Author: Chad de Alva

Chad de Alva is a FAA approved drone pilot, filmmaker and photographer based out of Flagstaff, Arizona. Born and Raised in Telluride, Colorado, Chad has grown up exploring and adventuring all over the Southwest. Before GoPro cameras were a thing, Chad was the guy duct-taping and jerry-rigging cameras to himself and his friends to document their adventures. Cameras may or may not have been lost or killed in action along the way, but cameras can be replaced—experiences cannot. Today, Chad’s work has taken him from the Alaska Range to the bottom of the Grand Canyon working with companies like the BBC and Nat. Geo. to help tell stories that move people. Chad combines his engineering background with his outdoor experience to develop innovative solutions for documenting adventures in never before seen ways. His love of the outdoors, adventure, and learning new things is limitless.
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Project Tundra // Suspension

Back in May, I installed some things on Project Tundra and something weird started happening.  I started getting this muscle soreness whenever I would drive the truck, and the problem seemed to be exacerbated by driving on dirt roads—especially when driving in a spirited manner (If I’m being honest, it happened on paved roads too….especially the twisty-windy ones.)  After seeking the help of various medical professionals with no luck, I took my problem to Google.  Rabbit holes were explored; but to no avail.  Months later, I can only conclude that I’m suffering from the thing that I hope has afflicted everyone who drives a vehicle off road:  Soreness of the face from too many Grins Per Mile.  And I put the blame squarely on the Icon Vehicle Dynamics (IVD) suspension for making my face hurt from grinning so much.

Not only has the raw enjoyment of the truck increased by installing IVD suspension, but the real world performance has improved considerably as well.  As a quiver-of-one vehicle, Project Tundra does everything from long hauls on America’s interstate system, to frequent trips on our favorite dirt roads.  Therefore, the truck’s suspension system needs to keep the vehicle rubber side down while dodging exploding semi-truck tires at 80 MPH in Utah, and soak up washboarded dirt roads in Arizona so that passengers can still play Jenga in the back seat.

Off the dealers’ lot, the stock TRD suspension is respectably capable—but there’s certainly room for improvement.  The folks at Icon Vehicle Dynamics have spent hundreds of man-hours developing suspension products specifically for the Toyota Tundra, and all of this R&D time enables them to suggest specific parts based on how you’re going to use your rig, and what you’re going to carry with it.  After talking about the end state of project tundra and how it would be used, IVD came up with a selection of parts that would make the Tundra perform like a magic carpet over a wide range of loads and roads.

PARTS OF THE PUZZLE

We were fortunate to get our hands on Icon’s new 3.0 Series coilovers and billet Upper Control Arms (UCAs) sporting the Icon Delta Joint for the front end of Project Tundra.  The 3.0 coilovers take the proven performance of the 2.5 Series coilovers and turn everything up to 11.  Everything on the 3.0’s is massive, as are the performance gains they provide over monotube shocks in every metric.  You can’t help but call the stock TRD-stickered Bilstein units ‘cute’ when they’re placed side by side with the 3.0 Series coilovers.  Installing a larger coilover assembly requires installing an aftermarket Upper Control Arm (UCA) that will clear the new coilover, yet this also provides real performance gains for suspension performance.

Icon’s Billet UCA’s with the Delta Joint give Project Tundra more wheel travel in the form of droop travel and the Delta Joint is far stronger than the stock ball joint.  Additional droop travel allows the tires to better stay in contact with the ground as the suspension (and thus tire) is what falls into a hole instead of the whole vehicle, keeping the vehicle more level.  The Delta Joint is a new product from IVD that combines the durability of a ball joint with the range of motion of a uni-ball.  The Delta Joint provides the benefits of both types of joints, and I’m quite eager to see how they hold up in the long run.  The UCA’s also allow for camber and caster adjustments, which can be used to help clear larger tires or dial in additional positive caster to tweak handling performance.

