OK, so I have been missing from these forums for a couple months now (maybe more than that) so I thought I would make amends by putting in my little build forum. I do see that with Johnny's new tires, I might have the single shortest AZ truck, and I will have to add some more photos after this too, but here goes:

So this was the little truck on the day I bought it from a little dealer.

And after fixing a couple of minor things/cleaning it up to go get it dirty again in the snow a little over a year ago.


Of course there was an extensive thread about my crank bolt problems. Long story short is NEVER sacrifice a truck because of bad crank bolt threads. Check out the thread here if you need more info, but this is what a TimeSert looks like going in.


Then of course were the tires. 33x12.5 Goodyear Duratracs. I talk about them in the tire thread and elsewhere, but with something like 20K on them now, I have learned a lot more. They looked like this new.


They are simply put, great on most terrain. They get a little light in deep water or on Phoenix's oil-on-water roads in the rain, but they are much more polite in their wet handling then a true MT. I like them a lot, but sure, I MIGHT go 35's next time... we'll see.

After that of course, I had to get rid of the [email]d@mned[/email] running boards.

I went with the same Trail Gear ones as Johnny, Ray and others, and unfortunately I don't have a photo at the moment, I will try to get one tomorrow.

Somewhere in that mess though, a guy pulling out of a drive through liquor window decided he would see what happens when you hit a large truck and try and shove it over with your Maxima. His car, totaled. My Monty...

As you can see, part of my bumper had to be thrown away, and I could not fully straighten the sheet metal behind it, so I got to plotting....


This is the center/base of the Rugged Ridge XHD bumper system.

It is meant for an '09 to present JK, and is a rather heavy duty piece. The neat thing is it has all sorts of add ons and options. I will talk more about it later, but I chose to go with the so called "storage ends" that have lockable, removable lids and wells inside to store recovery straps, shackles, and whatever else you might want to stuff in there.


As you can see, I had to have a couple of things modified. Of course the mounts had to be re-engineered to fit the Montero. But since the width, thickness, and everything else lined up really well out of the box, it wasn't too hard. The bigger challenge was sectioning out the storage wells a bit. You can see the bare steel bits where a section was taken out because on the jeep, those areas need to slope up to meet the fenders. On the Montero, the slope actually matches the cutout on the corner of the light, but it would not have allowed me to mount the bumper as close in as I wanted it to be. Obviously I also went for the simple hoop, which I was glad to see matches the slope of the radiator quite nicely.
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/HUM469/Montero/DSC00626.jpg[/img]

You might notice the large gaps between the bumper ends and the fender metal and flare area. Don't worry, I have a solution for that, but I will talk more about it (and yes, it did happen, I will have photos!) tomorrow! Questions? Shoot them out there, and I will have a more detailed write-up. I also have a number of other littler items if anyone is interested later too. Let me know when I have shared enough to atone for my absence! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/zombie.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />