Solid Axle Swap BS Thread

whomp whomp

 

That happened quick

 

Ouch! What brand?

 

Trail mart of course

 

Going to go Alcan to replace it?

 

That's the plan. They are super proud of their stuff though.

 

That's true! But mine have held up well so far!

 

are they the hd leaves? I ran a set for multiple years with a mix of daily driving and beating the piss out of them crawling with them going extremely negative and never had an issue.

 

They are

 

Out of the garage

 

Last stage, gears, driveline, check all nuts and bolts for torque, lube, tires, then drive it for the summer.
Should be ready for next weekend

 

For those of you running FJ80 rear axles, what did you end up doing for a parking brake? I picked up an 80 rear end to swap into my 2nd gen Tacoma and have started cleaning it up and ordering parts, but I'm not looking forward to making the parking brake work. I'm thinking of 3 potential options:
1. Run the pair of Tacoma cables to the existing single 80 cable and use the stock parking brake setup.
2. Eliminate the weird pivot and cross cable on the 80 axle and reroute the Tacoma cables to pull the existing parking brakes from the side.
3. Gut the drum hardware and weld on some mounts for secondary calipers such as Wilwood's MC4, then run the Tacoma's cables to them. Or if anyone knows of a direct replacement caliper that will do hydro brakes in addition to a mechanical parking brake, that would be even better.
4. I have also considered line locks which would be the easiest, but in doing some research it appears that they aren't the best for long term use. If anyone has had good experience using line locks for weeks at a time, let me know, otherwise these are at the bottom of my list.

Am I missing any other reasonable options? I like the simplicity of keeping the existing drums, but I know the 80 series' drums have a pretty poor reputation which would make dedicated calipers nice, they'd just be a bit more work and money. I also don't really love the idea of having that cable cross the rear of the axle either, it seems like it would be begging to get ripped off by something. I'd like to see what those of you running this axle on a Tacoma have done.

 

I just put electric line locks on my truck. One for each rear wheel. I can lock up inside tires for tight turns crawling, but I really just did it to have some piece of mind when I have to hop out of the truck at the boat ramp. I wouldn't trust them to hold pressure long term, but before you even get to that point, they default open if you lose power to them. So you'd have to go with manual linenlocks that use a handle to turn the valve. Not sure if those are better or the same for longer term holding as the electric ones.

 

I like where this is going