$150,000 Toyota Tacoma Race Truck Walk Around

How's it going everyone? Welcome back to the Tacoma Beast channel, where as you all know, it's all about the taco. Today we're in Las Vegas for SEMA, and with me today is Brandon Walsh. He's a racer for the Baja 100. Well, not 100, 1000, 500, 200, right? 250, 400, 500. There's a lot of them out there. Yeah, and for those of you that have been following the channel, you guys have seen we became the media chase truck for Brandon and chased him all over Ensenada, Mexico. And we've actually even snatched you out. That's true. Off of a cliff, right? That's true. First time you guys were out, we had a incident where I kind of drove off a cliff a little bit and had to hang out there for about four hours. So Mateo and the boys showed up and a good old Toyota Tacoma four-wheel drive pulled us out and got us going again. Dude, it was awesome. It's been an absolute pleasure being able to chase you around Mexico and see you race this Tacoma. Let's talk a little bit about it. How did you start this build? Like what made you want to build it to where it is now? June, 2005, my buddy dragged me down to a Baja 500 race. I'd never been to any type of race in my life. I didn't even like racing to be honest and I was afraid of Mexico. And I went down there and instantly just fell in love with like the atmosphere and the trucks and just the way people could take their almost daily driver trucks, make them into race cars and then trucks that aren't daily drivers that are actually like real full-on race cars and just blast through the desert, blast through the mountains, rivers, you name it, down in Mexico. Something that like we don't get to experience in the United States like they do down there. And I told him on the way back, I go, hey man, I want to race this race. And he's like, with what? I go, my parents had just bought me about two years before for my 16th birthday at 2002 Tacoma, first gen, 2002 four screen Tacoma, right? I went home, told my mom, I was like, hey, by the way, she was pissed I even went down there. I didn't, you know, didn't even tell her I was going. You ran away to Mexico. Pretty much, no cell phone service down there. It was real bad. And I told her, I said, yeah, I'm going to race my truck. And she's like, well, you only get one. I'm not buying another one. I was like, oh, don't worry. Between next couple months, I'm planning out how am I going to build this race car? And I don't have, you know, a grandfather, a dad, someone that raced before. We had none of my, no one in my family had ever done something like that. So I was just Googling stuff and going on forums and going off pictures. You know, I knew how to weld at the time a little bit and I was just building my own parts, right? So long story short, ended up racing the Baja 500 the next year. With that same first gen. With the first, yeah, my first gen. It was very, very unsuccessful. It was really bad. I made about 40 miles. I had no radio, no GPS. I mean, my dump cans were like dirt bike, little five gallon things, took like 20 minutes to fill a truck up. But like, it got me hooked, you know? Like, I just was like, when am I going to come back? It was supposed to be a one-time deal. And I'm like, well shit, I mean, I got this whole truck's all torn apart. I got holes going through it. I mean, I destroyed a beautiful brand new truck that was two years old because I put a roll cage in it. And cut it in half and ripped the interior out. And you know, I'll be honest, it was a little ghetto. It was some stuff that wasn't that, it wasn't up to par with everyone else. But I had no idea what I was doing. So I was just like, all right, man, let's go for it. So as time went on, I actually did not finish a race for four years. For four straight years, I failed over and over and over and over. I got ridiculed on the internet, on the forums. Everyone was saying, ah, you suck, Brandon. You should quit. Well, that was almost like this motivation. Well, I was gonna do this a couple of times, but now you guys think I suck so bad, so I'm gonna go prove to you that I don't suck. I was like, I'm gonna prove to you I don't suck, that I can do it, that I can finish a race. And finally, I started finishing little ones here and there, right? And then I ended up getting a lot of sponsors and support around me that were trying to help me with the truck that unfortunately was just not a race car. I'd made too many mistakes with it when I first started that I didn't, there was no way to recover from that. I was lucky enough to have a grandfather at the time that helped me get this one built right here. So what this is right here is everything that I tried in the first couple of years to do myself was done professionally the way I wanted it, but the way that I couldn't do it myself. How this truck started was first gen frame rail, completely never been on any car at all, right from Toyota. And