Larry Chen: My 500whp Supercharged Salvaged Tundra w/ $50k In Mods Video

Larry Chen Video Transcript

Foreign I finally feel like I’m at a good point to talk about the Tundra build in its entirety so we’ll talk about prices we’ll talk about how much it actually took to get to this point so this project started very early in 2021 Copart actually reached out to me and they wanted me to

Build a vehicle with them for the hoonigan project cars channel so I figured you know what we actually need a pickup truck really bad and I’m so glad we actually chose the Toyota Tundra because it is an absolute Workhorse and it’s something we use every single day

Here at the shop for productions for off-road chasing for towing for whatever with that said my goal with this project was to actually build like a raptor Tundra because Toyota never actually built a good Raptor competitor they had the TRD Pro but it didn’t hold a candle

To what the Raptor actually did for that generation right so this is a 2018 I found it on Copart and I bid on it I ended up getting it for twenty five thousand dollars after fees it actually came exactly out to 26 572. out the door

I did have to get it shipped from the East Coast it was actually a New York New Jersey vehicle so that cost a couple thousand dollars but we won’t talk about how much labor cost we’ll just talk about how much everything cost in terms of materials to build this vehicle

I figured it would be a good idea to start off with a salvaged vehicle because to cut up a perfectly good truck doesn’t really make sense especially if it’s something that is worth a lot of money at the time I don’t know if you guys remember this was mid shutdown they

Were basically no pickup trucks for sale every single truck was so expensive it was just so overly priced so honestly I had to go this route there pretty much was no other way for me to get a low mileage truck for a decent price this

Did have a lot of front end damage it was a salvage truck and it actually had a really bad front-end incident and it looked like it got hit in the rear pretty bad too it actually made sense for me to cut this up because it was in pretty dire state to begin with

A lot of parts of the front end some of the frames some of the subframe actually looked really bad it was a terrible repair but it was a running driving truck luckily when we actually got it it only had about 25 000 miles so it was a really good starting point for this

Build [Applause] I’ll just go ahead and talk about the biggest mod that we’ve done to the tundra and I think this is honestly something that every Tundra owner of this generation should consider this is the brand new Magnum 2650 from Magnuson superchargers it is a 2.6 liter

Supercharger and this is a big upgrade from their 1.9 liter TVs 1900 which was actually the one that they developed for Toyota it was the TRD supercharger that you can actually get from the dealership so why did we upgrade to the 2650 well the old one was essentially pushing 7

PSI and because it’s smaller displacement it had a small pulley already and it was already maxed out in terms of how much power you could actually get out of it on the 2650 it’s using what the Magnuson supercharger guys have been using for the GM LS platforms

The biggest advantage of the 2.6 liter supercharger is that it’s using the bigger Eaton rotors that move more air use less power to move and you can turn the supercharger at a slower speed which lowers the Heat and intake air temperatures by a lot the new unit also incorporates a dual

Charge air cooler which also helps with intake air temperatures so the cool thing about this is if you already have the 1900 or a TRD supercharger on any of your 5.7 liter Toyotas you can just pay for the upgrade kit because you’ve already dropped a gas tank to upgrade

The fuel pump you already have pretty much all the accessories including the upgraded injectors what’s cool about this unit is it actually comes with magnuson’s own air box so the reason why Magnuson actually had to make their own air box is because the inlet into the supercharger and the mass airflow sensor

Is too small so they actually had to make a bigger diameter one which allows for the mass airflow sensor to read within its range because it’s just so much more air going in so if you use the smaller diameter intake then the speed of the air is just too fast because it’s

Just pulling in so much more air so it’s really cool it actually uh takes in fresh air from the fender just like the stock intake and it is so cool that it actually runs a k n drop-in element that’s included in the kit this kit will run you eight thousand

Ninety five dollars if you don’t have anything else it will be cheaper if you’re upgrading from the 1900s couple other things I want to talk about we run Pennzoil Ultra Platinum 5W20 on this especially because it’s forced induction the stock vehicle makes 380 horsepower to the crank and with the Magnuson

