Interview With Land Pirates Off Road's Very Own Lucas

I would like to welcome Lucas, President of Land Pirates Off Road to our blog. 

Mom:     Tell our readers a little about yourself and how you got in to the business.

Lucas:     I grew up on a island just out side of Seattle, Washington in a small sub-community. My father was an aerospace machinist for the Boeing company and believed in teaching my brother and myself everything from a young age. I started steering a car at age 5, by the time I was 7 I was driving down the freeways sitting on my dad's lap while he slept.

It was a sleepy town when I was young, we would play on the beach and run through the woods for fun and entertainment. I loved to be outside and spent my days day dreaming instead of learning much in school. Frustrated, my father told me that if I learned how to read, he would buy me a motorcycle.

Oh, it all went down hill from there...

I would drive the family pick up truck on the farm we had at breakneck speeds learning to my dad's amusement how to power slide at age 11.

Having more fun fixing the truck and the motorcycles after wrecking them than in school, I became a bit obsessive in driving faster.

I rolled my first truck off road 2 days after being given my drivers licence. It was quite exciting for me, we rolled it back onto its wheels checked the oil, and kept on going.

I had started racing motocross at the local tracks at age 14 but moved into enduro and desert racing by the time I was 16.

Life sometimes has a way of steering you into different directions, and so it was for me. I graduated a year early from high school and went into collage to become a gunsmith.

3 years later I was 20, a father, working 2 jobs and building my first house. My then wife and I still drove off road and I road a duel sport bike to work. With our second son joining the family, we entered into riding quads off road as a family.
I worked for 10 years as lead under chassis mechanic at a local Napa repair shop until my construction company could fully be launched.

Living in the Puget Sound area had its draw backs. No one liked to drive the way I liked to. Everyone was into mud bogging... So it was very hard for me to find out about the real off road trucks that drove in Baja.
Baja became my dream... filling my garage with posters of the "Iron Man Stewart" and Riding legends like Malcolm Smith and Ricky Johnson. I built a 88 Toyota long travel truck using Downey Off Road components. Off road I was king in the local area. No one had seen such a truck before!

A few years later I found myself owning my own construction company, divorced, and looking for bigger adventures in life.

I started taking my sport bikes out onto the tracks and trying to break the latest top speed.

One day, a friend of mine told me that a friend of his was going to be headed down into Baja on duel sport bikes. I contacted him and in 2 weeks I picked up and modified a Suzuki DR400S and headed to Baja, Mexico.

2004 was an eye opener for me. Seeing pre-runners driving down the streets of San Diego I would flag them down and ask about them. A whole new world opened up.

As soon as I returned home from our 2,200 mile trip in Baja I called the internet provider and finally hooked up to the internet.

Can you imagine what that did to me? ( Yes, yes I can!)

With in 6 months I was building my first real long travel Toyota for Total Chaos.

In 2006 I had a massive motorcycle wreck that took me 3 months to recover from and get back to work. Never one to be off a bike, that same year my friends and I headed back down to Baja on motorcycles but this time I had a KTM 640 Adventure. It was an epic trip for me again.

I came home and invested in a 94' 80 series Landcruiser as a chase truck for motorcycles and started up Land Pirates Off Road. We made several trips chasing bikes on the west cost both in Oregon and in Washington.

Keeping it as a hobby business, we built 7 machines for off road.

We decided to take apart the original long travel 4-Runner and change it into a desert rig. With new found speed came the carnage...

A lot was learned over the next few years about just how hard true speed off road is on equipment. While we thought we had a grasp on how to travel over land on an expedition or to have fun on the trails. It was nothing at all like driving through the deserts at over 100 mph.

This brings us to 2011 when with the down turn in the economy I decided to finally hang up my tool belt and keep the welding jacket on. We are now working full time at Land Pirates Off Road building off road trucks and SUVs along with custom hot rods and motorcycles.

Mom:     You have a sweet Toyota Tundra chase truck. Tell the readers a bit about the truck and what you chase with it.

Lucas: We began using a chase truck back in 2006 and it was our 1994 Landcruiser. many miles later we decided that the Cruiser was not quite fast enough and we needed more capacity to carry gear.