I gave it to the builder and I said, here's the fiberglass body, here's the frame, build me a truck, right? And as the build went on, I'd go over there and be like, I want the arms to be like this. I want the rear end to be like this. Everything that I tried to do originally. This is technically a first gen frame, 4.0 motor out of a second gen with a TRD supercharger. And as you can see, as the years have gone by, we've evolved the body a little bit more. We got the second gen front clip with the Tacoma Beast headlights and the Tacoma Beast TRD grill. What did you do to my grill? You know what, man? You had to put a couple of holes in it because we had to get the bar through it, you know? But everyone loves it, man. Yeah, I know. It's been hanging on for dear life. So it's doing a good job. I think if you flip over, this is the one thing that's staying on the truck. Yeah, I think so. It's all protected here. So, I mean, as you can see, we got, like I said, second gen front clip. The body's based off a first gen, exactly like my other truck. Like that's extra cab. That's exactly what my other truck looked like. The bed sides are a third gen. That's really unique, man. Yeah, we try to show- It's the only truck out there that has that. Second, first, and third gen. That's pretty cool. Try to give love to all the generations. Cause I mean, all three generations have had a really big part of how I started racing. My brother had a second gen. It was my number one chase truck down there at the time. I started with a first gen. As you know, we were lucky enough to have a deal with Toyota for three years to race a third gen with them. There's not any one generation of Tacoma that is more important than the other, in my opinion. That's awesome. And that's a great story. Is that the reason behind the name Homemade Motorsports? Yeah, so back to the days when I was ridiculed on the internet every single day. You know, I'm 18 and 19 too. So I took everything a lot more personal than I do with now, right? You're younger, you want to fight back and say this, say that, whatever. But they would always have these forums saying like, oh, homemade at it again. Cause they used to make fun of my truck for being homemade and POS and not, you know, not. So it was always homemade, homemade. Oh, look at what homemade's doing. Oh, look at homemade failed again. Well, that was your nickname. It was my nickname that they were supposed to make like that I was supposed to not like, right? So I was like, hey man, I love it. Let's do it, man. So I'm gonna call my buddies like, let's make it homemade motorsports, right? And I mean, jokes on all these guys now, people actually know homemade motorsports now, 16 years later, right? So it turned into like, it was supposed to be a joke that was supposed to, you know, piss me off and make me angry. But it's what my team is now. We are homemade motorsports now and forever. And that's how we got it. That's really, really cool. Let's move on to the front of the vehicle. I know that with SCORE, you have certain rules that you have to follow, right? Correct, yeah. So let's get down here. Did you have to keep the original frame? That was the hardest part about building this truck, actually, was we were not allowed to cut, modify anything with the frame, right? So you had to keep the frame in the stock location. Your upper arms had to mount plus or minus one and a half inches from the stock area. And same with the shock, your spindle level. So that was the hardest part. And back when this truck was built, we were racing a bunch of, against a bunch of Ford Rangers. And Ford Rangers at the time were all I-beams. So when you have I-beams, you don't, your frame rail right here, you don't have an upper arm on I-beams. So everything's below. So they can just have this travel that goes for days. For every 15 inches you have, they have 28. You know, and that's hard to keep up with a truck that's got 28 inches of travel and you've got 15. So. What do they call it, I-beams? I call it dirty hooker travel. Dirty hooker travel. Oh, I couldn't stop laughing when I heard that the first time. It's, you get a lot for really cheap, right? So that's dirty hooker travel. Anyone with an I-beam knows that. So I'm not, yeah. But with us, we had to actually build our arms with a very radical bend in them so that. It's so unique. It looks like a Frankenstein like style. Like it just looks like it's, it wasn't Toyota. It looks like it's broken. Yeah. You know, in fact, it's funny. It was a 2007 Baja 1000. And I had my other truck that I built something very similar to this. Wasn't as effective as this, obviously. And we're at a pit and some guy runs up and he goes, dude, stop. We're like, what? He goes, your arms are broken, dude. They're bent in half. And I'm like, oh no. I was like, my buddy Nick's co-driving with me. And I'm like, Nick, you gotta get out and check this out, man. And he gets