04 Extra Cab SAS

Do it! And might I suggest... graft in the 80 coils and links under the rear of the Tacoma. You could do it with a combination of 3G 4Runner and 80 series coils/links/mounts. That's been another part of the dream for my Tacoma. Figured I'd do something like chop off the rear of the Tacoma frame and graft in a 3G 4runner frame, then fix up the mounts a bit as needed. (For sure the upper links/mounts are quite different angles between the 3G 4R and the 80 series). Lotsa work though...

Or get a bit whacky and do Prado LC trailing arms and coils...

Good progress though. Favorite build going on right now.

 

If I went through the trouble of swapping that axle in, I would probably make all new link mounts on the chassis side, and run longer links than an 80 would have. Id probably just keep it simple and do leafs though.

However, I don't really see it happening. Or if I decide to do that, it might be down the road after I have some miles on the truck with the front end done and everything working well.

 

I’m getting old!! I get lost in the grocery store sometimes!!

 

So you had to push the axle that far forward to avoid the oil pan? Looks like a lot with have to be clearanced to clear the tires in the fender?

 

Oil pan is 1 reason. I didn't want to mess with the firewall any. So I set the axle to a distance that gave me an appropriate amount of clearance, and it just so happens to be a good amount of clearance for the oil pan as well

 

Looking good...
Having a Diamond axle and 3 link, I gained 2.75" of WB when I did my SAC. The pan was the reason for most of the WB gain and this is after I purchased a reverse sump pan and pick up tube.

 

I gained a little less than 5". I was really hoping to gain less because of how much more work needed to clear fenders. But having a low ride height poses a lot of problems

 

In the end, what are your up/down travel numbers and what length shocks are you going with?
My axle is 62" WMS so I didn't need to cut anything firewall related. The OEM pinch weld and plastic cover are still in tact.

 

PM sent.

 

Im shooting for 4" up and who knows down. I haven't bought shocks yet so Im unsure. A lot of the 80 series shocks are around 10" travel I believe. Im not going for a crap load of travel. I still feel like it will be very capable the way Im building it even without a bazillion inches of travel

 

Firewall tub kind of sucked but fitting 35s on less than 2” lift it was work that had to be done. I keep going back and forth on it I want to do the swap or not. I should just take that time to get my Tacoma back together, especially since it’s been apart for 8 years.

 

Well, the poor ol' girl has sat for over a month and I've felt guilty, so it was time to put a little time in on her.

The other day, I got back to work on the caster correction. I made these tabs and TIG welded on some washers that happened to be the same thickness as the stock brackets.



After rotating the axle some I figured where I wanted to set it, and marked where to cut. Then it was all tacked on. I'll leave them tacked on for now until I take all my measurements before final welding everything up




Last night I started messing with everything without the coils in. I was able to figure out that the bump stops compress about 1.25" with even distribution of weight. So I will probably plan for around 1.75" of compression and fine tune from there.



From there I was able to see that the lower coil mount wasn't lining up very well, and was tilted by about 6 degrees. Since the OD of the coils is barely smaller than the inside dimensions of the upper coil mount, I want to ensure at ride height everything jives smoothly together. With this much misalignment in the coil, the coil is running on the mount up top.




This basically meant more work that I wasn't planning on, but I feel is necessary. I decided to cut the lower coil mounts off and relocate them to line up better. This was fairly simple actually. I simply made a wedge to set the proper angle, and slide both mounts forward 1/2".

Everything is fit up for now. I realized during this process that I had been putting faith in my analog angle finder and its a bit sticky. My digital angle finder seems to be more consistent, and I have discovered a few adjustments that I need to make still. Luckily, I am waiting to final weld anything until I am absolutely happy with here everything is lading.

I'll be making a couple tweaks to the upper coil mounts, then fine tuning in the wheel base with my trammel points. Once that is set, I should be pretty damn close to welding everything up and moving onto other things.




Before tacking on the lower coil mount, I thought it would be beneficial to weld in 12mm nuts on the bottom side. That way I could machine some spacer pucks to fine tune in my up travel limits.



And where I left off tonight. It looks much better than the stock location. This has put a little wind back into my sail. My life is pretty busy so I won't be able to work on it as much as I would like. However, I am going to try and get something notable done each week, so I can actually make progress and post about once a week here and on my IG handle.

 

Another Oregon member, right on!! I'm hoping my SAS will be done my mid February.

 

Well, there seems to be a common theme anymore with how often I can find time to work on the Tacoma. That's life I suppose. Anyhow, I managed to get some time here and there over the last week to put in some time on it.


First thing I wanted to do, was make sure the wheel base was close(+/- 1/16") so I could be confident in the placement of the coil mounts both upper and lower. I made this fixture that picks up the center machine mark on the rear axle shafts, and the center machine mark on the trunion bearing cap. Somehow, out of dumb luck...... I was exactly on.



Somehow during this process, I discovered the axle was off side to side, by 3/16". I believe this mistake happened because I measured from the center holes of the lower coil mounts, and now I assume those aren't reliable.

So to confirm my findings, I took a piece of leftover delrin, and machined a little indicator that allows me to place it in the center machine marks of the trunion bearing caps and get a good side to side measurement. This confirmed my findings, and allowed me to fine tune it into within 1/32" of centered.





Luckily my lathe is in a position that helped pulling the axle over with a strap haha.



