Solid Axle Swap BS Thread

Thermal heating switch and inverter board decided it didn’t like the bumper I was building...

 

Give me a offer! If it's good I'll pull them out and run spool/Detroit

 

If you would go to Detroit makes me wonder why you would sell the arb. East coast gear supply has the Detroit, gears and install kit for 1070

 

Because I want little to no electrical on the buggy. I only had arbs because I use to DD the taco. And didn't want mechanical lockers. Now the axles are on the buggy I would swap them out.

 

Pirate has some phenomenal tech...unfortunately photobucket and the sale to Vertical Scope has really hurt things over there. There’s no fluff like there is on TW builds....can’t list weather tech floor mats as a mod and not get emasculated. Which is fine in my book. It’s shot itself in the foot though by scaring off a lot of guys doing budget builds because you get flamed for not going links, tons, and 40’s.

The extra pinion bearing is nice and it’s way easy to setup with minimal tools. My biggest beef with them is that they will nickel and dime you to death building them with brakes, hubs, and a shave kit.

 

I don’t miss my ARB or regret going Detroit/Spartan at all since the Tacoma sees minimal street driving. It’s nice not fiddling around with air, switches and solenoids. Just knowing I’m locked when I need no matter what is perfect for me

 

FWIW I run a grizzly locker out back and it’s a DD. Driven on a lot of snow and ice. It’s really not bad at all. Gonna do another grizzly up front most likely.

 

That’s what I’ve got for the rear on mine. Read good reviews on them.

 

They are the best bang for the buck strength wise. Gm made like 20billion of them, and most of the parts swapped between years and models.

 

Pinion strength is off the charts due to the three pinion bearing design also the options for upgrades are better.
the rock bouncer guys are running the High 14 in the front with 40 spline shafts not cheap but bad ass.

boss just ordered a Hi 9 with a grizzly for his jeep. guess well see how it treats him.

 

I wonder if a shave kit would have helped.

 

This came in yesterday

 

Things arrived here today too...

 

You guys that have done links, did you use the link calculator? If so how have you like the handling results? If you didn't use the calculator how did you come to lengths and separation numbers? If it is something I can do myself without bad results I would like to go that route.

 

I'l let other people respond first since my build is still in progress. I've been following builds since the Delphi forum Torra days and pirate, ih8mud, and yotatech. I'm a better listener and observer than someone that can articulate to other people. There are people that follow the numbers like doctrine and their truck ends up riding like shit and has death wobble over 40mph, and a lot of other problems. Then there are others that follow the common sense stuff. Longest panhard as possible, parallel drag link. As much top link separation as you can get, keep the caster and pinion angle close to stock. And then their trucks ride great when by the numbers they shouldn't. This is going to ignite a firestorm. Too many people are emotionally invested in their builds they want to hear nothing other than agreement.

 

I played with the link calculator after taking measurements on my truck and ended up building the suspension pretty close to the numbers from the calculations. The only thing I have changed since has been the upper link length, extending it from that 75% length of the lower rule to around 85% of the length. That helped with keeping castor angles where I wanted them through the suspension travel.

As for how it handles.... I am very pleased with it. Drives great on the street, handles and flexs very well off-road.

 

I can attest to this.

 

This ^^

The calculator is a good indicator, but reality sets in once you line everything up and start fitting. It'll help get you a baseline then you just gotta do best you can once it's fab time.