OUT BACK

To keep up with the front end, Icon provided us with their leaf expansion pack, hydraulic bump stop system, and VS 2.5 Series PBR Rear shocks with CDCV.  The leaf expansion pack provides ~1.5 inches of lift to the back of the truck and maintains the load carrying capacity without making Project Tundra ride like a dump truck.  The pack is installed between the stock main and overload spring so that factory towing and load characteristics are retained, and lift and comfort are added.  Icon has something spring related on the horizon that will be of great interest to the overland / adventure travel community and we will be updating this article as details emerge.

The hydraulic bump stop system was added to help keep the rear of Project Tundra in control, especially while carrying the additional loads that overland-style travel typically places on a vehicle.  Toyota’s stock bumpstops are about as soft as a lacrosse ball, and they instantly release all of the energy compressed into them right back out which can cause the back to the vehicle to kick or step out.  The bump stops provide bottom out control and are speed sensitive so that they can soak up big hard hits without limiting articulation and slow speed suspension movements.

Rounding out the system are Icon’s 2.5 Series shocks with Vehicle Specific (VS) valving, and the Compression Damping Control Valve (CDCV).  VS valving is the result of spending hours playing with shim-stacks, pistons, and other suspension variables to create a shock tuned specifically to the Toyota Tundra.  The CDCV allows me to dial in the amount of compression dampening we want in all of the shocks on project tundra, so we can crank up the compression for better road handling and big hits, and back it off for a more compliant ride when we’re going slow and doing technical trails.

WHEELS AND TIRES

When combined with Icon’s suspension system, a set of Icon Alloys Six Speed wheels allows project Tundra to clear a true 35 inch tire. These 17 x 8.5 inch wheels were developed with a specific +25mm offset that allows for lock-to-lock steering throughout the range of travel from full stuff to full droop. We wrapped our shiny new Six Speed wheels with Falken Tire MT01’s and A/T3Ws. Keep an eye out for a long term test on their tires, and we’ll be talking all about wheels and tires in a future Project Tundra article.

INSTALL

Installing all of these parts on Project Tundra took two days over the course of a weekend, and with the exception of an air chisel, no real specialized tools were required.  On Saturday, Chazz Layne and I were able to install everything on the front end with no real visits from Mr. Murphy.  You do have to cut a factory bumpstop to clear the new 3.0 Series coilover, and rather than take a corner off as the directions suggest, I opted to cut the whole bumpstop off, so that I could weld the bumpstop back on if I ever needed to in the future.  Likewise, you need to trim the ends of the swaybar, but I just opted to remove mine.  (DISCLAIMER:  AA and IVD can’t be held responsible for what you do to your truck…+LEGAL WORD VOMIT AS NEEDED)  We also had to elongate a hole on the reservoir mounting bracket, but other than that, everything was a bolt on installation easily completed in a leisurely day in the shop while stopping frequently to take photos.

On Sunday, I tackled the back end by myself, and here’s where you’ll need that air chisel I was mentioning.  The factory bump striker plates are riveted to the frame, so you’ll need to grind / chisel these mounts off so you can install the IVD mounts.  Installing the shocks is straightforward and took me maybe five minutes in total.  Installing the leaf expansion pack is also a pretty easy process, especially if you remove the leafs from the truck and use a jack and some planning to help haul your axle around.  With everything installed and properly torqued, the next thing to do is get the truck aligned.

SHAKEDOWN

Backing out of the garage, the difference was obvious, and things only got better from there.  The installation was done the week before Overland Expo West, and over the course of this summer I’ve taken project Tundra all over the Southwest, driving on everything from desert freeways to Colorado passes.  In every type of terrain, at high speeds and at low speeds the suspension has soaked up and confidently handled everything I’ve pointed the truck at.

