90-92 Daihatsu Rocky F300

[Juice]

Okay, so this will be my first post, but it's going to be a long one, i hope to get plenty of insight and further knowledge. Let me preface this by saying, I know there's not a lot of info on this truck, I will tell you why i bought one anyways. My father has taken me wheeling ever since i was a little kid, from Elbe, to Evan's creek, to the naches. We've done it in his 4Runner, I've seen it have a 3.0 V6 to a 7MGTE to now where he is going to LS swap it with a 1UZ. I always just wanted to go fast and hear a turbo whistle and have low cars that snap peoples heads and I thought you were cool..... Then I decided to grow up. I'm now going to start crawling as my dad does and as I grew up around. the other kids that were my age are getting their trucks and now it's my turn.

 I have 2 requirements though. 1. I don't want to be a slouch, I want to be able to keep up with the big dogs and 2. I want a 4x4 nobody else has. The Rocky I bought from my dad's buddy, it had been sitting on his property for years with some sort of engine problem that was never figured out. I got it for $200. That solves problem #2 a truck nobody else has. The engine problems did not bother me because the stock 1.6L engine in the Rocky makes 94 horsepower and 94 lbs. of torque.

this leads to building this truck into a great crawler with my dad. I have been doing a TON of research trying to find bolt in swaps or anything to make our life easier. If any of you can help with that, it would make my dad and I's life a whole lot easier.

Here is the extent of my research from forums of people doing swaps and just random searching and a whole lot of reading.

Engine Swaps: 3.4/3.0 Toyota V6, 22R/20R/20RU/22RE, 1.9L TDI, F70, 3.8L/2.2L Ecotec, 2.8L Turbo Diesel out of a Non-US later Gen Rocky, 4.3L Vortec, 3RZ

22R Engine mounts line up with the rockies.
Terminal plugs on ECU are identical to 22RE ECU.
An Electric Fan would give me more space in the engine bay.
30"x9.5" Tires fit with no lift and stock axles.
W56 w/ Manual hubs and not forward shift, behind a 22RE lines up less than an inch from the shifter/Tcase holes on the Rocky.
87 Toyota Pickup Drivetrain have the same electrical connectors.
Other people have put a RF1A "Top Shift" Transfer Case in it. And 21,23,26 Splines? (I don't know what splines are but i wrote it down.)

All of this info, rememeber my goal is to keep up with the really well put together trucks. My dad and I plan to do a SAS and build the suspension as of right now, I need to decide what engine and parts I need to get with said engine to get this on the road with the best crawling capability.

Thank you for any help in advance,
7MGTE4Runner

[a1gemmel]

Looks like it could be a cool project, I hope you're a good fabricator or have the inclination to learn!

What are your actual goals with your truck? That will largely inform what's involved in making it do what you want. For instance - what difficulty trails do you want to be doing? What tire size roughly are we looking at? Does this need to be street legal? Will it be daily driven? Do you already have parts / donor vehicle(s) lined up to start with?

For a truly greenfield project like this, you need to nail down what you want to do and come up with a cohesive vision before you start digging into it, there's just too many paths to go down otherwise. I have a few ideas of what I'd do with this...

[Juice]

Looks like it could be a cool project, I hope you're a good fabricator or have the inclination to learn!

What are your actual goals with your truck? That will largely inform what's involved in making it do what you want. For instance - what difficulty trails do you want to be doing? What tire size roughly are we looking at? Does this need to be street legal? Will it be daily driven? Do you already have parts / donor vehicle(s) lined up to start with?

For a truly greenfield project like this, you need to nail down what you want to do and come up with a cohesive vision before you start digging into it, there's just too many paths to go down otherwise. I have a few ideas of what I'd do with this...

I'm still pretty young but my dad is VERY mechanically inclined, and i'm VERY inclined to learn. It won't be daily driven but i would like it to be semi-street legal, My dad has 35's and we believe if we sas it mine will also fit 35's. The trails we go to are Elbe Hills, The Naches, and Evan's Creek, so difficulty wise you can be the judge. When i was washing the car at the car wash there was a guy who came up and said he had a bunch of the same truck at his property so there might be some donor parts. I'd love to hear your ideas. The ideas we are strongly leaning towards as of right now, is either taking a new engine out of one of the "donor" rigs and supercharging it (the 1.6L 4 cyl w/ 94 hp) or doing a 21RU swap. We are pretty set on doing a yota SAS and building suspension on our own with 35 in tires depending on how much room i have under the truck.

[a1gemmel]

Is the Rocky already 4wd?

