Well here's some recent pictures I took with my phone. This is why everything takes so long... I do things one way then change my mind... haha. I have a full build plan now though and have the end result clear in my mind. Here she sits as of Friday. Got my "mock-up" 4.0 in there, am building up another one.
Build plan is a comp cut front and rear at the body line, I have a 2nd gen front clip that I am using, minus the headlights/signals and header panel... so mostly just the hood, fenders and grille. Air shocks at all four corners, I have 14" Fox air shocks for the front, and 14" Rock Equipment air shocks for the rear. Rear 4-link with 2" solid aluminum lower links, 1/8" wall 1.75 DOM uppers. Flipped/twin-sticked Dana 300 t-case with 4.5:1 low range attached to a BW1350 crawl box. Spooled FW 8.8 with disc brakes, front/rear cutting brakes. Hydro assist with an IFS Toyota steering box. Fuel cell and inline fuel pump. All rolling on 37" IROKs for now. The reasoning behind chopping the frame off and making my own simply comes down to keeping it low. Ride height before, I just wasn't happy with, and what you see now is ride height. I have 20" to belly (18 to the front link mount... thinking of changing that though) and the roofline is at 72.5" which I am much happier with. Before It was 75, so I brought ride height down substantially with the fabrication of the new frame rails. I stretched the front end out 5" putting the wheelbase at 99", but now that I am linking/comp cutting the rear, I will stretch entire wheelbase to 105", which is pretty much the ticket with the belly height that I'm at. So there's my build plan in a nutshell, ETF is early spring next year...hopefully sooner. Maybe get out and do some late snow wheeling... who knows.
