’85 Toyota SR5 Pickup

When getting vehicles in from other parts of the country, it’s necessary to do a deep clean to ensure any little critters didn’t make their way up here from down south. Once the deep clean and steam cleaning are done, it is time to evaluate the vehicle. Typically it takes a minimum of 8-16 hours to assess a vehicle for restoration to see if the vehicle is able to be restored (parts assessment, engine and drivetrain health, customers expectations of the build) and write an estimate to present to the customer. Each customer’s set of expectations for a vehicle is different, so this part of the project is very important. Establishing a plan from the start is key to a vehicle’s restoration because they are not cheap! This vehicle came in with over 200k miles on it and is in great shape for its age. After the vehicle is photographed, documented and there is an exact plan of what we will be doing with the project, we can finally start the teardown of the vehicle. All parts are organized in crates, and hardware is labeled and tagged for future assembly and restoration. Losing parts and disorganization can cost in the end.

Once the vehicle is fully disassembled, we can start our body prep, media/sandblasting procedures, send out the interior to be overhauled, and engine/drivetrain rebuild. We try to order all parts we can think of upfront before the restoration to ensure that we have parts available when needed or can be sourced elsewhere. For this truck, the frame on this vehicle was so nice living in a dry southern climate, so all we had to do was wire wheel, sand, and paint. It was probably the best chassis we have ever seen! The body had its usual dings and dents from being a truck, hunting use, the boys taking it 4 wheeling, and once being hit by a deer. But it was literally RUST FREE! The perfect candidate for restoration. The body was sanded down, bodyworked, and prepped for primer. The next stage will be the painting process.

For this truck, we sent out our engine to be rebuilt by 22reperformance.com, and it is the second engine we have used from them. We went with a Stage 1 22re engine rebuild. 22re Performance is based out of California and is one of the best companies in the country for these engine rebuilds. Their work is amazing: https://22reperformance.com/stage-1-rebuilt-engine-1. Some other cool features of this truck were an LCE performance header and exhaust.

The axles have been fully serviced with top-of-the-line components. All brakes, wheel bearings, seals, gears, and steering components have been fully serviced. The vehicle came with a 2.5″ lift that was recently installed, so we kept it in the vehicle. Another cool feature of this truck is it has the original auto-locking hubs!

The vehicle came stock with a 5-speed transmission and 4×4 transfer case, which were both fully rebuilt and serviced! To save costs, we went with a set of US Wheel replacement chrome steel wheels instead of restoring the original OEM chrome wheels. The customers saved them for a later date. For tires, we went with a 31″ BF Goodrich All-terrain. Great all-around tire!

The next step in the restoration of Blueboy was the paint stage. We kept the truck the original color with factory reproduction decals for a period-correct look. The factory paint code for this truck is CODE: 81A. All interior plastics were prepped and restored, and a new dash cap was installed. Very common on these old Toyotas were the dash pads cracking due to heat and too much sunlight. We added a custom upgraded Tuffy Security console with a hidden stereo. One of our favorite parts of this restoration was how clean the bed came out! The interior fabric was restored to an OE spec, blue on blue. Oh, the 80’s were an awesome time!