FJ Cruiser I / Saggin' Wagon III - Casey Illinois Endurance Race

Today project. Sagan wagon gets a buddy when Ian and Jessi transform a new FJ cruiser into an exo

cage rock crawler, then it's man versus Mother Nature in this three hour Midwest and

D plus time saving welding tips right now on Xtreme 4x4.

Hey

guys,

welcome to Xtreme 4x4. Today we have two very similar projects yet very different.

This 85 Toyota Land Cruiser

FJ, I guess you could call it. Our old school trail truck has already been back half had a custom for

in the rear and a spring over on the front.

And if theres

w

is our old school build, then this brand new 2007 FJ is obviously our new school trail.

When we first saw these things at the showroom floor, we had a great idea. Let's get our hands on one tear into it using similar parts and tricks that we did on our old FJ and then take them out on the trail together for some true Toyota fun

on the front

of our second wagon. We performed

a conversion, installing new diver leaf springs on the top side of

ale to

this gave us about five inches of lift.

Now, we can go ahead and take care of the steering using a high steer kit from Marlin Crawler.

The K include CNC machine, high ST

that we've already installed to help keep the actual assembly together. It

also comes with quarter inch wall

pre

lube, tie rod ends and a pitman arm.

Now, you guys have probably already seen some of these newer fjs out there

with lift kits and larger wheels and tires and I've seen a couple of them out on the trail with serious work done like fully link suspension, Dana six,

front and rear.

But we thought with our OSE

why not treat it the same as our 85 and try to keep the majority of the running gear all Toyota.

So that made us think why not just use an over the counter lift.

Our MX series suspension system from Pro Comp will give our FJ a true six inches of lift. Thanks to the new Pro Comp, extreme coil over shocks, we'll install in the front

on the rear. We use some variable rate coil springs as well as some MX six adjustable shocks.

Now, like most ifs kits, it uses drop down brackets for the two front control arms.

We also are gonna install a set of new nodular iron steering knuckles. Now, these are designed to keep the factory rack and pinion in its stock location, basically keeping it up out of harm's way when the trucks off road

Now, the high ST

kit is only one piece to our entire steering puzzle on the classic FJ.

Now that's installed, we can go ahead and find the location for a hydraulic ram assist

from PSC.

All starts with this fully rebuilt and tap scout to steering box and I'm going to amount to the frame.

And then from that point,

the drag link will connect right on

to this wagon

with it bolted to the steering box. I'll clamp it to the frame to check for alignment of the drag link

and I'll mark the location of the mounting bolts.

Real.

There's no way I can do five more of those

and insert slugs into the frame

and weld them in a place.

Then the box can be bolted in for good

with our front suspension removed along with this front diff, we can go ahead and start installing some of the parts from pro comp.

The rear cross member will need to be installed first to act as a template for our frame cut.

And once the cut is complete, both front and rear cross members can be installed

with the new bushings installed on the differential so you can raise it back into place and secure it to the rear cross members.

Hey, Jessi, come here for a second. Would you

install the factory lower control arms?

Then the new MX series coil overs can be installed, followed by the new nodular knuckle.

Then the wheel bearings axle shaft and sway bar can also be reinstalled.

And once the brake lines and a BS wires are relocated, the compression struts can be installed between the rear cross member and the pockets mounted to the truck frame

in the rear shocks with rear sway are disconnected,

lower the axle to remove stock rear spring

unbolt and replace the rear upper control arms,

then install the track bar relocation bracket,

the new springs as well as the adjustable MX series shocks

and the rear axle can be raised back into position, sway bar and upper control arms and track bar are then reattached

for the new F day. We're going to be using 35 by 12.5 inch Pro

C extreme empty

mounted on 17 inch extreme alloy with the custom function will be lock already installed.

Now, the empty is a three play much

with deep buttress treads that extend far down into the side wall. So they're still functional even when they're air down.

And with these new tres on our new FJ will be one step closer to get this thing on the trail

that

way

later on bend cut notch and voila exoskeleton. But up next, hold on for this pedal mashing marathon off road endurance racing when Xtreme 4x4 continues

time. Now for an Xtreme 4x4 tech tip.

Now whether you're repairing a rust patch or you're shaving the entire body on your truck or you're just giving your differential little added protection

there's always that one filler piece right in the middle that you either don't have access to from the backside or you just need a third hand to kind of help hold it in place. Well, here's a little tip for you.

