Colinb17's kinda sorta build thread - now with 4-link and long travel

Are you happy now you diode haters

 

Hate to thread jack, but does anyone know where I can locate a rear driveshaft for my truck? Got a couple nice dents in mine now and what seems to be a slight bend.

 

to bad you were not closer...

 

Junk yard. Or dealer. $700ish. Or get a driveshaft shop to re-sleeve yours and balance. out here it cost around $300

 

find a drive shaft shop near you ..and have them rutube it and rebalance it,new joints, the whole works
had mine done not long ago ..for around $325 otd

 

lol I had already added that.

 

<3

dis vvv

all 3 alternatives will work. i got my spare for cheap from a good friend in Florida who works fo toyota. they had taken it off a nearly brand new truck because of vibrations. turned out to be something else, so they had a perfectly good driveshaft sitting around. check with the dealers and see if they have any used ones taking up space in the back of the shop. otherwise, it's really not much to have one custom made. for our purposes, a tom wood s is overpriced, and actually a hindrance off road. fo to a driveline shop, or even a big rig shop, and have them build you one. had mine completely rebuilt while i was in kansas city a few months ago. I kept the factory tube, but had new flanges welded on, new u-joints, and a ballance, for aroung $300-$350. could have had it retubed for not much more (would have just been building an entirely new driveshaft at that point), but i'm happy with the tube wall thickness, so there was no point.

 

I've still got a 2wd shaft sitting in my bay. I actually threw one out not long ago cause i had 2 sitting here collecting dust.. 2wd of course. I wouldn't throw out a 4wd shaft.

 

damn, yall really pull that many good shape driveshafts?

 

Not really, i have had those 2 for some time now. One was completely rebuilt just to have the extended warranty company turn around and install a new one. The rebuilt one is now in my truck since i trust the guy that did the rebuild (and it wasn't even me). I think my original is the one i tossed a while back.

 

haha, you probably get as much use out of other folks warranties as they do

how are the new spindles treating you?

 

You know, those extended warranty companies are either extrememly cheap or way too generous. I still don't know why they did that with the drive shaft, but it gave me an extra so I'm not complaining.

As for the spindles, I'm loving them. With all that nasty weather yesterday I'm thinking about hitting my spot up the road on my lunch break to see how wet it is and test the new suspension. if not today, i am going there Wednesday with a few friends. Oh, and with the spindles, she handles front end bumps so much nicer than before. It was so smooth when i went out last week.

 

The shops around here keep talking about how they can't do it because of the metric sized flanges and ujoints or something like that. I don't want to have to drop a grand on a new assembly from the dealer though. But they are all asking me to find out what the flange size is and if the ujoints are metric. I don't know how to find that out.

 

What i would do, if you aren't comfortable having Toyota do the ujoints, buy the "spider kit" from Toyota and take it to a good driveline shop. Now, that being said, whoever is telling you to find out that info, stay away from that shop. If they need their customers to get that type of info, they don't need to be doing the job. Just my opinion.

EDIT: i just read your original post, sorry i looked right past it. Are you 2 or 4 wheel? If you are 2 wheel i can hook you up with one fairly cheap plus shipping.

 

And Justin, being in Bama, are you anywhere near "bamatoy" or whatever his screen name is? He should be able to swap those for you easy peasy.

 

Got it all fixed. Retuned, balanced and shined up by the shop that was asking the questions. Turns out the reason he was asking the questions was because he didn't have a dye for the metric sized u joints and didn't want me to waste my time driving down to the shop to find out he couldn't do it. He was just asking to make sure I had, as he called it "american" ujoints. When we found that out he did it in no time and for under a hundred fifty otd. All in all I'm very pleased.

 

I must be missing something. What kind of "dye" is he talking about?

 

Die, not dye. i'm guessing to hold the flanges square and true on the balancer.

 

Must be them there fancy things. I usually use an old socket and a hammer to swap ujoints. Works like a charm with the right method. But then again they were doing more than just joints. Just glad its taken care of for him.

 

My bad, I didn't know how to properly spell it. And yeah it is to hold the flange part of the shaft to his lathe looking machine while he welds the new tube in and balances it. That way it stays properly indexed and perfectly square during the welding/balancing part.