Every year for our Ultimate Adventure weeklong wheeling road trip we build some off-the-wall official vehicle, and this year we started with a brand spankin' new '07 FJ Cruiser from Toyota. A month ago our Ultimate FJ was on the rack with parts strewn all around it, and now it's done. We'll cover the final steps of the major buildup this month, and then next month we'll tie things up and give you a review of how everything worked on the trail.
When we left off, the Ultimate FJ was still at All-Pro Off Road in Hemet, California, where all the axles and suspension were being replaced with Pro-Rock Dana 60s from Dynatrac. In addition, the standard full-time four-wheel-drive transfer case was replaced with a four-speed Atlas transfer case and custom adapter from Advance Adapters. However, there is still a ton of upgrades we need to show you, not to mention all the little things that needed to be changed to get this rig ready. So read on, and if you want to see even more buildup photos, check out www.ultimateadventure2006.com.
We had mocked up the rear suspension and started on the front suspension in last month's coverage, so the next step was finishing up both. Our axles were built at Dynatrac, but a lot of work installing brackets was still required to be done at All Pro. Mike Schoffstal is the head fabricator at All Pro, and when you combine his years of SCORE desert and CORR short-course off-road racing fabrication with All-Pro owner John Bundrant's years of rockcrawling competition and design, you're sure to get a bulletproof suspension. On the rear axle a tall truss was built to attach the upper triangulated links. To attach the truss to the axle Schoffstal used our Hobart Tigmate TIG-welder. | 
The axle was moved under the truck where the mounting points are evenly spaced to the frame, even though the pinion was designed to be 2 inches towards the passenger side to keep the driveshaft out of the fuel tank on articulation. Since we had a mock-up axle, we had already measured and called Tom Woods Custom Driveshafts to order our driveshafts for the FJ. | 
Both axles are stuffed with chromoly shafts from Yukon Gear as well as Detroit Lockers and 5.38 gears. In the rear, full-floating assemblies were used for added strength. This required a custom set of double-splined shafts. Dynatrac drive flanges are bolted into the rear outer hubs to carry the torque, instead of locking hubs. |
Up front we used a set of Yukon inner axleshafts and Dynatrac shorty stub shafts. The shorty stub shafts are required since we are testing Dynatrac's new stubby hubs that are tucked inside the wheel more for protection of the Warn locking hubs. | 
We also installed a set of Ox Dana 60 U-joints. We really liked the ease of assembly these joints have. Instead of normal joints where there is a cross with caps that press over the trunnions, Ox joints have four separate trunnions that insert into the body of the joint and are then captured by caps that screw into the center of the body. However, we were disappointed that we had to grind an excessive amount on the joint's massive body where they interfered with the axleshaft ears to allow for proper steering angle. | 
We decided to add a ram-assist setup from Howe Performance Steering to our front axle. Running big tires at low air pressure puts significant strain on all of your steering components. However, adding a ram to assist the steering relieves the steering box and drag-link joints from a certain amount of abuse. We like the Howe steering since it is designed as a whole system with respect to pump volume and pressure, steering box and knuckle turning distance, and the throw of the ram. |
In addition to porting an early IFS Toyota minitruck box for ram assist and supplying the ram and reservoir, Howe also did some work to the stock power-steering pump. This pump eventually worked very well even though the volume of fluid it moves is less than ideal for the large ram-assist system. If there had been more time to build new mounts, we would have followed Howe's recommendations to use one of its aftermarket pumps over this modified Toyota unit. However, every Howe pump is dyno tested prior to being shipped out and we had zero problems on the trip with this modified unit. With the axles assembled we began the final installation. Up front we attached our Panhard bar to a custom bracket welded to the end forging of the axlehousing. | 
With the axles assembled, we began the final installation. Up front, we attached our Panhard bar to a custom bracket welded to the end forging of the axlehousing. | 
Then new shock towers were attached to the frame for the front Walker Evan's coilover shocks. The All Pro solid-axle swap kit includes these W.E. shocks with 12 positions of compression damping for different terrains. |