Bandido's Bad at Taking Pictures '03 DC Build

Soon?

 

Long overdue rear axle rebuild, only the diff worked, brakes and wheel bearings went out a while ago.... Too much time spent in the north east in the winter has also disolved the backing plates.

Trying to decide between steelit, chassis saver, and POR15 to cover the axle housing in.

 

POR or chassis saver - steel it is overpriced junk if you’re not going to weld on it for some reason.

 

Yeah everyone I've seen rave about steelit doesn't live somewhere that they salt the roads...

I am going to 3 or 4 link the rear in the next 4-6 months I think/hope.

 

I’ve coated both bumpers and my axle with it and definitely not worth the price - if it was a race truck where you might need to weld mid race on any part of the chassis it would justify the cost. It’s no more durable than any 1k paint.

 

Flex Seal duh

 

Some goodies showed up right on time today.

 

I haven't been able to rent a quality bearing splitter, and while on one side of the diff rear, I was able to easily pull the carier bearing with my 2 jaw, but the other side isn't grabbing; so I'm buying a bearing splitter that should work well for the Toyota Diffs.
I'm out of town again this weekend, so the build is going slowly...

I got in one of those Duralast/Trakmotive high angle/extended CV's, they Appear to be capable of extending about 2.5" but they are listed as only a 1.5" extension. I'm definitely going to buy another and adjust my LT kit accordingly. Unfortunately it looks like I'll need to make an extended height front shock tower to fit these massive raptor shocks/springs.
I'll be buying a new OEM power steering rack, mostly for the new TRI's which I go thru like crazy unless they are OEM, seriously considering extending the steering arm another inch, I'll take a look at how that impacts the kinematics and available steering angle... I'll also rout the return line thru the Trans cooler core in the Radiator, now that its unused.
Also considering K04 turbos(one guy is running this on his lotus and making ~550 whp 500 tq), however I don't think I can fit these unless they go very low, which would require an auxiliary return sump, and thats some complexity I don't need. So I'll stay NA for now, and possibly retrofit a supercharger at some point in the future.

I'm also worried I'm going to buy a bead roller to make my gas tank, and I'm starting to run out of space at my house.

 

Lmfao. Rack fits perfect.

 

Finally had some time to work on diffs today. As I was tearing down the rear to space the pinion to improve the engagement pattern, I realized I have a 27 spline 4.88 pinion, I'd prefer to run the 29 spline like OEM, so back it goes. I didn't even think to confirm that I had what I ordered, at least a 2 week delay to getting the truck back on the road.
Solid pinion spacers are also pretty annoying lol.
MR2 also somehow needs another fuel pump... So I guess I should get on that.

 

New gears showed up middle of last week. Had time sinday for a few fit ups, dropped .0025" from my solid pinion stack, which feels like a lot, but the pinion is now a little tighter.

One curious thing to me is that this pinion shim stack is .2200" like holy shit. Stock was .0745" on my mics and the 27 spline gearset took a modest .1050"

I dont think theres any problem, but this feels like a lot of shim. On the flip side, the install kit has about .380" in shims... so maybe this is more normal than I realize?

 

Another update: the Front diff gears I got ended up being 7.5" standard rotation gears, not reverse rotation, those got sent back too, but new ones have still not shown up.

While I still haven't started the Motor swap, I have been thinking about a few other things, mostly painting bumpers and wheels to match; However I feel like Painting the wheels could go terribly wrong, so I'm just sitting here worrying about it.

A few other things, I bought another Trakmotive LT CV axles, need to get my front end arms finished, I might put together a GB thread and sell WIY kits if I'm happy with how they work...

Also, it looks like IS350 Monoblock calipers will be compatible with the 5th gen 4Runner Rotors (replacing 14WA Caliper) with a pretty simple adapter plate, so I might give that a quick try, the Lexus calipers are a LOT lighter and stiffer than the 14WA calipers, I actually need to measure to determine just how much lighter, but it feels like its nearly 10 lbs per!

 

subd

Derp the wheels. Or get them powdered. Or don't do anything since your wheels will get scratched, you'll decide to sell em one day and every other idiot in the world will be sure to let you know they're scratched even though you included this neat AF fact in your description and your very clear pictures of your scratched wheels.

Yes I'm disgruntled at FB marketplace and the morons it breeds out of the woodworking lol

 

Supposedly these are just painted from the factory, I've had them for... 5 years now and they have very mild rock rash at worst lol I might just paint em and if it looks like shit...so be it

They have a plastic center cap that I suspect WILL look like shit painted

but for like 2 weeks I'll have ALL the instagram poser shots lol

 

Painted wheels more than a couple times and unless you're going high quality 2k I'd stick to living with them the color they are or powdercoat. Neither of which are worth it if you're gonna get them all scratched up. 1k always dulls and looks kind of cheap when dirt embeds itself in them.

 

Yeah I was thinking hotrodflatz paint, but I've never seen a car that gets left outside/beaten on with that paint.

 

So I got both my diffs in this weekend, they feel OK. The coast in 4wd doesn't feel great, like there's some very small vibration or noise but tbh I can't remember if it ever felt great. The LPV delete was a success, but the pedal is really soft after bleeding, so not sure if I got all the air out, seems like the front calipers may be stuck or something, and the rear shoes aren't fully adjusted yet.

I also finally started some motor fitting stuff.
The 2GR dowl pins line right up with where they are on a 5VZ, so this means the alignment of a R series or A304F is easy. I'm test fitting with my old A304F bell housing, 4 bolt holes line right up, but one of them needs to be tapped on the block, hole is present tho.

There's also room to make 2 more of the transmission holes into mounting points, but I don't have the right sized drillbit to get into that right now...

Now the difference between the transverse block and a longitudinal block... Starter location.


After about an hour and a half with a die grinder and Dremel:

And I threw the the old 5VZflex plate on there and hit 12V to the starter...we have compression!!

This afternoon I'll draw up exhaust flanges and engine side motor mount flanges to get cut out on a water jet or plasma table soon.

 

Whoa I missed where you decided to go from 1GR to 2GR - is that out of a Camry with the transverse oil pan?

 

Oh no I've been on the 2GR train the whole time lol. Technically this one is out of a sienna lol.

These are "front" sump like a 5vzfe, so I'm sure I'll be modding the lower pan to clear the front diff, but it should clear pretty easy.

 

Checking kinematics and digitally confirming travel estimates, as well as shock point placements for a quick minute this morning.

I'm a bit surprised by how difficult the anti-squat% is to get right, and just how sensitive it is to the Axle side lower link mount, I'll need to pay extra attention to fabbing those up.

Also, I'm sort of surprised that the main limitation for front travel on the 1st gen Taco is definitely the tie rod inner, I don't have a good solution for that right now.
Both UCA and LCA ball joints/uniballs, as well the tie rod outer can easily be optimized to split misalignment thru travel, but the inner really can't.
As it is, assuming that I get some solution for the Tie rod inner the front geometry should easily cycle ~12"

There won't be room for more compression without going to glass fenders/opening up the apron area to allow the tire to stuff up there more, and at least with a 33 theres really only another inch or so of compression to achieve before the chassis is also kissing the dirt with a pretty moderate amount of tire squish.
There isn't room to get much more droop without simply going wider, the CV angles and particularly the Tie rod inner angle get very severe very fast.

This exercise has definitely made me question front travel numbers and lift amount for a first gen, even with some +2 amount, the trucks aren't able to pull very large droop numbers when lifted... I Probably need to work on this a little harder and consider doing more than one iteration of a front end kit, one to be perfectly compatible with the new axles, and one to maximize the usage of the new shocks.