Supercharger it makes 490 wheel horsepower with the 37 inch tires and all of that a couple other things I want to talk about that we have under the hood we have a CSF all aluminum radiator that’s 425 dollars we changed all the hoses to HPS that’s 225 dollars for the whole kit

This is really really cool so sdhq makes this secondary air pump intake relocation kit and the reason why is because when you actually build this for off-road and you remove the fender liners the stock place where it’s actually taking in fresh air is really bad it’s actually in the wheel well so it

Basically gets Caked Up in a bunch of dust gets into it so then this is really cool they have this kit that’s 400 that allows you to relocate the air pump intake one other big thing that we love to do on all of our project Vehicles is installing anti-gravity batteries this

One they don’t actually sell anymore it’s a little older it’s nine hundred dollars but all of their batteries are so nice in that they’re very light and if for whatever reason we accidentally leave the lights on or whatever we can just restart it with a push of a button

We have a couple other things along with it we have the melee designs battery box which is 160 dollars and we have a sdhq battery kit which is really trick it’s a bunch of CNC parts that allow for us to run a bunch of accessories this came

With an air horn and a couple other things that we’ll talk about later that requires all of those power inputs that’s a hundred and forty dollars for that kit I think that’s pretty much it for the engine bay we’ll talk about the outside the most obvious thing is that it is

Wide body so it has ADV fiberglass front fenders and rear fenders they are nine inches wider than stock and also they are two inches taller and they actually allow for the 37 inch tires to fit pretty good without hitting the actual fenders in the rear they actually molded

The fendras that they sell right now on their website off of this truck because for whatever reason nobody actually wanted a six and a half foot bedside wide body everybody just did the five and a half foot wide body so if you guys purchase these over fenders from ADV

They were actually molded off of this very truck the price is 750 for the pair for the front and nine hundred dollars for the pair for the rear they actually do have one that actually has a TRD bed stamp if you want to go with that look

Capacity and I would just be like man one day when there’s no traffic behind me because the vehicle was very very damaged and we actually needed to paint the best sides the fenders we needed to paint this entire side of the vehicle because it was pretty damaged the doors

There was a bunch of dings and of course the frame needed to be fixed and straightened out I actually did have to take it to a body shop for that and that cost me ten thousand five hundred dollars we’ll go ahead and finish up on the

Outside of the vehicle I did put in a Baja Designs S8 light bar I think it’s really dumb for there to be a fake vent right there so the fact that Baja Designs makes a perfect 40 inch LED light bar it fits here perfectly we actually did use a sdhq mount which cost

A hundred dollars the light bar cost 1100 and the fog lights which are also made by Baja Designs are really cool they fit in the OEM location and they were 430 dollars onto the back because we are using this for Productions and we’re actually using this a lot to chase

Off-road racing we need a little bit of security we got a bed cover from Amazon for thirteen hundred dollars one more small thing in the bed of the truck I actually got these really trick aluminum tie downs from my buddy Keith charvonia he actually makes these and

These are three hundred dollars for the wheels we actually went with real bead locks not bead looks I know a lot of people like the bead look but I actually wanted functionality because we will be airing these down and we have been for serious off-roading so we don’t

Actually get stuck we actually went with Fuel Off-road wheels these are their Zephyr style wheels and they are 17×9 they come in many different sizes and also bolt patterns and of course because this is a tundra we had to go with the 5×150 bolt pattern it’s cool because not

A lot of people make wheels for this bolt pattern for whatever reason these are negative 15 offset and they are a little heavier they’re 38 pounds each but they can definitely take abuse because we have been pushing this truck quite a bit since we put it together the

Wheels for five came out to eighteen hundred and eighty dollars for tires we went with BFG normally we run yokama tires because they support us with all of our builds but of course during the shutdown nobody had tires and honestly these were one of the few tires

That were in stock in the entire country so these are actually The BFG Mud terrain km3s and these are actually what they run in Baja on their race vehicles and these are really really really good they’re very sticky we’ve used it pretty much since we built the truck and it’s

