kwikrnu

I called a 4x4 shop ( steves off road in Chattanooga TN ) for an estimate on installing an arb rear locker in my truck. He said they have to grind a tooth off the ring gear. Is that true? I haven't seen anything about that. His price was $350 if I bring in 3rd member.

Other estimates with the diff in the truck have been $300 at a 4x4 shop ( high tymes Clarksville TN ) which has never done an air locker before, $455 at a 4x4 shop ( tennessee off road in Nashville ) which said they have done them before and $670 at a 4x4 shop ( essentially off road Murfreesboro Tennessee ) I do not now much about.

Any ideas?

I wouldn't mind doing it myself but I don't have the tools and have never done it before and would hate to ruin $1100 worth of gears and locker just to save $400-$600 in labor.


Front arb diff with 4.56 gears is installed so no more 4wd until I get the rear done.

ZUK

iTrader: (1)

never heard of the need for tooth grinding. What gear brand do you have for the rear?

kwikrnu

It is precision. I had orderd some yukon gears but randys ring and pinion screwed me when they said they had it then never shipped it because they didn't have one and never told me. :mad:

mt_goat

Grind a tooth OFF? That's crazy

kwikrnu

Toyota performance Industries TPI in Gallatin recommended the guy and they do lots of land cruiser work up here.

I had never heard of this so I wanted to check it out.

ZUK

iTrader: (1)

Precision. You picked the #1 gear for the Toyota application.

xjfetish

I have just opened a new shop in Clarksville TN. The shop is called T.O.R.S. Stands for The Off Road Supremacy. I have done many ARB setups and 25% of them being Toyota. NO grinding of the teeth has ever been required and should NEVER be required. Grinding can weaken the ring gear and destroy the properties of the ring gear if enough heat is produced. I charge $650 for setup. I just finished a solid axle swap in a 2003 Toyota Tacoma, worked out pretty sweet, only 4" over stock too. The customer wanted to keep it low, we are also installing fiberglass bed sides and fenders, 6-1/2" buldge.

Simon

d0ubledown

really zuk? i was told by the guy that setup my fronts (w/ arb) that theyre like glass? and there was a 'high spot' and that caused variance in the BL around that high spot? i always thought the PG's were good..and heard nothing bad about em. but its a front diff..so not used as much and wasnt too worried about it. maybe fronts & rears differ quality wise?

to the OP...grinding off a tooth is just unheard of. definitely do NOT go to that shop. i payed CDN$200/diff and thats elocked rear and arb installed front...diffs were out of the truck & brought in...

perhaps check out xjfetish's shop. id definitely go with one thats done arbs and knows toys...

bruzer

DO NOT GRIND THE GEARS. Its not needed, and the person that told you needed too is a jack @$$ and dosen't belong working on toyota's.

xjfetish

That price I quoted was for doing the job on the truck, bring the diff to me and I will do it for $400. Front and rear do not differ in quality at all. I will be putting some cut down Unimog axles in a 91 4runner in about 3 months. When the website is up I will post pics of all of the work. We are getting about 20 pairs of unimog axles in the near future.

Simon

jetboy

That shop probably does a lot of landcruisers. It's very common, well 100% common I suppose to grind a tooth on the rear ring gear for the installation of the center pin on c-clip axles. Unless you have some way to set up the diff while the third and axle shafts are in the housing. This is on low gear sets such as 5.29, 4.88 ect because the ring gear is too thick for the center pin to fit. I have not ever heard of this becoming a strength problem. Granted the lc diff is a bit larger and stronger. The ring gear is sufficiently thick, your only grinding the corner of a gear which is mostly outside (or inside depending on how you look at it) the wear pattern, and the pinion sheer strength is still the weak point. I think this would be similar on 8" toyota diffs, however they should not need to grind a tooth unless you have some sort of c-clip axle, which I doubt you do.

Anyway they may be thinking landcruiser axles. Set up is similar, but I'd probably want someone who knows the difference to do mine.

good luck.

d0ubledown

that makes sense...although the way the OP worded it...sounded like they were going to completely grind off a tooth? nope..we dont have C's in the 8"

jetboy

Another set up issue that I have not seen mentioned here was the difference between a crush sleeve and using solid shims for pinion depth. Some folks I know are very particular about only using solid shims. I personally have never had problems with crush sleeves, but you might search about the differences and why solid shims might be better.

xjfetish

First I have never set up a landcruiser diff., but have heard that you don't install 4.56 gear set but instead use a 4.57 gear set. The ford 9" has them same problem with the same solution. The 4.57 has a thinner ring gear and will work just fine and close enough ratio to match the 4.56 for the front.

The difference between the sleeve and the shims:

Shims cannot colapse or move due to constant torque input or from the shaft being too short and slamming into the pinion (but then you have a bigger problem than just the sleeve), but are harder to set up.

The sleeve can colapse and I have seen them colapse. I prefer the shims as I don't like the idea of the pinion getting loose and causing further damage. Therefore on all setups I use the shims.

Chainlink

I have a couple of Heep buddies, and one in particular swapped in the ford 8.8 with yukon gears and to install his elocker a tooth had to be ground down, not sure if more than one but I know at least one as I was looking at it the other day and said " Crap dude you have a chipped tooth" He explained it was needed to fit somthing or other. Jetboy basically described what my buddy did, but I drifted off in my own thoughts so I only caught half of it.

I asked if this was common and he mentioned a few others we know and they had to do the same, It was a clean install and the tooth was only partialy ground a taper if you will. But the 8.8 is a c clip set up also(like Jet refered).