We've been dancing around the details of the steering system for the 2022 Ultimate Adventure Ultimate Shop Truck for a few reasons, but as we sit here writing this, those reasons have passed us like a ship in the night. The truth is, the truck is done and it steers pretty darn well. Early on, we decided that using a Jeep Wrangler JK steering box might be about the easiest route we could take to direct the front tires, and we stuck with that idea until the end. Add in the support of PSC as the Official Steering Of Ultimate Adventure in 2022 and using one of the company's Big Bore Steering Boxes was a no brainer. Add to that a custom drag link and tie rod from Chris Durham Motorsports (CDM), a steering shaft and U-joints from Borgeson, and a PSC Hi-Flow Pump and Ram Assist, and the 38-inch Falkens on TR Beadlocks aim wherever we want them to. Here's how we made the Jeep parts fit a Toyota with a Ford Dana 60 front axle.

Jeep Wrangler JKs use a forward-sweep steering box that from the factory mounts inside the framerail. The box also has a relatively long sector shaft that has somewhat of a reputation for breaking (but we've also seen them take a lot of abuse). There are a ton of big, heavy JK Wranglers on the trail around the country, and to mitigate some of the issues with these steering boxes, PSC, a leader in power steering performance, came up with the PSC Big Bore XD power steering box. It has a 10mm-larger sector shaft than the stock JK steering box (going from 35mm to 45mm) making it ideal for any JK with large tires that gets used heavily off-road. It's also a great place to start when building a custom truck like our 2006 Toyota Tundra. The Tundra came from the factory with rack-and-pinion steering, which we chopped off early on along with the stock front suspension. Since then, we've had our eyes on a bit of real estate along the front driver-side framerail, thinking a JK steering box would fit in there nicely and allow for us to steer our Ford Dana 60 held in place with leaf springs. To mount the box we first made a template of the four mounting holes using some scrap cardboard. This allowed us to drill holes in the Toyota frame and then add sleeves that passed through the frame to help secure the steering box. The sleeves were made out of some heavy-wall tubing we had in our arsenal, and the faces of all four sleeves were turned for squareness at Rob Bonney Fabrication in Peoria, Arizona.

With the PSC Big Bore box in place on the framerail we sourced two steering U-joints from Borgeson along with a length of 1-inch double-D (DD) steering shaft. With a bit of digging and research we figured out that the steering column in the Tundra was 11/16-inch, 36-spline. By using a Borgeson 11/16-inch 36-spline steering shaft with a 1-inch DD on the other side, we were able to replace the factory Toyota steering shaft from the column and cut a hole to get some 1-inch DD shaft, also from Borgeson, aimed in the general direction of the JK steering box. With that in place, a 1-inch DD to ¾-inch DD Borgeson Steering U-joint would connect the column to the box.

Our good friend and Ultimate Adventure Crony Chris Durham is a master of many things, including but not limited to building rad custom 4x4s, building and selling a bunch of fiberglass hoods for Jeeps and Toyota FJ-40s, as well as a JK Gladiator conversion grille hood and fenders and much more. Chris also makes custom aluminum steering and suspension links out of 7075 aluminum. We've used CDM aluminum steering before and also watched it work on more than a few trails. These parts hit rocks, deflect from impact, and then bounce back to their original shape like nothing happened. We need that on almost any rig we drive (our technique is called "drive by braille") so when it came time to get a tie rod and drag link for the Ultimate Shop truck, we reached out to Chris and got some CDM aluminum steering parts on their way. With the parts in hand, we were able to use a series of 1-ton over-the-counter tie-rod ends to connect the knuckles to the pitman arm.

We generally try to run ram assist on any rockcrawler that has lockers and tires over 37 inches tall. Not that it's a concern for us with the PSC Big Bore JK steering box, but a ram also takes some of the burden off the steering box's sector shaft. Of course, adding a ram assist from PSC is about as easy as adding the ram and a few rebuildable high-pressure hydraulic hoses. On a Tundra, accessing the ports for the ram on the PSC Big Bore box involved some chicanery to avoid the 4.7-liter's driver-side motor mount. We also had to take the 1.75-inch CDM tie rod to Rob Bonney Fabrication, where Rob machined down a recess for the clamp that will hold the ram in place. This makes a necessary weak spot in the tie rod, and we chose to orient the ram so the clamp would be near the passenger side end of the tie rod. This is favorable over a machined recess near the center of the tie rod, where it would be more likely to bend for good. With all the parts in place the truck steers the 38x13.50R17 Falken Wildpeak M/Ts on TR Beadlocks with ease. That's just what we need.

Ultimate Adventure 2022, presented by Rugged Ridge, will be happening the last week of September, so be sure to keep your eyes on this website for daily event updates publishing from September 25 to October 2, event coverage in the pages of Four Wheeler, and, of course, the Ultimate Adventure videos on MotorTrend's YouTube page in early December.