Being a car enthusiast born above the rust belt poses some serious logistical challenges when it comes to finding the chassis you're after. After buying one car in particular that I neglected to run over with a fine toothed comb, I was left stranded several times. It was much rustier than anticipated, to the point where anything I touched, broke. On one hand, it was a manual, AWD, and had plenty of open seats for trips to the mountain, but on the other, it was unfortunately too far gone for me to save.



As my winter beater crumpled in onto itself and we parted ways for little better than scrap value, I started looking for a replacement with my revised search criteria in hand.

Enter: a tiny, lowered, RWD, open diff pickup truck. Perfect.
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After a few visits to a craigslist ad sporting some well-lit and flattering-angled pictures followed by a description that left plenty to be desired, I was hooked, and in a matter of days I was on route to Pennsylvania to buy a 1994 Toyota Pickup with just under 240,000mi on the clock. It wasn't perfectly clean underneath, or anywhere, but it was heaps better than what I had at the time.



I knew I would like it, but the rate at which I fell in love with it was astounding. I drove it all winter, blasting through Maine between hills, over frost heaves and around potholes on a set of craigslist studded winter tires that were most certainly not the correct size. It performed beautifully.





Throughout the season I became more familiar with it and realized that for the first time "mini-trucking" appealed to me quite a bit. This was also when I first learned about Nigel Petrie and his tube chassis SR-Hilux drift truck, as well as some other creative things people were working on and had done in the past. I'm sure many of you know of him, but if not absolutely check out his work. He's been and continues to be an inspiration.







engineeredtoslide.com

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As much as I liked my truck, it was more about the platform, and It was almost immediately apparent that I needed one with less rust. Adding "clean" or "rust free" to my criteria increased my search radius exponentially, but I posted the truck for sale and began to look.



It turned up in California, on eBay, from the original owner's family, and I immediately began making the arrangements. The trip home was an incredible experience.





With a hair under 200,000mi on it, rust free and well taken care of, I knew I had the right one.

 

I had saved up some money to pay for both the difference in value of the truck I sold and the one I bought, as well as some mods, but I accidentally bought a jet ski instead. This summer was one for the books, and although I didn't get as far with the truck as I had wanted I can't say I regret it.







The summer went by quick, and with Black Friday approaching I decided I would scoop a few parts to install over the coming winter. Just a month before the truck was supposed to go into storage, in the first week of October 2017, an older man swung across two lanes and into mine and I wasn't able to stop. Insurance totaled the truck, but nobody was hurt, thankfully. Immediately I knew I could fix it.

 

Reserved

 

Table of Contents:

4/8/18 - Front end unbending / disassembly

 

Step 1 - body
Step 2 - fix any remaining weaknesses
Step 3 - MORE POWER

Looking forward to this.

 

One hell of a story & a never ending story at had!

 

A bit long since the start of this thread but here's what we've been up to:



We started by tying off various points of the front end to trees, trailer hitches, and whatever else made sense with 3" ratchet straps. That enabled us to exert different forces on the bent areas while we hammered them out. We also removed everything that was damaged or in the way from the front end.





It took a long time to get the bends and creases out of the passenger fender well. The truck was 4.5" shorter on the passenger's side than the driver's side so we took our time hammering out the smallest bends first. The worst creases got smaller as the bends around them were flattened out, and in the end we got within 1/4" of the target length.

I didn't bother looking for a truck to cut a piece out of because I want to redo the entire front end later on, but in the end putting a new fender well in would have taken the same amount of time and probably would have been easier. It's possible I'll re-visit this again before I redo it entirely.

Months ago I removed the fenders to clean the insides and take a look around and a screenshot from a video I took shows what the sheet metal looked like before.





It needs a bit more work before I start test fitting the new body panels.