Topic: cut and turn knuckles

[auckman]

anyone cut and turn their knuckles on a toyota axle??
how many degrees??
any pics??

[harley1615]

I have cut a dozen or so. About the easiest way i have found to do it is with a cut of wheel. cut along the edge of the weld closest to the tube. Just cut Threw the weld not the knuckle insert, Cut all the way around it,then beat it out with a hammer. Where you set it all depends on your lift and where you want your pinion angle to be ect... when you re weld it it is better to heat the tube and knuckle up to get excellent penetration and so they cool close to the same rate,

[DieselD]

nice little writeup
http://www.4x4wire.com/toyota/tech/rotated_housing/

[Saber]

The link above inspired me to try this myself.  Very good write-up.  Use Scott's verbiage and my pics and you can't go wrong.

I took a few pics of mine... maybe too many, at least I covered all the details.   

The most important tools you can use is a big-ass pipe cutter, a 90 deg laser level, a tape measure, patience and more patience.  I gained a perfect pinion angle out of the deal, as well as ~2 deg of negative caster.  I actually rotated the passenger side to ~2.5 deg of negative caster to compensate for road crown.  Tons of work, but it was worth it!  You really can drive in 4WD at 80+ mph and not even notice.  Providing you can get to that speed.  Anyway, enjoy and I'd be happy to answer questions/issues along the way.  Best of luck.

http://www.bikelikehell.com/gallery/AxleRotationFront

[Saber]

I added some captions to my pics for easy reading and to hopefully explain some of my madness.  There are 3 pages total.  I'll take some fresh pics of the installed/painted product, so you can check those out as well.

[fj-rankenstein]

depending on how much lift and such I have always tilted the pinion up between 12-14 degrees up..(depending on pinion angle towards the output on tcase...) and my knuckles are always between 3-5 degrees nevative caster....

you will want to be closer to the 5 degrees negative caster with big tire(35 inch and up..) and perhaps 2-3 degrees with a tire in the range of 33-35 inch.....

this is a rule that I have followed now with all my trucks and the trucks that I have helped build and there has never been problems....

dont go any more than 5 degrees though.. the steering gets really "heavy" feeling and if there is not enough caster the steering becomes quite twitchy and will not self center.....

oh, and rent a 4 inch pipe cutter to do the cutting... it should be no more than 15 bucks a day...

hope that helps....