OEM Gear Ratio Chart

My truck was e locker swapped by a previous owner and i need to know how to tell what gears are in it without opening it up.
As i wont open it up until i have a new gear set and bearings as it blew up on me when i was teaching my brother to drive stick.
Any help is appreciated in this struggle of mine. I wont scrap the truck as it has 187,xxx miles and runs good on 5 and we have a need for it still.

 

Normally I'd recommend rotating a wheel and counting the drive shaft revolutions. By 'blew up' do you mean there's no longer a mechanical connection within the differential between the drive shaft and axle shafts? I'd like to think the previous owner did his/her research and matched the front and rear ratios (assuming 4wd), but that may not be the case.

 

idk owner was retarded and did little to no matinence on it so i dont know if they are matched
the truck will not drive on the rear axle only on the front.

 

and yes i am still driving it but i took the rear drive shaft out of it

 

i use it for weekend scrap runs all over the place and load it up with so much junk that the locals call it the tweaker-mobile.

 

They were able to swap an axle but didn't perform routine maintenance? That is fascinating. Unfortunately it sounds like your only option is removing the diff cover and start counting teeth on the ring and pinion gears (the tooth counts may be stamped on the gears somewhere I've never actually checked). Number of ring teeth / number of pinion teeth = ratio. Unless someone else on here as any better ideas...

 

ok did a redneck inspection on the truck ( Testing movement of suspension components with a crowbar ) and the front axle shafts are also loose with a 1/2 inch of slop in them too. yay.....l

 

is there a way to extract the metal catalyst from the manifolds to sell for scrap money as i am taking out the downstream one as it was plugged and i wonder if the manifold ones are plugged too.

edit sorry this made no sense, i dont want to take them off or replace them with headers. i was wondering if i could get the platinum out with them still in the truck.
i am trying to get some money saved up to buy some wheels to replace the split rims on my tow truck

 

Am I looking at B03A?

 

yep

 

notice early correction to the OP by @Ed Quinones that raises some question about the B07A code. 07 is supposed to be 4:30 but he had 4:56. I guess I got to try to do some accurate wheel turning and drive shaft rotation counting unless or in addition to any clarification anyone has. that was on a 1999 4 runner, i've got 2003 tacoma 4WD (so it sort of matters although I could run different tire sizes to make up ). Assuming the first letter code is right I could just go with an 8" housing and use the existing gear setup although I have a complete 4.56 available. I think that is the same axle gen. my code is the same as the correction B07A

OK, did the spin the tire and the drive shaft turned about 2 and 1/6 turns for a single turn of the wheel. I'm not sure why that single spin gives half the ratio but I have read that in other posts, so that seems to correspond to 4:30s.

ironically that might mean, if this 4:56 is an 8" that I buy the axle and then put in my gears. is there an external measurement between studs or of some part of the housing that indicates the 8" size. I assume the housings are different?

lastly, this is my first foray into this kind of axle housing problems and this bend has me wondering if I should alter my setup at all to avoid bending a replacement. maybe I shouldn't be gunshy and just put this down to bad luck but how robust are these axle housings. Is this kind of bend uncommon? I note in my thread on yotatech on throwing the axle bearing someone who bought a housing found it was bent.

This truck does not appear to have been off roaded significantly and relatively recently had the factory frame replacement. But it does have big tires 265/75-16s relative to my 1986 4WD pickups that I used to plow* with that have 235/75 15s and the larger the tire the more leverage it exerts on the housing so possibly a tire could have struck or been struck in such a way as to bend the axle without a lot of apparent body damage evidence And this could have lead to toe angular loading on the bearing that caused it to walk out of the housing (along with the wheel, drum and axle). Or, maybe, the bearing decomposed by other unknown forces and when the axle walked out it leveraged on the housing (that is the direction of the bend, outward at front, inward at rear of tire). I didn't see it in tire wear which points to something that happened during the bearing decomposition but maybe I hadn't driven it far enough. It went down the road steady at 75 but I don't really know what I would have felt from rear toe out. IT is a small amount, maybe 3/32 at the housing but by the time you get to the outside of 265/75 16s we're talking about 7/8 of an inch.

Maybe this is not a common problem and I should just look for a standard axle housing, or maybe after replacing axle housing I should put smaller wheels on to avoid bending the replacement axle housing (looks like the center hole, stud spacing are the same for my older pickups with 15" wheels and this tacoma). I would take this up and down the highway when it's not plowing season but I don't need to go 75 so smaller wheels wouldn't kill me. Or, is there some kind of heavier aftermarket replacement housing (maybe have to get new gear set as well if it doesn't mount the OEM stuff). With the frame replacement, I am looking for some years out of this truck so I don't mind putting some money into it. Of course I still have to watch the front axle which still has me thinking smaller tires.

thanks for any thoughts you might have.

brian

 

PS Don't currently have differential lock. But most of the 4:30 tacoma axles I find out there do have differential lock and i'm having an easier time locating these complete units than just the housing.

Can't see why going to differential lock style is a bad idea, although that teases the idea of looking at aftermarket elocker types as well. Don't know if these are just gear replacements that fit the housing or if I would get a new axle housing with that upgrade?