Solid Axle Swap BS Thread

Motor mounts are easy, i made mine out of 2x2 .120wall and havent broken them yet. I welded the stock flange on there and bolted them up. The real fun is building the steering box mount, what a pain in the ass, that took forever!!

I still think the 4.0 and 5.38s will be fine for you. My truck hauls ass with 5.29s and the 3.4, tons of torque and will accelerate through 80 loaded up with a weeks worth of camping and wheeling shit.

 

You may be right, it might be fine, but I'd rather go this direction. The name Basketcase has a double meaning. It's a piece of shit with a million and 2 problems.. That's obvious. But the other part is the finished product is supposed to be kinda nuts (at least by what my skill, budget and facilities allow). A meanass V8 backing everything up plays to that. Engine swaps aren't common in these trucks yet, I wanna do something uncommon. We'll see how that works in the end.

 

See I'm a round ass over titties guy...

 

You do you man, the build does seriously look like it's coming together, and hacking the frame off the front is probably the best thing you could've done at this point in time, but why not just go ahead and pull that motor out the way?
Like I said I like the Ls.. they have huge aftermarket, good power, loud noises.. But big engines that make big power also weigh a lot, so does plating the frame, and I don't know if you have any plans for a cage, but they aren't light either.. I get that the big engine will still do smokey burnouts and stuff but all this stuff is sprung weight, sprung weight isn't what you want IMHO. the way I'm seeing it is heavy truck with lots of power, not great gearing.. big axles still break under heavy rigs with big tires and 350hp, especially when you "hammer down and let'er eat"
Not trying to argue, simply stating my point of view, seen plenty of jeeps break 1 ton stuff with stereotypically under powered straight 6s... I've also seen Toyota 8in axles take a some very serious abuse in buggies.

 

I agree with the above. More knowledge is power in these things. I'd suggest you go over to pirate and look at the builds where people have tried to do similar things to what you wanna accomplish here and see what they ran into. Smokey burnouts and loud noises and being all yea bro merica is cool and all but there's the whole rest of the truck and physics involved sadly. Stoked to see it come together though.

 

This basket case project is confusing then

I think it is great you are thinking about the box and wanting to get a big ass V8 in a 2nd gen tacoma.

What I don't understand is why go through the trouble and expense of doing a link suspension, building a custom frame, etc; if crawling is not the primary goal. Well, I get it. A link suspension is so awesome regardless. But still.........

Yea, I'm from the southwest and am totally biased because of the type of terrain we have, so most people go with 3-links and lower gears cause you need tons of flex and control. Not sure I would have done a 3-link if I was living in a different part of the country. That's money you can put in a different part of the truck.

 

You still need control and flex wheeling down in the southeast. Where the v8s come into play is "hill killing" but fuck that in a tacoma.

 

I contemplated LS or 3.4 swapping my truck when I found out little metal bits are playing ping pong inside my 3RZ. I still kept coming back to the 3RZ though. It stops being a light, underpowered, rock crawler that doesn't normally break things when you go LS.

Not nearly as much fun in a straight line an my friends' LS powered FZJ80 or LS FJ45 but simple is good sometimes. They are always messing with something swap related it seems

 

Agreed!

She can bolt on rounder titties, she can't bolt on a rounder a$$.

 

Brians 80 seems to be relativley bug free, the 45 on the other hand... I watched him almost put it through his garage wall and into his living room because gumby.

You should have dropped a 3.4 in the tacoma then you could have driven it to the trail and not have to deal with trailer mx!!

 

The truck was 3-linked when I bought it, albeit horribly and dangerously, so it kinda has to stay that way.

I'm gonna tray to make this make WAY more sense. Here goes:

I like building shit. I get to wheel 6 times a year if I'm LUCKY. This year I got to go out ONCE for 4 days. My DD is perfectly capable of doing most the trails most of our local members do. Actually more so. It's locked front and rear with 4.88s, surplus BFG 37s and full armor. I bought the crawl box to go in it which I put in Basketcase (but will get switched back). So if wheeling was my only concern or aspect of this hobby I was really interested in I would have it covered.

