The Does Everything, but Sucks at Everything Build

Awww hell, someone dredged up this shit show...

To answer your question:

Its really straight forward, as long as you've got a welder to attach your brake & ABS lines back to the housing its pretty easy. I trashed my old housing, I used one of the axle tubes for a press to disassemble my old axles and cut off all the brake & abs attachments and welded them on the new axle housing.

If you want the easiest possible install make sure to get a 1330 yoke. If you get a 1350 yoke you will have to get an adapter ujoint or change the yoke on your drive shaft and get a 1350 ujoint.

I didn't need to change the length of my drive shaft, it appears that shifting the pinion up vertically sets the drive shaft/ pinion angles back closer to stock (like if there wasn't any lift in the rear). IIRC Jason had to have his lengthened due to insufficient spline contact with the suspension drooped out.

If you are thinking about doing a disk brake conversion go ahead and do it at the same time and don't bother disassembling your old axles&housing, its a pain in the ass & unless you have access to a 25+ ton press you *might* not be able to disassemble your old axles.

EXPECT SOMETHING OUT OF YOUR CONTROL TO GO WRONG. Seriously, everyone that I've heard got one of these had some kind of an issue. My first set of axles had bent hubs, jason's got fucked up while shipping, I heard jon burt had an issue with his, also IIRC I read a write up for an FJ install where Currie fucked up an axle length by a tiny bit but it caused the gearing/bearings (I forget which) to bind causing an axle to be unable to spin, and it took him a while to figure out what the hell was going on, Currie owned up to it and sent him a new axle......but yeah...Don't plan any major trips around the completion of the axle install. Took me several weeks to get Currie to un-fuck my bent axles.

Don't let the install be a factor in your decision, either housing has basically the same install.

I've had it in for around 10 months now and had it on a couple trips in California, 3 to Utah, 2 to Colorado, here are some long term thoughts/Additional information/Lessons..................

Minor annoyances:
Changing the oil is a bit of a PITA. Since the cover is at a 45degree angle the oil pools in the depression and you have to manually scoop it out from underneath the ring gear to get the rest out. Also as its draining out it fills up the bottom couple of bolt holes and you have to blow those out with air before bolting everything back up (if you want to be thorough and keep things clean). For some goofy reason Currie used a paper gasket AND gasket maker when they put mine together. My first gear oil change I just copied what they did and it seemed to seal fine. A couple months ago I pulled the cover off to find where a locker air leak was coming from and reused the gasket without any gasket maker and it was leaking like a motherfucker. Lost .5qt over 500miles and ended up adding another .5qt afterwards on the way up to Colorado. When I got up there I pulled out the shitty gasket that Currie provided and resealed it with permatex instant gasket and it was fine. I replaced it a couple weeks ago with a Lube Locket gasket that seems to be working really well. In retrospect I wish I had just gotten a lube locker gasket on my first gear oil change. The gross loss of gear oil led to the following thought.......Due to the high pinion design it caused a bit of a pucker factor losing that much oil, the pinion bearings seem to be fine, but I wonder how much oil could be lost before the outer pinion bearing isn't receiving enough and fails on the interstate due to the heat from high RPMs.

The high pinion is nice and helps protect the drive shaft but doesn't mean you can be completely reckless while crawling. I managed to Dusy-Ershim without touching the driveshaft at all. The other 2nd gen tacoma in my group ended up denting his twice. However on my last crawling trail, I took a stupid line and ended up denting the drive shaft.

The small ubolts for the yokes are a bitch to remove after they have been in there for a while, they get rusted up in the holes and don't want to come out. When you order a set, be sure to get 2, you'll likely need them at some point if you fuck up your original set when you try to remove them.

They used button head bolts for the mounting bolts for the skid that runs under the diff. Some of the heads are smashed over from rocks and I can't insert an allen into the hole and they are too tight in there to grab and spin out with channel locks. It wouldn't be an issue, except when changing the oil the oil runs down and gets trapped between the skid and the housing and can make a mess when you can't get it out. Looks like I'm going to have to weld nuts on the bolts to get them out, after I do I'll just replace them with grade 8 normal hex head bolts.

