Quote Originally Posted by Ascinder View Post
Just out of curiosity, when you are going up these dirt hills, do you pull up on your parking brake at all? The limited slip in the rear will usually engage at that point and basically lock up the rear so you aren't spinning back there. The VX's limited slip is pretty good so it's worth a shot in the mean time. Good luck!!
I have read that on this site before, but forgot about it at the time. This was just a month or so ago at a small off-road area nearby. I was trying to climb some hills I hadn't attempted yet, and broke loose. The hill was pretty steep and I was pretty close to the top, and a bit nervous...
I might would have made it if I had let some air out of the tires too, but I needed to drive it back home when I was done playing and don't have onboard air.

As far as the fab goes, I would most likely do it myself (with friends). My friends are way more in to this stuff than I am, and have built full on tube frame rock-crawler buggies with Chevy 4.3 v6 besides just the Toyota truck based crawlers. Welding on some leaf-spring mounts etc seems like small potatoes.
I spent a good bit on the VX last year with the lift, maintainence, 33's etc. I'm not sure when I'll be ready to spend more money on it, but that SAS keeps popping up in my mind. I guess if I did a SAS, would I simply kill the TOD computer? Then I would have a rear wheel drive with Hubs unlocked, 4 high with hubs locked, and then 4 low with T-case engaged. Seems a bit of a waste of a handy all wheel drive vehicle too though. I know it's come in handy with the higher-than-normal snow amounts we've received here in west TN this year.