it drives great so I may not get to this right away.

Reinstall fender liners/ engine bay splash shields- these are drying and will likely go on when I hit post

Im waiting to see if there's a Toyotaparts sale for the 4th. I will be ordering new TRE's and Boots.

Drive it as much as possible in the next two days to settle the suspension so that I can tear into the rear on Monday morning!

Im going to try and get a few beauty shots to show off the front frame fender well sexiness as its never going to look this good again.

 

Looked really clean. Expert work!

 

Those are awesome adapters for a spring compressor. Great idea to fab that for next time.

So is that an older HF 20 ton shop press?

I was eying the that seem to be in Timmy's video and other's posts for fitting the rear axles in. Have heard sometimes the bottom cross support gets in the way.

Do you know if your older one fits the axles? Looks like I found an older one and can put a tape measure on it soon.

 

Impressed! But the truck aside, how in the heck do you build that camper???

 

Yeah its an old HF 12 ton I believe? I think it gets its drivers license this year, and now has a 20 ton bottlejack. I can grab some measurements tomorrow.

 

Thanks!
Some weirdo put it on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPQn9sUD3RL_0CS0215tWDA

 

I think the 12T frames are too small IIRC.

 

I just spit out my drink laughing

 

You are, in all your shop glory, and YT prowess, what I wish I could be.

Hats off to you, and your abilities

 

Thanks Noah! My skills are an amalgamation of little things here and there, some I wonder if's and some what if a guy did______.The human potential is limitless if you set your sights on something and pursue it with a passion.

More to come!

 

It's rear suspension time!

This work took place from June 23rd to July 12 2024. I took over 200 gigs of photos and video (for the YouTube's) so this will be picture heavy, but I will try and limit any redundant photos. I will elaborate on as much detail as possible, but feel free to ask questions or for more photos etc. I Kinda feel weird clogging up the main forum with my builds weirdness, so this will be a perfect place for questions and whatnot.

It all started with a trip to the local u-pull salvage yard.
Well, Let's back up. The toyota section at my local yard is about 1/2 mile from the entrance gate. They do not allow driving in the yard and do not supply carts. I needed away to get all my tools (and Dale!) back to the donor truck and then get that stuff plus my parts haul back. This Harbor Freight garden cart fit the bill nicely. Loaded here with everything I needed (and more). Dale doesn't actually ride, he prefers to run around and smell the smells.

Jack, 2x Jackstands, 1/2 impact, Sawsall, Extra batteries, Impact socket set, my typical mobile toolkit, and a happy Dale.

My initial intention was to go snag a pair of leaf springs from a 2002 ac 2wd that they have to build a bastard spring pack. Knowing that I will have the airbag setup I have a lot more wiggle room as far as rear ride height, and knew that I wanted more weight capacity without sacrificing suspension flexibility. If such a goldilocks zone exists. I did consider ATS leaf springs or General leaf springs, but neither of them really excited me.

I had just looked down after dragging the leafs from under the truck when son of a bitch.
A wild LSD appeared


I picked up my tools and gathered myself. I knew that lsd was coming home with me, but needed to think about it for a few minutes. Some extremely brief gear ratio googling later and it was decided. Do I pull just the diff, or do I take the whole assembly? I then remembered @bmf4069 talking about axle seal problems and thought that he may be interested in the housing. A quick phone call later and it was confirmed, I am taking the whole axle. I remember Bmf asking " when do you want to go get it?" and I replied, "well I'm here now, I'll just bring it home with me" The only thing left connected at this point was the driveshaft and rear brake line, another 10 minutes or so and I was loading up.

The cart worked out perfectly, and while it wasn't a walk in the park, it was way better than multiple trips or shouldering an axle!

I preemptively pulled the six bed bolts and reinstalled them with a generous amount of copper anti seize. "YoU aRe PuLlInG ThE bED?!" Where we are going, we don't need beds.

Pulled the bed first thing the next morning and backed it into the shop where it would sit for a few weeks.

By the end of the day I had the rear frame stripped bare, ready for that newness.

