Rob Varney’s 2008 Tacoma Chinook

This is the personal project of Durango local Rob Varney, who built this in his free time at the shop where he works, Vanlab Durango. We are catching up with Rob two and a half years into this project, and I know despite his impressive result he is jealous of all the Youtube I watched in MY free time. 

This is a 2008 Toyota Tacoma, regular cab. It is 4 Wheel-Drive, with the 4-cylinder 2.7L engine and a 5 speed manual. When Rob bought it, it was basically stock other than the lightbar, and still in its original indigo pearl color. 

Inspired by Toyota World Runner’s Landcruiser Chinook and others, Rob located a Chinook camper and purchased it, towing it home with the Toyota which at the time had a GFC-style camper in the bed. 

In order to mimic the fitment of the Chinook camper on the original toyota trucks of the 1970s, where the slope of the campers front end matches the curve of the windshield, Rob cut and re-glassed in the front section to extend it about 10 inches.

For the sake of simplicity and to ease color-matching between the fiberglass camper and the Tacoma, Rob went with this lunar shade of rhino-liner. The lift is a Bilstein 5100 kit by Toyo, and Rob added new SPC upper control arms this year as well (allowing for increased camber adjustability to correct the geometry for lift kits) 

Wheels came with the truck and the tires are Falken Rubitreks LT285/75r16 s all around. In order to accommodate the Chinook on the stock frame of the Toyota, Rob fabricated the new mounting frame that you see here. 

On the day that two were to become one, Rob used a sawzall to cut around the rear window and remove the rear wall of the cab. The final step in their tsaheylu bonding ritual. 

The Chinook camper originally came with a manual pop-top, but Rob built this electronically actuated version himself, it uses (.......) 

Leaf springs

Rob is two and a half years into this build and I’m stoked to see where he’s at in another two!