This is an ordinary, 1987 2 wheel drive Toyota pickup. Nothing ostentatious, nothing offensive, nothing particularly out of the ordinary. The man behind the wheel however has plans to change all that. This is day one, October 22, 2011...
The truck is the first generation of Toyota's X-cab model, which stretches the cab and adds approximately 9 inches of storage space behind the seats of the cab. There were no additional jump seats behind the driver and passenger seat in these early models, that was the reason this generation of Toyota truck was chosen. I don't want passengers in excess of 1 in my truck. This is the only model of truck that gives me the seating capacity of a regular cab truck but with the ability to recline by driver's seat. This is, in my opinion, the perfect pick-up truck cab arrangement.
November 5, 2011, This is the official start of Phase 1.
What is "Phase 1", you might ask. Phase 1 was fairly simple and straight forward. Getting rid of the little half ton axle that the truck came with, and replacing it with the full float 1-ton dually axle. This axle pictured above came as pictured from a local scrap yard. I would need to completely dissassemble the axle and re-build it. Which I did over the course of the following two months
This is what the Dually hub looked like after I got the wheels off, and began pulling out the half shafts. Notice how the shafts flange at the end and fit onto the bolts on the hub? This is why full-floating axles are great, because the hub is supported by the axle housing, the half shaft is only stressed in a torsion mode (as it transmits engine power to the wheels) but is not stressed in shear like a semi float axle would be. this means the half shaft itself can break, crack, explode, and the wheels will not fall off!
Meanwhile some other important modifications were made to the interior...
You can see how the axle housing extends out to support the two hub bearings. The halfshaft fits inside that extended axle tube and the flange "reaches around" to connect directly to the hub and provide torque to the wheels.
This is the back end of the hub sans brake drum. the brake drum bolts onto the back of the hub and an oil/grease seal fits into the inside of the hub back.
These are the stock Toyota 1-Ton leaf springs that connect the axle to the truck, as you will see in a few pictures they are quite a bit more... robust... than the stock half ton springs...
Bare axle housing cleaned, painted and ready for installation
Stock, 2 wheel drive semi float half ton axle, note the differences between the leaf springs on this axle and the leaf springs about to be installed...
There should be several noticeable differences between the 1-ton axle and the half ton axle... One might notice that the 1 ton axle is a bit...beefier... maybe...?
At this point in the night I was excited in the extreme... not only had the stock 1 ton springs added about 4 inches of lift to the rear end, but the axle was actually installed, my little truck was now a dually! On January 3rd, 2012 I could now cross off "own a Dually pickup" from my bucket list
This was so COOL!!! The little kid inside me was jumping up and down with joy as I gazed upon the start of my creation... This truck was starting to really turn into the Mad Truck I had always wanted it to be... I also thought up a name for it around this point, at the close of Phase 1. I started to realize that this truck was a bit of a "Franken-truck" a truck assembled from components from other trucks, some of which had died. For example the rear axle was originally out of a 1990 Toyota U-Haul Box truck. While at this stage it was really just an other wise healthy truck with grafted legs, it struck me that my truck was, as far as other cars and trucks were concerned, an undead truck...
a re-animated corpse...
a revenant...
and in that moment I realized what my truck's name was...
"The Revenant"
However mad the truck was at this point, still wasn't insane enough for me, no it needed more... and thus the idea for Phase II was born...
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