Nov 2, 2016: "Stage 1" - Differential GearingOut came this hunk of junk for regearing!
Also yanked out this all-new rear diff! This puppy is huge -- Nice work Toyota!
Despite the fact that things didn't go as planned, it turns out it took more than one year for the first aftermarket gear set to be built. So having waited through the entire year, I was able to get a new R&P gear set from the very first batch of gears from Nitro!
A few things to note here...
-- Because my truck is a manual, it already came with 4.30:1 gearing (vs 3.901:1 for 6cyl autos). So the drop to 4.88:1, which is a staple Hilux/minitruck gear ratio with history dating back to the late 80s and rice paddy use in Brazil, will only net a 13.5% reduction meaning any tire size larger than 34.7" (30.6" + 13.5%) will cause the truck to become overgeared. There is another common aftermarket Toyota ratio, the 5.29:1, but Nitro has no interest in making this ratio for the 3rd gen. Their reasoning is that anyone who needs that low of gearing would ditch IFS anyway. I agree. Here we have another negative strike against keeping the truck IFS.
-- ARB was behind further, not having a rear air locker available yet. I did get the front installed which had not changed from the 2nd gen Tacoma, but I'll have to wait for a rear locker now. Ohh man. So I guess I wouldn't have been able to do (or would have struggled to do) Rubicon/Fordyce/Hammers/etc even had I been on schedule. Bitter sweet. Installing an ARB later once available wouldn't be the end of the world so I decided to just get this stuff done now to get working on other projects.
Here we have the new Nitro R&P installed and setup using Marlin's industry-leading set-up procedure!
