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99 Tacoma SAS

17K views 64 replies 11 participants last post by  Kyle N 
#1 ·
So I suppose I will make an official built thread. This is a summer project. I probably wont cut the suspension off until July partly because I have a 2.5 week trip to the NW in June.

Truck: 99 Tacoma Prerunner 3.4 TiRD. I did the 4wd swap to an auto from a 4runner about 6 years ago with manual hubs. So was basically a stock 4wd.

12/21/2012 I rolled it after sliding out in the snow in Mt Shasta driving down I5 in a snow storm. Luckily not much damage because of sliding in 1.5-2 ft of fresh snow before turning upside down.

April of 2013 I replaced my stock shocks and accidentally bought lift shocks with a longer body. So decided I may as well buy the springs to go with it because the shocks were non-returnable. Got a Wheelers Add-a-leaf in the back and OME 881's in the front on those Bilstein 5100's. Tires are ~31.75". Did this at a coworkers shop. Hard to tell but the roof is kinda bent up from the flip. It still looks the same to date, minus a little more NE rust. Ugh. I think next winter I am buying a beater to go easy on my Tacoma.



The SAS Plan
-FJ80 elocker axle $450
-Rebuild said axle $TBD (probably about 250)
-T100 pass-drop case R150F $250
-Clutch/brake pedals for manual swap $TBD (goal <150)
-Shave axle and repaint $~0
-Build radius arms/steering $TBD (goal is <1000)
-LC steering box $TBD (goal is $200 plus cost of rebuild kit)
-10 or 12" coilovers $TBD (probably 1000-1300 depending on brand)

Some of you know I got the axle, but just the the trans today. Lucky for me, the T100 3.4 bell housings have the clutch slave on the driver side, I learned. Trans has about 120k on it, case has about 200k. Spent a few hrs wire-wheeling them today. Just need a flywheel and trans mount and I'm ready to pull mine. Probably some hardware.

 
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#2 ·
Gonna be following this, a little different approach than most.

Where about's in New England? I'm up in Vermont.

Also Barnes 4wd in the vendor section is having a killer deal on Heim joints right now. They also have really nice link brackets and such. Great customer support and fast shipping. Didnt know what type of rod ends you were looking at though.

Edit: here is the link to the deal http://ttora.com/forum/showthread.php?t=204241

Also a place to check out coil overs is Down South Motorsports, really awesome to deal with and they will valve them to your rigs specs for free. I found them to be cheaper and free shipping on top of that
 
#3 ·
Yeah I lurked around in your build thread. I'm in NY a little way from Syracuse. Thanks for the link, I may source a few brackets/joints from them. Maybe some DOM, but I figure I can just get that from a nearby metal supply. That stuff will likely wait until July. The first thing I am going to do is the trans swap. But that's probably going to wait until July too since I need to get my clutch from my parents house in CA, lol.

Did spend a few hrs taking the axle apart. Still need to finish though. Stuck heim wants to get sawed.

Did pick up a engine hoist and stand a few days ago.
 
#4 ·
Yeah I went with ruffstuff, at the time I picked up a full 3 link kit w/o tubing for under $600. But those brackets were a pain because I had to drill every hole out bigger. They were all undersized, Barnes 4wd realized this was a issue with a lot of mfg's and fixed the problem. Yeah I got my rear truss from them and it was at my door in 3 business days.

I really wish I went yota axles but the community I'm in Dana and ford parts are plentiful. I'm actually thinking I might start building a d60 because everyone in my club has them and parts are easier to find. For some reason yota stuff up here is like finding gold, I didn't want to be down because I have a rare axle and had to order parts. Instead I can bum a spare shaft off a friend to finish the day or get out of the woods.

Is this the thread that majority of the build will be through? I like to subscribe
 
#5 ·
Yeah, this is the thread. And better under-sized than over, though. I thought about dana, but there were too many variations (I dont know dick about them) and they still sold for 300 minimum. Yeah, I drove 10-12 hrs total but 450 with a elocker and the width I want, worth it. Yota parts are hard to come by here, too. Seems you have to go south of Penn to find a more plentiful supply.

Still need to smoothen the bracket remnants, but they are all off. Took about 3 hrs of intermittent grinding (went through 3-4 cut-off wheels). I was careful not to go too deep so I didn't cut below the surface of the housing, which was my greatest fear. As result, more metal left meant more hammer-time. Had to piece it off to get it all, sometimes cut off a few chunks to make it easier.

If you dont have a torch and plan on doing this, dont buy one. Just keep a hammer on hand and be smart about what you're doing. It wasn't that bad. A large crescent wrench works pretty well to to clamp down on a flat surface and use the leverage to tear it off.