Heres the 00 4wd axle (closest to the jack) sitting next to the 02 LSD unit. Notice the 02 has the addition of the wheel speed sensors and wiring harness. The 02 Also has ABS, but that does not change the brake lines or layout back here.

In all my research I found that both axles are likely 3.9xx ratio and figured if its within a hundredth or a thousandth I have no qualms about running it. I drained the gear oil from both axles and pulled the axle shafts and diff's, laying everything out on some clean cardboard. Sure enough one is stamped 3.90 and the other 3.9. Good enough for who its for! Also the ring gear from my 2000 truck is marked 99-12-18, maybe in the running for "earliest first gen"?

I sat my donor axle housing on either end and gave the insides a brake clean bath. 2 cans worth. I cleaned the differential mounting surface and installed the LSD with The right stuff 90 minute grey. Buttoned up the axle shafts/ backing plates and it was time to clean up the outside.

For a reference later I center punched through the center hole of the spring hangers before I went on the axle shaving frenzy. When disassembling welded assemblies I always approach it in a way where I am directing my focus at the welds and trying to leave the parent metal as pristine as possible. For the axle This meant cutoff wheel to dissect the weld and a cold chisel to break the unwanted parts free. The OEM spring perches and LSPV bracket got the chop.

OSHA? Never heard of her. This is proper tig welding attire. About 9pm and I couldn't stop thinking about this thing so I went out and ran a few beads over a couple of whoopsies I made with a cutoff wheel.

Topo chico nightcap while organizing my thoughts as a proud dale looks on.

The next day was spring day. Label/direction arrows, disassemble, remove old spring clamps, cleanup, cutdown leafs/polish ends, and build new clamps. Didn't think that would take a full day, but it did.

Starting point

Here's a good shot of the mostly completed packs. Basically its two main leafs the standard #2 and #3 leaf and then a cut down (diamond cut boyeee) #3 leaf. Notice how the second main leaf lands under where the shackle bolt goes. This was done on purpose as this are see's the most deformity, and I like the idea of being able to still drive with a broken main leaf. Not quite a "military wrap" but way better than the single point of failure in the stock pack.

I bent up these (way oversized)spring clamps.They work, but my get shortened up some in the future. Also I intend to cut some sleeves for the bolts at some point.

The stock spring hangers had a doubler plate underneath them that I removed, so lets make a set to get started putting things back together.

Had a couple of options in stock. This is where I have to remember my goals for the rig. Lightweight and efficient. No need for a 3/8 double plate when the 3/16" is overkill.

I cut these profiles and cleaned them up for nice handling and welding.

I designed (a few weeks ahead of time) a u bolt eliminator spring perch and got to cutting the parts on the CNC plasma. The machine is a self built and has a cutting capacity of 49"x100" a powermax 45xp provides the plasma power. It uses mach 3 control, and I use sheet cam for tool paths and G-code.

In action.

Stacking parts together as they get cut is like Christmas

I prepped all the parts and welded them up on the bench. Remember the abc's of welding "always be comfortable"

Due to the doubler design I could set these into place on the axle and still have some adjustment room for pinion angle and positioning. Worked out great!

I must only have video of these next parts, but here is a finished shot of the upper spring clamping plate, and airbag mount. This is actually revision 1. The first go around I forgot to add material for the kicked up edges, and had some ugly sharp corners That I radiuses off in the later photos. Sometimes things don't jump out at you in the design stage like they do in the flesh.
Check out the captive Bolt heads for one tool install! Also you can see how the airbag cups mount via the two 3/8 tapped holes. These are not Daystar cups, but rather an off brand. Glass reinforced nylon, so they should hold up just fine.

A couple of first looks with a bag in place.

At this point I was ready to Load the suspension and check my pinion angles. The t-case pinion exits at -5 degrees ish and I knew I wanted as close to 0 of a total driveline angle as possible. The rear pinion raises with more load so its important to do this with the suspension loaded to that amount. Or so I though. I placed 540lbs of concrete on each side of the truck to simulate the load. Set the pinion angle at 5 degrees positive (thanks to the cool doubler spring perch design) and then carefully unloaded the concrete and remeasured the pinion angle. It only moved -.6 degrees. WELD IT! It took some time to do, but I sleep easy at night knowingI checked it.

