Post by dankfab on Feb 22, 2016 8:47:08 GMT -8
So the body came off the trekker this weekend, I had some buddy's come over and we just picked the entire thing right off the frame and set it on the ground for now. As I mentioned. The plan was to use the wider its rear axle out of the 4runner, plus its got 4.88s in the 3rd (not that it's hard to swap that). Then I thought that we would be kinda wrong to go and cut a fully functional 4 link off an axle and convert it to leave. That and the 4 link would handle the power of the 3.4 much better than leave. So I was going to make my own link mounts on the frame and use the factory style suspension in a 4runner, just tweaked a little bit. I was also going to use the IFS steering box and convert to hy-steer, this would also require slight frame modifications. I would need a different gas tank in the trekker frame, and also new crossmember for the t case. Once again I'll be running duals so I will have to do that anyways. I will also need to go through the work of making new motor mounts and such.
Next step for me was to strip the 4runner down like I did the trekker, get the wiring all sorted out get the body off and start transplanting parts. After a little bit a beer drinking and thinking and measuring, I really think the trekker body will fit the 4runner frame quite nicely. Then bam the 4 link is done, gas tank is good to go (i think??) motor mounts are good, IFS steering box in and reinforced and so on.
So as you can tell I really like the idea of a body swap in this case, it just seems to be the way to do things, only thing I'll need to do is SAS the 4runner frame, this would be the 5th SAS I've done and the 3rd using leafs up front, pretty simple actually.
My biggest dilemma here is how it should be registered, I know people on here (slacker), have used different body's for their trekkers, but I would imagine that you would just drill out the rivets on the donor trucks VIN tag and swap your trekker VIN to the new body and nobody ever knows the difference.... My problem would be the different VIN on the frame.
Now I know that I can just do the swap, call it a trekker, and drive it til I die. But what if I decided to sell it? Does it hurt the value not having the original frame? Would it be fraud to grind the VIN on the frame off and re-stamp it to match the trekker. Do I just eliminate the frame VIN all together when I cut the IFS out? I know people run tube frames without VIN numbers all the time, but those vehicles aren't normally collector type vehicles.
Sorry for the long post but any help or insight would be awesome, I'll get the pictures of everthing up here in a bit.
Next step for me was to strip the 4runner down like I did the trekker, get the wiring all sorted out get the body off and start transplanting parts. After a little bit a beer drinking and thinking and measuring, I really think the trekker body will fit the 4runner frame quite nicely. Then bam the 4 link is done, gas tank is good to go (i think??) motor mounts are good, IFS steering box in and reinforced and so on.
So as you can tell I really like the idea of a body swap in this case, it just seems to be the way to do things, only thing I'll need to do is SAS the 4runner frame, this would be the 5th SAS I've done and the 3rd using leafs up front, pretty simple actually.
My biggest dilemma here is how it should be registered, I know people on here (slacker), have used different body's for their trekkers, but I would imagine that you would just drill out the rivets on the donor trucks VIN tag and swap your trekker VIN to the new body and nobody ever knows the difference.... My problem would be the different VIN on the frame.
Now I know that I can just do the swap, call it a trekker, and drive it til I die. But what if I decided to sell it? Does it hurt the value not having the original frame? Would it be fraud to grind the VIN on the frame off and re-stamp it to match the trekker. Do I just eliminate the frame VIN all together when I cut the IFS out? I know people run tube frames without VIN numbers all the time, but those vehicles aren't normally collector type vehicles.
Sorry for the long post but any help or insight would be awesome, I'll get the pictures of everthing up here in a bit.