 
#6 ·
•Found a 96 FSM on the net.
•Cleaned up the left over welds, after the 3rd is out I'll clean/paint it
•Tore apart the axle (need to wire and lock the diff prior to removal)
•Only one 10mm bolt sheared, otherwise relatively problem-free
•Castors and some plywood make an awesome axle mover (and dirt-bag creeper)

Paint. Recommendations? Few coats of POR15 is the plan. But I guess thats waits until the axle is fabbed up.

So I was originally planing on doing gears and tires next year, bizarre I know. But now that I have it out, I figure I may as well go to 5.29's to prevent from having to go through all this work again (and downtime). As it comes to diff's, should I do the diff bearings or just swap the R&P? I'm going to manual hubs so the milage will be minimal. I plan on doing whatever I can by myself. Pointers are appreciated.



 
#7 ·
POR-15 is great stuff, I used that on my frame during the axle swap and caging, I didn't use it on the axles cause I figured it was gonna be all bashed up from rocks. Looking back now I probably should of. I'd recommend it on a daily driven rig.

As for the bearings I would say yes, Its cheap insurance. I've had a pinion bearing completely black during my removal of stock gears. To me its better to know that its all new.
 
#8 ·
Shitty update.

Well I'm am going to be inop for about 3 weeks. Flying back home on Saturday to CA/OR for that time. Didn't do a lot. Just cleaned parts, installed and broke one axle seal so I need a another before I go further and got one knuckle/seal on. Rotors should be here tomorrow (OEM's).

I'll be finishing the axle rebuild as time goes through the month of July. Going to do the manual swap my truck to the pass-side tcase before chopping the suspension. So I need to get a clutch pedal/cyl setup first. Hoping I find one out west in a part out. Not much here in the NE. I figure it's better to go one complete step at a time.
 
#9 ·
Steering question.

So I dug around and found that you can move the drag link to the front using a RHD FJ80 left side steering arm. Ordered one last night for 150 and the replacement oil seal for 8 and change (that I bent up). Also good for future high-steer if/when the time comes. He stated he used a Chevy tie-rod ends in post #35. Question: are rod ends standardized when it comes to the taper fit? Post 34 states the pitman arm will be need to be modified. The all seems clearly stated, but I just want another perspective.

I guess I could go to the parts store with the arm next week, too, if needed. Hm.

From this thread, very nice 80: http://forum.ih8mud.com/threads/jodo-97-lx450-coilover-project.294260/page-2


In other news, summited Mt Jefferson in Oregon. Which kicked ass. One of the big reasons NY is not the place for me.
 
#14 ·
Yeah, I paid the $70 for the maintenance bit. Then two weeks later ran into someone on a local forum that had one and periodically loans it out to people.. whoops. Try your local boards, someone with 1-ton steering will have one.
 
#13 ·
As far as I can see all the high steer sets on 60's and older use two bolt holes on the right side steering arm; one for the steering rod and the other for the drag link. Stuff for 80's seems to stack the two joints on a common bolt. While I honestly think both of those are better than the GM y-link, which seems the rod end misalignment would allow more slop when you steer the opposite direction because of a little drag link rotation, it simply seems easier. I just don't want to buy all the extra parts and think the money could be better spent elsewhere.
 
#15 ·
Special thanks to Kurt for letting me use his 7.~ degree taper bit for the GM 1 ton y-link.

Got some DOM tube for links in. Still need to get some 2x4x.1875 (I'm thinking) for the front frame material if I decide to chop the stock front off.

A mountain biking bud lathed the c-clip grooves in the birfs for the 30 spline lockouts (which should be in this week, from a guy in WA). THanks to Got Cope? for giving me the dimension. Apparently it's around, but I hadn't yet seen it on the internet anywhere but his thread.

Best update. My car isn't broke.

Also pulled the bed today. Made the lifter for about 130 bucks in materials. All 2x4's are 8 ft in length, 4x4's are two 8ft's cut in half. Castors rated for 230 lb each at the bottom with brakes (well 3 do, lol). Picked up some cold rolled .120" sheet last week. Going to box it in. I decided I will keep the stock supports because there are structurally very good. Seeing as there is nothing but frame loading on them (minus spare tire). But I am going to chop the ends off, put a flat plate on, and run bolts through the frame rails. Not 100% on this plan, but I think it's best at this time. If I decide to change material down the road I have the bolt flanges already in place.

In case anyone is wondering, pulling the bed is super easy. This is all I removed. Pull a few plastic wiring connectors from the underside and you're set. I spent more time building the lifter than pulling the bed. I think it took 3 hrs, but I could now trim that to under 2 easily.