I pulled the axle out yet again to make the welds.

Dale is part billy goat

I think around this time @shifty` said something to the effect of " there's not a man in your family if you don't chop out that crossmember and delete the LSPV" Or maybe my memory is just fuzzy, but he was right. The spare tire crossmember and LSPV needed to go! I had been eyeing the spare tire as the location of a 15-20 gal fresh water tank and for 5ish gallons of diesel for the heater. This was all the motivation I needed to throw myself into it head first.

I welded in a temporary angle iron crossmember, and chopped torched the crossmember out. Playing with some tape here for potential crossmember designs.

I then cut and fit some .125 tread plate (smooth side out) to box the frame. It's what I had on hand and really a great material for this. 1/8 is a little undersized of the frame thickness but the raised portion of the tread plate is just under 3/16. Perfect. Call it 1/8" HD.

At the end of this day I rebent, cut, and flared on the fittings for the Wilwood bias valve to replace the LSPV. If anyone is interested in this mod I highly recommend going this route. The tool and required fittings is about 1/2 the price of the kit from you know who, and the tool will be useful long after you have sold your first gen for a super duper cool third gen.

The Wilwood bias valve eventually got a nice tapped plate mount installed.

The final crossmember locations. The tubing is 1 1/2" ASTM a513 seamless. Better yield than 1020 Dom, and available from my neighbor (the steel supplier) for a good price. It is something like .10-.20 lbs heavier per foot, but I used less than 10 feet soon big gain there. The crossmembers land on 3/8" doublers for the shocks and 1/4" doubler plates for the rear crossmember. 100% USDA grade A BEEF.

Somewhere in here I realized the stock exhaust passes right through where I wanted my shock to land so it got the chop. I cut this weed burner tip from some material I had on hand. At some point I will build a catback system and dump the exhaust right before the rear wheel well. That and fab up some longtubes, but that's a ways away.

Onto the upper airbag mounts. Due to where I wanted the bags to sit on top of the spring, it put the mounting bolts, and the airline fitting really close to the frame. Like impossibly close. I decided to notch the frame with this 1/4" arch that I fabricated. You can see here My layout for the optimal bag angle. I think flat to the bottom of the frame would have worked, but I decided on a 10 degree angle so that as the spring compresses the bag is always aligned with the lower cup. A lot more work, but one of those things I would rather whole ass than just slap it together.

Here's a shot of the finished notch showing the clearance created.

This shot shows the angle of the mount, and the outer pipe/mount in place.

Paint time!

I broke everything down (again) to paint. The axle, u bolt plates, springs, and shackles got painted separately to ensure good coverage. Everythingwas aggressively wire wheeled and ospho'd before painting with my usual Rustoleum low gloss black. Reduced 16:1:1 and sprayed out of a 1.8 tip.

I reassembled as soon as everything was able to be handled. WOW.

Worth it!

Shock mounts.
I only did shock mounts after the paint because I incorrectly ordered three sets of shocks, the correct ones being the last pair to come in. I ended up using a Bilstein 24-065276 5100 shock for an f-250/f350. 1 inches of travel and an eye to eye design. I designed and cut these shock tabs out of 1/4" plate and then drilled, prepped, tig welded, fit on the truck, and mig'd them out

The beauty of using an off the shelf paint: it comes in 12oz touch up rattle cans.

Baby flexin to end this one off. Next installment will be the flatbed/service bed/ute tray. I have a bunch of goodies on the way and cant wait to get started. Alignment scheduled for Monday and then I'm going to load the camper and spend the night somewhere making sure I like where my ideas are going. Next update will likely come in several installments, as this one has taken me a few hours to put together.

 

Dropping some wheel stud info here before I close about a dozen tabs.

M12x1.5

You have a couple of options based on length and this leads to about 11 different part numbers.

Dorman-The unthreaded shank can be oversized for the hub and lead to a frustrating install. Be weary of the studs that have a significant unthreaded shank. $2-3 a piece
ARP- The gold standard. Only sold in packages of 5. $7-9 a piece
Ebay/Amazon- lots of reports of fake 10.9 grade fasteners online. and even if the material is right....meh. $2 a piece
Wheeladapters.com- Made in USA (Dearborn Michigan. Dear slim, I wrote you but you still aint callin') Sold in sets of 12 and 24. $2.66 each


I went the wheeladapters dot com route. If nothing else, FOR SCIENCE!

