About my truck
Toyota is known world-wide for building extremely reliable stout 4×4′s, and it’s been proven for going on 30 years now. With a reputation like that, I decided to build up a Toyota 4×4 for my own travels. I’m quite familiar with them, considering this is my fourth build up. Prior to this I’ve built an 1981 short bed truck, an 1989 4runner and a 2001 Tacoma extended cab. All of those vehicles treated me well and took me everywhere I wanted to go.
The first two 4×4′s were built with rock crawling in mind, extreme wheel travel, crawler gears and super swampers. Once I picked up the Tacoma I found a whole other mode of offroad travel, and I quickly started to appreciate it quite a bit more. In some circles it’s called expedition travel, or extreme road trip, but I would prefer to call it overlanding. The emphasis is not on how big of a rock one can crawl over, but where you can go, and even more importantly for how long you can go there. Building an overland vehicle is done with an emphasis on being self contained for long periods of time, and the ability to see far off places. The vehicle is often built with slightly over-sized tires and a couple of inches of lift to clear them. Locking differentials will most likely be selectable air or electric lockers, so that on road worthiness is not effected. Stout bumpers with winches are a must, and many perfer to install the signature snorkel. The biggest part of setting up an overland vehicle is the living arrangements. This can be anything from a camper shell with a false floor to sleep on and store gear under, or a roof top tent, with accommodations for cooking and cleaning up. There are many approaches to this, and as you follow along on my vehicles build up I will talk more about each area in great detail.
The vehicle I’ve chosen is a simple and stout 1979 Toyota 4×4 shortbed pickup with a 20r engine and a 4 speed transmission. To this point the vehicle is fairly stock, with some minor modifications and is a perfect platform to turn into my overland ride.
