ive heard that 5.29's will break on you often. this is my daily driver/weekend warrior so once those gears are in they are staying there forever. plan is to run 5.29's with 35's of some sort and a rear locker. about 90% road driving. should be close to stock ratio which is good. the only thing thats scaring me is hearing that i can break the teeth on those gears. if what i hear is true then im going to 4.88's and 33's.

 

the taller the gear ratio, the thinner the teeth. The only way to have the same thickness of teeth in a 5.29s as thick as stock or somethin close to stock is having a bigger ring. Proabably why I doubt I'll ever go bigger than 33's, among other reasons.

 

If you go through the proper break-in technique, you should be fine. The only time I've heard of them breaking is through a lot of abuse (heavy rock crawling and such), or improper break-in technique.

 

What he said

 

Check out Zuk's site. It is simply not true.

http://www.gearinstalls.com/410suck.htm

James

 

holy crap man, so with a set of high qualty gears, proper break in technique, an install person who knows what there doing, and sythetic oil i should be okay running 5.29's and 35's on my daily driver

 

I am.

 

how long have you been running them? and what brand of gears did you buy?

 

2 years.
I don't know what brand they were, I don't particularly care. I just asked a few shops for quotes and then took in my thirds to have them done.
I have a hard time believing that there are companies out there making gears that do an inferior job of it. For such a relatively small market, a consistently bad product would not sell for long. (until we start seeing cheap Chinese gears, but that's unlikely since it's such a small market.) It might make a difference if I was a pro rock crawler or something, but for 99% of the rest of us, gears is gears.

Buddy of mine runs 5.29s and 35s, then 36s, now 37s - has had the same gears without any problems for 11 years.

 

My last 4Runner - an 85 - has the same set of 5.29's in the truck today as it did when the previous owner installed them in his PREVIOUS truck almost 15 years ago. Figure there's close to 200K miles on those gears. Couple of bad pinion bearings, but not a single gearing problem.

Nothing wrong w/ 5.29's AT ALL.

My curren 5.29's have been abused by the PO and are in great shape.

 

Stay away from 4Wheel Part's house brand (Genuine?). They are not the best. I don't like Richmond either. I like Yukon and Precision.

 

I second that.

So in short:

• Get a good brand.
• Get installed the right way (be picky).
• Follow the break-in procedure like it's your new religion.

Do those, and enjoy your gears for a long time.

 

you could always cryo the gears for that extra peace of mind.

 

thanks for posting that. i was gonna if i didn't see it up already. GREAT site with a levelheaded captain at the helm.

 

quick question about this. i'm planning on getting 4.88's this spring. i'm at the mercy of someone else to do the installation, because i don't know how to do it, nor do i have the space to do the work. so if someone else does the installation, how do i know if it's done right and what do i need to be picky about?

 

Start w/ a reputable shop. ORS is in your area, I believe. Or... just send everything to Zuk.

 

my best guess or say in that would be to find a highly established 4x4 shop. going to a local mechanic or a lame shop like that the guy might know just about as much as you do.

 

Or you could do them yourself like I did.

I spent less on the tools to do the job than I would have had to pay for labor to get only one 3rd set up.

 

thats a good idea, but as good as i am of putting things back together the way they came apart. i trust my baby in the hands of the mexicans at california mini trucks than my own.

 

It's something anyone *could* do, but setting up gears is a bit of an art. It's one of those things that usually don't get done right until you've done few, but the imperfect practice runs are expensive...