What in good God's green earth would compel someone to build a truck like this?!
Well...
Perhaps some context is required before I explain further...
Like most young children I watched Disney movies as a kid. One of those movies in particular struck a special chord inside me, it was a slightly lesser known movie, called "The Rescuers Down Under", Don't ask me about the plot of that movie, all I remember is some kid getting kidnapped and some mice saved him yadda yadda yadda touchey feel goodness.... YUCK! Point is this dear reader this movie had the most epic of all epic vehicles in it (excepting maybe Death Race), the Half-Track!
Feast your eyes:
This Truck was my childhood fantasy vehicle. Anytime anyone asked me what sort of car I wanted to have I would always reply "I want a Half Track!"
As I got a few years older I was introduced to another influence Mad Max, and it's post apocalyptic vehicular epicness, go HERE to see what I mean
Ok now that you have some idea about my formative years and what sort of movies influenced me (not the ones my parents intended I think) you might understand why I built my rig the way I did.
I wanted a truck that could haul long distance, that meant reliability. I wanted to be able to comfortably travel over ice, snow, sand, gravel, really anything one could concieveably carry a load over, hence why I didn't want a rock crawler, but it did need to be a rugged 4x4. And i wanted a dually, because duallies are awesome, and nobody is going to tell me otherwise. I didn't want a newer truck either, I'm not a fan of all the gizmos and do-dads more modern trucks have in them. I like just a basic sound system, and fuel injection and that is it, no power windows, no power seats, and NO AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSIONS!!!!!
Now at this point one might ask: well why not just get a Ford F-350 4x4 Dually or a Dodge 3500 Ram 4x4 Dually or an old Chevy of similar size. Well that's just it. SIZE, those trucks are HUGE and WIDE. That and the only older ones that are still running are typically the Diesels, and very few of these trucks were mated with a manual transmission. Also their engines were huge! While I have exactly Zero problems with big engines, at the time I started this project I was on a very tight budget, being a college student, and there was no way I could afford to feed a large displacement engine. What I needed and wanted was a mini-truck
But wait, mini-trucks don't come with Dually axles!
Not entirely true...
you see in the late 80's and early 90's Toyota sold 1 ton cab and chassis trucks to several RV companies and to U-haul. A few of those trucks might have also made it to other commercial buyers but I'm less sure about that. In the end the only real difference between these trucks and the regular "half-ton" trucks sold at the dealer to the regular customer was the rear axle. The 1-ton cab and chassis trucks came with a native 1-ton, full float, dual wheel rear axle, while the "half-ton" trucks had a semi-float single rear wheel half-ton axle comparable to any other mini truck sold by any other manufacturer (go HERE to see why full float is awesome for trucks). the chassis on these trucks only differs by length, the ladder frame is exactly the same, same wall gauge thickness, same size of frame rail... in essence the only thing making an older Toyota truck a "half-ton" truck is the half ton axle under it, not the chassis. I should note that this is only true for Toyota trucks built before '94 which is when toyota introduced the Tacoma and quit selling the Hilux in the US.
Older Toyota trucks are a favorite of off roadsters, because parts are relatively cheap and the trucks have fairly good stock quality for 4x4 capabilities, however this makes the 4x4 trucks a bit more expensive than the regular 2x4 trucks, especially if the truck is equipped with the Toyota solid front axle. So I first purchased a 2x4 truck to convert to a dually just to get a feel for how much work a full fleged 4x4 swap would be... More on that in the overview of Phase 1
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