The Build Part 3: Components and Systems
One of my favorite mods is the Lucrum Lighting System. Not only do they retract, but they aim left and right, up and down. It is a lot more useful than you would think, being able to aim them anywhere with just a joystick.
In the photo at left, the larger portion at left is the Lucrum system. Behind it is an "antenna bridge" I made, shown at right.
The antenna bridge is one central place to mount all the antennas including CB, FM, Sirius, GPS, cell phone repeater and more. It saved me from having to drill a million holes into the roof. I made it out of 12ga aluminum with sides to protect the antennas from tree branches, etc.
Below it is a 1" hole through the roof. This has a piece of plastic electrical conduit that I have run all the wiring into. The Lucrum Lights and the antenna bridge are bolted through the roof sheetmetal in 7 spots which haven't leaked so far.
The wiring bundle meets at this tube intersection at left. The GPS antenna goes into this Garmin 86CX. The USB output from the Garmin then goes into the computer for Google Earth.
It's mounted in the ceiling to minimize the cable run to the GPS antenna. Because of all the cage tubing I could not run the Garmin without an external antenna.
It is really nice to have the computer. Only recently was it possible to have live GPS tracking on Google Earth and it is great to have. Before you go on a trip you can draw your trrails in Google Earth the night before, and then when you are out there the next day you can see yourself driving along them.
I fabbed the computer mount out of aluminum.
Back to the ceiling, at left is the control box for the Lucrum lights. At right is a Galaxy SSB with frequency counter.
I had to be talked into doing seats because the factory ones (right) are not so bad. However deep bucket suspension seats are a lot nicer because you are no longer sliding all over the place. They are made by a small company called BS Sand that customized them perfectly for the FJ. I made custom slider rails using the factory rails. These allow you to slide the seat back and forth.
These are suspension seats, meaning they sit on their own suspension system. The mounting tabs do not match any factory mount, so you have to make your own mounts. In the front I adapted the factory rails, but in the rear they needed their own tube structure to attach to the cage. I use Crow 5-point harnesses without the crotch strap.
The engine build is the highest-output FJ Toyota 4.0 liter I know of. My friends at
Underdog Racing Development did a custom 3" mandrel exhaust with their new Y-pipe. This is hooked up to Doug Thorley ceramic headers. This allows the URD 4.0 1GR Supercharger to scream through the 4.56 gears. In fact, it screamed through 3 sets of 8" ring and pinions before I finally had to replace the whole rear end with a Currie Ford 9".
