Back to a Pretender? Goal Contender.

dwphoto said:
Keep your foot in it brother.
That looks like a very solid camping/wheeling rig.. get some beefy skid plates for the under belly, a rear locker for sure maybe front locker as well. Sent it keep it simple and in the dirt.
Click to expand...
Totally.
Rear locker, great shocks, and the biggest tires that don't quite fit would be a great starter recipe. Is that a solid rear axle year? I would talk to Ian (Wheeleveryweekend) as he probably has a decent 8112 tune for that and he is doing a black Friday sale right now.
 
FYI a front locker makes these things turn significantly worse than they already do, which is BAD. If I am going to have to do tight turns, I unlock a hub otherwise its miserable. Mine is "only" a limited slip but its really stiff.

Sean
 
So yea... got bent over and Diddy'd a few years ago when my girlfriend just didn't come home from work one night and then never returned. Found out she was fucking some dude she worked with I guess. Didn't even care anymore after 10 years of ups and downs mostly due to her penchant for alcohol and anger. Then 10 days later a friend of mine that I've known since 8 years old smoked himself. That was a good week. That was the first, second week of November 2022.

At the time, I wasn't working due to being burnt out mentally from said relationship, shitty work potential and being handicap. After spending most of 2023 looking for a job I finally found something corporate with Oreillys Auto. It was a major pay upgrade to a monumental $3k net income per month. I was there a week. It was a shit show. I thought it would be something I could rebound with but it ended up being a dead end.

Then, I just said fuck it. The dream is over. Came to reality hard and knew what I had to do. After I finished the cage on the truck and with everything that had happened I kind of lost the mojo. I didn't want to let her (the truck) go but I had the Tacoma, center console fishing boat and the Sequoia. Two GSP's now as well. The icing on the cake that really sealed the deal was that my old two smoker Evinrude 90 outboard shit the bed one day at the lake and chewed a top ring in one cylinder and caused piston damage/low compression. In hindsight, the purchase of the boat was probably the beginning of the end for the Tacoma. I love fishing. I love being on the boat.

So long story short, I grudgingly sold the Tacoma to some piece of shit under deserving KID with mommy's money. I knew the kid was going to destroy the truck. I felt bad for her. I owned her 15 years. I was hoping it would go to someone that could take it the step further and see it to the end of being a STRAIGHT SENDER! The kid must have fucked it up mechanically because it's already back on the market but with a bunch of stuff replaced like transmission and a number of drive train items. The new seller is trying to make $5k on my work lol no chance it goes for what this DB wants. ANYWAY...

Right before I let the truck go in the months leading up to the sale I started to do some fab work to the Sequoia. Nothing major. My goals were, rock sliders, roof rack, rear hatch ladder and tire carrier swing out. I got everything but the tire carrier finished. I then did something that I've wanted to do for a long time even if only for a couple of years. I moved to Mexico. I needed a reset. I found a small house in the neighborhood that I've been frequenting in this area since 1998. Cholla Bay. It's a neighborhood in Puerto Penasco also known as Rocky Point in Sonora, Mexico. I'd posted about it years ago on my DR thread that died and went to desert heaven.

So, now here we are. I've been here 7 months and it's going how I expected. Lots of culture shock. Ups and downs. Before I came I found a donor outboard motor in Phoenix for the boat. I tore it down and completely rebuilt it. Evinrude 140. The idea was to come here, spend as much time on the water as possible, go fishing and learn about the sea. The one thing that I've begun to notice is that I don't feel completely fulfilled because I haven't worked with metal for a year. The other part of the plan was to start building the Sequoia. So that leads me to the conclusion.

Over the last few months I started looking on FB Marketplace and Offerup for uppers and shocks. There's absolutely NOTHING in Phoenix right now for first gen Tundra/SEA-quoia's. Ideally, I really wanted to make my own uppers but now that I'm back to the pretenders league, I don't have a secondary whip to DD while work can be done in the garage. I figured back up plan was to wait for the annual SOLO Viernes Negro Sale and buy uppers. I bit the bullet and did that option. So now I just need to find some coilovers. Factory replacement extended travel or maybe a 6" race series coilover from King. I'd have to modify the coil bucket but that's not a problem. Somehow through this all I managed to get all of my fab equipment down here and I have a garage now too.

Anyone have any coilovers?
 
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My welds are finally starting to look decent too. Not all the time, everytime automatic but when I focus for 5 minutes instead of just wanting to "finish" as fast as possible they can look decent.

The roof rack and ladder I made out of 1.5"x.095 hot roll. My Hobart 140 I don't think has the best low heat settings so some of the welds on the roof rack were sub optimal in the "looks" category. I was trying to not warp the rack so it would still bolt up without messing with it and reaming holes. But when I weld something that's at least 1/8" or thicker and I have the machine on 3 or top setting 4, the welds look really good.

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