1993 Toyota Pickup Project Truck - Taking Our Toy To The Next Level

Jeremy Bonds of Total Chaos started by pulling the carpet back, taking out the inner kick panels in our cab, and removing the factory ECU on the passenger side and fuse box on the other side......

.....Things were about to get hot and chopped right here, and that's nowhere you want your electronics to be during the fabrication.

Bonds went to work drilling some relief holes before starting to cut.....

......Once the cutting was done, a paper template piece was fitted in place.....

.....before trying to cut some sheetmetal to fit into the hole.

Once the paper template was fitted to the correct size, Total Chaos used their cutting equipment to make a patch for the holes out of 18-gauge material.

Bonds tack-welded the patch into place, and then used a hammer to massage the factory fenderwells in a bit to meet up with the patch. If you're trying this yourself, Total Chaos (TC) recommends using either .030 or .023 MIG wire (the smallest possible)......

......with a low heat setting when welding it all up. TC also suggests testing the heat settings of your welder on some extra scrap material so you don't blow a hole through your sheetmetal.

When finished, the patch should look similar to this on the inside of the cab. Notice how there is some overlap? This is a good idea so not to leave any gaps, just in case you don't trim your patches perfectly. It also adds a bit more strength in the patch area.

When the patch was finished, Bonds took the extra step and caulked around the patch to make sure there was a weathertight fit that would allow no moisture or debris to get through into the cab.

Everything was painted black to cover up any work and protect the sheetmetal from rusting. Bonds held up the section that had been chopped out of our Toyota. As you can see, this was a substantial amount of tire clearance gained.

We were still able to put the factory kick panels back in as well, though they are bowed in a bit due to the cutting and patching that was just done.

Once the firewall was cut, Bonds went to work sticking on our Glassworks fiberglass front fenders. Glassworks has excellent molds, but they still recommend trimming and sanding panels to get a perfect fit.

Since we hadn't yet gotten a prerunner bumper on the front of our Toyota, Bonds cut our factory piece to fit the line of the fiberglass fender.

Here you can see the tire clearance differences with the stock fender and uncut firewall compared to the Glassworks fiberglass fender and cut-out firewall......

.....The new fenders give a 3-inch rise and a 3-inch flare to account for larger tires and a wider track width, should we choose to widen the front end a bit at a later time.