out, he goes, there's nothing wrong with them. I was like, oh my God, dude. He thinks they're literally, we bent them in half. But they're made, they're made bent. They look like wings. They look like bat wings. Yeah, yeah. Like when there's no tires on it and the whole, everything's off it, it looked like bat wings, you know. But they're made so that when the travel drops out, the round part curves around the frame. Because if you don't, your arm would hit here. And that's where it limits it. So the geometry is tricky on that, but we got it dialed in. The truck works really good. Did you change your steering? Yeah, we actually used a house steering box, which is based off Chevy Saginaw box that was in very old trucks back in the day. So we have a custom swing steering set up with a ram assist. And people always look and go, why do you have a ram assist on a Baja truck? Well, a lot of the guys use racks, rack and pinions, right? In my opinion, this is stronger. And the ram assist is actually when we take a big hit, the force is going in the ram assist and not affecting our steering box. So we've had a lot of very good luck with that, so. And then the lower control arm is also all custom made, right? Correct, yeah. It's a center mounted A-arm system. So on a regular Tacoma, your arms are mounted about out here. Yeah. Right? So when you bring them in like that, it gives you more travel. It gives you more down travel. Okay. Now what about the suspension that's on it, the shocks? I see you have two shocks there. Correct, yeah. We've got King coilovers and bypasses, 3.0 bypasses in the front and back, and then 2.5 coilovers in the front and back too. And how much travel do you have with them? We got about 19 in the front and 29 in the back. 29 in the back, man, that's a lot. This thing can jump. Oh yeah. He actually made it to the Toyota commercial. Correct, that was actually a lot of fun. Recently to feature the new Tundra, right? Yeah, it was part of the reveal for the brand new Tundra. We had the opportunity, we got chosen by Toyota to go do that. It was awesome. Got to go jump my truck all day with a bunch of cameras and stuff. And we made it to a commercial and it's honestly a dream come true. Like I said, when I first started racing, I was just a Toyota guru. I just loved it. And to be able to represent Toyota in the off-road from current to Ivan Stewart days in the commercial is like a dream come true. I mean, honestly- So that's why this truck is wrapped the way that it is now. That's why it's wrapped like Ivan's old school wrap is because in the commercial, that's how it looked. So everyone loved it so much that we decided to keep it for the rest of the year. So we're still rocking it. And I think it's probably the best it's ever looked in my opinion, but- Let's take a look at it. It looks freaking awesome, man. I love what you did. I love the wrap. Did you do it? Did you guys do it yourself or is this Toyota took it on? Toyota designed it. The original, the design with Toyota and the TRD, but SignArt's been doing all my wraps since 2008. They're the ones to credit that because they take these trucks, not just mine, all of them, and make what aren't so pretty going into their shop look absolutely amazing going out. It's crazy. That's awesome, man. Now, one thing that really stands out here is this crazy firewall. Correct. What sort of work went into making that happen? I mean, it looks, that does not look Toyota at all. No, no, no. So if we took all, if we took the hood off, the body off, all these aluminum panels, it's almost like a NASCAR where it's just all tubes, tube chassis, tube chassis, right? Minus the frame. And it's gotta be all score, it's just- Correct. It's all two inch chromoly all the way through, a couple of spots where it's not needed, inch and a half, inch and three quarter. But all these panels are pretty much on your firewall, it's built into the car. You can't move it and remove it, which makes sometimes getting the stuff under the dash very difficult. So we have these panels all throughout the whole truck. So if we have a problem during the race and we have a blown fuse maybe, because this truck actually does use the stock OEM fuse box and computer and all that stuff on it. So we still have those fuses. Oh wow, you guys kept all that. We have to, yeah. That's the only way to make the supercharger really work the way it's supposed to. It is an OEM TRD supercharger in here. So the panels just pop off. So there's these three screws here, pop them all off. It just makes cleaning stuff easier. It makes getting to stuff easier on the truck. It's just a little bit stronger than your regular firewall too, so. All right, Brandon, let's talk about the back of this truck. What do you have going on back here, man? There is a lot going on back here. When you think of a regular Toyota Tacoma, Tundra, any truck, you got a bed. You can use the bed. You can put a