Even when loaded down with the family and toys for a long weekend of play, the truck still had outstanding handling and performance.  While the addition of cargo weight obviously sags the suspension out just like it would any vehicle, being able to add compression dampening with just a few clicks helps keep the truck’s handling in check when loaded with gear.  Where a monotube shock valved for a lightly loaded truck would blow through it’s travel when saddled with additional weight, the IVD suspension keeps things in in control with a few additional clicks of compression dampening.

IT’S TIME TO REDEFINE ADVENTURE TRAVEL / OVERLANDING SUSPENSION

Just like any other sport or industry, the overlanding / adventure travel industry has its stigmas about what constitutes suspension perfection and about a million other ‘best options.’ Well, stigmas were meant to be broken.  If folks didn’t bother to break the mold and try something new, innovation wouldn’t be a thing, which is why I’m so glad that Icon Vehicle Dynamics is pushing their suspension into our industry.  Call it desert racing suspension or whatever you want, the fact of the matter is IVD’s suspension systems are brilliant for how we use our vehicles.  I’ve logged hundreds of thousands of miles on Australian-made monotube shocks, and while those systems work well and are certainly an upgrade from any stock suspension, they’re not on the same level as Icon suspension.

Going with a top shelf system from Icon Vehicle Daynamics is certainly going to cost more than a monotube shock setup—but this is an upgrade where you get what you pay for.  I know that conventional thinking in the industry would steer folks to stick with the tried and true, but I’m a big fan of tinkering, and trying new things.  Going with ‘desert racing suspension’ has worked out quite well for me and project tundra.  The performance (and safety) gains are night and day, and I don’t see any reason why these components wouldn’t last as long, if not longer with proper maintenance than anything else out there.  And besides, having suspension that can handle the occasional surprise whoop section or occasional airing out of the tires happens to be a hell of a lot of fun.

Full Disclosure: Icon Vehicle Dynamics, Icon Alloys, and Falken Tires generously contributed products for this build at no cost to Chad de Alva or American Adventurist. That said, American Adventurist staff members have been using and abusing IVD products for over a decade with zero trail failures in the some of the harshest terrain in North America.

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Meet the Maker Part II

GoPro cameras are pretty awesome things.  They’re durable (by camera standards) waterproof cameras that are small enough that you can put them just about anywhere to get cool shots we could only dream about a few short years ago.  Yet actually mounting a camera in some of the places that would make for a really unique shot can be an engineering challenge in actually making it happen.  Sometimes, you just need to make your own mount- and using a 3D Printer like the TAZ 6 happens to be the perfect way to do it.

There are exactly 2.4 kabillion companies out there who make no less than 9.33 zillion mounts and accessories for GoPro cameras.  Yet cameras can still end up looking like this—ask me how I know.  Suction cups and sticky mounts can work really well, but they can also cause your GoPro to jump ship, which is what brought Chazz Layne to me asking for a help with a GoPro mounting solution.  Chazz asked me to come up with a magnetic mount for a GoPro, so that he could stick a camera to literally any ferrous metal surface in his vehicle and capture all kinds of shots from time lapses while wrenching to axle-cam shots while rallying.

Since I needed to make these new magnetic mounts work with the GoPro ecosystem of mounts and accessories, it made sense to do a little bit of extra work and model all of the parts that I would need to make ANY GoPro part I could dream up.  A set of calipers and a few genuine GoPro mounts to measure off of were all that I needed to reverse engineer what I’m going to call the three-prong, and two-prong GoPro mounts in a CAD program.

All of the screen captures you’re going to see here are from SolidWorks, but any CAD program that can output a STL file will work great.  The design-build process from reverse engineering to printing is going to be the same no matter what CAD program you use.  Check out the first article in this series for a couple of free CAD programs to use.  Once I had my three-prong and two-prong mounts modeled, I made a test print of each to make sure that I had all of the dimensions correct, and that my parts worked properly with the genuine GoPro parts.  When you’re working with interference fits (like capturing the acorn nut) or when you’ve got parts that mate to one another, a test print it always a good call.