 
#16 ·
And in case anyone is wondering, I was, about lifting the gas tank for more clearance. Yeah with a bed it's not going to happen. The front-most truss on the under-side of the bed would have to be trimmed. Most you could get is maybe 1/2 inch without cutting it. If you did cut it, you'd lose some bed strength and could lift it as much as about 2 inches, ballpark figure. Though there seems to be several inches of room under the cab. If I was flat-bedding it it would be on my to-do list.
 
#18 ·
No joke man!

So in the process of full boxing, you cannot (in stock form) use the cross members for the gas tank strap and spare tire. They bolt to the top and bottom ends of the c-channel, inside the channel. So clearly it can no longer go inside. I like the shape of them, so I am keeping them. I welded the threaded strip the the bottom of the upper side on each so I will mod each of them to just bolt on from the top. The lower bolt holes wouldn't be usable in any easy fashion, so I welded those quarter inch bars in. .120" plate is going over that, welded. So 3/8" of steel will be threaded for it to bolt to. This way I can drop the x-members in from above. Though I am going to make the gas tank x-memeber removable, I am considering welding in the spare tire one. If I ever want to put a rectangular tube in I can just cut it out and weld in a new one. I hope to hit the back frame area with POR-15 metal prep tomorrow. I may add one small brace, otherwise just washing.

Retard moment of the day. So earlier today I ate shit mountain biking and have a fat bruise on my left hand. So it's pretty worthless. Was having trouble pushing the truck in the garage after I finshed up. Epiphany--I'll just put it in 4wd and drive in. After about 2 seconds of starter I recollected the lack of a gas tank. Shit yeah.

 
#19 ·
So a little blurb on frame painting. If you have rust, some may recommend a chemical converter to turn rust into something neutral. Apparently marine cleaners like Ospho have been around for decades, I guess phosphoric acid in it converts rust into some dull grey substance a nd leaves a coat that binds well to ~some~ paints. In the case of Ospho, POR-15 apparently does not bind well to it. Luckily POR-15 has a 'metal prep' solution that you can get for ~30 a gallon on Amazon.

I used a spray bottle from Lowes to put it in. Basically coat the frame, keep it wetted with it for at least 30 minutes. I probably went for 35 or so. This is all of course after I cleaned, brushed, grinded, soap-washed and dried the frame prior to. For the POR product, after the 30 minutes hose it down with water and let dry. Mine isn't dry yet, but Metal Prep also leaves a coat on it, in this case it is suppose to bind very well to POR-15 paints. So thats the plan; tomorrow or Thursday paint the inside of the c-channel and the boxing plates, then the next few days weld them on. And lastly do 2 coats on the entire outside of the frame.

The frame was still a bit wet in this photo, but this is the dull grey you can see on a lot of the surface rusted areas. Some areas I wasn't able to cut down as well didn't turn as good as I hoped, but few and far between.

PS Ballistic Fab has 20% off most products right now. I'm putting in a hefty order in a bit. I basically decided I didn't like the stresses on bolts and radius arms do to bending stresses under flex so I'm going 3 link. Along with the fact that the burlier you make a radius arm, the less articulation you inherently will receive, unfortunately.

I know it's not exactly fast, but I am hoping to have the bed back on in about 2 weeks.

 
#20 · (Edited)
So after I made the above post I left the truck out overnight to dry out. In the morning it was clear so I left it outside while I went to work for 10 hrs. Naturally, it rained at 2pm or so. I get home, the sprayed frame areas look like hell. Apparently if given an additional few hrs in the rain, even though you hose it off, it corrodes like mad. So I had to scotchbrite the frame again, wash again, spray again (today). Also if you use the metal-prep give it more than a half hr. A half doesnt do as well as I think it should, at least in my case which went on for about an hr.


Stock frame steel is about 1/8 thick. Automotive steel is a little higher grade, so I went with cold rolled steel, 11g which is about .120" thick. Cost about 37 bucks at a local metal supply for a 2x4 ft sheet, that was more than enough. Cold rolled steel has a higher yield strength (45-50000 psi vs ~30000) than hot rolled, slightly harder and normally a higher ultimate strength by a small margin (tensile strength, both 50-60k psi, roughly). Yield strength is that which the material will permanently deform, bend frame, shock tower, etc. Cold also ~has no scale~ on it, as opposed to hot rolled. Lighter 120V welders have a tougher time burning through scale.

I took some measurement around the bumpstops to find the moment of inertia to basically compare shape effectiveness to welding a .25" plate on the outside. Both have their benefits, as far as gravity is concerned the .25 plate addition is stronger. Side to side loading is stronger in full boxing with .120", though.

