2002 TuRD

I don't use them, but I'm leaving them as they keep stuff from rattling against the back wall when driving around. The jump seat trim is actually held on by 4 bolts, and some hooks, it has practically no clips which is pretty nice actually!
 
I was supposed to go wheeling at Golden mountain last weekend, however they closed the park on Tuesday in advance of the hurricane remnants dumping their forecasted rain and wind over TN. So the group decided we all want to wheel no matter what, let's go to AOP. Well it rained for a total of 10mins at 2am on Friday and that's it, this was the dryest I have ever seen AOP and it was was awesome!! Great time! Broke a tailight, busted a mirror off and got hassled by a TN state trooper for basically nothing on the drive home, overall good weekend!
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Went to hawk pride this weekend, it was awesome as usual, however not without some drama, this will be kind of long. So I haven't touched the truck since AOP, outside of replacing a mirror I broke and a taillight, hell I didn't even unpack it. So I loaded the Tacoma up, and drove it to hawk pride. At my first gas stop, leaving a gas station on 74, I lost my power steering, so I pulled over and saw this:
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Luckly it threaded back in. At that same fuel stop, I noticed some gear lube on my rear leafs, I figured it was venting out of the transfer cases as I was driving it pretty fast, and the cases were being noisy. So I drove through Cherokee and stop in Cleveland TN to get some gear lube. I look at the leafs now and now I have a ton of gear lube back there and some on my tailgate, and it leaking out the pinion seal, damnit. So I decided to press on because I figured I would just fill up the rear diff after ideling through Satan's asshole of traffic aka Chattanooga. So I get through that and fill the diff cuss at the metal shavings coming out of the fill hole at a rest stop, and call the people I'm meeting there to have at least one person satu sober Incase I need to get rescued via trailer LOL. So I'm now driving through AL thinking about what to do, and I decided that I'm putting in a new pinion seal and swapping the rear diff to the front at camp, and putting the front in the rear. So one more stop at a vatozone to pick up fluids and I arrive at the park fine. Set up my tent, and we get to wrenching on a friend's trailer:
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The pinion had like a quarter inch of play, pitted pinion bearing and a blown out seal. So we pulled the shims, ran a pattern using mustard as a gear marking compound, and got some preload back only using the solid spacer. So we stabbed the diff in the front, time to drink beer and wheel the next day.
 
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So the past few trips I have been in a wheeling funk, meaning I have been picking shit lines, being a general pussy when it comes to obstacles, pulling cable when not needed and bypassing stuff, I shouldn't. It got to the point where not only the people that I wheel with heckling me, randos online started to LOL!! So I went into this trip that I wasn't messing around, and I'm breaking this funk. Now of course there was minimal pictures taken, but a summary: I drove out of a flop by bouncing it off red limiter, took only bonus lines following a friend on stickeys in an XJ, and just tried whatever was in front of me. Well I'm back and feeling good now, and miraculously, no cable was pulled and outside of the carnage fest that was i-40 and rte 74 in NC/TN, no wrenches were turned! Here's a video of me testing out the front diff camp site setup on day 1 of wheeling:

And now it's time to park the truck again until the g2g in December and then do maintenance on it all winter:laughing:

Also my cases were nice and quiet on the drive home, imagine that a pinion flopping around would make lots of drive line noise off throttle LOL
 
That's a good friend to let you spill gear oil all over what looks like pretty new deck boards on his trailer, lol.

Love how you keep driving this thing all over the east coast from park to park and beating the piss out of it along the way. Keep doing the Lord's work brother!
 
Kickdeez said:
That's a good friend to let you spill gear oil all over what looks like pretty new deck boards on his trailer, lol.

Love how you keep driving this thing all over the east coast from park to park and beating the piss out of it along the way. Keep doing the Lord's work brother!
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He bought that trailer last week and gladly offered it up :laughing:!

Thanks man! The drive to and from the park is most of the adventure LOL
 
Wife quit her job so my truck project money is not there like it used to be, so the hackery continues except on an even tighter budget :laughing: This truck needs some TLC after wheeling season last year and the steering shaft popping off scared me pretty good, so I have been going over the truck and fixing little stuff that's been annoying me. I found the root cause of the shaft popping off, the retainer all thread on my borgenson shaft was too big to fit in the groove of the yota steering input splines, so it vibrated off. I ground down the head of that all thread so it fits in the groove and it "shouldn't" pop off now. I also cut 20ft out of the winch line as it was way too long and would bunch up, so I'm down to 80ft now.

