Building the "BEAST"

FJs are ok, But I would say the tacoma takes the cake and eats it too.

 

I myself would have to agree. I've wheeled both in stock form and I have to say the FJ wheels really well, but when you factor in the wheel base on both and the lack of sight in the FJ, I'd have to give my nod the the Taco.

 

I personally don't like the look of the new FJ, plus with the pickup you can bring the family and the dog!

 

Wyatt, just curious....... what front axle would you use for a SAS with only a target tire size of 35-37's, and on a budget? Also, what would you estimate the cost for the whole swap too?
I think that rather than installing a 6" drop bracket lift, a SAS may be the way to go for me in the future but i would want it to maintain some street manners so it could still be a DD.

 

Hi Wyatt, glad to you over here posting your build of "Big Sexy". When I joined over here I posted a couple of pics of your rig when we were out in Ouray, CO last July. It truly is a Beast. Anyways, I'm glad to see all the documentation of the build. I consider Jason to be one of the Top Fabricators in the country.





Glad to see you over here.

Mike

 

Hey Eric. We always get questions like that and I always say depends on what your budget is. But if your never going any larger than 37's a strong Dana 44 would be my choice. Built right, they can withstand alot of abuse.
However, The Dana 44 is a little narrow for these trucks, so my next thought would be a Dana 60. If you wheel right you'll never break that.

Then cost is another can of worms all together. That depends on what your using as your suspension. Coilovers are more expensive than leaf springs but they are more effective because of the wide range of settings you can use and the ride is better. Now I know there are people who have leaf sprung swaps that will tell you that their truck rides better now than stock but I find that impossible to believe since I've driven both. Heck, my truck dosen't drive any where near how it drove when it was stock, however, it does drive nice for it's size and better than a leaf sprung truck.
Anyway, if you factor in the axle and it's build, the springs (leaf) and shocks, steering stuff, frame reinforcment, your rear springs and shocks since it now needs to match your front and front driveshaft plus labor if you do nothing, you can expect to pay anywhere from $7,000 to $15,000 easy. There are alot of people who say they did their swap for $1500 or $3,000. Id run for the hills if I were on the same highway as them. You want to be safe and be able to drive your truck daily if need be. I can and have driven my truck daily for weeks at a time when my daily driver was in the shop. Thats 57 miles one way to my office and 57 miles back.

I talked to Dan the other day, the owner of this truck and he spent $18,000 over three years to build this truck and he did alot of the work himself along with me on weekends.



Dana 44 front and stock Toy axle in the rear, 14" colovers with three link in the front and Deaver 62" springs in the rear. He built this truck right. He drves his truck around Southern California every weekend with not one issue at all, and when it comes time to wheel, he gets in and drives to the trail, wheels with me and my Beast and then drives home. I love his truck..

My advice is to look around on both TTORA and Pirate boards. Don't ask any questions over there. Come to me with your questions and I'll get the answers for you so you don't get flamed. People on those boards can be a bit painful. Thats what Dan does. He goes to different boards and never posts but comes away with a wealth of knowledge.
Then gaher all your parts that you can and when you have them all, save another $2,500 for stuff you forgot and you should be ready. Done right, it's not cheap to do, but it is well worth it.

Hope that helps and don't be afraid to ask anything, however, no I don't want to trade

 

Hey Mike, thanks alot I like it over here on this board and I'm glad to see some of our FJ friends here as well. Yeah, Jason is one of the best. His vision and ideas for this is out of this world. These are all his handy work.






There are many others but these are the most well known. He is a fabricating mad man.

 

Again I will say "I like it", I wish there was a place around here I could just drop the truck off and say "do it"
To have the talent and the eye sight for such projects is truely impressive.
All the way around, a thumbs up in my book.

 

You wouldn't consider a Toyota front axle strong enough? What about 35" tires as the max? I read in one of my dads 4x4 mags the other day that chrysler was selling built D44 with lockers and 4.56 gears for Jeep guys for really cheap. $1400 I think disk to disk. I don't know if that deal is still on though?

