Well the pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together. Thanks to a lot of help from my friends (ovrarok, helipilot, 1985crawler, Dingman, rockcrawlingtoy, & zippo) my truck has a lot of help coming her way in the upcoming weeks.
ovrarok went over the moon in sourcing me a dual case setup running a mc07 that was missing the 5209 bearing. After searching for days on the internet for a replacement bearing I finally got through on the phone to Mitch at Marlin. He told me they sell the bearing for $60 or refurbish the whole adapter for $100. So I told ovrarok about this and he was going to the post office to ship some stuff out of his own and offered to send the adapter to Marlin for me. I guess I must have been expecting too much as it appears that I paid an extra $40 for them to simply install the bearing for me. This is how I received it back today from them. I thought they would have resurfaced it or got rid of all the burs at the least. I'm not sure how you could call this "refurbishing" it as it appears all that was done was the two bearings were replaced. Which I could have easily done myself and saved myself the $40 + ovrarok's time & the shipping to and fro.
1985Crawler was coming to Eugene the following week after ovrarok found me the duals. I asked him to pickup my new crawlbox and take it with him when he met RockcrawlinToy in Eugene to buy Rock's extended cab (we've lost him to the jeepers but I'm still dragging his ass to the roundup). RockcrawlingToy couldn't fit the rear case and the crawlbox so I told ovrarok to keep the rear case as a finders fee as I already have two cases in my possession before all of this. It was the adapter I really needed and was searching for one for months. So only thing standing between me and duals now is a cross-member and drive-lines.
I can't thank rok, crawler, and toy enough for all their help with this. I owe you guys all a debt of gratitude for it and I'm bringing a costco case of beer with your names on it to the roundup. The good
too not that colorado piss water you guys tell me you usually drink
I also have changed direction on what I'm doing about my front locker. I was planning on just putting a spartan in my front diff and running that with my true trac I currently have in the rear. Well now I have gone down a much deeper rabbit hole.
Spurred on by first finding a standard pinion elocker on Craigslist for $350. When I told helipilot about my new scoop he told me he had the gaskets and hardware I needed to install it as it was initially his plan to go with 8" elockers front and rear.When he came over to drop them off I then told him that I also found a FJ80 front axle with a high pinion elocker on Craigslist as well. We then cooked up the plan for him to buy the axle (he wants everything but the diff and the housing as he has plans to run a diamond axle with 9.5" elockers eventually) and sell me the high pinion elocker for a great price. So now the plan going forward is to have elockers front and rear with a high pinion in the front!
zippo has graciously offered me his expertise in re-gearing them to 5.29 for me once I can swing the $1100 for the gears + install kits from Nitro. So after sharing this plan with the chat Dingman helped a brother out by pointing out that the elockers have a problem with breaking side gears. I did some hard researching into the issue including reaching out to zuk over at
www.gearinstalls.com this is what he told me in his reply:
Hi Andrew-
The problem is not so much with the e-locker side gears it's the axle shafts being used. Some are shorter than others. Here is a copy/paste from my info page....
Below is a copy/paste from my friend Jim Hughes in New Mexico and is in regards to the retrofit e-lockers that are breaking
the sidegear(usually the passenger side goes first)...good info to know....
Zuk, I’ve attached pics of the side gear and axle damage. I did confirm the 2nd gen 4Runner 1989 – 95 (Coil Sprung) rear axle
shafts are approximately 7mm longer than the 1986 – 94 leaf sprung “IFS” axle shafts. This additional length should help from
twisting the side gear as the axle will go into the beefy part of the gear, not just the collar.
He also pointed me in the direction of these two threads on pirate as well:
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/toyota-truck-4runner/806250-toyota-e-locker-fix-89-95-4runners-trucks.htmlhttp://www.yotatech.com/f116/myth-busters-e-locker-conversion-axle-length-199972/So with this information in hand I asked zippo to keep an eye out for the longer shafts from a 1990-95 coil sprung 4Runner and a rear housing from a leaf sprung IFS truck when he was going to the junkyard earlier this week. Like the legend he is he found me shafts from a 95 Runner and a housing from an 88 all for $60! He broke it all down in the rain for me and lugged it all home for me. An absolute legend! So now once I get the cash together for the gears, an RCV axle (going to put that in the front at the same time as the new diffs), & this awesome controller from 12volt guy it will be time to get elocked up!
