My Early 3rd gen had no needle bearing

Hey all, so i purchased my truck brand new from the dealership in October 2015. It was one of the first 3rd gens on my island. Any way its been a few years now and the truck has been lifted for almost all it’s life with a TC +2” LT. recently i was on my 3rd rebuild of the suspension and decided, that even though i have had no “vibrations “ or “humming “ from the front end; that i was going to go ahead and change out the needle bearing since i was going to be inspecting everything apart already and the ECGS kit been sitting in my garage for a couple years collecting dust. Well long story short i pop the CV and my truck didn’t even have a needle bearing. It has the smooth bearing that looks like the one from ecgs. That explains why i never had that problem i guess!!

 

Maybe all the needles blew out making it appear to look like the ECGS bushing. Do you have a picture?

 

Well that's odd.

 

Very odd but awesome

 

I wonder who makes the bushing. It doesn't look like the ECGS one.

 

Well it's pretty obvious your Air Locker installer put the bushing in there in the past. It's kinda standard practice on a diff rebuild.

 

100% that what's happened. I would not want to run a locker with the stock needle bearing.

 

If that's a bushing, and not a fucked up bearing race, someone did you a solid

 

How did you not notice it there when you did the locker?

 

What locker kit do you have?

 

ARB and also 4:88 gears

 

Before being put out on the lot the new trucks that my dealership installs lifts on get the ecgs bushing installed at same time.

 

This one looks different then the ecgs one, and also truck was purchased in 2015. I dont know when the ecgs kit came out. Heres the pic of the ecgs one in the box from yesterday

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/bEOP_qGpBpM?feature=share I just uploaded a video from yesterday if any one want to take a look. I couldn’t upload it on here unfortunately

 

I'd suspect the ECGS fairies while on vacation before I'd suspect a Toyota dealership tech, but anything is possible.

 

Welp, I'm jealous. Lol. I'm about to pay a shop 300-400 to do this. I didn't know about this needle bearing issue until after I upgraded my suspension and tires.

 

Well no that wasn't obvious with anything you had posted here. I just picked up on "airlocked" on your 2nd post then searched and read that you had your ARB air locker installed by one of the finest in Hawaii. The needle bearing has been around and well known way before the 3rd gen and any installer would have put a bushing in.

But now we see that you did this in 2016 and did not see the needle bearing so yes it is a mystery how it got there.

Do you happen to remember how many miles were on your truck when you picked it up from the dealer?

 

That is crazy!!
Is that the passenger side ?

 

Is this picture driver side?

Looks like an ecgs bushing installed backwards. Or possibly another brand. Here is how an ecgs looks like Installed: