Supercharged 2002 3 link

I would just get a car to DD and keep the taxo street legal-ish to drive on nice days and to the trail. I trailerd a jeep prior to my taco and it got old pretty quick:
1) you have to dd a brodozer truck which is a pain
2) the damn trailer seemed to need at least a days worth of wrenching whenever you needed it, and toasted at least one tire per trip (i had a brand new trailer, before i get the i had used crap comments lol)
3) evreyone and their mother wants to borrow it all the time, see #2.
4) you need to store it somewhere
5) you wont do any maintenance to the taco so its trail reliability will go down the toilet
6) you will become evreyones personal mover with a full size truck and a trailer. Im an asshole to evreyone includeing my family and i still had to help with at least 2 moves a year.

The only way i would trailer again is if i had a buggy. Spend the money on a tow rig and trailer and over build the drivetrain and get a ready welder for the trail. Part of the fun of wheeling is the drive home wondering whats going to break!

 

You need different friends and family

#4 from the list above is a concern for sure. Had a friend that bought a new trailer only to realize when he got home with it that he had no place to put it LOL

I agree about the buggy thing. If I am going to put something on a trailer it better be a real trail-only rig

 

My goddam mother in law got pissed at me 2 weeks ago (zero fucks given btw) when she asked me if i could move 3 rooms of old carpet to the dump with the taco, that was met with a hell no!!

If i had a tow rig and trailer i would be laid up with a back injury after moving 3 rooms of carpet 2 weeks ago, food for thought op!

 

Enjoyed reading through your build, great truck.
Hoping you could help steer me in my build. I am itching to cut out my ifs lift and get a 3 link setup and am looking at the TG 3 link kit c because with the right directions I am confident I could build something to fly to the moon in but get nervous with some of the bracket only kits such as 4wu. I'm also nervous about sourcing out the parts from both my own lack of technical knowledge and just like peace of mind knowing parts are new when I drive the 400 miles to Moab.
1.) How do you like the 8" Rock assault axle? I don't see myself going larger than 37's ever. (Famous last quote right?)
Just seems people end up replacing them with a diamond or something of the sort but your talk of 40's certainly inspires some confidence.
2.) Any opinion on TG's 3-link kit?

 

Well I'll put it this way, no matter what "kit" you get it's going to be a bit of a struggle getting everything to work. With the trail gear kit you still have to cut the length of your links to your desire and some other things such as putting the steering box far enough forward to get your wheels out of the firewall.

In all honesty if I could do it all over again, I would either go all out with 1 tons, or a more realistic but still pricey option would be diamond axles with LC 9.5 diffs. I would get the 4wu kit and do what I had to do to make it work.

But for the price of the rock assault I figured I couldn't go wrong, and for the time being it's great. I will eventually just go 1 tons but who knows when that will be. But for now I'm not trying to do the craziest trails out there (though I've been pushing my luck lately) and I'm just making sure I'm doing my normal stuff to make sure it works smoothly.

Again, any real advice I can give is to save as much as possible, look for deals out there on forums and craigslist, and RESEARCH!! I can't stress research enough. Read every Tacoma thread on pirate4x4, look at just about every solid axle swap build an any forum, look at the link calculators out there, look up the coilover bible, the 3 link/4 link bible. There's an endless amount of knowledge to absorb and before you cut into anything you should read just about all of it.

I found myself reading everything after I cut everything off assuming I knew what I was doing after reading a couple builds, I wouldn't wish it on anyone lol. End rant

 

That's what I'm talking about...family love lol! - espeically with the mother in law haha

Jimmynolife provided excellent advise in his reply.

 

Oh I'm well aware of the cost hence the appeal of the TG axle. Thanks for pointing out the threads to read, I've been scouring over builds and I don't mean to hijack your thread, it's just great to ask someone who actually is using an axle I am looking at rather than opening up a question to hundreds of opinions not based on personal experience.

 

Yeah I feel yeah, I read so much bad stuff about trail gear in general but I've seen so many buggys and trucks with rock assaults that I figured I'd just try it myself

 

I edited my reply above; especially since I do not have experience with the axle you are asking about.

What kept me away from the TG axle when I was axle shopping was the fact that I couldn't customize pinion angle, caster, axle width and differential offset, etc. Plus I knew I wanted full width axles anyway. Perhaps TG allow full customization on their axles now? Dunno...

It seems like it is a good axle overall.

 

That's definitely something I hate about the rock assault. The pinion angle and caster are what stock solid axles are, it's not great but it works. They don't offer full custom stuff, trail gear is all about supply and demand and just manufacturing as many of the same thing as possible for the most profit, and who can blame them right? I'm sure they have sold at least 1000 housings and it looks like they just keep going

 

If the the pinion angle/caster work even though they are what the stock solid axles are then it's all good. I imagine it might be a bit more of an issue for leaf sprung rigs.

Lotsa TG haters out there for sure. We are all quite aware of the story.

To each his own. The guy that started TG targeted a huge market; namely, the tons of people that had been frustrated and burned by vendors that never had shit in stock, or took forever to deliver parts they said they had, or that sold parts that were more expensive than what people wanted to afford. Too bad that his ethically questionable strategies earned him a ton of enemies in the industry.

But hey, competition brings innovation and that's the beauty of capitalism. If the TG axle works, then that's matters to the consumer that cannot afford a more expensive product like a Diamond axle.

I have a few TG parts in my build, but I don' tell anybody And the reason why I have them is because NOBODY else had them in stock when I needed them.

 

I did some work on my Tundra brakes this past weekend and found that the rotors were not centered between the calipers. Be sure to check that.
I like others just added a washer between the caliper and the mounting bracket.

Hopefully yours is set up correctly from the get go.

 

That's exactly what I had to do also lol. I had to do the same with my taco brakes lol

 

FyI @Ritchie @Jimmynolife just learned today that you arent supposed to use a BPE or the backing plate with the FROR kit. Going to pull off my bpe and see if that fixes the spaceing issue. http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/toyota-truck-4runner/2384953-fror-brake-mounting-kit.html

 

Yeah, I don't have it on mine, still had to run a little washer. No big deal

 

^^... same here.

 

Went up the Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park this weekend. No wheeling just a lot of freeway miles haha.

They were doing some kind of search and rescue simulation I'm assuming...? At lake Hume where the lady and I camped and spotted probably the coolest king cab Toyota search and rescue vehicle ever.



There was also a bunch of jeeps up there, one of which being on 40"s and portal axle dynatracs

 

The pic angle makes your truck look HUGE!

That's ar really cool toyota rescue vehicle.

 

I have checked that truck out and talked to the guy who owns it. It is fully built, fully unique, and super clean. I was drooling over it in the home depot parking lot and he was nice enough to talk to me about it and let me take a few pics.

 

Went on a trip up north to swamp lake, did a whole trip report on it here Swamp Lake Trip Report