Skydog1

Nice runner. My entire truck is painted with green durabak, its strong stuff.

1984RunnerCrawler

Thanks, do you have other pic's of your truck beside your avatar? I would love to see more pic of the durabak. Also how did you apply it, roller or spray gun? How much time did it take?

I am worried my external roll cage is going to make this project (when I get around to it) a pain.

liveoffroad

very cool build, i love the 22ret's! sometimes i wish i had gone that route instead of my 7m! keep up the good work

1984RunnerCrawler

Thanks, I considered doing the 7m motor as well as a 3.4 but those would have been a much bigger project.

Though I have really gotten turbo upgrade fever which is a pretty big project, so I may have been better starting with a big motor =).

liveoffroad

ya that's kinda what maed me go with an n/a engine in the end. turbo engines are too easy to throw mods on and get lots of extra power, at the sacrifice of reliability and longevity.

1984RunnerCrawler

I have been doing a ton of reading (still far from knowledgeable though) on upgrading the 22rte to a bigger turbo. As far as reliability is concerned the head gasket is the biggest problem (as with all 22r engines). And putting in ARP head studs will give you he piece of mind you need for upgrading a turbo.

There are other issues if you don't tune the engine right but that is universal to all engines =).

If you (or anyone) is interested in upgrading a 22rte turbo I highly recommend this site! It has a ton of great info.

http://www.well.com/~mosk/welcome.htm

1984RunnerCrawler

As I was putting back together my front axle I couldn't quite remember the order of all the components in the Warn hub. So I took apart the other one and noticed immediately that there were more parts than in the other one. After a quick bit of research it turns out that it is missing its inner hub gears (thank you PO you piece of crap!!). After a bit of research it became apparent the stock Aisin hubs are much better than the warn's and you can upgrade the Aisins to chromoly gears. The problem with these hubs is they are stupid expensive! but I guess you gotta pay to play, just ordered the set.

Skydog1

My Aisins are so hard to turn that I usually have to use the end of my lighter to turn the hub lock/unlock

1984RunnerCrawler

thanks for the info, seems a little strange for them to be that difficult to lock/unlock. Ill post my experience with mine when I get them.

liveoffroad

my aisin's work great. you might take them apart and clean everything cuz they shouldn't be that hard to turn. i even put a little grease on mine but don't go overboard.

haha, you gotta love sloppy PO's. when i bought mine, there were 2 different gear ratio's in the axles....

1984RunnerCrawler

haha, you gotta love sloppy PO's. when i bought mine, there were 2 different gear ratio's in the axles....[/quote]

The PO of mine was truly a worthless piece of crap! I had never really worked on cars when I bought it so I was very under educated which has cost me. This is my list of things I had to fix just purely because of bad workmanship.

1) the cross member is mounted in such a way that the bottom two bolts on the transmission wiggle loose causing space between the transmission and engine, this ruined the clutch. fixed this by mounting nuts to the other side of the bolts

2) butchered the EFI conversion which game me never ending electrical issues, pissed me off so much I did the turbo engine swap. These electrical issues burnt out my starter and alternator as well!

3) hub wasn't put together properly which I am pretty sure is why my birfield went as well.

at a point where I wish I would have built it all myself but I suppose at least ive learned a lot

1984RunnerCrawler

So got my new hubs, they are a little stiff but now where near the point where I would have to use a lighter or something to turn them.

Skydog1

When I have time ill take mine apart and clean them.

1984RunnerCrawler

I am still rebuilding my front axle =(, As I was replacing the hubs I noticed the PO had drilled out the hub assembly to put in bigger unknown studs (don't ask me why). These studs would not work with my stock AISIN hubs that I bought. So I had to buy new hub assemblies from trail gear. Since I was this far into I figured I might as well upgrade to FJ40 rotors and Toyota V6 calipers and Master cylinder. Super frustrating process as the further I got into the axle the more I realized was wrong. I really don't have problems spending money on upgrades or things I break (that's what I signed up for when getting into wheeling) but the majority of the cost of this project turned out to be just fixing stuff the PO messed up. I will never buy a used vehicle that has been built EVER again.

Enough of my whining =). Here are pics of the nice new shiny parts.

All new (rotor, hub assembly, hub), its so shiny! lol
[IMG][/IMG]

Here it is installed with the new caliper (one thing is that the calipers I got looked identical and would only install on the passenger side, passenger and driver side calipers are different right?)
[IMG][/IMG]


So close to getting it back into wheeling condition =)

1984RunnerCrawler

So after getting back to my shop I saw that the two calipers were different (the difference between this is where the brake line attaches).

The problem is on the drivers side the knuckle and rotor are not aligned properly (not parallel). I don't really know what could be wrong at this point, so the next time I can make it out to my shop I am going to rip the entire drivers side out and replace it to see if I messed anything up while installing it. The rotor is solid and doesn't budge when I try to wiggle it so not really sure what could be going on.

Anyone have any info about this?

Just a reminder I am a newbie when it comes to working cars (my first axle rebuild) so any little detail/experience will help =).

1984RunnerCrawler

I blew up my front axel yet again and twisted my rear driveline in half on a trip up compressor in north idaho. So its time for longfields.

Longfields and hub gears for 599$ from my local trail gear dealer is a pretty sweet deal!

1984RunnerCrawler

FYI, turns out my steering stops were dented in which was causing the internals of my birf's to blow up (refer to previous picture). From what ive read when birf's fail under normal conditions the outside cracks.

Got my long fields installed, really nice product.

After I installed the long fields i went out on a few trips and ended up blowing up my clutch so I dropped my tranny and ordered the heavy duty marlin crawler clutch. While my tranny is down im going to install twin sticks and 4.7's in my rear case. I gotta say I am pretty excited about the 4.7's! =)

One of my lockers has never been reliable so I pulled it out and it turned out to be a lunch box. And from the research i did you should not have Lunch boxes in the rear. So while ive got everything torn down it is getting a full spool.

There is a rock crawling competition in north idaho on august 22 so the goal is to have everything back together by then.

Terrys87

iTrader: (1)

Even buying a stock truck, you will be surprised at what POs do to them. They butcher them up as well. Anytime I get a new truck, I just expect to go thru it and correct their poor work.

rattlewagon

August 22 is not that far away! Good luck!

rustED

iTrader: (2)

Nice build! Sucks that you had to fix all the PO's mistakes, but at least you know its done right now! Seen a lot of people slide a large size nut inside the steering stop and weld them up to make them stronger. Keep up the good work!