NightMares 01 Sport Build

[NightMares]

Finished her all up tonight. All that's left is assembly and install. No light bar tabs, wouldn't clear the winch so looks like I'm drilling holes and painting the bolts black afterwords. ******, but I fought for about an hour about how to make it clear with no luck.

Mounted







Trimmed for grille clearance.





Upol Por 15 on back side



Upol 2k urethane







Raptor!

 

[dapepper9]

That raptor liner looks beautiful man!

 

[NightMares]

Thanks. There's one spot that i got a little heavy on, but luckily right now it's not extremely visible and I'm hoping while it dries it flattens out a little. It's visible on the last picture I posted below the shackle mount on the left.

 

[NightMares]

Got the bumper and winch installed last night. All that's left is to get the lights in and get everything wired up. I think it turned out alright, although color match wise I feel the bumper looks just a little more...pink. But eh, can't expect perfection on a bed liner.

Still got some final adjustment to do on the bumper alignment wise. Sitting flush on the drivers side at the fender, has a slight gap on the passenger side. Thinking I'll drop the drivers side down to match that way I got some space in case I come down on a rock or something.

Paint match didn't help the underbite going on with the grille, so come the time I do my aftermarket hood I'll be ordering in a non-sport grille in black to have painted to match everything. It's not too bad with the sport grille, in fact I think it looks pretty mean or "Pissed Off" and it turned out better than I was expecting it to with the red, but it still just isn't quite right.

Anywho, here's the 95% final outcome.







Better view of how it will look once everything gets re-adjusted

 

[derekp]

Nice man. I like it. I hear you on the bed liner color match, no matter what we do it never truly matches.

 

[NightMares]

I never expected perfection out of it considering the Raptor liner goes on as a satin finish rather than a gloss. It really depends on the lighting for it, in the photo's I took this morning in the rain and overcast you can really see the mismatch, but when the sun hits it direct like the photo's I posted above it's harder to really notice.



But, it's done. I'm happy, if I grow to hate it then I can always strip it and have it powder coated, or hell even painted to match. I know I don't want to go black as it will take away from the "Sport" package on the truck, I don't want to lose sight of that.

 

[Cruizer]

Awesome build thread. Been watching this truck for a while now. Probably my favorite 2nd Gen now. Amazing work!

 

[NightMares]

Thanks man! I appreciate that. It's come a very long ways, and just in parts I have set aside awaiting install it has a very long ways to go.

Fun update, just bought a bunch of material. Going to try my hand at fabricating some sliders and getting rid of the nerf bars.

 

[NightMares]

Got the 4x3's installed last night. Pulled the Y harness off the stock bumper, going to solder the ends of the CSI plugs onto the factory harness and then hook it up to the floods. Also need to throw a come-along onto the tabs and ratchet them down a little bit, a few of the lights don't quite line up inside the face. Also going to try to get the 20" at least mounted. Adjustment and 20" might be this weekend, wiring the floods will happen on my lunch break today.

Also ordered in some different seat covers. Went with the Covercraft Carhartt Gravel. The Smittybilt I installed is always moving the seat on me while I'm driving, so it's getting donated to a worthy cause.

Also, for future reference, I changed up a few things I plan to order. Going with the Go Rhino Lightning series light bar rather than the FabFours headache rack. Also going with the vertical series TireGate rather than the pre-runner style.

 

[NightMares]

Some updated photo's of the 4x3's installed. Once I get the mounting tabs straightened I'll adjust them so they're straight, but it looks a whole hell of a lot better than it did.

 

[NightMares]

Found out the CSI plugs for the lights are the same as the factory plugs on my Y harness from the factory. Frustrated that I found this out now rather than when I was mounting the lights in there, but meh still excited.

Factory on the left, CSI on the upper right. I'll just electrical tape the connectors together to keep water out and to prevent them from coming apart, also so I can keep the factory harness in case I ever want to swap back to bumpers.





Also got the wireless module installed in the winch control box.

 

[NightMares]

Well, awesome but disappointing news. Tonight I loaded the truck up and dropped it off at the shop awaiting tomorrow morning. I've got an event that I'm running this Saturday that requires my truck to be done, and with my work schedule and family I don't have the time to finish it. Tomorrow my truck will be getting the 5" lift and long arm upgrade installed by one of my technicians. The winch will also be wired in and finished up, and the light bar installed although not wired up until I can build my console to house the switch panel.

