 This month Project Trail Toy received several upgrades including replacing the 35" Swampers I had with a set of 37 X 12.50 SSR Swampers from Interco. The 35's worked well on trail but I feel a little more ground clearance will be helpful in scrambling over large boulders.
The truck was designed to provide just enough lift for the 35's so a little rework was necessary to to clear the larger tires.
 Testing on the ramp revealed just a little rubbing that needed to be fixed.
The rubbing between the front tires and firewall was reduced by moving the front axle forward 1/2" and a little more fender trimming. I removed the front springs and the bolts and clamps that hold them together. The upper two leaves were replaced in each spring pack with leaves that had the spring pin hole moved forward 1/2".
The springs were then reassembled and reinstalled. This moved the axle forward 1/2" helping with the clearance problem at the fire wall but caused slight rubbing at the front fenders. Using a grinder I removed about an inch from the front of both fenders.
In the rear I still needed more clearance so the firewall was cut out and moved back, see below for more info. 
In the rear the tire just touches the flat bed at full articulation. In the future I plan to cut the bed rail slightly to prevent touching. The local shops here in town don't want to mount tires on my Champion beadlock wheels so I ended up mounting the tires myself. It's actually easier to mount your own tires with bead locked wheels, all it takes is a little WD-40 sprayed onto the tire and then push the tire onto the rim by hand.
Bolt on the outer rig and then air up the tire - simple. This is the third set of Interco Swampers I have installed and something I have noticed is that they fit tighter on the wheel than other tires.
This makes it a little harder to dismount the tires and I have found it necessary to use a tire machine to unseat the rear bead. 
The upside to this tighter than normal fit is that it is much harder to pop the bead off when running the tires at low pressure on the trail, this is a real advantage. Larger tires often have troubles balancing true, especially when they are mounted on beadlock wheels but both the 35" and 37" Radial Swampers did not need balancing at all.
I never did balance the 35's as they felt very smooth on the street. Same deal with the 37's, they run smooth with no vibrations at all even on the freeway. If they continue to run this smooth, I won't even bother balancing them either. A few days after installing the new tires I had a chance to give the tires a test on the new Johnson Valley trail "Big Johnson" and I was glad to have the additional inch under my axles as this new trail is the hardest trail in the valley with lots of huge rocks just begging to be crawled. The tires worked well and the huge lugs easily climbed up the jagged rocks.
During the day I tried different pressures and ended up using 5 PSI, for use in sand I think 2 or 3 PSI would be ideal. On the road I run them at 30 PSI. This high pressure helps decrease tire wear and increase gas mileage.
Over all this tire is a rock crawlers dream tire, good on the street and outstanding on the trail. Next Month I will add more info about opening up the fenders to fit the larger tires.  Assouline Air Compressor Assouline has been making large scale industrial air compressors in Israel for many year and was recently selected to produce a portable compressor for use by the Israel's Military.
The result is the AC 500 compressor. This 8 pound portable unit is about the size and shape of a "Truck Air" or ARB style compressor but the similarity stops there.
The Assouline compressor is rated to run continually at 60 PSI for 30 minutes. 
The unit puts out an good volume of air for such a small and light compressor. Using my 37" X 12.50 tires mounted on 10" X 15" wheels the Assouline compressor was able to air up each tire from 5 psi to 30 psi in just 8 minutes.
The unit includes a 3 foot hose and built in gauge. The unit comes in a very nice velour caring bag. The compressor has provisions for hard mounting under the hood, or inside your truck. With a longer hose it would be possible to reach all four tires.
The unit runs very quite thanks to a small muffler mounted to it. It runs produces much less noise than other 12 compressors I have used in the past. The Assouline compressor sells for $375 and is well suited for use as a primary air source to run an ARB's or to refill tires after a trail run.
I think this powerful little compressor is going to make some waves in the future of portable compressors. See
www.toy4x4.atfreeweb.com for more information.  Parking Brake Upgrade The stock parking brake setup in the rear drums never did work well even after switching to the larger drum assemblies from an 86-95 style rear axle. The stock parking brake simply would not hold the truck on a hill without also using the compression of the engine.
Especially worrisome to me is that I often wheel with my 5 year old son and it would be easy for him to move the gear shifter and could cause the truck to start rolling.
The disc parking brake is made by All Pro Off Road and bolts onto the back of a 4 cylinder style transfer case. Installing the kit is fairly easy. Once the drive shaft was removed, the rear flange was split into it's two parts.
The disc was added and the flange put back onto the tcase. The rear bolts of the tcase were removed and the parking brake assembly bolted into place. On my application the caliper was dragging slightly so 
I ground a little steel off of the cam to allow the caliper to open up a little more. I also bent the swing arm up in a "dog leg" fashion to bring it up a little higher. Some installations may also require a new parking brake cable. The parking brake works wonderfully. Once adjusted just a few clicks of the parking brake holds the truck securely on any incline. It's a huge improvement over the stock setup.
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