The 5.29 Mega Thread!!

Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of taking back roads. I guess I'll just have to go slow. It's about a 90 mile trip home. So I figure at least two stops just to be safe. Then the most I drive is maybe 30 miles in a day max with long stops between trips. Town is only 10 miles away from my home.

I won't be able to do any four-wheel-drive stuff on the route home either. But I will be able to on the way into town every day.

Just going to be a slow process, and good to know about the did fluid. I have an F-150 that was not so easy to change the front diff fluid, so you'd get creative and vacuum a couple times to compensate.

I will buy a temp gun. Any recommendations you can link me to on Amazon? I don't want to buy a total piece of junk.

 

I just did this and had to drive from NC to NY right after. The shop gave me instructions that basically just said you need to vary your speed every few minutes and stop for 25 minutes after every 50 miles. Here's a copy of the ECGS recommended break in procedure:

 

And that one doesn't say anything about a max speed. From what I read about the nitros people are being recommended to keep it below 55.

Hopefully I can get them to do the first three drives in short trips well I'm waiting to pick it up and in between getting all the extra stuff put on and I'm ordering.

When it says varying speeds, does that mean just drop in speed then accelerate up to a normal speed? Seems pretty standard.

Doesnt seem like a hard process, just a painfully slow one.

 

There's 2 sides to gears, drive and coast. When your foot is on the gas, drive side is making contact. When your foot is off the gas or braking, coast side is making contact. This is where the varying speed helps break in the gears better by polishing both sides of the gear teeth.

 

I went in today to check up on things and finalize what I wanted to pay for up front which is most the accessories, and the services guy seems really nice and cool but he tried talking me down to 4.88's. Actually, his personal opinion was that I didn't need the gears at all. I disagreed. There is a decent wait but they are on the way. Unfortunately that means driving almost 90 miles to drop the truck off when they get in, wait for however long it takes, probably a couple days (I'd rather they do the initial 3 trip break). Then driving back down and picking it up. THEN... being that one guy on the road going 50mph in a 70 lol. Whatever, I'll be happy and I know it. I told him every time I have lifted anything I have noticed a difference and it felt sluggish especially on highways trying to find that final gear. Literally everything I have ever lifted. Anyways... just get's annoying dealing with dealers and all that mess. I knew deep down that if I didn't get the 5.29's I would think about it every time I got in the truck. So I may have to suck it up for a bit until the gears get here. O well, will give me a chance to break everything else in at least.

 

Any thoughts on this harmonic vibration/Wir-wir sound around 58 mph > 63 mph.

 

500 mile break in complete on my nitros. I definitely have a howl around 50-60 on deceleration. After I changed the fluids it got maybe 20% quieter, but its definitely noticeable. That being said, my ridge grapplers are pretty quiet tires. So if you have MT tires you probably wouldn't notice it over the tires lol.

 

Just you wait! I can get mine to sing like a wine glass now!

 

Vibration is no bueno. Need to have that looked at.

 

I was dealing with a problem child a few years back. Not a Toyota but a 1997 Chevy Express Van 2WD that I lifted 6" with 35" Dura-Tracs. My savior was downloading this app on my phone. It allowed me to check 3 angles. Once the App showed me 3 green figures I got it dialed. The App is called "TREMEC Tool Box" I unbolted my u-bolts and tried different shims plus raised and lowered my tranny about 15 times until I got it completely dialed in. What a pain in the Ass. Prior to me doing it I called about 10 Transmission shops and Off-Road shops and no
one was willing to take it on to make it smooth. Good luck.

 

Exactly. Takes time to dial it in. I put a scope on the diff and TCase. Noise isn’t coming from there…definitely all the angles combined are making a “tuning fork” of sorts. My buddy that owns an LC is playing with shims for me.
Love the van bro! Killer. I’ve had a sportsmobile.

 

Good luck in finding it. Too bad it takes so much damn trial and error. We wanted a Sportsmobile but didn’t have enough money at the time so I built this and put a locker in the rear. Did ok but was a bit sketchy driving over snow/ice covered mountain passes. The Taco loves sketchy mountain passes.

 

For those of you that are getting a howl or any rolling sound. I believe this reduces noise.

I went a little over the gear break in procedures and replaced the gear oil at the recommended break in of 500 miles. Again at 1000 miles and again at 2000 miles. By doing this the oil continually become much cleaner where at the 2000 mile change there was a very small amount of shavings on the magnet with clean clear oil. I believe this has greatly reduced the sound the diff was making, now I cant be sure, but I'm guessing removing the heavier oil weighted down by the metal shavings has helped. For the last time I changed it again at 5000 miles and the oil was clean and clear with almost no shavings on the magnet.
Oil is cheap, I wanted to keep it clean and get as much of the metal out as possible. I also believe this will help keep the air seals in better condition.

This is all subjective, I don't have any actual proof. I could have just received nice and quiet gears.
Just wanted to pass this along, because if more people do this and it does in fact make the diffs less noisy we might be able to pass this along to everyone with noisy diffs.

 

Well, I finally got my truck. Only about 200 miles on it so far, but drives great. Some obvious hard shifts until it programs everything, but the gears won't be here for around 2 months... So I am getting the lift and other stuff done which means I will get to experience the drive w/ a 3" lift on 285's before I pull that install trigger on the 5.29's. Im kinda scared. I definitely don't want loud howls. Then again, everyone's idea of loud is subjective.

 

I got a buddy of mine to put a tune on the truck and it performed much better in regards to holding gears and not jumping all over the place.
I would recommend that first, then gears if you carry a big load. I had to have gears due to the camper and trailer, but if your just getting bigger tires, you may consider the tune first.

 

This thread has so much valuable information! OP has put some excellent data points. While numbers tell the actual story, I understand better in graphs. So given the same information provided by OP and the RPM Calculator available on Nitro Gears website, I created these two graphs: one for a 33" tire and one for 35" tire. Each graph compares RPM values for the following:
1. Automatic with 3.90 Gears (Stock)
2. Automatic with 4.88 Gears
3. Automatic with 5.29 Gears
5. Manual with 4.30 Gears (Stock)

At first glance, you would expect the RPM numbers for the MT truck with 4.30 Gears to be somewhere between #1 and #2 but due to the different final drive ratios on the 5th and 6th gear between the AT and the MT, the RPMs line up almost exactly with #3!

In fact it is so close, you can barely see the Blue line for 5.29 in the graphs below.

So basically a 5.29 geared AT truck is the same as a stock MT truck!!

My takeaway from this exercise - that even with 5.29 on 33" tires on the Automatic, I'll still be in the same ball park RPM figures what Toyota thinks is suitable with the Manual Transmission truck. Am I wrong?

 

Your are correct. My truck does not scream RPMs with 33s. Drives much better than it did without gears.

 

Yea, I watched some more vids. The worry is gone. Glad I stuck with my gut on this. Now the waiting. I already have a 5.29 sticker for the taco but I can't put it on until the gears get in. Literally the only sticker going on, ever. And it's black on black tinted windows.

 

thats awesome lol where is the sticker from? do you have a pic? also waiting for my 5.29's

 

That's nuts. I will say it is weird shifting into 4th gear at 35mph in my automatic truck on 33's. My 35s go on hopefully sometime this week.