Darthyota's 4Runner Build

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darthyota

darthyota

Rank IV

Enthusiast III

1,173
Sherwood Park Alberta
I know this isn't so much an overland build but more of a hardcore offroad build

ok so, i bought my runner already sas'd it was locked in the rear with a lock right locker and had metric 33x11.5 equivalent tires on it. i drove it like that for about a year and then i threw some 37x12.5x17 bfg km2's on it. drove it like that for a few month till the lock right grenaded. so i threw a grizzly locker in it drove it some more till i found some issues with the front end and decided screw it im going to 3 link it and fix any other issues i found. this was in june and the truck has been sitting in the garage since then. there was some delays getting my kit from brian between the cc company not letting the charges go through initially to filler metal issues to pieces just going missing non of them brians fault. so by the time i finally get all the parts of my kit sorted and ready to tear into in its september. the week after i got it torn apart i crashed my bike and broke my left wrist and my right shoulder blade meaning i couldnt do anything for 8 weeks, which then put me in my final session of school to get my journeymen welding ticket which ment no cash flow as i still had/have a few things to get so i can finish the build. by the time school finished it was christmas so nothing got done so jump forward to last weekend and i was finally able get some work done on it. so heres some pics in no particular order, i apologize ahead of time if there are any duplicates



















 
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darthyota

darthyota

Rank IV

Enthusiast III

1,173
Sherwood Park Alberta
Progress ahoy!
So after some research and remembering that I had an LSD that I had originally purchased to go in my X-Runner that didn't fit in the X because it used the larger 8.4" diff and not the same "old" 8" that the FJ cruisers and 4th gen 4Runners use, I discovered that I could use it in my 8" carrier. There are however some differences between the old v6 8" and the newer FJ/4Runner 8". I discovered this difference after a couple trips to Sherwood Park Toyota for two different 8" carrier bearings, luckily I was able to find an adapter bearing. The adapter bearing has the OD of the old v6 8" carrier bearing and the ID of the newer FJ/4Runner 8" diff. Once I had the bearings I needed in hand I pressed them onto the LSD so it could be installed into the third. I had my buddy Bear help me with this as he has set up thousands of diffs. One of the things you need to make sure that you do when doing diff work is if you are removing the ring gear bolts is that you use new ones on the install as they are torque to yield and therefore only good for a single use.

The OS Giken LSD





Installed into the third.


The third installed into the housing


Some drain plug protector reinforcement. I did this as it is a common issue where a rock smashes this and makes it almost impossible to remove the drain plug.



I then set about installing the axel shafts into the housing.




Once I got the shafts in I started working on the drivers side. The first thing I had to do was to shim the new king pins ( I'm using the trail gear trunnion bearing eliminator kit) so that the steering preload is between 15 and 25 ft/lbs as measured with a fish scale. My drivers side is shimmed to 0.0645" and 0.0684" top and bottom to give a 21.9 ft/lb steering preload, I will be shimming the passenger side a little more to get closer to a 20 ft/lb preload. Once I got my steering preload set it was time to start packing the knuckle ball with grease. This is a very gooey messy step, the Toyota mini truck solid axles use approximately 2 tubes of grease per side, this includes packing the wheel bearings, packing the wheel bearing case and the locking hubs full of grease. Next comes the spindle, now normally you would just put a backing plate or a backing plate eliminator on but I plan on running much larger Lexus GX470 13WH calipers and rotors so I need to cut one set of caliper mounting ears off my 6 shooter knuckles so that I can bolt the calipers to the new mounting bracket. The other half of this requires you to use the IFS wheel bearing case as opposed to the SFA wheel bearing case as it pushes the rotor mounting surface out 1.5", the other added bonus to this setup is that you no longer need to run wheel spacers on the front to match the rear if you have a factory IFS truck.

Knuckle packed with grease


Wheel bearing case installed.



Here you can see the 13W caliper bracket and the cut off knuckle ears.


The last step is to install the locking hubs. Before I reinstalled the hubs I installed a set of chromo hub gears, one thing I noticed while installing these gears is that even when dry they tend to stick and grab preventing them from actuating smoothly like the factory hub gears I'm hoping this is something that will be eliminated with some use.

4WD locking hub installed.



Tomorrow I will start reassembling the passenger side.
 
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darthyota

darthyota

Rank IV

Enthusiast III

1,173
Sherwood Park Alberta
Axle is back together now I need to heft it back under the truck once I ream out my steering arms again. Took a little longer then anticipated due to it going from a nice mild -5°c ish to -25°c ish, but its back to being milder out so it makes working in an uninsulated garage bearable, I do use a Mr. Heater Hero to take the edge off.
 
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