Hello from Draper I'm Grady, sold my track car project corvette and my Miata to go back to playing in the dirt where i belong instead of hamming it up with tech bro's in their quarter mil clout chasing cars they daintily cruise to a parking lot with. previously i had a '72 scout II on 40's & tons with a 203/205 and chevy drivetrain swap i did in my carport back in Monterey, Ca straight out of high school many years ago.
I picked up a '13 raptor in February- purchased it without seeing it, drove it 900 miles home the same day i flew out with a bag of tools and an obdII scanner, and that set the tone for the rest of my adventures with this truck for the year.
I've managed to throw about 16k miles on it so far jumping between multiple raptor runs jumping and bombing through southern idaho into the west utah desert and 'overlanding' adventures to southern Utah either solo or with the local Lexus GX group, I even managed a little rock crawling on the 7 mile trail and picked up some body damage dropping off a few 4' shelves in a truck with the departure angle of a school bus.
Unfortunately the lexus group likes to remind me they're overlanders not baja racer wannabes, I subscribe to the mentality of "go fast, dont die" which is similar to bad lines good times but for motorcycles so we dont exactly jive on the trail pace but we still have a good time. I'm glad to find a space for people that actually use their shit the way it was intended and I'm loving the build section, it's like being back on pirate4x4 when it didn't suck and people actually built cool shit in their garage rather than pay someone to do it.
I had no idea what a prelander was before joining the forum but if i had to put a label on it, I'm going for something like that... but without $80k into the build, call it a minimalist build if you will, it's 'overlanding' not 'overpacking' right? I feel people forget that sometimes. Future plans for the raptor will be 3.0's a better lighting package for night runs, and some paint protection of some kind, it's the "daily" and it hasnt faired well with the abuse it's seen so far, most of the rocker panel paints already gone, and the hips are destroyed so we'll see what we can do, otherwise the plans to beat the hell out of it and enjoy exploring utah as fast as possible. Cheers.
I picked up a '13 raptor in February- purchased it without seeing it, drove it 900 miles home the same day i flew out with a bag of tools and an obdII scanner, and that set the tone for the rest of my adventures with this truck for the year.
I've managed to throw about 16k miles on it so far jumping between multiple raptor runs jumping and bombing through southern idaho into the west utah desert and 'overlanding' adventures to southern Utah either solo or with the local Lexus GX group, I even managed a little rock crawling on the 7 mile trail and picked up some body damage dropping off a few 4' shelves in a truck with the departure angle of a school bus.
Unfortunately the lexus group likes to remind me they're overlanders not baja racer wannabes, I subscribe to the mentality of "go fast, dont die" which is similar to bad lines good times but for motorcycles so we dont exactly jive on the trail pace but we still have a good time. I'm glad to find a space for people that actually use their shit the way it was intended and I'm loving the build section, it's like being back on pirate4x4 when it didn't suck and people actually built cool shit in their garage rather than pay someone to do it.
I had no idea what a prelander was before joining the forum but if i had to put a label on it, I'm going for something like that... but without $80k into the build, call it a minimalist build if you will, it's 'overlanding' not 'overpacking' right? I feel people forget that sometimes. Future plans for the raptor will be 3.0's a better lighting package for night runs, and some paint protection of some kind, it's the "daily" and it hasnt faired well with the abuse it's seen so far, most of the rocker panel paints already gone, and the hips are destroyed so we'll see what we can do, otherwise the plans to beat the hell out of it and enjoy exploring utah as fast as possible. Cheers.
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