 

Dorman is fine versus OEM, but a small helpful infographic I made for wheel studs, b/c front (disc) and rear (drum) are diff't lengths. You got the 'extended studs' which I believ eare the +4.5mm though, but you can caliper on arrival to verify.

​

 

Good stuff!

The set I ordered are 60mm and may require a little trimming. Fine by me. Buying from a small business that's selling American made parts hits me right in the feel goods.

 

Sizes may be different across the years also. The lengths I posted above at applicable (per Dorman at least) for the '06. With all the little weird differences between '00 and '06, the alpha and omega, that handy dandy infographic may not apply here.

 

Just remember, I have a set of headers arriving in October. You know, just in case you wanna look em over.

 

Bad ass!

 

Kinda slow this week. I didn't want to dive into the flatbed with my pending alignment coming up on Monday.

I picked up this set of wheels on some Geolander mt's 285 70 17 from a local buddy. Also a set of 1 1/4 hub centric spacers. Looks great with just a little bit more tire. I will be swapping between the two sets. Mt 285's for local, and the skinny at's for any kind of distance. The wheel studs above are to accommodate this.


Today I went through and checked the torque on all the fasteners in the suspension F&R. I did find a hand tight shock bolt and a loose brake line mount. I paint marked the LBJ bolts, and a few other critical fasteners for quick reference next time.

Removed the return line for the OEM LSPV. 5 minute low hanging fruit kinda job.


Tomorrow I need to add a couple of crossmembers to the flatbed for the camper to set on and weld in some temporary pad eye's for the turnbuckles to secure the camper. My alignment guy wants it loaded to the expected rig weight. I'll add 80lb bags of Quickcrete to the interior of the camper to dial it in. Pictures of this stuff tomorrow.

 

Just got through this post. That's some really nice work Jake, admire your skill level. Everything clean, well thought out and executed, and stout/strong AF. Thanks for sharing it.

 

Got the Winnebango loaded and locked down today.

Started with adding some crossmembers for the camper to bear on.

SOMEBODY set the shock tower a smidge high and complicated this.

Im using 3/4 rubber mat between the fiberglass and the steel.

It rides pretty damn incredible with just the camper and 5psi in the air bags. I didn't realize how uncomfortable it was before until I was actively searching for bumps and potholes to hit for testing purposes. One section of expansion joints in the highway used to feel pretty sketchy, Now its plush and controlled.

So I added another 800lbs

Still rides great! I did bump up the bags to 20 psi. Sitting at approximately 1200lbs heavier than stock. Dead level on the bed and just breaking the bubble high in the rear on the rocker. Notice the spring still has plenty of arch? This shit is so rad.

Tons of room for activity! This was all dead space with the stock bed. Temporarily setup the old turn buckles with loops of chain and weld on chain hooks. Im going to eliminate these in favor of 4-6 bolts fastened from underneath.



Alignment tomorrow morning at 8 am

 

You rockin load range E1 or SL? Like the price of those tires, any feedback?

 

Wicked fabrication skills! Do you have more photos of the camper? That thing looks awesome. Love the old pickup too. What happened to it?

 

Both the the Wranglers and the Yokohomas are e1 rated.

No complaints, but both sets were used take off marketplace specials. I did notice some lack of wet traction yesterday evening on the wranglers, but that could just be the newly installed LSD, or high tire pressure for being unloaded, or heavy suspension testing foot.

If I were paying full price I would snag a pair of kenda kleever's. The only tire that my dually truck hasn't destroyed in under a year.

Thanks dude!

The YouTube build of the camper is posted in this thread somewhere.

I sold the 79' for a handsome profit. I hated to let it go, but I'm trying to keep the heard somewhat small these days. There's only so many hours in the day and one guy cant drive 3-4-5 cars.

I'll have to check out your ultra 4 and hilux builds when I get a minute!

 

How much does it raise the nose at speed?