I have started doing the hybrid swap. I got the idea from another member who said they had done relatively the same process some number of years ago. Mainly I'm doing it just to do it. I would like to test it in my 1984 FJ60 in a SOA configuartion. I traded a machinist some .38 special snake shot rounds for the lathe work on the mini truck knuckle balls.
I wanted to get as much slipped into the axle tube as possible instead of the traditional cut n turn method. I read on a lot of posts about the thickness of the axle tubes when cutting out the knuckle balls and when I got them out of both the mini truck and the fzj80 housings I measured and came up with about 4mm which is much less than what other posts had stated. It may be that in order to get the pipe cutter to work well I had to clean the axle tubes well enough with the flap discs that it reduced the axle tube thicknesses significantly.
Anyways, that's why there's a significant groove in the knuckle balls. I don't think it will be an issue be cause once I get the castor set where I want it I think I'll plug weld the near the ends to really make sure they don't move.
I used a cheap cylinder hone to clean up the inside axle tubes to make fitment a bit easier. The long side ended up being 2 1/8" longer and the short side ended up being 1 7/8" longer. for a total of 4" wider than a stock mini truck front housing. I think with oem mini truck outers 61" will be the wms. with IFS hubs it can be 64".
That's as far as I have gotten with the hybrid axle. I need to rebuild the hi pinion differential now so that i can slip a piece of solid stock through the center of it while it's bolted up to the housing and see how centered the knuckle balls are in the axle tubes. Respectively the long and short side inner axle shafts will need to be custom made longer than oem mini truck stock axles. Since this will be tested under an FJ60 I'm thinking longfields are required. The outers and birfields will not change, however I think the 25mm pin upgrade might be prudent.
Also I'm doing this because I have tons of mini truck axle outer parts and mini truck hi steer parts left over from my 854runner.
let me know what you think!