The Toyota Dually Loredump

"It's all just nuts and bolts..."

    Here I sit in the chilly (but bearable) shop today with a winter storm breathing down my neck...making some slow and steady progress; just got the injection pump mounted on the OM617. I thought maybe I'd write a little about why the hell I'm doing this, and how I got to this point, so here goes.

70s military engine go brrrrrrrrrrrrrr

    A few years ago I had bought a shitty trailer someone made with a Jeep axle. I was towing motorcycles and random garbage around behind my lifted 2002 Subaru Forester (that's a story for another time) and a thought came to me: "What I really need is a truck."

    My first thought was to buy something newer and 'reliable', but the problem was I hate all modern trucks. Here in the US, they're all $70k tank-sized affronts to god with seating for 7 and beds barely big enough for a cooler. And anyone I'd known with an F-150, Silverado, or even Tundra had some story about how their top end had randomly exploded at 60,000mi. Besides I found all modern trucks to be downright unattractive.

    No, what I needed was something robust, reliable, and utilitarian. I needed a shining example of the way American trucks used to be; dirt simple workhorses. Yes, what I needed was a 90s Japanese import mini truck.

    And the more I thought and looked, the more I realized what I've always wanted since I was 16 was a Toyota Pickup. So I was scouring marketplace for some shitbox I could afford, trading listings with some friends when a reply came from my friend Justin in the group chat: "Did you know they made a 1 ton dually version of this?"

How the truck looks at the moment (for now)

    I immediately fell down a rabbit hole of Wikipedia articles, forum posts, Google image searches. I was hyperfixated and excited, yes, I think this was the machine. Apparently somewhere in the late 80s and early 90s, amid the pickup import tariffs, Toyota had found and filled a niche for tiny one-ton pickups. Mostly they were found under hastily installed camper bodies, but occasionally they were cab-and-chassis with boxes, flatbeds, or dump beds mounted once they arrived here in America.

    Within the day I had found one in Florida, not too far from where some friends of mine lived, and they agreed to go have a look. About a week later they were video calling me while they looked it over. About a week after that it showed up on a hotshot's trailer. I was $3000 poorer ($2k was for shipping) but one weird mini truck with a popped head gasket richer. (Thank you to Blaise and Sadie, I can never thank you guys enough for making this happen.)

Silly hat

    

    This particular specimen had a big goofy box mounted when I got it, which was allegedly used to haul stone crab around its area of Florida to restaurants and markets. I promptly removed that fucker (because it was too tall to fit in my shop), and set about rebuilding the top end of the 3VZE 3.0L v6 (I know, wasn't I just talking shit about modern trucks blowing up?)

Engine fixed, tow bar mounted, flatbed built

    After a few months, two remanufactured heads, a lot of RockAuto magnets, and some mild frustration later, the engine was running fine. I built a wood flatbed and spent the next couple of years trucking around hauling and towing all sorts of nonsesne. True to its Toyota prestige, the truck served me extremely well, and needed very little. But of course I couldn't be satisfied with just that.

Justin's Daihatsu Hijet on the back. Yes we drove around (slowly) like that, yes that's over the weight limit.

    Firstly, I had always envisioned a manual truck, but this one-ton dually variant never came with a manual as far as I could tell, and I wasn't about to hold out for a unicorn. So I was happy with this one's 4-speed automatic slushbox, knowing that I could swap in an R150 5-speed manual rather easily.

    I ended up with two transmissions (this will become a theme), after buying one and then finding an incredible deal on a second. Late summer of 2024 I charged headfirst into what I thought would take me a couple weeks, and actually took me like three months. I've documented that journey here on the YotaTech forums.

    Secondly, but actually firstly, I had planned to engine swap this truck pretty before it was even bought. Mere hours after introducing me to the dually one-ton, Justin also introduced me to Doomsday Diesel, and their OM617 to R150 adapter kit. This interested me greatly, because it not only fixed the dually's greatest weakness (a low-torque v6), but also gave it bullet-proof reliability, simplicity, and upgradeability.

    So a few months after I brought the truck home, I had ventured down to the NJ coast to buy an OM617 and some kit parts from a guy who had been planning to do his own swap. A few months after that, my friend Nate sent me a marketplace listing for a dirt-cheap 300D in Long Island (see what I mean about the theme?). So we hauled that home and I was able to part it out successfully enough to pay for all of the second engine, and some of the first.

An organ donor on its death bed, towed by the soul it shall save.

    The OM617s sat in a corner of my shop for a few years, always a "I'll get to that" type of project. There was of course, no rush, as the 3VZE with its rebuilt top end ran dutifully and chugged happily along...until it didn't.

    There were some warning signs the engine wasn't doing so well, but I had such a hard time troubleshooting and diagnosing them, I just chalked them up to the engine being old and weird. Then one day, in a bit of a road rage incident, while pushing the little truck to around 90mph in 5th gear, the power went away. I clutched in and watched the tachometer drop. When I pulled over for a restart, it sounded like a tin can full of marbles. My best guess is it jumped timing and kissed a few valves. I've since changed my driving habits...that was a stupid move on my part, and I paid for it. But silver linings being as they are, I decided there was no better time to start the OM617 swap.

    So that's about where we are. Progress is slow, and life has gotten in the way a few times...namely I spent a few months revamping my shop so it's easier to organize and work in. I've spent a lot of time getting frustrated that the progress isn't further along, looking up a the towering column of to-dos in this project. It's even easier to get caught up second guessing myself in the little things. But every time I'm banging my head against the wall, I have my wonderful fiance, and my supportive friends to remind me: I'm a hobbyist with no traditional mechanic's training, doing this mostly alone, armed with only cheap tools, PDF service manuals, and YouTube. If I take it one step at a time, It'll get done when it gets done. As my friend Jake told me once: "Take it one part at a time, it's all just nuts and bolts."