What have you done to your Tacoma today? 1st Gen Edition

... fixed my intermittent dome light by cleaning contacts and applying dielectric grease. Installed a new led festoon light and soldered on two resistors. Went ahead and changed the map lights with the same festoon bulb but with one resistor each.

 

Manual hubs

 

Tons

 

Another question about a 63 swap.

Last spring, when I boxed and reinforced the frame, relocated shocks, etc... I welded the lower mounts to the axle (obviously). Right after I did this, my axle seal(s) blew. (Not sure if both of them blew, but I know the driver side did for sure).

Is this just a coincidence? Or should I have done something other than being careful not to just bare down and burn a bunch of metal, letting it cool between short sections of weld. I figured the diff oil would be enough of a heat sink (and with the axle vent) that the heat of the weld wouldn't blow anything.

How do other people go about welding to the axle? Because I'll have the perches to burn on, and I may re-do my lower shock mounts while I'm at this.

 

I can't imagine it getting much hotter than the gear friction on a long day of driving/wheeling.

 

That's kind of (exactly) what I was thinking.

 

Maybe if you did a whole truss weld at the same time I could see it boiling out.

 

Yep, that was also a thought that I had.

Just wanting to make sure that's the general consensus. Would love to avoid doing the rear axle seals again any time soon.

 

Where did ya get this thingy?

 

I know the TC rear relocation kit says that often times the welding can affect the axle seals and to plan on replacing them when installing the kit.

 

I'm thinking about draining the axle and pulling the axles out while I weld it this time. Don't really want to do that, but I'd rather buy 4 quarts of diff oil than axle seals AND 4 quarts of diff oil.

 

It would probably help. Although I think just not taking long passes and consciously trying to keep things cool should be good.

 

Thing that has me nervous is that is actually EXACTLY what I did when I did my lower mounts last spring, and my axle seals had to be replaced right after that.

It could be coincidence. Those seals had better than 250K miles on them. Or, maybe I blew them while welding the mounts. And the perches are closer to the seals than the mounts were.

 

It's just shy of 3". When I beefed up mine with 3inch pipe I needed to pinch the pipe. Just a bit to get a better fit. You might want to consider beefing your up to keep the axle from cracking in that area. I had no problem with seals after burning mine on twice.

 

Maybe it was the heat in combination with the age that did it, hopefully the new seals will fair better results this time

 

Not likely. Especially given the location of your mounts. If they had been on the ends like the TC kit's are then I'd consider replacing the seals.

Your truck has a lot of miles right? Cause that is much more likely the reason. The bearings go bad and that causes the seal to go bad. Did you end up doing bearings?

 

Yes, No way I wasn't going to do all of it, if I was already in there. (especially with the amount of miles that were on them)

At least next time won't be so expensive, cause now I have a press and the press fixture for it.

 

Okay so just took my truck for a test drive after doing the big 3 upgrade. Charges at 14.2 while driving but then drops to 12.9-13.4 at a stop. If I put it in park it jumps back to 14.2. Any ideas? Little confused on the voltage drop

 

I bet your RPMS are about what, 2-300rpms lower when in drive vs park?

THat alt your swapped in is higher output but only at higher rpms, and by rpms I mean the alt's rpms.

If you wanted high output at low rpms you should go with the CS144 swap as that's it's party trick. It'll do around 100amps at our trucks idle speed. Vs about 40 from the stock alt. Your's isn't stock granted but its the same case/housing. So all that is different is the windings are tighter.

 

yeah I woudn't worry too much about it long as you're not laying down massive beads like an axle truss or something. It should be just fine.