Now time for some fab that will rival Morgan Clarke. So my battery is in my bed, and it looks like crap with cables hanging all over and I'm always worried about a tweaker stealing it at work or something. So I needed a battery box, well enter a spare cooler:
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I messed up my ANL fuse holder so it's not all done yet but, this is roughly what it's going to look like. My trail gear battery box fits in the there was well, so its all secured and the cooler is there to keep it out of view and protect it if anything falls on it.

I also had to move the hilift so people know that I wheel, also added bonus that's it's no longer flapping around on the bedside.
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Next up is pulling the front diff out and swapping out the pinion bearings and putting that diff back in the rear where it belongs (long story short nerdy Toyota stuff the 3rd is shaped different due to year differences and slides over rocks better). So it's like 50% of the way to being ready to wheel again.
 
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Been pretty sick the past week and have been feeling better, so decided to hit the garage and start working on this front diff. Tore the front axle down, birf soup in one knuckle yay. I blame a friend of mine who always has it in his junk pile, his dick beaters were in that axle while it was being wrenched on while on the trailer, coincidence, don't think so lol. Anyway got the diff out and ran a pattern:
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Condition of the outer pinion bearing:
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So I have the diff tore down and waiting on parts. Waiting on new carrier bearings, a side adjuster thats FUBAR and axle seals. Looks like I'll be turning wrenches the day before leaving for hot springs at the end of the month, fawk. I knew I should have just ordered the carrier bearings when I ordered the new pinion bearings last month, oh well.
 
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Shewee. Was it roaring? I saw you beebopping up 321 a while back. I was very jealous that you could travel highway speeds without looking scared for your life.
 
1stgenxxx said:
Shewee. Was it roaring? I saw you beebopping up 321 a while back. I was very jealous that you could travel highway speeds without looking scared for your life.
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Roaring, then blew out the pinion seal between Asheville and knoxville. I kept topping the fluid off and kept driving it to hawk pride. In retrospect my tcase howl may have been the rear axle the entire time lol.

321, I was either driving to or from work. I have been legit kind of scared driving it since the steering shaft popped off on 127 lol
 
I get burned evreytime I don't use OEM parts on this thing. Koyo outer pinion bearing on the left from a master rebuild kit and outer pinion bearing from Toyota (also koyo, different p/n) on the right. The inner pinion bearing also was different.
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Got all the bearings swapped last night and ran a pattern, way too shallow, but it was midnight and I didn't want to wake my wife up hammering away on the puller, gonna mess with it after work this week.
 
Diffs done, trucks mostly back together. I drained the rear diff fluid and there is crazy amounts of metal in there, hoping it was from the other diff eating itself alive and that's metal I couldn't get out at camp. I plan on rebuilding that diff this summer anyway I'll probably pull that third, clean everything out real good and install it before leaving on Thursday to drive it to AR to wheel at hot springs. I'm kind of excited, it will be like a throwback trip to when I lived up north and had to drive double digit hours to find a rock to put tires on!!

Obligatory final pattern shots used gears, been in the rear since 2016, probably 60k on them, and 400miles of interstate driving with a pinion slapping around:
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Got back from hot springs, I can't tell if I liked the park or not, or if it was worth the extra 12hrs round trip of driving over any of the other parks I usually go to. The terrains kind of cool, the rocks are weird, it's like wheeling on my countertops. Good times overall because I was in the woods and not at work. Truck worked fine, did everything I wanted it to, but I think I have some light death wobble going on at 70 and turning, it feels like out of balanced tires for a while, then stop, and repeat. I also lost my power steering overflow bottle on the interstate, as in it fell out of the truck and dumped fluid all over, that freaked me out at a gas stop thinking I had a leaking line or something lol!!

Didn't take many pics:
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Excellent reason why I refuse to wheel without a hi lift, pulling a carrier out of an XJ diff after a pinion bearing let loose
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Good trip, don't know if I'll go back, windrock, AOP, hawk pride, golden mountain, are all right on the way and just as fun and less driving on i-40 in TN.
 
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