This new project from the guys at Designed and Built is one that I really dig. I’m a fan of FJ Land Cruisers and if you are too then you are going to like this one. It’s not a typical FJ SUV body, but rather the pickup model and that’s cool just because you don’t see them as often, at least not around here in the States. But this one is going a bit further as they are slapping it onto a modified FJ80 chassis and extending the cab a bit. I’m normally not a big fan of folks trying to make an extended cab out of a truck that was never intended to be that way, but these things are so boxy and square that I think they can pull it off and make it look like it is supposed to be that way.

This rig is going to be off-road focused, not just a mall crawler, and the idea is to keep it with a low lift, lots of travel, and the power to put the suspension through its paces. I’m excited about it and you will be too.

If you want to just straight into the tech side of things, scroll past the first video and you’ll see the chassis mods that are happening in order to give improved suspension performance out back. If you want to see all the plans for this build then watch both videos below as the first one will give the history of this project, where it is going, and why.

Video Description:

In this episode we introduce George and he tells you about his background, how we met, how we got to this point and the plan for the new build.

Build Episode #2 for the next generation Barra powered FJ45/80. In this video we’re starting thew new build with a standard 80 series landcruiser chassis, adding some chassis plates, removing this section and this section to allow better suspension performance while maintaining a low centre of gravity, doing some cutting, welding and grinding before we end up with a finished chassis. We go through a detailed explanation on this later in the video so make sure you stick around if you love talking tech.