BUT

I like building shit. I have to have some project or thing I'm working on. It used to be fast cars, then guns then started building holsters. But I've wanted to build a badass truck since I was a kid but I never had time, money, skill or anything else I needed to pull that off. Right now I do, in limited quantities. My primary motivation is not what trail I'll tackle, park I'll visit or hill I'll climb. The main goal is building the truck itself. All that shit, for me, is a bonus.

I know that's completely backwards for most people on here, but I don't really give a shit. It works out great for me. Like I said I get to wheel a few times a year, but with this project I've gotten to do what I enjoy (even the parts that suck) 2 days a week, every week. And that's badass. To have something I can drive up the side of a mountain when it's done, huge bonus, but still a bonus, not the main goal.

I'm learning a lot with this project. Someone smarter than me told me years ago "Boy, there's all kinds of education in this world and aint none of them free". I'm getting an education here and it damn sure hasn't been free in any capacity, but it's worth it. I've never welded before this or done any sort of fabrication work on my own. On this project I'm getting pretty competent in those areas.

So in the name of badassedness, and because I want to add engine swap to the list of shit I've done it'll get an LSx swap (Provided finances work out the way I plan). It may not be needed, it may not even be advantageous, but it'll be cool.

 

Someone asked why I dont go ahead and yank to motor. I WOULD FUCKING LOVE TO. BUT I'm working in a storage unit. They aren't really happy with the project as it is, especially being 2 doors down from their office. They have a rule against "mechanical work" do to insurance and I'm already pushing that boundary REALLY far. If I yank to motor, I'll be dragging it onto a flatbed as soon as they see it. Axle under it or not.

So i'm going to get it back to a rolling chassis, linked and pretty much ready to go. Tackle some other projects while I'm at it. Around March we will trailer it over to a barn on my girlfriends property and work will continue there. That barn is one step away from condemned, but it survived the hurricane earlier this year and it's still standing...mostly. Work with what you got though, at least it has power.

Here's the "shop" I'm working in. As you can see I couldn't maneuver a cherry picker in there even if I wanted to.



I't a "20x20" that aint 20x20. More like 19x18, with one outlet on a 10 amp breaker. That's what I have to work with. So far the welding has gone better than we expected. Although when I get the truck somewhere else there will be some rewelding and extra beads laid in critical areas.

The blue stand in the middle I built to day. It'll be used to hold up the ends of the frame while we get everything fit up and welded in place.

That picture will hopefully answer some "why don't you just" questions.

 

First time cutting with a torch. And my DD parked next to my motivation. Those are the 42s from Basketcase he just mounted today. You can't park next to that regularly and NOT want to build a SAS truck

 

I love it! Do it because you want to man. Heck yeah.

I once blew over 20 grand to build a 500+ HP El Camino. Why!?!? Because why not. That sucker ran a 10.89 quarter mile on its best day and I loved tearing up the streets of Houston everyday on my way to work.

I've already told the wife I'll be building a bad ass truck with our kids when they get older.

 

I used to hang out down on Rankin Road for the street races when I was going to UTI in Houston around 1999-2000. THat is very much a car town and the perfect place for a badass street truck

 

No kidding! I use to hang out at rankin my last two years of high school, 2001-2003. Fun times. Too many close calls with the cops. Lol

 

Yessir

 

Like i said, you do you man. I'm just here for the popcorn.

 

It still doesn't make sense to me

Building a rig without a specific purpose/goal is what burns most people along the way. If you enjoy building rigs randomly just for the heck of it; well...it's your time and money and you have the right to do it!

When it comes to these projects; everybody wants:

Fast - Strong - Cheap

As we all find out the hard way; one can almost NEVER have all three categories on the same rig. Best thing is two pick two categories and hope for the best.

Sometimes it seems from your posts that you want all three