We purchased the 2010 Tundra in April and drove it quite a bit to get a feel for the truck in stock form. By far, it is the best handling full sized truck we have ever driven hands down.
We decided to build it as the replacement chase vehicle for the company and we sold the Landcruiser.

Coming up with the plan to keep the interior 100% factory for comfort, we decided to build an exoskeleton for protection and to help take some of the flex out of the chassis. 

First we solid mounted the body to the frame with F-911 bolts then welded the 4130 frame around it. This worked in conjunction with the new pre-runner style front bumper we incorporated into the frame.

Utilizing Bud Built 3/16 body armor under the frame we then added a 3/8 aluminum front main skid plate and 1/4 inch aluminum side skid plates in conjunction with a light hoop to protect the LightForce 35 watt HID lights.

The engine cage stiffens up the front end and helps transfer the abuse that the Total Chaos long travel front suspension dishes out. We are running 16 inches of travel in the front and incorporate a 2.5 inch King coil over with 3 1/2 inch springs. With 20 position adjustable compression on the remote reservoirs we can easily dial in a full compression stack into the valving on the fly. To control the big impacts we run a King 2.5 triple by-pass secondary shock on the front as well.

The rear currently has a Deaver rear spring set up with King 3.0 5 tube by-pass shocks and Lite Racing 3 inch travel jounce shocks. We have it strapped at 15 3/4 travel.

For grip we use Toyo Mud Terrain tires in the 35x12.50 x 18 size mounted on Method Racing wheels with OMF strengthening rings welded to the outer rim.

To turn this size tire we have decided to run Nitro Gear 4.88 gears, an Auburn Pro limited slip in the rear and an ARB front air locker.

To help the big truck breath better we have added an enclosed aFe intake system and a aFe SS cat back exhaust system.

Helping in the lighting department we then added another 4 Lightforce 35 watt HID lights above the cab.

With the long travel suspension and the 35 inch tires we added fiberglass fenders and bed sides as well.

We took the truck to Nevada for it's first shake down in the desert. Only minor adjustments to the shocks were needed but we realized with 400+ horse power we had the ability to travel at over 100 mph off road with a 7,000 pound truck.

So we have now gone back to the drawing board to revamp the truck to handle the speeds we can drive at.

In the works we will be adding an ARB roof rack for cargo capacity.

We will be adding 2 inch King air bumps to the front end and we are looking at either going with a spring under kit in the rear or going with a trailing arm set up.

To slow it down we are developing a Wilwood 6 piston brake caliper upgrade.

We need more fuel capacity so we are looking at adding a fuel cell and dropping the stock 20 gallon tank so we can locate the traction bars or the trailing arm rear suspension under neath.

Transmission will be updated by IPT with a new valve body and a Warn 9000 winch will be added to the rear of the truck along with a rear anti sway bar.

All of this will allow us to chase any motorcycle group and keep up with them. It also has branched us out into adding chase truck service to off road racing teams that need an extra truck for repair work or fuel drops.

Part of the over all aspect of this build was to keep our family in comfort when we take our off road trips and when we run our expeditions. We are also avid scuba divers, we have plans on an epic adventure to dive the east cost of Baja in such remote areas that the only way there is by truck or boat. Unless you own a sea plane or helicopter!

Mom:     What is your most memorable customer build?

Lucas:      Actually, they are all fun. But when we work on one of our dive buddies trucks, keeping the old truck up and running has been a lot of fun. We have only taken things off the truck and added Old Man Emu shocks.
It is nice to see the truck driving around town and to see it arrive at the dive sites full of gear. Not sure why that one really sticks in out head! Perhaps it is because he just loves his truck and tells us all the time how great it is!

Mom:     What is your most memorable adventure?

Lucas:      By far it was the 2011 Nevada trip. 14 trucks and SUVs drove over 850 miles off road in some of the most beautiful country there is. My youngest son road his motorcycle and we were his personal chase truck which was quite the change.
But it was great to see people from the last Nevada run return, some with new equipment, and to drive the big Tundra for the first time at speed.

We are looking forward to the next adventure in Nevada this year. over 1,000 miles off road from Western Nevada to Moab. From there I am personally headed south into New Mexico. From that point I will be heading into So Cal and possibly into Baja again. That is one of the reasons we are hard at work with the refinement of the truck.

Don't forget to check out Land Pirates Offraod website