dirt bike in the back. You can have a toolbox, right? Yeah, you got leaf springs, you got a bed. Here you have- That's it, right? A lot. We have the full frame still, but other than that, I mean, our batteries are back here. Our coolers are back here, both transmission and radiator. We got big fans, we got two full-size 37-inch tires. He's got oil back here. Oil on both sides, we have training fluid, engine oil, brake fluid, just anything that we may need when we're in the middle of nowhere and aren't close to our team, right? That's the hard part about Baja racing, is that you really have to have a lot of the stuff you're gonna need in the truck, on the truck, because you might be 50 to 100 miles away from your team during these races. And that means you and your co-driver are on your own. And this guy's fast. Trust me, I've chased him around Mexico and there's no catching up to him. We do our best. You know, we have our moments, right? But yeah, so like I said, we have these full-size spares. We have two Optima batteries, both on both sides. There's a lot of accessories on this car. So one battery isn't enough, so we got two. So if you come back here and check this out, our radiator, unlike most regular trucks, it's in the front. We have our radiator right about here is where it sits, underneath this aluminum shroud that we have. And then right about here inside is our transmission cooler. The reason for that is we don't want these precious things that keep our car cool in the front, where it's gonna get rocks thrown at it. Maybe you run into a rock, a tree or something. You want that stuff protected, right? So it's back here. There's two fans on the outside, one in the inside, one sucking, one into a burnout, right? So that's another big difference from a regular truck is that our cooling system is in the back, along with our batteries and our jacks back here, fluids, everything. So we try to keep those. You also have oxygen, right? I know your homemade has like a place where you can connect the oxygen to. Correct, correct. So in the car, both the driver and the co-driver, this thing called a Parker pumper system. What that is is it's a filterized air system with a hose that plugs in the side of your helmet or on the top of your helmet, however your helmet is set up. And what that is, is you're going, sometimes you're following someone in the dirt for miles and it's just dust, dust, dust. And because we don't have a windshield, it's just right in our face, right? So you put your helmet down and you got the fresh air coming through the side of your helmet. It kind of gives you some fresh air to breathe when you're in that really dusty environment. That's incredible, man. Moving on to the back, I know we started here. What do you have for your rear axle? So we don't have the standard Toyota axle. In fact, we don't have flange, most trucks are flange axles. You pull the axle out and the brakes come with it. We have what's called a full floater rear end. That is where the hubs are actually bolted separately to the housing and your axles can be flipped around either way. They just slide in and they're grooved on both sides. They're the same pattern on both sides. So what we have is a Cambrick engineering based off a nine inch. So the third member that's in there is based off a Ford nine inch. It's just a little bit bigger than the Toyota stuff. It's better for racing, a little stronger. But actually this race, our good friend Carl, my co-driver also, what do you guys know, from Nitro Gear sent us a badass, one of the most badass third member rear ends I've ever seen. It looks incredible. I mean, I'll be honest with you guys, I did not want to put it in the truck. I wanted to just put it on my dining room table or like on the fire mantel because it's pretty, it's beautiful. It looks awesome. I don't even want to touch it. It looks like a trophy. It really is. It's like the most beautiful thing that's ever been put on this truck. And unfortunately it's down at the bottom of so you can get the- It's going to get wrecked. But it actually is a 10 inch gear opposed to a nine inch gear, which is a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger. And we actually run a 586 inch is the gear ratio we run. And you're moving 37 inch tires on a stock second gen 4.0 engine, right? Yeah. It's a 4.0 supercharger, race style turbo 400 manual valve body transmission. So we're three speed. What manual valve body means is there's no clutch. It's kind of like a dirt bike. If you have it in third gear and you start the car, it's going to start in third gear. There's no, it's not going to go down to second free. It's not going to go from second to third for you. You have to physically put it in the gear you want. There's just no clutch. That's what all the top guys run. It's very durable. Definitely better than your average OEM transmission that these trucks have. Cool, man. What size shocks are in the back here? In the back, we got 3.0 king coilovers and bypasses. 