On the Toyota 21RU - I don't see any reason to use one of those. They're boat anchors, more rare than the 22R/22RE and less powerful.

Looking at the wheelbase, I feel like fitting a toyota driveline with dual cases would be very difficult. You'd have to get the engine as far forward as you could, possibly even running a rear mounted radiator. You would want to use an L52/L45 since they're 6 inches shorter than the other options. With 35s and 5.29s in toyota axles you could probably get away with a single 4.7 transfer case to keep the driveline shorter. If it were me, I would also push the axles out to lengthen the wheelbase as much as I reasonably could. I would also try to keep it as low as possible, you don't want to get tippy. I prefer cutting sheet metal rather than lifting trucks.

This thing is pretty similarly sized and shaped to a suzuki jimny/samurai, so you could borrow some parts and designs from those. They have a divorced transfer case that you can get 6.5:1 gears for. If the rocky is 2wd and you're keeping the factory trans and engine, this would be a good option. That little 1.6L is going to feel very sluggish with 35s. A supercharger would help

[Snowtoy]

If it were me, and assuming you don't have an unlimited budget, I would go with a 22re, and Toyota drivetrain.  Run ARB diffs geared with 4/88's or 5.29's with 33's or 35's, depending on what fits and what your level of skill is, and lower geared transfercase, don't think you could run duals if the axle are left in the stock wheel openings. 

One of the guys I used to wheel with 20yrs ago ran a Samurai set up that way with 35's, and it had no problem running with guys running 37's-44's in the rocks and snow, pretty much a point and go type of rig.  If I could've fit in one, and it would've carried the amount of gear I like to camp with, I might have built one myself.

[Juice]

Is the Rocky already 4wd?

On the Toyota 21RU - I don't see any reason to use one of those. They're boat anchors, more rare than the 22R/22RE and less powerful.

Looking at the wheelbase, I feel like fitting a toyota driveline with dual cases would be very difficult. You'd have to get the engine as far forward as you could, possibly even running a rear mounted radiator. You would want to use an L52/L45 since they're 6 inches shorter than the other options. With 35s and 5.29s in toyota axles you could probably get away with a single 4.7 transfer case to keep the driveline shorter. If it were me, I would also push the axles out to lengthen the wheelbase as much as I reasonably could. I would also try to keep it as low as possible, you don't want to get tippy. I prefer cutting sheet metal rather than lifting trucks.

This thing is pretty similarly sized and shaped to a suzuki jimny/samurai, so you could borrow some parts and designs from those. They have a divorced transfer case that you can get 6.5:1 gears for. If the rocky is 2wd and you're keeping the factory trans and engine, this would be a good option. That little 1.6L is going to feel very sluggish with 35s. A supercharger would help

First off, I'd like to say I am sucha  fan of your pickup thread, it is so awesome, I heavily plan on doing the 1.6L w/ the supercharger, I found a rocky engine for $850 , and my dad had a supercharger laying around his garage from an old pontiac i believe? So we're gonna put that on it, a friend of ours has a pair of axles that have the same drop drivekline as mine and are 4.10s he has some that are a lower gear ratio (maybe 5.29s?) as well and i think i might snag those, also a Rocky T-case is 6:1, I would like to do dual transfercase to get suuuuper low, but there probably is no adapters for rocky tcases, and if i swap in a yota t-case i would just have to do a transmissiona nd herego and engine swap anyways. My rocky is stock 4wd.

I heard somewhere my t-case was 6:1 but that is not the same as it says online, if i wanted to replace my t-case with the samurai 6.5:1, how would I without doing a whole different transmission and herego engine? They don't make any adapters for these things. Please help. The samurai t-case seems like a solution but I don't know how.

[Snowtoy]

I heard somewhere my t-case was 6:1 but that is not the same as it says online, if i wanted to replace my t-case with the samurai 6.5:1, how would I without doing a whole different transmission and herego engine? They don't make any adapters for these things. Please help. The samurai t-case seems like a solution but I don't know how.

That is the ratio for the transfercase in Low and the trans in 1st gear, the T-case gear ratio itself is 1.754.
If you don't have it, here is an online service manual.
http://wilbo666.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/100759879/Daihatsu%20F300%20Service%20Manual.pdf

This gear ratio calculator will give you an idea of what your final ratio will be regarding the trans, t-case, and diff gears combos.
https://www.crawlpedia.com/crawl_ratio_calculator.htm

I know you are set on running Rocky stuff, so what kind of durability history does the rocky T-case have for wheeling, especially when running bigger tires?