Regrets/mistakes during the order:
I should have gotten a 60VXR or just got a 70. I don't think the clearance difference between the 60 and the 70 is that much. The 60 has a 3" tube OD. The 60VXR and the 70 has a 3.5" tube OD. When I ordered my axle I didn't know they could adapt the 3.5" OD tubes to the toyota bearing flanges. I would also ask if they can adapt one of their trusses to work with the leaf spring perches to make the housing bulletproof.

I assumed when I ordered my axle that Currie knew how wide toyota OEM axles are.......They do not, and after reading that @jberry813 argued with them about it, I started wondering if they fucked mine up and turned out my axle was 1/2"-ish wider than I wanted it to be. When you order make damn sure they make it the exact length you want it, because they are probably going to fuck it up if you don't.

Future concerns:
This may or may not affect you but it is worth considering if you plan on larger tires at some point.

Next set of tires I get will be 37s. I intend on keeping my 4.56 gears until something breaks and then get a higher(or lower or whatever...) set of gears. The issue comes in with the fact that gear ratios are limited for 2nd gen diffs beyond 4.88 with 5.29 being the only option. Dana's don't come in that though and only come in 5.13 and 5.38. So I get to make a choice of shelling out cash for a small bump that might not even be worth it(4.88s) or living with a ratio mismatch (5.29front/5.38rear). The difference between 5.29 and 5.38 is only 1.7% and internet "wisdom" says that its acceptable to run it. That's almost the difference if you ran a set of worn/bald tires on the rear and a set of brand new tires in the front. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the people running gear mismatches are doing mostly just rock crawling or running mud trucks, but I haven't heard of anyone hauling ass through 1500+ miles of dirt a year with some rock crawling here and there. Definitely concerned if I end up going with the mismatch that I'm going to cause long term damage to the transfer case.

Something most people don't realize:
The base model 60 is cheaper than most people think. $4070 out the door(air locker, gears, gear set up, california tax included). Picked up local though.

 

Right on, thanks for putting that all down... great points brought up and answered many questions.

 

"should have got a ford 9" - @AssBurns

 

How'd the rig holding up? This has been one of my favorite builds on here!

 

Its doing OK, I work on it so much and go out often I ran out of give-a-crap to keep this build thread up to date, I just put a couple photos on Instagram usually. I haven't taken it out much since I broke my wrist in november, been working on it here and there for the last month or so, hopefully it will be rolling again in a week or so and go on a trip.

 

Well I hope your wrist heals up!

Love the attention to detail on all the mods! looking forward to seeing the build on here or insta! What's your instaname?

 

Instagram is "atettenhorst"

 

just followed! thanks man!

 

sub

subbing just do to your very thorough explanations of adjusting tubular heim UCAs and the physics of alignments in the fitting 35s thread. Those posts were very informative to me, since I am starting to prepare to move up to 35s. That's how I found this build anyways.

I'll have to read through this build soon and glean other knowledge.

Yep, I dreged it up.

 

Yeah this hasn't been maintained in years. I post photos on Instagram and record a story every once in a while. Last photo I posted:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B2LSGcxAWm5/?igshid=i3ri9d6rp8k4

 

I hope you don't mind:







Such a sick build my friend. true wheeling rig GOALS!

 

hey @tetten, your rear bumper looks generic AF. You could have at last capped the ends. but the tire carrier turned out good. I wanna see how you fit your camping shit in the truck next week.

 

Rear bumper isn't done, it's just done enough to offroad with. don't need camping stuff when you just sleep in the cab.

 

TC +2 race

 

I used these guys when I rebuilt my UCAs. They have snap rings too. So far no issues. I plan on using them when it comes time to rebuild my LCAs

https://www.nexgenoffroad.com/product-p/nexgu16.htm