I dropped the gas tank and removed the cross members. Used cardboard and drew/cut templates. Luckily the sides are nearly identical in frame shape, so I used the same one on the pass side as drivers side. Though there is the brake proportioning dealio (I think) bolted to the frame on the d-side and the p-side has a different shape of shock mount cut-out. There are differences, but is pretty straight forward. I said it in the last post, the crossmembers slide in the ~inside~ of the c-channel. So both will NOT work in the stock locations. You will have to modify them to your liking. Keep them bolt in by some means or weld them in. I'll probably weld the back one in and make a bolt-in mount for the front one because it hangs the gas tank. Going to paint the inside of the plates and c-channel tomorrow evening before I weld the plates on. Then weld the plates, then paint the outside with 2 coats of POR-15. One of the normal stuff, one of top-coat.

Nothing intriguing, but making the plates 2-piece made it a bit easier to put together. The driver side you will see some odd bends. Those will weld the the section on the plate that the proportioning valve assembly bolts to. It's a robust piece. I didn't want to measure and drill 4 holes, it would have been a PITA on such a imprecise part.

 
#22 ·
SOB I'm going slow. Hoping to NOT hit the 2 month mark for a bed reinforcement job. I wound up saying fuck it to having bolt in crossmembers. I measured a bunch of times and welded that shit in. No more tire under the bed, replaced the stock one with a 2x3x.125 piece, pretty happy with that decision. Wound up just welding the gas tank x-member in place. Lifted the back of the tank about .125", figured I may gain something out of it. The frame is super-rigid now. Final paint come tomorrow.

In other news, I pulled the A340F and started putting in the R150F. Yeah, the T100 bellhousing (from a 3.4) has a knob on the driver side that doesnt clear the stock diff (that I havent removed yet). So I cant slide it back the last 2". According to a FSM, looks like its for a 'stiffener plate.' Which the Tacoma's dont seem to have, at least not with autos. Probably need to cut the IFS off or get a Tacoma bell housing rather than saw it off.

 
#25 ·
Not much but progress last week. Wont work on it much over the next 4 weeks but hope to get a little time in. Started a ghetto trans crossmember for purely temporary use to hold the engine/trans in place.

Hey anyone thats gone dual cases. Hows the gear tcase trans mount compare with the chain drives? The T100 tcase I have holds the mount somewhat low, it's not on the tail-housing like Tacoma's. I've been a fan of the chain cases and wanted to keep it with dual cases, but I think the shitty mounting spot is going to be the killer for me. Not much side-to-side info on the VF1A and RF1A. Appears to be cheaper to go duals with gear only, on Marlins site.

 
#26 ·
Cool build. To answer your question on the trans mount vs the gear drive tcase mount: The taco trans mount is taller and wraps up around the side of the trans, where as the gear drive mount is lower and bolts almost to the bottom of the tcase, i think i have a shot of it in my build in the garage and you can compare. I would move the mount to the crawl box housing in your case. If you are trans swapping and doing an SAS i would just keep it all gear drive. The chain drive case is beefy inside, yet the front output is so short you loose a lot of spline engagement which can lead to fretting failure quicker than a total spline gear drive input. I would also go gear drive because parts can be found anywhere and cheap, where as finding t-100 parts is very hard!

Post pics of how you route the exhaust. I think i'm going to switch over to pax side drop and ditch the lefty when i SAS my truck and everyone says its easy to deal with the exhaust yet never posts pics on it.
 
#27 ·
The exhaust is not a hard job. I was going to finish that part in October, once I had half of it tacked up I decided I better not just in case the t case interfered. I was a good idea, too, because there is like 1/4" of space from where I have it, I could move it over a half inch or inch if needed. I will probably end up buying some new tubing for the section between the muffler and manifold cross-over flange (stuff on each side of the cat). Worst case use a few 90° sections and cut 20° or so pieces of them and just curve it a little around the bulge and then back. Weld you cat up, a little tubing, rear O2 sensor, your gold. May need to mod ext hangers, just some 3/8" or so round bar. Somethin like this…Used *'s because a space bar wouldn't put anything in if it isn't obvious what I am saying.

*****------
-----/ tcase \-------

Been reading about hear cases. How do the old gear cases seem to do for bearing life? I'd be inclined to go with this and source two gear cases but I couldn't help but think I should be getting new bearings, too. Makes me think I should just save the extra 600 and get the fully assembled one in 2-3 months.

https://www.marlincrawler.com/transfer-case/line-ups/crawl-boxes/dual-case-kit-v6
 
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