Taco Sauce TX Pro Build: Custom LT, 37’s, Tundra Axle Swap, and now a Back Half?

Well, finally had time to work on a little bit of my own stuff and start polishing the turd. Axle housing was in a lot worse shape than expected (thick surface rust) but that’s why it was so cheap. Plenty of steel there to freshen up and throw under the Tacoma. Got old mounts cut off and most of the rust off it. Just need to grab some wire wheels to get inside some of the nooks and crannies. Shoot it with steel it, build the truss, drop the diff off for gears/ locker, drop the axles off for re-drill, put it all back together, flip shackles, set pinion angle, cycle suspension for shock mounts, run brake lines and wiring and she's done. Hoping to make it for the cinder hills drag races on May 15

 

She's looking good! Yeah, mine was in pretty rough shape as well. Figured if I was going to replace everything anyways, it didn't matter if every component was shot haha.

I had thought of doing something like this for the truss. I know you can be somewhat methodical to minimize distortion while welding, but still concerns me without an alignment rod.

 

That’s the exact truss I was looking at for design motivation. I’m thinking I can get some tabs welded to the front of the housing and bolt them to my welding table. Wouldn’t be full length of the axle but I could bolt down across about 52” of the axle if I run it diagonal across my table. Other than that just turn the heat down a little and take my time with little stitch welds.

Also trying to figure out how to ditch the u-bolts and just use grade 8 hardware and bolt it up through the truss or something.

 

Yeah that should probably work out fine.

I'm sure you'll figure it out. Should be a really clean setup said and done.

 

Long day and lots of welding today. Got the truss 95% complete and welded. Just need to get the u-bolts in there during mock up so I can box in around them on those outer edges.



Bottom bash guard and drain plug beef up



And got all the holes welded in for the axles to go to the machinist for facing up, redrill, and getting the hub down to the correct bore.

 

Hey Ryan, what was the original bolt pattern?

Gonna check something real quick. And you gonna just hit the backside with a flap or somethin?

EDIT. im dumb

 

Original bolt pattern is 5x5.5 but they had 10 holes drilled in em for some reason. And yeah I’ll hit the back side with the flap disk and leave the front for you to touch up professionally.

 

I mean.. feel free to knock down anything real big on that front side.. saves tooling for sure. gathering up all the info now and drawing it up real quick at home. I'll take it in tomorrow with a better game plan.

 

oh, whats the overall diameter of that flange? roughly.. just for mock up sake.

 

Yeah was definitely gonna do that for you.

Rough hanging off the side of the truck at the workbench measurement is about 7.5” diameter. Current hub bore is 110mm and needs to go down to 106mm.

I’m also trying to figure out which arp studs I’m going to get because they have very specific tolerance they recommend based on the knurl diameters

 

Did you stick an alignment rod through there while welding or how did you make sure you didn’t warp the housing? Also, may I suggest you add a ring gear/ locker inspection cover while you are at it? Are the Tundra axle shafts the same length, i.e., interchangeable left to right?

 

Ryan, If this wasn't your plan already, I would suggest leaving enough of the OEM hub diameter to help center the brake rotor.

 

I pulled the info for the studs already. Holes need to be roughly .006" undersized. That's based off the Tacoma studs..

 

Sketched it all up real quick last night. I wanted to see how lucky we get with dodging existing holes. This was the best setup I could come up with. Rotated 40 degrees... can get 2 clean holes and the rest are decent. Dims are noted.. but blue solid holes are Taco undersized holes for studs (drawn to .550", about .009"-.010" undersized, obviously we can change depending on stud knurl diameter).

 

No alignment rod. Walls are 1/4” from what I could tell (not that that means they won’t warp) I just used lots of heavy tacks about every 2” before welding any beads and then welded in 1-2” sections moving the heat around and letting fully cool in between. Took reference measurements against a straight edge along the way and when done and it’s all good. About 6.5 hours of weld time with all the cool down time

And what do you mean by inspection cover? Like cut out a removable section to take a peek inside if needed? I might be more tempted if there were any flat spots on this thing but I’m not too worried. It’s so much beefier than the taco one I’m not too concerned about it. And yes axles are interchangeable.

 

I’ll send a rotor down with the axles so they can reference that. Good idea

 

Looks good. Sucks a little there couldn’t be more clean holes but there isn’t much else we can do about that. Overlaps are minimal anyways.

 

I'll show you the other options.. you can pick. I just figured this might be better vs having a couple go straight through an existing hole.

 

I’m totally fine with this one and trust your opinion

 

I think he meant something like this. I honestly thought of welding one in, but not for inspection. More because its inconvenient right now to add enough gear oil due to the way my axle is clocked. I may do it when my 3rd is out again for the locker