18 inch long bypasses, 16 inch long stroke coilovers. And how long does it take you to tune those shocks? Cause I'm assuming you have to tune this thing perfectly for the Baja. We're actually going to be heading out in two days to Placer City, California, which is closer to where I live to get geared up for the Baja 1000, which is in a couple of weeks from now. So we'll probably spend about three or four hours out there running up and down the pole line. Getting it dialed. Just people watching us. They'll be driving alongside of us on the road, taking videos. And we'll go back and watch the videos. Between what people see, what we see in the video, and what it feels like in the truck, we can make adjustments on our bypass tubes, compression, and rebound to make it react how we want it to. I'll tell you what, the last time we were out there, the first run that we went down the pole line was 50, I think 58 miles an hour. By the time we left a couple hours earlier, we were at 83. So we went about 25 so miles an hour faster. You know what I mean? That's 50% faster almost. That's incredible. From simply just tuning your shocks. Just twisting tubes and stuff like that. So I look forward to Saturday and see what we can get out of this thing. That's gonna be interesting, man. Let me ask you this. Last time we were out recording you racing, you flipped over. And all of your fiberglass got destroyed. I remember, I think you only had one handle. How expensive does racing get? Racing in general is expensive. So what you try to do is not do that. You try to keep your car on all four wheels. You try not to go on your side. So that race, I decided to do everything. I wanted to ruin tires, ruin bed sides. I mean, you name it. I decided we're gonna do it all one time. So hopefully got that out of the way. But these actually, because of that, I was able to, we upgraded the fenders to the third gen Tacoma bed sides. So we had a kind of a generic bed side on there that was used on multiple different brands of trucks. But given the opportunity that I no longer had our bed sides with us, I said, this is the time. We gotta put some more Toyota on here. This is the cleanest I've ever seen this truck. I knew we had to shoot it and show you guys before, you know, this maniac takes it out and completely gets it caked with mud. Which is what it's supposed to look like, right? Nice and dirty. But it's always nice to see them when they're put together because what this shows right here is not just about me. It's about my entire team. Like my team worked their asses off for the last two weeks to get this car like this. And not just my team, every single sponsor on here. Everyone, you know, getting us the parts on time, getting us what we need, getting us what we need and then some, you know? Instead of getting a regular third member, we get a brand new built aluminum bad-ass third member, right? All the sponsors all came together and just, this was such a group effort between team and sponsors. It was insane. And it shows, I mean, that's the glory of it is that those long nights in the shop when you're like, it's 11 o'clock at night, I got an hour drive home. And it's seven days in a row like that sometimes. When you stand back and you're at a show or whatever, and you see like what all you and your buddies, your team, your sponsors have put together, it makes it all worth it. That's awesome, man. And yes, it's not going to look like this in a couple of weeks, but we're going to enjoy it while we can. All right, Brandon, us Overlanders, we have tons of lights, but nothing like this. This is, you know, you got two lights here stacked right on top of each other. You have, is that a 40 up there? It's a 40, yeah. 40, and then you have three pods on each side. Do you really need all that light? Absolutely, man. The better you can see at night, the faster you can go. Right? And RIDGID has always done a really good job of hooking us up with the top of the line lights that they got at any given time. Since 2010, I have not really ever had a problem at night. And in fact, believe it or not, I'm faster at night. I enjoy the night more. And I think it's because I can actually see better. You know, during the day, sometimes the sun is right over our head and we can't see. And when the sun is beaming straight down, you don't see those bumps the same, right? When you're driving in the pitch black dark and you got the lights beaming out, you can see the mounts. And for me, that actually helps me be faster. I can see the depth of the ground better at night than I can during the day. Awesome. But there's a lot going on here, you're right. So let's start with the little ones first. These right here are our DOT approval lights, pretty much. These are the ones that we're allowed to have on on the street because we do have some highway sections during