02 Tacoma doublecab 3-Link on FJ80 axles

Hell yeah, like where this going. I was about ready to run 80s under my taco until I realized the just how much $$ I was gonna be spending.

Where in socal are you located?

 

just 15 min. east of you, San Gabriel valley. I went to high school in La Canada, had alot of friends that lived in La Crescenta, sunland and tujunga.

To be brutally honest I probably wouldn't be running 80's either but I got both axles for less than 700$. Got my rear 9.5 third with an Arb and 4.88's of a guy on pirate that he had in a diamond axle in the front of his buggy. He said he was running hubs and it only had about 50 miles on it so I jumped all over it, its clean as hell. It cost me 950$ I think which is cheaper than the Arb itself. To be honest I'm not even going to add it all up, I'm building the truck that I've always wanted, Ive been patient and nibbled away at the parts gathering the last 5 years but now I just cant take it anymore and need to get this thing done, nature is calling hardcore.

(dream truck is a 79 series crew cab v8 turbo-diesel with a tray but ill have to wait another 20 years for the 25yr import law, and to save the money for one) like ronny dahl's truck. hope he doesn't get pissed i used his pic

 

Ordered the parts needed to put together the high pinion for the front axle. I already had the

$1,091 Arb RD129 Air Locking Differential

Arb RD129 for the front but that was it. I bought it off a guy on pirate that said the pinion had got into it, yotamasters said it was good to go. Arb's have a fair amount of runout on the gear mounting face, the arb in my moms XJ was bad enough that we took it to a machine shop and them true the face, Ill have the same thing done to this one since its been "bitten". The front axle I bought from billy at hellfire fabworks (now the knuckle design is owned by ruffstuff) was missing shafts birf's and the third but had everything else, so now I'm just filling in the blanks .
parts ordered:
nitro 4.88's
nitro 29 spline pinion fit kit
nitro master install kit
nitro empty hi-pinion housing w/ the adjusters (not sure if it came with an oil slinger or not, we'll find out)

still need:
possibly an oil slinger
solid pinion spacer
marlin heavy duty eco pinion seal
arb bulkhead kit

My Moms XJ haha, funny watching a 61 yr old trying to climb into it. Me and her BF swapped in a ford 8.8 with disc brakes, and he built a custom long arm kit from scratch for the front

 

Haha I feel you man. I stopped keeping count of what everything cost me after I bought the housing lol

 

Since your local man i might have to bounce some ideas off of you if thats cool with you, would love to check out your truck. Digging the swamp lake pics too, been dying to do the dusy and get back to coyote/red lake again

 

well we have a very serious problem, I was going over all my 4WU brackets and joints today and half of them don't fit. I have no doubt that the heat from the welding caused the issue.
Big Disclaimer: I have not talked to brian yet and figured out a solution so this is no way a dig on him, the brackets themselves are awesome and the welds look like a robot made them however "Houston we have a problem". Only half of the brackets work. I figured it would be easier just to email him a link to the build so he could see the problem rather than going back and forth. Only solution I've come up with so far is making a spreader with a piece of all thread, 2 fender washers and nuts, tightening them opposite and trying to spread the bracket and then heating it with a torch (which I don't have and don't really want to do). I paid enough that i expect this stuff to fit, nor do I want to send the stuff back and have to wait another 3-4 weeks. All 5 joints measure out to 66.6mm, the uni-balls are precision manufactured so i trust that tolerance.

Joints that fit:
Both frame side and axle panhard heims fit, axle side is really snug


driver side axle bracket fits

Brackets that don't fit:
frame side bracket for lower links - Both don't fit


passenger side lower link mount

Drivers side upper link mount, the top hole works but the bottom one doesn't which isn't a huge deal because I want to use the top if clearance allows for more link seperation

 

66.6! Nothing good about that

 

Sounds good man, just let me know! My buddy with the black truck has the whole 4wu kit and I helped him a bit with setting it up.

 

Still looking for a way to purge the front housing of the gear oil/bearing grease soup that is in there. Thought about checking with a plating company to see what they had to say, pretty sure they don't want to do it because you need to keep the vats free of contaminants. Maybe a powdercoater?

 

This is gonna be a cool build!

I can appreciate your courage with those axles I also echo what others mentioned above. Building f80 axles can be more involved (meaning, expensive lol) than what it seems at first. Once upon a time I considered those axles before I started my SAS. But to build them the way I wanted it would have cost too much. So I went a different route all together. But when you build them right they are awesome axles. It's really the best of both worlds between weight and strength.

It seems like the brackets that don't work just need to a tiny more room. The joints with the misalignment spacers are 66.6mm and the brackets that don't work are 66.0-66.1. Hope you can find an easy solution!

 

I'm sure you could make a 2x4 wedge with flat stock on each side that starts at 66 and then grows to 66.6-66.7.

When I made my upper link mount the welding really closed it up and That was my solution

 

Or a hydraulic spreader if you wanna get fancy

 

Garden hose?

 

I think most people are just intimidated by them. Its basically a minitruck axle on a larger scale (birfs,knuckles and balls). The wheel bearings are the same. Hubs/spindles are basically the same. Most expensive part of the front axle build was the hellfire knuckles, but I bought those 3 yrs ago. Locking hubs off a mini-truck work with the longer style birfs.
The pass side axle bracket isn't going to be a problem ill just do the all thread trick when i weld it on and hopefully it will give me enough clearance to get the joint in. The frame side lower link brackets are still the enigma.

 

Thats interesting. All the brackets are welded together with a joint in them bolted down hand tight and .015" shim in place so that doesnt happen. The last time this happened was the 2nd kit I ever produced.

Take a peice of all thread cut to fit between the tabs and put a nut on either side of the thread. slip is in and twist each nut in opposite directions to spread the two pieces about.

 

You may also try to slip the joint in from the top as apposed to straight in from the front.

 

There's some good customer service right there ^

 

I guess oil comes from the ground right, i was thinking a little too environmentally. Ill borrow my buddy's preasure washer. Its soaking in simple green right now

 

Yes you were. Get the majority out and simple green or dawn the rest out if you want it really clean