So you push your 1st gen offroad - what cracks next?

That's almost identical to what I did. I'm not super familiar with what is on the market for the t brace but it just needs to be something at a 90 angle and not too wide. I riveted the top to keep it almost flush.

Your shitbox is shittier than mine! I should probably go check my mount before making that claim!

 

rear of my bed is splitting again by the tail lights...even with bed stiffeners. *sigh*

 

my bed is held together with 2" square tubing bolted underneath ahaha.

 

Update on this since it’s my problem now. Rear side has a small crack as well in last pic

 

Good luck man. I can't wait to see how you manage to get that back together.

 

Looks like the passenger side. What is/was your coilover setup?

This is fixable. It's a lot of effort though.

 

It is @theesotericone 4 runner that I bought and am in the process of repairing.
I’ll drop a bunch of pics when I am on the computer but the driver side has a crack forming on the side as well and the top of the stock bucket is cracked in half at the same spot but the top reinforcement plate is not cracked. I am welding up all cracks and welding a 5/16 steel rod in the lip around the outside and maybe plating the sides or I am tempted to running a strap over top of the whole thing.

Started tearing it apart yesterday and I’m currently deciding on how to plate it. both sides have all cracks welded up and the rod welded in place.

 

Nice work!

Be curious how that holds up for you vs replacing the whole bucket.

 

Yep time will tell. Part looked like 500$ and it says discontinued now so it would probably be harder to track down.

Really I’m just too impatient to order a part and I don’t want to weld up that back side it seems like a huge pain.

 

So what kind of finesse wheeling causes these coil buckets to tear apart like that? I mean maybe slow down a bit on the desert racing?

 

Crawling.

 

Awesome. Glad to see that rig get the attention it deserves. Strap it.

Use.

Seriously, there has been a lot written about the causes, much of it in this thread. IIRC, this rig had those "short" Kings on it when this happened.

 

currently thinking run a strap over it and I have some room where I can plate it on the inside so I’ll see what I can do there as well

 

As Mike @Digiratus said, it's due to use. The key is that it's due to use where the shock unloads quickly, causing a inversion of force on the top of the coil bucket. Essentially, the bucket transitions from pushing down on the coilover to pulling it (and the rest of the unsprung weight - wheel, tire, etc) up.

Limit straps are really the only way to prevent this. You can read some of the details and see a diagram of the forces, here: Protecting the Front Shock Towers with Limit Straps

I've always thought of crawling as being less hard on the shock towers, since you aren't (generally) moving quickly over terrain, and so you don't have a "fast unloading" or "inversion" of the forces on the towers like you might on a trail with whoops or medium size rocks, etc that you're traversing at speed. Obviously with crawling, I suppose you could be dropping off of large boulders quickly or something, and that would do it too. All the trucks I've seen it on aren't crawlers though (admittedly, I hang out with non-crawlers, generally).

 

I agree it happens more often to the go fast guys. It can and does happen from crawling. I'm not a go fast guy but that rig has a lot of hard crawling miles on it.

 

I’d like to add to @turbodb ‘s fine writeup to mention that total vehicle weight and unsprung weight will contribute to the fatigue failure. This sticker on our door frames:

shows GVWR of 5100 lbs and tire size 225 75 R15, which equates to a tire weight of around 31 lbs. With our propensity to add weight and to increase tire size some vehicles’ total weight approach 6000 lbs with 35 inch tire weights approaching 65 lbs. From my mechanical engineering classes I recall steel can take an infinite amount of load cycles below a load limit. Above that limit steel will fail. I suspect the vehicles experiencing coil bucket failure are exceeding the fatigue load limit due to the dynamic forces @turbodb describes which increase with increased weight.

 

For sure. Most of us that push hard have failures you don't see on stock rigs. Added weight and the added stresses of what we do to our rigs contributes to all sorts of broken parts that Toyota never engineered for. So we ended up engineering our own solutions to stop them from occurring. You gotta pay to play.

 

@Squeaky Penguin you were running straps and still had cracks starting, correct?

 

@theesotericone ran straps on and off as well I believe between the trail gear straps breaking.

I plan to order kartek to go back it unless someone else has another recommendation.

I’ll set it on the ground tomorrow to flex it out but should be all done for now. Ran straps over the top and tapered the ends so I could get as much weld on the front as possible because the back was hard to get a good angle for a decent weld. They are also plug welded from the inside and welded on the top from the inside.
Passenger

Driver

Inside

 

Evidently my steering rack doesn't want to be attached.







And just for fun, here's one from inside the door.