 

OK. When you build one of these super flexy trucks, they require a driveshaft that can handle the massive angles put upon them. The stock shafts won't work even if you lengthen them so what do you do? You can call up Jesse at Highangle Driveline or JE Reel driveline and have them build one for you. They both do excellent work. Or you can build your own. I did both.
Some of the information and pictures you'll see here are from an article I found in 4x4 wire. http://www.4x4wire.com/index.php?op...ncreased-angle&catid=68:toyota-tech&Itemid=53
It showed me exactly what I needed to do to build my own flexy driveshaft.
The other reason for going with this set up is because the joints in the Toyota driveshafts are some of the strongest around and the flange setup makes it just that much stronger with great range than say a Dana 60 1350 joint and yoke.
Jesse at Highangle driveline supplied me with a set of Flanges that bolt up to my Dana 60's but will also bolt up to my new Highangle Toyota driveshafts.
Also, when you lift one of these newer Taco's, many have found that you get vibration from the rear shaft. Solution... a one peice driveshaft. Here are the two driveshafts that Highangle made for me and Marlin Crawler modified. (they were too short when they got them from highangle).


So, what do you need to build one of these yourself? We found that the '84 '85 Toyota ifs 4runner or ifs trucks front drive shaft was perfect for this build. They are cheap from the junk yard and they use the stronger driveline bolts. the only problem with these is the cv or double cardan joint will only supply about 22 degrees of angle in it's stock form. Solution.... clearence the joint.
Following is how we clearenced the cv by using the information found in the 4x4 wire article.

We found a driveshaft from an '85 ifs 4runner cut off the cv and went to town with our new found information.


Next are the pictures from the article in 4x4 wire. http://www.4x4wire.com/index.php?op...ncreased-angle&catid=68:toyota-tech&Itemid=53

First you need to pound out the caps.

Then you need to remove the needle bearings.

Next, get some small washers to use as spacers so you can get the other cap off.

Pound off the other cap.

Remove the cap and keep your washers. Your going to need them for the other end of the joint.

Now your flange protion is apart. It's hard to see in all the grease, but there is a small sprng in there and if you loose it you'll be at the junk yard looking for another driveshaft. Keep it safe.

Pound out the remaining cap.

Repeat the process on the other end of the joint. remembe, this is a DOUBLE cardan joint.

Now your joint is apart.

 

This is what your cv looks like when it's all apart.

Removing the cross from the yoke. These crosses or ujoints, have little crings or clips that you have to take off first before you can remove the cap. They are on the inside of the joint. Ijust used a screw driver and a hammer to get them out. I would suggest using toyota joint if you can find them when you put these together if the ones you took out are worn or no good. Problem is, they are hard to find. Toyota does not sell them seperatly and when you go to find them at a parts store, they will have different ones in the same box. I have gotten four of the same boxes from napa and inside the boxes were four different ujoints with the same part number.

Now it's time to get rid of the dust shield. The dust shield is just there to keep dust out when it flexes. Just grease it up often and you shouldn't have any problems. Then you need to grind down the edges some to gain the extra clearence you will need.

In these two pictures, you can see how much more clearence this gives you.

In these two pictures, you can see where we grinded to get our clearence.

Now since we have more clearence, you'll have to give the inner zerk fitting more clearence.

Here you can see why you needed to grind extra room in the "H" for your zerk fitting. It's the center zerk fitting.

Now put it all back together and you have a hi-angle cv. Takes about two hours and saves you about $300.00.

Here you can see the difference between a stock cv on the left and a clearenced cv on the right. It now has about 35 degrees of movement as opposed to about 22 degrees on the stock cv.


Then go find some .095 or .120 wall tubing, weld it up, take it to your favorite drive line shop and have it balanced and your good to go.

 

Here are some of the other magazine articles it was in. There are more but I got tired of scanning.




Got the front cover.


Got in back to back months in 4 Wheel drive and sport utility magazine.



This was the first full article of the truck so I'll show you the entire article since I don't think this Magazine is still out.








Then Marlin Crawler used my truck for it's new "Taco Box" in it's advertisement.

 

I'll continue to Update the thread as they come. I have new axle's coming and a tube cage in the interior, plus the install of my new Taco Box with it's 4.7 gears.

Stay tuned.

 

^ No doubt this is by far my favorite thread!!

 

Wyatt, sorry about your january discount thread being closed over on TN cuz you're not a vendor. The guys at TN are getting way too unreasonable and are making it a very unpleasant place to be. I hope you can still offer that sale here cuz i love your work! PS i feel embarrassed to even be associated with TN right now

 

Could this method be used on IFS CVs up front to increase travel from IFS?

 

I don't think it can. The CV axles on the front use an entirely different style of joint. I think if you tried to "clearance" a CV it would probably just separate entirely or become very weak aside from the fact that even without more extreme angles the boots already tear on them. I'd like to be proven wrong though...
This is what a CV joint looks like without the boot on it and cleaned of grease: