We spotted the yellow beast dubbed “The Crawler” at this year’s King of the Hammers event in Johnson Valley, California, where it went toe-to-toe with far pricier hardware to great effect. “There is no better feeling than watching a $5,000 Toyota go places that a $50,000 Jeep cannot touch,” says owner Trevor Hall.

During the course of his build, when body components stood in the way of progress, Trevor just tossed them in the dumpster – simplifying the truggy’s design while shedding a few pounds in the process.

Two hundred dollars later, Trevor, a resident of Blackfoot, Idaho, took delivery of a yellow 1979 Toyota Hilux. Rough and in some immediate need of welding, the Toyota pickup’s reputation for nearly unkillable durability proved accurate. Years later with less than $5,000 in total investment costs, Hall’s Toyota truggy cuts quite a figure in out in the dirt.

“The first time I went to King of the Hammers in 2013, we were running Wrecking Ball,” said Trevor. “There is an alternate line about half a mile from the waterfall where the Busted Knuckle boys in their Neon bouncer were trying to bounce up. After watching them bounce part way then slide off, I decided to give it a try. This little Toyota crawled over it like a mountain goat.”

With the amount of abuse the Hilux sees, a show-level paint job was never in the cards. Trevor says the shade is Duraback Yellow, which he applied in his garage. The bumpers on the Hilux are custom fabricated pieces, and the front LED headlights on the Hilux are flanked by a Smittybilt XRC-8 winch.

Over the years, the trails have taken a toll on the Crawler in a number of ways. It sports an undoubtedly purposeful look now in a Mad Max sort of way, where pragmatism trumps style every time, essentially creating a style of its own in the process.

Trevor says he got the idea to use a Hilux for the build after seeing an image of a group of guerrilla fighters aboard one. The image included a caption that said: “Ninety percent of Third World militaries can’t be wrong.”

Hall says he discovered night crawling at Johnson Valley a few years ago after finding the trails too clogged with people during the day. Along with a cage-mounted set of LEDs, Hall installed 22 more along the bottom of the Toyota to help light up the trail at night.

It was a statement that Trevor agreed with. After all, the man’s self-described Third World machining skills have gotten him out of a bind a number of times. So it came as little surprise that the Hilux was a natural fit for Trevor.

A diesel mechanic by trade, Hall has owned 4×4’s since high school, but really got interested in rock crawling in 2000 when he took on a 1952 M38A1 Willys Jeep project and joined the Snake River Offroaders club.

“This truck came along after the Willys was completed,” Hall explained. “I love the actual process of building and to me, these Toyotas are just cooler than Jeeps.” Taking lessons learned in previous builds, Hall decided that with the Toyota he would focus his efforts more strategically when he began modifying the pickup.

Hall says he learned a valuable lesson in previous builds to avoid sinking a ton of money into high-buck motors. Instead, he decided to swap out the tired 2.2-liter four-cylinder 20R motor for a more stout 22RE. The Hilux also received some mechanical advantage by swapping out the original four-speed gearbox for a five-speed and switching out the gearsets. This gives the Hilux far better low-speed pull than it had previously.

“With my previous build I learned that big engines can be a waste of money,” he recalled. “This time, I went with gears first. Next thing I did was swap out the four-speed gearbox for a five-speed unit, then doubled the transfer case and installed 4.7:1 gears.

After that, Hall turned his attention to the Toyota’s suspension. “I messed around with longer leaf springs, but then decided to ditch the springs altogether. A couple of local rigs ran one link suspensions and I noticed that they just flat-out worked, so I fabricated up a rear one-link setup and went wheeling. It’s my favorite modification to date: I love hearing from people how about it isn’t supposed to work and then showing the same know-it-all how well it actually does work.”

Once the suspension was sorted out, Hall realized it was time to retire the worn 20R motor and replace it with a 22RE. Throughout the build process, when he came across body components that were in the way, he decided the simplest solution was to just toss them.

“The bed got in the way while I was installed the one-link rear suspension, so it came off and a tube bed was built, and after a couple of years of wheel I decided to cut the back wall of the cab out and install a couple of more seats, along with a cage to keep passengers safe,” says Hall.

Hall’s approach with The Crawler build was, by his own admission, more calculated than previous endeavors. His favorite mod to date is the custom-fabricated, one-link rear suspension he made, which forced him to ditch the original truck bed for a tubular bed in order to make room.

The Crawler’s roll cage is built from 1.5-inch tubing bent up using a JD2 tube bender. After cutting out the back wall of the cab to make room for a pair of additional seats behind the driver and front passenger, Hall decided to install the cage for safety reasons. The Crawler’s fuel is housed in a custom made tank with baffles to ensure that fuel is available to pump at extreme angles.

The front axle is a Toyota unit with 4.10:1 gears while the rear is a custom reinforced Toyota unit with bottom trusses built from drill casings split in half and welded to bottoms. Springs are four-inch Marlin Crawlers at the front and Jeep Cherokee front springs installed in the rear.

The interior of The Crawler stayed true to its form-over-function exterior, focusing on the fundamentals in terms of controls and aesthetics. When Trevor decided he wanted to install another pair of seats in the back for the Toyota, it meant the rear wall of the cab had to go.

Who doesn’t love a personal touch? Hall’s taste calls for a hodgepodge of stickers lining the Crawler’s ceiling.

At that point, Hall also decided to install a roll cage made from 1.5-inch tubing, bent up using a JD2 bender, in order to keep his occupants safe. Aside from the custom gauge, eight-ball shifter, and passenger grip bar, the interior is fairly standard Toyota equipment. Hall says if he had to do it all over again, though, he’d probably keep the windshield this time around.

Although he considers The Crawler to be an on-going project, keeping builds low cost is something that Hall considers to be one of his specialties. “One thing that I have joked about was that from time to time it is necessary to perform repairs using less than perfect materials in less than perfect conditions,” he said.

“This became known as using my ‘Third World machining skills.’ I even had some stickers made with my motto: “I have done so much with so little for so long, that now, I can do anything with nothing in no time at all.”

So what’s next for The Crawler? That’s anyone’s guess according to Hall. “It started out life as a truck, now it’s a truggy, who knows where it’ll end up!”