Might as well post up my junk:

[Poopy]

My project is in its infantile stage, basically a lot of planning and reading message boards and learning what people are doing. My vehicle background is in building rock crawling trucks, my current vehicle is a 90 4runner with Dana 60's that I chopped the back cargo area off and fused on the back 6" of a regular cab truck. The muscle car departure is all new but i'm not new to racing, I raced 125cc Rotax Karts for a couple years, so I'm well in tune with what a "true" g-machine should feel like.

At this point, I'm going with a Hot Rods To Hell style truck arm setup for the rear, and a heidts MII weld in clip with adjustable UCA's and coilovers all around. I'm going to get a rotisserie built in the next week or so and then the fun will begin!

Enough about me, heres the car:

Current Power plant:



Basic condition of the car:



What I'm working on...searching for bondo!:



What was underneath the floorpans the previous owner installed:





My engine and rear axle donor:



My piss poor photshopped vision...Satin black upper and grille, with a silver or pearl white lower.

[68BNUT]

Hey dont be so hard on yourself that photoshop pic and half bad looks good cant wait to see updates. Oh yeah nice floor pans

[Piet]

I think it looks great. Can't wait to follow your progress. (Pictures too!)
You are way ahead of me.

[F70t/a]

That car will be badass!!! We all know what your going threw. Some of us have started with worse

[Little Bob]

Thats a great car to start with. Those are so light, you can do anything with them. I like color combo too.

[Gonzostyle]

I like the paint scheme, but am curious why you put a 65 Nova front end on it? want to get rid of your 62 grille? Also I am curious once you put the HTH truck arm in what your overall impressin of it is. keep us up to date

-Jeremie (only has 3 novas now....)

[Poopy]

Thanks guys! I'm looking forward to getting this thing started....As for the grille gonzo, i didnt change the grille, the photo i photochopped was the only clean 2dr Post i could find a pic of to alter....its not my car. ;)

My 62 grille is toast, not even repairable, I am looking at some different grille options, I'd love to do something with black swiss cheese mesh or the various other ricer meshes, or maybe just get a billet grille and paint it black.

As for the HTH truck arm, I'm going to build my own, for the price they want...around $1800 I could spend it in better areas as I am on a tight budget with this project, and I already picked up the truck arms and mounts for a measily $100. Now all i need is steel, a pan hard and coilovers. For probably about $5-600 I could do the whole thing.

[69boo307]

I hope you keep the straight-6 in there, and boost it :D. THere's a company that makes performance parts for them, and they have cars runnin 12's on the old things.

[BigCat]

Nice project! Not to be off the Pro-Touring subject, but how 'bout some pics of the 4runner.............

Lucas

[Piet]

I have to agree with 69boo.... the straight-6 looks pretty nice

[Poopy]

Hmmm, not so sure about the 6....I'll trade it for your V8 if you have one!

Heres my other child:

What I started with:





Started cutting!



Pickup truck cab splicing:



Had it all finished, then smashed the sh*t out of it, and cut more off:





And finally what it is today:





And a lil video!

Moab vid

[DLinson]

You picked a good car to work with, but I'm a little biased. The floors aren't a big deal, the rear tail light panel and bumper filler were completely gone on mine. Building that from scratch wasn't any fun, at least they sell floor boards. I believe I've replaced every panel on mine except the roof and trunk lid.

Do you have an extra rear window? I'm having trouble finding a good one.

Good luck,
Dennis Linson

[Poopy]

I just have the one rear window that came with it, and luckily its in good shape, the guy I bought it from had brand new floor pans overtop of that rusty crap, so i have them, but just need to install them properly.

I searched for a long time before i settled on this one, its really solid other than the lower rear quarter on the drivers side, the rest is mint. I found it on ebay in california...only $1925 too.

[Poopy]

I learned some tricks on photoshop, and now have a better rendering!

[RobM]

i love that truck! trucks are my second love to cars. i always say the day i have a nice truck and a nice car then life will be pretty much compleet right now i have about half of both of those.

[Poopy]

Thanks Rob..I love my truck too! Gonna go wheeling next weekend!

I've decided to try out building a truck arm rear suspension. I've read reviews on it and it seems to be the best bang for the buck handling package. I just started on this last week, so its a work in progress....here goes!

My floors were rusty, so I cut them out to get this project underway:



Here is my rear suspension donor, i got this whole piece and a 12bolt truck rear end for $100 CDN.



Here is the truck arm crossmember getting cut in half so it fit:





The crossmember with cut down mounts now welded on instead of riveted:



Mock up of the crossmember and subframe connectors, I've decided to go with 2x3 tube(its 2x2 in the pic) for the crossmember tube so I can drop it an inch lower and still have the 2x2 subframe connectors line up. Still to do is build a tub bridge over the driveshaft to tie the two sides together:

[Poopy]

I got the cross member finished, its pretty beefy, I dont think it will break or bend :D







Hopefully tomorrow I'll get it installed, and the subframe connectors built and installed....

[MrQuick]

nice work poopy, gonna be nice when done. Love the rock crawler by the way!

[Poopy]

Thanks! The rock crawler is fun, but needs a new yoke on its driveshaft...axle wrap sucks!

Made some good headway today, all the major frame parts are installed, most are fully welded and some still tacked, I had the rear end in and everything looks like its gonna work. Well... other than my pinion angle lol, I really goofed the measurement on that, this is why we only tack weld first!

[FSTFBDY]

verry nice work.

Love the 4x4 stuff also.