Pretty much about time to change tires the tires five and total came out to 24.45 we went with a full set of Hawk Performance slotted rotors and also their Light Truck pads that came out to 770 dollars I’ve been a big fan of King shocks ever

Since I worked with them on the FJ project so we definitely needed to go with King shocks for this truck so for the front we did three inch remote front coilovers they actually have finned remote reservoirs to keep them cool when we’re doing heavy off-road those are 3 207 dollars

The rear bypass shocks also have finned reservoirs for cooling and they’re also fully adjustable these are three thousand dollars we went with camburg racing kinetic Billet uniball upper control arms because they actually make a lot of stuff for Toyotas and they’re race proven they actually race Toyotas

In the Baja 1000 so I figured it’d be good to partner with them it’s such a nice arm and it really does increase the travel this is sixteen hundred dollars I actually got the entire suspension kit from camburg and they actually installed it in their Huntington Beach office

But uh they actually suggested I go with Deaver Springs so these are their Diva Ray Springs and they provide a two inch lift and they’re way softer than stock which allows for the travel so much more travel and so much more droop but they’re very very useful for

Any Tundra that’s planning on doing any serious off-roading the Deaver Springs came out to eleven hundred and fifty dollars a couple other things on the outside uh we went with sdhq rock sliders because they’re actually super beefy they attach to the frame and they run pretty much

The entire length of the cab and also a little bit into the bed area but it actually works as a step as well so they just are so cool sdhq is located in Arizona they’re really good friends of ours and they make everything in-house

In the US they of course sell a lot of other parts but they make so many amazing parts for Toyotas and of course for other manufacturers as well all right so we’ll talk about the interior now a little bit um the main feature of the Interior is

The VR bespoke steering wheel this was 900 what you actually do is you send them your stock core or they can just provide you with a brand new steering wheel but my main complaint on this generation Toyota Tundra was how plastic feeling the stock steering what was

Essentially it was a one piece molded plastic but this is really nice very beefy leather is super nice the stitching is super cool they have this 12 o’clock stripe but this is well worth nine hundred dollars other things that we did we did WeatherTech mats because we take this

Off-roading so much the WeatherTech mats help so much front and rear so these actually uh cover the entire back side here because we don’t have this little box they actually have a specific one just for this layout and because we don’t have the crew cab we just have

Like the extended cab it actually covers it really nice it gives it really good production we also got the WeatherTech uh rain guards these are great if you want to just leave the windows a little open and it’s raining and that way the interior doesn’t get wet it’s very JDM

It looks super cool the WeatherTech mats and rain guards came out to 310 dollars total we do run Type S dash cams front and rear we’re just going into the boonies we’re going out into the wild and uh of course when we’re Towing and we’re just driving in traffic it’s always safe to

Protect yourself with Type S dash cams these are 4K and you can actually connect them to your phone if you need to those are 340 dollars for two the last thing I did was a TRD shift knob that is a hundred dollars and then I actually

Blacked out all the badges so we got all new badges um on the side of the vehicle on the door and of course on the back four by four here all of that came out to a hundred dollars so now we have the truck lifted on our

Bendpak lift at our shop that way we can actually check out underneath it we’ll go ahead and talk about our airlift kit because we actually use this for off-road chasing as well as Towing we need to be able to level it out when we’re actually Towing other vehicles

This pretty much is attached to a trailer most of its life because anytime we need to move any of the cars that we’re shooting or my drift car or the gr86 whatever we’re going back and forth between tracks all the time so we actually have the air lift Wireless air

System and that actually just sits underneath the bumper right there it’s eight hundred dollars the load lifter 5000 bags that we actually have on it are 500 and the cups that they sit in are sixty dollars we have to have the cups because it needs to sit in something when it’s actually

Pumped up underneath the tundra you can actually fit a 35 inch spare and we have a Yokohama xat with a KMC spare wheel that’s 532 dollars for the Yokohama and 341 dollars for the KMC wheel what we have here is the sdhq traction bar kit and this actually doesn’t let

The rear end swing around when it’s under load so under acceleration a lot of times these will have really bad wheel hop and this will minimize the wheel hop as much as possible that was fourteen hundred and thirty dollars just small other things that we got from