After that was done, and I re-welded the temp panhard(which I cut apart). I was worried that a bunch of other stuff was off. So I dropped the radius arms to see if they were off, and they were fine. This was good news, because I thought I might have to cut the radius arm mounts off again, and adjust them.

I verified some other measurements, and made some adjustments to the upper coil mounts.

From there, I cut the tacks on the lower mounts, and dropped the upper mounts as low as they could go. This allowed me to better line up and tack in the lower mounts, so the coils now mount straight when its sitting on its own weight.




With all that taken care of, I was confident in beginning the process of welding everything up. I welded some Friday evening and a little this evening until I ran completely out of argon. I was able to get the frame plates completely welded up, and the upper coil mounts. After, I cleaned them up and wire-wheeled everything.

I'm now trying to work towards a checkpoint and have all the fab work complete on the frame and paint it all. Since its winter here in the PNW, I don't want to put it outside and have the frame rust. However, I want to have the ability to put it outside so I can bop around onto other projects like our Land Cruiser or my 85. So this is the little fire under my butt that I need to keep working on it.

This week I will get another bottle of argon so I can keep welding. From there, I will need to make mounts for the sway bar, upper shock mounts, and some other small detail work before I can begin prepping and painting the frame. More to come(hopefully)

 

I've made some progress lately, but haven't been keeping things up to date in here. Since I have limited space at home, I decided that it was time to get the truck to the point where it could be put outside without rusting. This meant I needed to finish up some fab work and paint the stuff that would be a pain to clean if they got rusty outside.

I took the week before last off to help expedite this process. Like usual, life got in the way so I didn't get as much done as I wanted. However, I still made pretty good progress.

The first order of business was figuring out shock mounts. I spent a ton of time online reading about shocks and springs on ih8mud. Originally my plan was to use the stock shocks off our 80. However, they ended up being too short of travel for me, so I had to come up with something else. I landed on a set of fox shocks for an 80 series. This took quite a bit of time to make my decision. So I proceeded to use a junk 80 shock to mock up, and gorilla tape it to length to build shock mounts around.

If you look closely enough, I made some brake line parts. Towards the back of the fender well, I drilled and tapped the frame for a bracket that was welded to a modified pair of the old brake elbows. I also had a set of custom brake lines made by an awesome outfit down in Eugene, OR called Pacific Rubber and Supply Corp. They will be making my power steering line as well.






One little detail that I should have done before the coil mounts were welded to the frame, was made the top of the engine mounts look nicer. I cut them off, but neglected to do the detail work while I had the room. I put a support in so they're structurally sound, but am not terribly stoked on the looks. Luckily, its a small hidden detail that will only bother me



With all the important fab work done, it was time to paint. I would have liked a little more time to get the sway bar mounts in, but I decided that will have to wait




The last thing to sort out was the firewall plate at the steering column. Originally I thought I was going to make a new plate. But after looking at it with some precision cut CADboard, I wouldn't have had much room to work on it when removing the steering shaft, or clear the brake booster.




So the alternative was to use the stock plate and modify it. I wanted to get this sealed up so I could keep bugs, moisture, and rodents out of the cab.

Its again, not quite as cosmetically appealing... but ultimately its simple and hidden.

I will probably find a plastic pipe cap to press into the old hole. For now, a couple layers of gorilla tape will have to suffice.

I didn't have access to quality rubber on the weekends, so I cut a piece of heater hose and made a temp piece, and held it in with some spare fasteners I have laying around. It was also a good opportunity to have a practice piece. I will probably use a little thicker piece of beefy rubber, and use some bearing grease to keep it from wearing too quickly. The idea here is to keep it simple, and easy to replace if needed.






With all that done, it was time to put everything back together and move the truck out to underneath the RV port, where it will live for the next couple months. Of course I had to pop in one of the shocks to see how cool it looked haha.

There probably wont be many more updates on this until later in the spring. Hopefully that will be due to building out my wife's 80 series Land Cruiser for lots of adventuring

 

Your brackets and welds all look great!

 

great work man! looks really nice. coilovers would have saved you a lot of time but I feel ya on the factory thing for a daily.

 

We need more pictures

 

Thanks man! All the years spent in the trade can be handy

Yeah, there's a couple reasons I went the direction ai did. 1 was to to for factory reliability. Another is I really wanted to avoid butchering the inner fenders. I know that might sound like an odd hangup, but that's just what I am hoping to avoid.

I may change it up down the road and link it proper. But I figured with my skill level off-road, this will be more than I have skill for quite a while

Haha, it's unlikely that I will be posting much for the next couple months while I am focusing on building up my Wifes FZJ80

 

Small update that's a bit late. I recieved my NW Fabworks T-Case setup not long ago. I happened to be the first person on the list for this particular combo, but had to wait a while until they had the triple stick kit designed. Almost exactly a year after I put my deposit down, and we had it!

I probably wont be back onto this project until around August or so. What I plan on next is getting the front end repaired so I can hang a grill, headlights, and markers. Then I can get the bumper sorted out and a radiator installed.


In the meantime, building up my wifes 80 has been consuming my time. For those interested, it's now sitting on 37's with an Iron Man 2" lift and an EIM Keith lower control arm mount. It will have 4.88's and be locked F/R with a factory elocker rear axle(getting swapped in) and an Eaton Elocker in front. Rock sliders, a rear swing out, front bumper modifications with a winch mount, sleeping platform, and more are all the goodies that I am hoping to have wrapped up by the time we go on a summer adventure.