Now that I have the three-prong and two-prong mounts modeled correctly, I can put them on literally anything else I can dream up, so I started working on a magnetic base, and came up with two designs.  The first is a base that is designed to work in applications where the mount isn’t going to be bouncing around particularly hard: shooting timelapses, gentle driving, etc.  I focused on creating a smaller footprint and protecting the magnets, which can break if they hit something hard enough.  Once I had my base, I added the three-prong GoPro mount, saved the model as a .STL and loaded the model into Cura, the printer control software for the TAZ 6.

Cura is a great program to work with, and the process of going from CAD model to print can be as easy as choosing the type of print you want (standard / high speed / high detail) and whether or not you need support material or a brim and hitting go.  Cura’s filament profiles are the result of countless hours of testing by the folks at Lulzbot, and as a result their printers are as close to a plug-and-play printing solution as you can get.  However, Cura can also nerd out—if you want to tweak every last setting of a given print profile, simply flip over to expert mode where you can change any variable.  Once you have your settings dialed, you’ll load the model(s) you want to print, which will appear in the build area.  If you need to change the model’s orientation, simply use the rotate button in the bottom left corner to rotate the model on any of the three axes.  Moving a model is as simple as clicking and dragging.  When you’re happy with everything start your print and kick back and enjoy the stepper music.

The second design I came up with has twice as many magnets so that it will stay in place during aggressive driving, impacts, or greater wind loads.  I kept with the design style from my first mount and added spots for additional magnets. To protect paint and other surfaces that are prone to scratching, I applied a thin layer of silicon caulk to the base of the mount that can be easily wiped clean and will provide a little bit of additional grip.  While the prints were running, I modeled another GoPro part that I’ve been wanting to make, and it’s here were modeling the two-prong and three-prong mounts really paid off.

I’ve always wanted a mounting arm that was longer than the sub-two-inch arms that GoPro makes, so I designed a truss, and added my three prong, and two-prong mounts to the ends, and voila! I had a six-inch GoPro mounting arm.  While the truss looks cool and helps keep the weight down, it does pose a challenge for a 3D Printer in that there are sections where the printer would have to print into thin air, so I knew going into this print that I would have to use support material to get good results.  Support material uses more filament, and you have to go through and clean all of the support material off post-print, but this is how you can make parts that otherwise couldn’t be printed.  With all of my models now existing as physical parts, it was time to stick them to Project Trundra, and see what happened out in the dirt.

I started easy, and worked my way up.  Static shots and time lapses turned into moving shots of spirited driving down dirt roads.  Smarter me would have used safety lanyards while testing these mounts, because everything has its limits, and even magnetic mounts can be knocked off of something if they’re subjected to a great enough load.  Yet, by the time I turned back onto pavement, I still had all of my gear.

The real value of magnetic mounts is that they do not need a perfectly clean surface to stick to, like an adhesive mount or suction cup requires, and that makes magnetic mounts a great tool for run and gun shooting where you want to quickly setup a camera and get back to having fun.  Overall, the magnetic mounts worked great, and I’m excited to pass these parts on to Chazz.

3D Printing is such a powerful technology, and having a TAZ 6 is like having an entire workshop full of expensive tools and skilled craftsman at your disposal—except this workshop takes up just a few square feet on your desk.  With a measuring device or two, a little bit of planning, and some time spent in a CAD program, you can reverse engineer just about anything with a TAZ 6.  Likewise, when you’re creating new things, 3D printing can turn that brainstorm or bar-napkin sketch in to a real functional thing.

For our last article in this series, we’re asking you, our readers to let us know in the comments below what you would create for yourself if you had a TAZ 6.  Anything aside from weapons is fair game here.  The American Adventurist staff will pick our favorite ideas, and then I will work on making those ideas into printed parts.  We will open-source the files and send built parts to the folks who came up with the ideas.  Let’s hear what you want to see made!