I'm glad the truck will finally be finished up, but disappointed that I will not be performing my own work. Up until now, everything installed has been done by myself, minus programming my key fobs which required the dealership to do.

Will be updating with final outcome pictures tomorrow.

 

[NightMares]

Swung over on my lunch break. It's pretty much done with the lift, he was greasing all the zerks when I showed up. All that's left now is to torque everything down and put it on the alignment rack. Once the alignment is done, they're going to weld the frame brackets on and start wiring the winch.

I left everything factory BDS colored for now. No time to get everything painted. I'm designing my own brand logo for NightMares Off Road, so once I get my design completed our sticker guy is going to print them off for me. I'll spray the springs and arms red, then spray the shock bodies black. Then I'll throw the red decals on and red shock boots.

But for now, check out that droop in the front!

 

[NightMares]

Truck is DONE! Unfortunately my co-worker didn't understand the relocate the winch control box so he didn't get the 20" installed, but easy enough for me to do when I get the time. Rear will be addressed sometime in the near future. I was hoping for a slight rake if not level from the added weight in the front, but negative. It went up more than 2" so I'm going to wait a couple weeks when it settles down and see how much the ass needs to come up to be level.

 

[BlackMagnum2000]

Ohh my

 

[NightMares]

Right?! Can't wait to actually drive it haha. It's staring at me through the glass, my co-worker says it drives better than before but I guess I'll be the judge of that one.

 

[NightMares]

Update after the lift for a couple things.

1) The dual shocks were a bad idea on my part. Stiff ride, every crack in the road was felt, back roads knocked my teeth out. Last night after work I ran over to the shop and yanked the factory location shocks out, for 2 reasons there. 1) Money loss: The secondary shock brackets cost more than the price of two shocks. In fact, it cost more than all 4 of the shocks in the front of the truck did. Pulling the factory shock locations make it not quite as expensive of a bad idea.. 2) Functionality: At full droop the secondary shocks still had some more extended length to go. The factory location shocks require the axle to come up to put the nut on the stem at the top. More articulation basically. The bump stops are set perfect. At full tuck I've got about about 1/4" shaft exposed on the secondary shock, and I'd say almost 2" exposed on the factory location shock. With that noted, I'll have more droop/articulation with the secondary shocks than the factory location shocks. Also, the secondary shocks are valved a little heavier, and the problem I had with the BDS on with the 3" a while back were they were too soft. As of now, I'm EXTREMELY pleased with the ride of the truck. Smooth, quiet, handles back roads like a dream.

2) Decided to do the rear kit tonight. With daylight savings it's damn near pitch black when I leave work, and I need to get the headlights adjusted so I need to get it done now rather than waiting for the springs to settle. I'm intermixing the BDS 5" and 3" rear kit, doing the 3" block kit which is about 1.75" tall and the 5" add-a-leaf which should give me an additional 2" which should set it fairly close to level now.

Now, onto the fun stuff.

Factory location shock removed.



And play time from yesterday.

 

[NightMares]

One of the perks to being the first person at my store for our Toys For Tots drive today.

FRONT ROW PARKING!

 

[freezie]

Nice job , it doesn't look anything like when you started !

 

[NightMares]

Nice job , it doesn't look anything like when you started !

Thanks! I've still got a long ways to go, but I feel safe saying it's not stock anymore haha.

Ran into a problem with the 3" kit I had. Centering pin on the 3/4" block was larger than the stock block, so it wouldn't fit together. I'm having some custom blocks made here in town for it, should be done tomorrow. Once I get them, I'll install them Wednesday since we're closing early and I'll have some free time while the wife is at work. Will also get the winch control box relocated, then flip the 20" light bar to fit inside the bumper.

Came across a deal that's going on until Christmas for the BFG KO2's. I've decided the next set of tires going on will be going on with new wheels with ~4-4.5" BS so I can eliminate the wheel spacers I currently have. I wish I could say I'm doing 17's, but there's an $80 difference between 16's and 17's PER wheel. They're literally twice the cost. Then there's a $45 difference between the 315/75R16 and the 35x12.50x17's. That's a $600 difference just to bump to 17's from the 16's, for just 4 tires and wheels, not including the 5th one I'll do at the same time as the TireGate. So hopefully by Christmas I'll have some Ultra Xtreme 102's in satin black with some 35" KO2's. We'll see what happens there.