Front and rear end/differential swap??

Now that a wider range of gearsets are available, perhaps this is a non-issue, but I couldn't find anything by searching.

Has anyone swapped their rear end, and front differential for ones from another vehicle either because the new ones are stronger, or because they have more aftermarket support?

 

Like same ratio?

Not sure if newer = stronger.

You have the OR so you have the bigger r&p already.

What other vehicles would you swap with?

 

Hmmm. For some reason I thought the 3rd gen Tacoma had a somewhat weak set of gears. No idea where I came to that "knowledge".

I was thinking of something like a swap to Tundra or LandCruiser running gear.

Shrug. Now that other gears are coming on the market, that reason basically goes away, and it seems I'm wrong about the strength of things.

 

I think I've only seen one person who has reported breaking their rear diff.

 

In a 3rd gen, the way to improve them would be to do a solid axle swap and put in Dana 60 axles from a 1 ton truck. You already have pretty strong front and rear diffs from the factory.

 

OP you can check out @jberry813 and his thread in 2nd gen builds... he's been doing that rear swap mentioned. more or less

 

Front is the same size as the last gen Tacoma (8”) but the OR got a 8.75 rear end r&p

 

9” swap

Perfect rear end IMO. Tons of clearance and just as strong (or can be) as a Dana 60.

 

Now you know two...

 

What were the circumstances? Tire size?

 

Are those the shavings off the plug magnet?

I had a grape size amount on mine when I switched the fluid. I didn’t see any chunks though and I could’ve find any in your pic but maybe I just don’t know where to look.

 

That's the metal particles on the the magnet he wiped on the rag. It's common to see that after break in.

 

As does the SR manual

 

That’s the normal amount of metallic paste off a new diff magnet at first oil change. Mine was pretty much the same, no issues with the diff. What am I missing?

 

Yeah it seemed excessive but I’m not too worried about it. Now if at my next oil change I see it again...

My rear end also howls like a banshee but I’m not sure the two are related.

 

Yea if that was the first time I had changed it I would have been fine. I’ve always had a noisy diff and I beat it hard with my 285s. That was my 3rd diff fluid change (on factory gears), and all three looked like that. I changed it everytime the rear end was submerged. When I swapped to nitro I didn’t have anymore that looked that bad.

Disassembled after 10k miles (since last fluid change) to do nitro swap. I consider this excessive:



What I’d consider normal:


@Enfield1 @nDub @Stocklocker

 

Ok. That’s good info. I was thinking it would was just your first oil change.

Thanks for the update.

 

Yeah that’s goofy. I’ll have to check mine again. I don’t wheel much in this truck though.

 

Did you get the TSB fix for that? I have a DBl CB SB and it took like 85% of mine away.

 

Yeah I had it done. It helped but not much unfortunately. Maybe 50% at best.