Schq they have these really neat ABS cards so when you’re actually off-roading and rocks are getting kicked up and you’re hitting bushes and you’re hitting sticks and stones or whatever they’ll actually damage the ABS sensor here so they actually make just this aluminum cover that’s cnc’d that’s a hundred dollars

Last thing underneath here are the sdhq stainless steel brake lines this definitely improves brake feel quite a bit so you can see these actually attach to the rear pumpkin and it goes to the hard lines to the brakes and then the front ones are pretty traditional they have enough length for

The extra suspension travel and they just improve brake pedal feel by a lot this kit is 225 dollars on the front we actually have a real TRD skid plate this actually came with the vehicle last but not least is the MagnaFlow Street exhaust I actually went with this Cat-Back exhaust because it’s actually

Quieter than the other ones that they have they have one that is a dual exit this is just a single exit and you get the same amount of gains but it is quieter and this was one thousand dollars but it actually helps also because that way there’s not a clearance

Issue on the other side of the car then we just have to worry about the exhaust on one side I actually do off-road this quite a bit and I actually Rock crawl with this so to hit a rock or a boulder whatever it’s pretty easy to crush this

That’s why it’s better just to have one but I love this exhaust and I run MagnaFlow on pretty much all of my cars one of my favorite things about this truck is the huge gas tank it actually holds 38 gallons so it actually allows us to drive quite far just on one fill

I’ve gotten almost 500 miles all said and done all in including the cost for labor for the Bodywork was 74 626 dollars in the end of the day was it worth it well for the same price around that generation Raptor potentially could be about that price maybe a little more

It is two inches narrower than the Raptor of the same generation and that is a six cylinder turbocharged motor V6 versus this being a V8 Supercharged motor maybe it was worth it maybe it wasn’t but the fact of the matter is it is unique and it is something that we

Worked on for a period of time it almost took about three years to get to this point you know we we took baby steps we did the body first then we ended up doing suspension and then the last thing we did was the Supercharger so power was the last thing that we added

And honestly it changed the vehicle it definitely needed it especially with all the extra stuff that we put on it a lot of people say that we do need to re-gear it but honestly it doesn’t really matter anymore it has so much power when we tow with it it just toes

Perfectly it tows just fine this was a pretty simple truck to start out with this was just the SR5 four-wheel drive model and it is the extended cab SR5 model really didn’t have too many bells and whistles it had leather seats already and it was honestly just a regular old work truck

Now it’s something special you know it’s something that we actually use all the time like I’ve said and we push it really hard off-road we Chase Baja 1000 King in the Hammers all these off-road races it is such a nice vehicle now so what’s next well first off we’re

Gonna change the bfgs over to Yokohama geolander tires we run the mud terrains on the FJ so I wanted the exact same thing on here in 37 inch those are a little bigger than the bfgs so we actually have to do a little more clearance so we actually have to move

The body mount just back a little bit and that’s something that we’re gonna do next week I also really want to remove the TRD Pro Hood I think it’s so ugly with the Dual hood scoop and it’s just not functional and it’s just so dumb so I actually

Ordered a brand new hood from carparts.com we’re actually going to send that to the paint shop and that way it can have no fake hood scoop I just can’t stand that that’s the one big complaint I have about this truck it’s just a look thing I just want it to look

Right and I wanted to perform nice so once we do that and then also when we fix the body mount it won’t rub anymore at all even with the Yokohama true 37 inch tires definitely looking forward to that and uh yeah I hope you guys enjoyed this

I hope you guys enjoyed us totaling everything together in terms of what we actually put into this truck if you guys have a tundra you know you guys can take bits and pieces of what we did you don’t have to of course copy the entire build uh if you want you can but

The point is that there’s just certain things that you can do to benefit your build and I’m sure there’s so many other crazy things you can do to your build that we haven’t even done yet so see you guys in the next video hey thanks for watching if you want to support us

Directly go to larrychanprince.com I print and sign every single one of these this is the perfect gift or it’s the perfect piece of art for your wall We need Oh