the race where we are under a strict speed limit on public roads, because that's just, unfortunately, it's part of Baja. You have to, there's small sections where you're on the highway. We can only have street legal lights on here. So these two right here- Those will go on. Are just for getting down the highway at night, right? But as soon as we hit the dirt, the fun begins, right? Yeah. Start flipping switches and it's daylight, right? So these guys, oh, by the way, when these guys are on, the halo ones- No way! That's sick. So when you go down the road, you got just the white right here, and then these guys go. That's really cool. I gotta see that at night. So we got a couple up here. These are spot and hyper spot combos. They're a newer style of light, and these are the newer generation of this light. They're really projecting out, but half of it's projecting further out, right? So we're getting even more distance out of these lights. Same thing with these guys right here. These are the hyper spot and the spot. And they're angled out a little bit because you don't want all your lights completely forward. We're in the middle of nowhere with no street light, sometimes no moonlight, and all we have is our lights. And having them aimed out just a little bit gives us more visibility on the side. You know, sometimes we're doing some crazy S-turns and stuff and it's nice to be able to see when your car is at angles what's on both sides. And again, that makes you faster. Being able to see more makes you faster. And now, this guy up here, it's probably the most impressive one out of all. It's brand new. It's the Adapt GPS rigid light. This light bar will change the way it projects light based on how fast you're driving. And I remember when he first sent it to me, I'm like, damn it, how am I gonna hook this up to my car, man? He goes, the GPS system is inside the light bar. There's no, you don't have to hook it up to your speedo. There's no splicing, nothing, just. It's just a regular, any other light switch, just a switch on off. But it knows how fast you're driving and it will project between spot, hyper spot, flood, whatever, as you're going. And it's amazing, it's amazing. Let me ask you this, Brandon. How long are you driving at night for? Well, Baja 1000 coming up is 1,227 miles. So it's like nonstop. The second you start the race all the way, and I remember chasing you, we were up for 36 hours. I think we were like, where we didn't get any sleep or anything. I don't know how I pulled that off. I think it's the adrenaline of the race. But for how long do you drive? We're gonna be, the time limit's 50 hours. And now the 36 you're talking about is a couple hours before the race and we're up, and after. 50 hours is just the time limit for the race, right? So you gotta think, that's 48 hours. I'm gonna possibly see the sun come up three times. Three times, right? I mean, that's why- It's the truth. That's why you ask why I have so many lights, because I need it. Because literally half the race, I'm gonna be in a pitch black car. That's gotta be one of the craziest races I've ever heard of, man. I mean, honestly, seeing the sun come up twice is pretty crazy. Seeing it a third time. I mean, you watch the videos, they're not lying when they say cactuses start looking like people and people start looking like cactuses. And when you start seeing that, you know you've been up for a long time. You know that the finish line is coming up. Yeah, and you've been up for a long, long time. Brandon, before I let you go, man, if anyone out there that's watching this video really wanted to get into the Baja and racing and start how you started, you know, what would you recommend? Don't give up, okay? Don't give up, number one. Number two, don't let anything that anyone says to you deter you from what you wanna do. It doesn't have to be racing. It could be anything. It could be a job. It could be something you're inventing. But if I stopped racing because of people telling me to stop too, I wouldn't be here today. But I use that as my energy and my fire to get where I'm at today. I went and got a second job at G Fueler just enough, just so I could make enough money to enter the race. Because I didn't, I mean, I was 18, 19 years old. I didn't have money to do that. So money's not an issue. You can make it happen, right? You can make anything happen if you try hard enough. You know, and the difference was I was in the garage with my one buddy at the time and my girlfriend building parts that weren't right. But it was, it got me there. And my buddies that were out drinking, going to the bar, going, you know, like I was so dedicated to my garage and my truck and that's how I got it, so. That's awesome, Brandon. Thank you so much for your time. You guys enjoy this video. Make sure to smash that like button. If you haven't already subscribed, make sure to do so. And I'll see you guys in the next video.