Wow, this build is looking amazing! Great work! I'm considering chopping up my rusted out Samurai body and converting it to a similar pickup cab, but the Aqualu cab is just simply AWESOME!
I had referenced your thread a few times in the past when brainstorming up what I wanted my build to me. Yours is lifted so high that the ALH oil pan clearance was a total non-issue, but I'm trying to make mine as low of an SPOA lift as possible (doubt I'll get it less than 5" lifted, probably 5.5" lift is the minimum on the larger Toyota axle housings. That makes the ALH or newer TDI install a lot more challenging with high steer and diff and firewall clearance...
Are you on the Zuwharrie forum, or the Suzuki Diesel FB Group?
I was leaning towards a cut down bed from a Suzuki Carry or other Japanese mini truck, cut down to 64" length, keeping the stock-ish LWB Samurai/SJK rear overhang, and stretching the wheelbase to around 106" - just long enough to squeeze dirtbikes in straight with the back tire barely touching the end of the folded down flat rear tailgate...
Now I'm looking at cheating and taking a big shortcut and just trying to import a stock LWB Samurai from Europe, but if the shipping ends up being a deal breaker, pickup cab it is!
I'll also be stuffing an ALH 1.9TDI into mine, a 20 degree clocked Doomsday Diesel 22R adapter, and an '09 Land Cruiser R151F trans and transfer case with the '86-'87 22RTEC turbo pickup R151F bell and a shorter input shaft to match the shorter bell swapped in. That's a 7" offset passenger drop transfer case, and I've got an '85 Toyota front axle widened with IFS hubs, and a T100 rear 8" housing with the passenger side chopped off short to make it a 5-5/8" or so passenger offset with a full floater hub conversion done using the '81-'85 front hub parts swapped off the front axle, plus some full floater adapters (Ruff Stuff makes some nice ones nowadays), and drive flanges instead of the front locking hubs. I've nabbed 2 or 3 broken 4.30 TRD E-Lockers from the Pick N Pull junkyard, and 1 or 2 good ones, kept hoping for a 4.10 TRD Tacoma but they all either got brand new frames or they got bought back, so all I see are V6 4Runner E-Lockers! Picked up a Land Cruiser FJ80 etc high pinion 8" front with 4.10 Nitro gears and a Detroit True Track locker, so I'll be rebuilding the broken E-Lockers into 1 good one with some Revolution, Nitro, or _____ 4.11 gears and converting my housing as well!
Keep up the awesome work!