MacRib brought me his sick little red truck to get notched. I forgot to take before pics of the axle & frame, but he *may* have had about 1" of travel if he was lucky. Now he has room to drop more if he wants to, but cross member mods will be necessary if he does. He's close to them right now, but seems to be getting away with it thanks to his stiffish leaf setup and possibly his air shocks. (I don't know if those are coming off now or not) Here are some pics.

This truck grew on me so much and drove so nice (minus the power steering I'm used to) that I want a pretaco now!

The truck




Before



After




Ride Height



haha, look at his exhaust. I chopped it at the muffler since it obviously needed to go.

 

wow....... very nice beef!!!!!!!

glad you were finally able to get your feet wet in another pretaco

i will take note of this

also kiddies....... if you didnt notice that back end also has the mafed beefed drop blocks as well

this thing had more beef than you were aware of....

 

Sweet man I wish you lived closer to me....

Also how much more do you think you can notch it with out cutting into the bed?

 

Man that truck continues to look sicker and sicker every time it gets something done! Beefed my 82 is really itching for a notch!

 

hahahah, classic Alex! And I guess you're right, this isn't the first pretaco I've worked on....I'm having some foggy memories of a certain early Yota that got some frame work and rear diff welded up.....the part that is perfectly clear is this early Yota doing some sweet donuts in a certain parking lot! Seems the rear of your truck just has a strange way of going around and around quite often. Must be that big right foot of yours...? hahaha (let's not forget about your fat 9/16" u-bolts and custom steel blocks too)

 

Custom steel blocks? I want some of those..

 

Probably something like this...this was my standard deep Drop Notch, but with some extra meat since he wanted to drift, but keep the notch under the bed...this truck is no more now! boo.

You know I've got you covered Manny. Hopefully your early Yota and I aren't going anywhere any time soon.

 

Thanks Beefed.. Since the baby is coming in July I want to complete my 82 so the wifey can see my true vision!

 

very nice

 

Nice I like the setup on Slo-mo's truck....

Why did I move out of SoCal....

 

good work, that truck looks good too.

 

I want to do a similar c-notch to my truck also, but im just wondering how much strength it'll have.

 

looks good man. im more than likely going to have to do the same thing after my drop.

look forward to getting those bump stops of ya. you sent me an e-mail earlier today about the shipping.
mike.

 

i was talking to Mac and i also noticed that you incorporated the bump stop into the notch itself instead of needing a plate to attach it to. this is a pretty good idea man! saves on metal and production cost not to mention you gain extra room for travel from deleting the plate.

 

This is my standard Drop Notch that allows these trucks to go as staticlly low as possible without having to cut out the bed for the diff to poke up through. I probably have about 30 Taco's out there now with this deep notch. If they're not this deep, they'll most likely hit now and then, plus this depth allows you to still carry some stuff. It's a lot stronger than you'd think. I have guys going to the drags on notches identical to this, drifting (but with the extra meat as show in the pics above) and DDing for years now.

I was going to cut at the top of the square hole in the frame like I do on the Taco's, but that only left 1.5" of frame, (the Taco's have 2") so I dropped it down a bit lower to play it safe (about to the middle of the square hole) and plated the inside of the hole and then welded in the bottom frame piece and filled the hole with weld, you'd never know it was there. The box frame design is very strong, and on the Taco's I weld in a inner wall to box it in since they come channel, unlike the boxed pretaco.

I've always wondered how these will hold up in a hard rear ender, and unfortunately my friend just found out...he has my bolt in one which is just as deep, and said he was blown away when he looked and everything was fine. He had some great things to say about it on CT. Plus that truck above (Slo-mo) hit a construction bump in the road at night so hard his airbag went off, cracking his window, separating welds in the front of the frame, and when I asked about his notch, he said it was all good to go.

I wouldn't go any deeper than this, it's pushing the limits, but I have a ton of confidence in it after all the ones I've done...including mine. (the old original and the one with the ugliest welds of course) This probably could have been just slightly shallower knowing what I know now about the pretaco vs the Taco, but these guys all end up wanting to go lower anyway.

Cool, thanks Mike.

This is how I've done all the bumps on the notches. Are you thinking of a plate that's off to the side a bit like the new DJM bolt in for the 05+?

 

Have you ever though about making a bolt on notch kit for the ones of us with these older trucks?

 

It seems that people could definitely use it. For the people that are local enough to me, I always do the weld in ones to avoid having to make the whole bolt on kit, but I've had a few people asking about it. The nice thing about my Taco one that bolts on is it has a plate for the BPV since it's in the way, you just pull it back and bolt it back up using the OEM bolts, but the early Yota's have the valve already out of the way, so there wouldn't be a need for the plate. The feature mine would have unlike most universal ones would be that it'd be a bit deeper, allowing for that little bit of extra drop. I've been through all this on the Taco's. Originally they were shallower, but I've since made them as deep as my weld in Drop Notch with great success.

 

yea, i didnt know you were bypassing the plate all together on the notches.

 

Neat

i feel safer with a welder anyway

 

i just got the pleasure to drive the truck around town (to go get the tailpipe re-routed) and thing rides just like a cloud! nice work beefed. all he needs now is to just replace the blown rear shocks and he should be golden!