All you gotta do is take a nail or a tig rod and tack welded onto that piece.

And voila, you have a handy little handle that all you have to do is put it in tack, weld your piece in and then once it's all welded in, just break it right off and you did it all by yourself. You don't need that extra hand.

Now, you guys might think that only trophy trucks are built to race its speed for extended lengths of time. Well, get ready for the Casey, Illinois and Durham.

Since 1975. The MidAmerica op Road Club has hosted one of the toughest endurance series in the country.

Nonstop. Adrenaline is what it is. It is amazing. You need nerves of steel for this kind of racing around the three mile course. They had to endure this brutality for 125 miles.

It's absolutely hardcore. You tuck them in and go. It's, it's pretty ballsy. It's man versus nature out here. It really is. You know, going through the hills,

hills and hauler, you just don't know what you're doing

yet requiring the focus of an assassin.

One miss corner can be deadly,

trees do hurt. You're running

six inches off the side of them trees, one slight move and you're, you're gonna be hurt.

It's a scary thing. It's really scary.

Trees won't move. Boys. If you hit one of those, you're gonna tear up something. That's all there is to it

billed as the fall classic seven trucks and 16 buggies lined up for the season finale

most but not make it to the finish

rough. Uh, takes a lot to finish the whole thing

upside down and wet and broke and cold

as one lap in Brian B

was the first casual team. It's pretty frustrating. Last race of the year. Our biggest race

I was really looking forward to running today, but

just not gonna happen. This is definitely a war of attrition. You're gonna see half the field gone probably after the first half of the race.

A

lot of trucks break on this. A lot of

30 years ago, Richard

Alman helped start the endurance series now at age 69 he's still going at it.

I hope I can do it when I'm his age. I was going to quit when I was 65 but I still felt good and I'm just going to keep doing it. The only rocking chair he's interested in has four wheels as this Woods Warrior hasn't lost its n for,

I still feel kind of queasy in my stomach when I pull on that line. As soon as that

green flag comes up,

it's all gone and something else takes over and you try to get to the

front

on the track. Richard's never say quit attitude has made him a fan favorite

in the pits. He's been a mentor and a role model for the younger generation. When you talk to you listen, you know, he's been doing this for, you know, pretty much his whole life. He has helped us out giving us ideas, giving me moral support, giving me ideas on the track. Tell me what I'm doing wrong. Tell me what I'm doing right. Or maybe how to do it. Just a little bit better. I enjoy how they feel towards me and everything and,

and that's the reason I wanna, I wanna keep helping them as long as I can

for the three hour Epic. He teamed up with Justin Broomer, their game plan, survival and D A race strategy. Number one is to go out there and hold your vehicle together. You have to be able to save your truck and keep going till the 120 miles is up at

the halfway point.

Problem

trucks got a lot of miles

on it. So it's hard to

tell, but I think it may be few related. An endurance rate

failure is not breaking down but staying down. Well, it's pretty disappointing because he's doing a good job and he's running right up there with him. We'll get it going. It's a long race. So we get back into the breakdown was costly as Dirk Carlin built up a three lap lead,

unable to close the gap. Carlson held on for the win

with team Alvin finishing back and forth.

You never know what's going.

I mean, you can get the rub on them and pre prepare them as good as you can, but something way out of left field is gonna happen. I've never had a vehicle. Make me walk that much before today.

You know, the endurance race, you finish them. That's, that's, uh,

that's a good thing in its own right there. Not many people can go out there and finish. We had a lot of trouble today, but

when you do get done, it's a relief and you're tired, real tired, thirsty.

I guess you could say that this was a pretty extreme race considering every truck broke down at least once before it made it to the finish and these guys don't have big dollar support teams. The drivers were back fixing these trucks, get them back in the race and finishing just like true competitors.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 where we're in the middle of building our two FJ cruisers into truly competent off road trucks, our 2007 brand new truck and our old 85 sag and wagon, and we're keeping both of them truly Toyota at heart as well as using a lot of the same parts in each one.

So when we did the spring over a conversion on this truck, we did a shackle reversal. So the swing shackles in the rear, which gives us a better approach angle and this truck hasn't had a bumper on it since forever. So, before we came out, the, we

got to build a bumper.

That's a giant winch,

kind of looks like a boat. Huh?

