Well I guess I will start this one up. Our story began November of 06, Ordered a VDB upgrade package 2. About december 14th she was delivered. and it was time to get her dirty. After some chatting on the FJC forums a few of us decided to get together for some runs, all bone stock except Itzdbom who had BFG's wow, we were all so impressed at that time, nobody could imagine spending money for new tires when the ones we had were still new. hahah how that would soon change.
After the first outing with our new formed club and a fully tweaked running board I realized many things were to be needed to make this rig what I wanted. so the first add on was Trail-Gear sliders.
Boy were these fun, first I cleaned and sanded them then primed and painted them white. looked real nice till the first time they got some Mokule'ia mud on them. some church carwash kids started to scrub and the flakes were a fallin. after pressure washing them more came off and about a week later I had some rusty spotted crap.
imagine the tires and rims are still stock.lol
Finally I Stripped the remaining paint, resanded and went with herculiner.
Around the same time I was dealing with the slider coating issues the tires and alloy rims were in the process of being changed out.
after my encounter with the truck eating mud hole I realized Dunlop ht's were not gonna cut it.
Fixxer gave me a killer deal on some steelies and 4WP's Brotha Ka'Aina hooked me up with the deal on my 33x12.50 Mickey thompson Baja claws.
I was on the inevitable path of a modding madman now. The suspention was next. I actually ordered it with the tires but it took a while to ship to the rock.
I went with the Old Man Emu heavy front springs and struts and medium rear springs. to save money I ran the stock rear shocks. What a difference. So glad I did.
Still wasnt as high as I thought it was, just ask that fallen log in sherwood forest.
*Stuck on da log pic not found*
Next Item was the Bud Built skids. Awesome product. I rustoleumed the topside black and herculined the bottoms. Man these things have taken a beating but still hold up beautifully, just gotta slap on some patches of liner on the scratched areas now and then. you can see that last run really did a number on em, time for a touch up
Well the next item was for my baby girl, she loves wheeling but gets bored at the stopping points so I bought a set of headrest DVD players. One of the best investments to date, if you have kids I highly reccomend it.
Next mod was the cheapest and easiest to date. After the bottom plastic peice on my rear bumper popped off and got scratched up I decided to black it out and all 4 corner silver protrusions (bumper wings). Thanks to Jester I got the lowdown on how to do this. Adhesion promoter and black satin finish did the trick.
since I had the bumpers apart, I figured I'd bobb the mudflaps too, I tried jus taking them off but there were just too many holes to catch debris behind them so Out came the scissors.
Somewhere in the middle I put in the TRD cold air intake and removed that plastic child's snowsled(engine cover). It's all becoming a blur heheheh
And now on to the next phase of the bumper. John at Kajobuilt fabbed me up the sickest front tube bumper out there in my opinion. (Metal tech would be my only other choice) After a couple coats of duplicolor spray on bedliner and the attachment of the Warn M8000 winch it was slapped on and ready to go. Didn't have a fairlead yet as the roller did not fit into the design.
Then the mainland move, when we got here the first thing I did was have an Alarm installed. 200 bucks by a crazy Laotian, cool guy just a bit loopy.
Another must here was the GPS unit, originally got the tomtom ONE but it didnt have offroad options. then I went with the garmin c550, A higher end unit, and guess what no offroad option or gps coordinate option, it does have traffic alerts and automatic rerouting if an accident is reported, and the handsfree bluetooth is handy but this will be replaced in the future with a GSmap unit.
My first trip up to AllPro was to get a hawse fairlead, Borregofest was approaching and I didn't want to trust the mail system. got the aluminum fairlead. It is meant for synth rope but works fine with cable so far, I will need to replace it when I change to synth in the future.
I'm a pretty straightforward guy as long as I'm not BS'n ya
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