The Beginning

I am, like many people, influenced by the things I read. In June of 2011, when I determined that I needed to trade in my faithful 2003 Ford Ranger, I had just finished reading Stephen Pressfield’s novel Killing Rommel. Somewhat foolishly I didn’t see myself rolling along city streets or off road trails. I saw a new truck, festooned with machine guns, ammunition, food, fuel, water, and the other detritus of modern special warfare, deep in a trackless desert hundreds, if not thousands of miles away from any support.

To that end, and in keeping with some of my own beliefs about how money should be spent, I purchased a brand new, 4-door, 4-wheel drive, 2011 Toyota Tacoma SR5 with a manual
transmission in charcoal gray. Her name, all my vehicles are ‘she’, settled on Rogue.

I immediately set to making the modifications that I saw as necessary to turn her into this combat ready vehicle. Of course, I wasn’t completely lost in my literature based imagination. I didn’t install machine gun firing points or tactical radios. Beyond the fact that these things are not easy to acquire, belt fed weapons systems on your vehicle draws a lot of attention from, you know, the police.

I did immediately install a 3” lift, 18” KMC Wheels, new 285/65/ R18 BF Goodrich A/T tires and some Westin running boards.

I can’t deny… she looked GOOD.

LOOKED good.

The problem I had run in to, and didn’t even know it yet, is that, like many things, I thought I knew more than I did. Driving off road is not a naturally born talent, it is an acquired skill. The knowledge on how to set up an off-road vehicle is also acquired, not simply granted based on the ownership of a 4-wheel drive vehicle and the successful reading of a novel about the Long Range Desert Group.

Seriously though, if you haven’t read Killing Rommel, you are missing out… I digress.

Among my, now, more obvious mistakes were the choice of wheels. The company was good, KMC makes wheels that are among the best in the industry, but the size. The stock wheel size on the 2011 Tacoma was 16”, I should have stayed with that size. Why? Wouldn’t that make my truck look like it had skipped leg day when I added the lift? No. When setting up a truck that you actually intend to use off-road, it is FAR better to have more tire, less wheel.

This does a couple things for you. First, it provides a bit of cushion to your off road ride. Having more tire means that there is more give when you strike something unforgiving. Even when the suspension bottoms out, there is still a bit of give, more or less depending on what PSI you are running in your tires, when the tire flexes. Secondly, it provides more clearance for your wheel of the ground limiting damage to your not inexpensive wheels in rough terrain. Thirdly, when driving in soft sand or on other unstable terrain, it allows for greater deflation which provides more surface area which makes your tires less like to dive into a soft surface.

Another mistake was my choice of running boards. While they were great and looked good, they were a total waste of money that deposited more mud and dirt on the back of my pant legs then they ever protected my truck from damage. I should have waited and gone with
real rock sliders which would have protected Rogue from damage and not just been ripped off if they had struck something and sat close enough to the truck that getting out wouldn’t mean having mud and dirt deposited on the back of my pant legs.

The lift was also a problem. I picked one based on how cool it looked, not on how capable it was. While this wasn’t an issue for a while, it would turn into a big one.

Still, she looked good and I can’t deny, none of us can deny, that aesthetics don’t play at
least SOME role in how we set up our trucks.

I took her on some minor adventures. We drove out onto the beaches at the Outer Banks together, we rolled around NC usually with the windows down and the radio up.

Then summer came to an end and she and I moved to Germany. Before I lived in Germany, I had talked to many people who had lived there. “Don’t bring a big American truck” is what they all told me. No problem. A) Rogue isn’t American and B) She’s not very big. Wow. Was I wrong on that!

By European standards, she was a monster. Sure, it was nice to not really have to remember where I parked because coming out of pretty much anywhere she sat so high above the other cars in the lot that it looked like she was parked on top of them. But the streets are small and narrow in Germany and driving her in urban areas very quickly became something
that I just didn’t do.

My first trail damage came not on some epic overlanding trip or some bizzaro vehicle based combat operation, but in the old city of Salzburg, Austria. I had entered an address into my GPS (a serious necessity for anyone moving to Europe) but didn’t understand that the Austrians write their addresses different than the Germans and I ended up at the gate of a
thousand year old monastery at 2 AM… oops. Well, the streets are too narrow to turn around
in and there was no one awake (or willing) to let me into the courtyard so… I backed down
about 3 miles of streets so narrow I had to fold Rogue’s side view mirrors in. Yep. No shit. At a switchback I actually had to back up on to some poor homeowner’s front porch, to get the
clearance to turn around and get headed forward again. Sorry about your flowers, whoever
you are.

Together, Rogue and I traveled all over Germany… or as much of it as I got to see considering how busy I was at that time. Then I came home and the real trouble began.

Remember how I mentioned that the lift looked good but would be a problem? Well…turns out that the lift wasn’t designed for the wet conditions of NC or the freeze/thaw cycle of
central Europe. Water got into the shocks and, well, ruined them. The rear suspension, which
turned out to just be an add a leaf started squealing like crazy every time I went over a bump…but I have gotten ahead of myself.

I didn’t ship Rogue right back from Germany to Virginia, I sent her to California to have Jason DeMello of Demello Off Road put a new front bumper and a custom made new rear bumper on her complete with swing out spare tire carrier, high lift jack, maxtrax, rotopax fuel cans and a fold down camp table all on a sesame seed bun with special sauce and two strips of
bacon. Working with Demello Off Road was great! They understood my situation, picked
Rogue up from the shipping center and let me know when she was done. I flew out and picked her up and drove her back to VA… THAT was when the trouble started.

The front suspension wasn’t made to take the extra weight of the front bumper and, combined with the damage to the shock portion of the coilover, ruined the front suspension.

By the time I replaced them, I was riding on springs alone. The shock portion wasn’t doing any good at all. The same was true in the rear. The heavier rear bumper wore out the bushings between the leafs so it squealed so bad that driving her was aggravating.

But, no worries. I replaced the coilovers with Bilstein 5100 shocks, Old Man Emu heavy
weight coils in front and Deaver expedition weight leaf springs in the rear… which I did not
need. Remember that thing I said about thinking I was going to be waging the North African
campaign in Rogue… yeah well… I still, apparently, thought that.

I took her home for Christmas that year… and returned with a $1200 need to replace a
worn clutch plate. Ouch.

Time went by. A bizarre thunk sound coming from the front end when I turned ended up being the lower control arm bushings. No big deal, right… yeah.. the bushings are cheap.
Labor is expensive. I replaced one side, just to get to replace the other. All of this just in time
to hear the thunk again only to find out that now it was the upper control arms. As it turns
out… when they put the lift in they replaced the UCAs… then, when I replaced the lfit I should have gone back to a stock UCA… but… I didn’t know they weren’t stock so I had a front end with about… oh… an inch of play in the upper control arms… which, of course, tore apart the lower control arms. $5000 later, I had my truck back… good as new.

I told you the lift would be a problem.

Time wore on and Rogue and I continued to adventure. We spent a lot of time in the OBX and a lot of time in the mountains of Western Virginia and North Carolina.

Then, in March of 17, I took her home again.

My mom and I had plans that would have us gone all day so I dropped Rogue off at the
Toyota Dealership near my parents’ house for an oil change. About an hour and a half later I
get a phone call… “Sir, are you aware that you have a leak in your transfer case?”

Awesome.

The next day I left my parents’ house to adopt a dog. I came home with a brand new 4Runner. The rest, as they say, is history… a history that I am just beginning to write.

But seriously though… if you haven’t read Killing Rommel…