Now, lucky for us. Our 2007 FJ has aftermarket bumpers readily available for it and we chose both front and rear ones from war.

These are a heavy duty rock crawler series bumper made it a 3/16 and quarter inch plate. They're CNC formed and robotically welded and these tapered outer wings will actually improve our approach and departure angles. The front has an integrated grill guard while the rear has eyelets welded in place to mount de ring shackles

with the stock rear bumper removed.

I need to cut a trim piece off both sides to cover the exposed area under the tail lights

and I'll simply bolt on the war bumper using the FJS factory mounting points.

Our front bumper also has provisions for all popular Warn wins.

We saw this one went to the sea

show where one best new off road four will drive product award because of its innovative design.

This power plant HP combines the benefits of having a 9500 pound winch with a fast line speed along with an on board premium air compressor.

Plus

there's no additional wiring or plumbing required.

It installs just like a standard winch where we can spend more time on the trail.

Now, this package will allow us to airport tires or even use air tools

like this impact wrench.

Now, as I'm sure you guys have figured out by now, we're trying to use a lot of the same parts in both of our FJ cruisers, old and new and now that we have our power plant winch in the front bumper of this 2007, we can go ahead and start planning for some driver and passenger protection. Now, we didn't really want to gut out the inside of this truck and put a roll cage in there. We didn't want to get that evasive. So we're gonna install what's called an exoskeleton. Now, the exo

cage or exoskeleton will protect the interior of the truck and the passenger and the driver just in case of a rollover. But it also does something else. This truck retails for just a shade under like 30 grand.

So it's gonna help protect some of these body panels just in case this thing should get on its side. Now, we're not gonna protect everything that's impossibilities. We're gonna probably want one tube across the front fender to protect this. We're running up right up to the roof. We can't block these double doors here because we won't be able to open

and we probably run a second one

down through here

and then just continue on to the back, protecting the major things like

this light that sticks out. It's just,

it's in the way

now because we could got the inside of the 85 FJ. We went ahead and built a full interior roll cage

and after the break, I'll be finishing up and installing three.

Yes, three suspensions.

Are you ready?

Let's begin.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 where we're right in the middle of turning both an 85 and a 2007 FJ into True Confident Trail trucks.

Now, building a full exo

cage really is no different than building a roll cage inside a truck.

You want to keep the tubes as close to the body panels as possible,

but not so close that if the cage hits a rock or a tree, it's going to tear into the body.

Well,

now, as you guys could probably see our new FJ is full of very distinctive body lines and we don't really wanna hide those with our XO cage. If anything, we wanna kind of accentuate them in the same way that Warren did with this grill guard kind of matches the Toyota grill shell. So we did the same thing here with these two tubes to match the turn signal and kind of a flat fender design to match this fender. Now on the roof, we threw a peek in that overhead bar to sort of match that roof line on this truck

only a train. I would know this truck was once an FJ cruiser because we got away so much of the body.

But one feature we wanted to keep was the rear door, not only to keep the style of the wagon, but also to make it easier to get in and out of the back seat.

And speaking of seats, we chose these ultra our

suspension seats from be

they've got a really tight footprint area, but still offer features like total driver containment with this three inch taller hip area.

And as you can see these seats have been treated with a custom spider web stitch.

Now, when

I'm out

and I like to listen to music. And the cool thing about that is that they offer TX speakers mounted right in the head.

The one thing that we definitely wanted on this truck was some off road lights, but there wasn't a lot of room on this front bumper. So we decided to add them to the exo

cage itself. And we're using four A RB IP F lights, two driving and two spot. Probably the biggest thing about this Xo Cage is that it's going to be removable. It's going to come off this front bumper right here where I'll be bolted on

and then it's also going to split right above the driver and passenger and the whole rear section is going to come off as one piece and the front section will come off that way you can finish wel it around on the back side as well as clean it up, paint it and then put it back on.

Well, that's all we have for you today on the old and new school FJ Cruisers. The next time you see this old one, we will be doing some rewiring and getting some gears in the transfer case and make it a doubler. And in our 2007 FJ will basically turn to the diffs, putting some, a RB lockers in at front and rear to make it a true off road machine, adding some power to the engine and just finishing up some odds and ends and then both these trucks are gonna hit the trail together.

Oh, that sounded cool. We'll see you next time

the same.