why, OH WHY, can I not seem to dig up any info about this anywhere on the interwebs... I KNOW this has to have been done before...

Here's the scenario. I have an 06 Tacoma SR5 Prerunner 2wd, no locker in the rear. I would LOVE to put an OEM E-locker in the truck out of a TRD model.

Not going aftermarket, the obvious easy option would be swapping out the entire rear axle and wiring it up. But short of doing that, can just the 3rd members be interchanged?

Immediate pro: I'm only 2wd, so I don't have to worry about matching the gear ratio to a front drivetrain , but of coarse as close to original would be nice, but a little lower gearing wouldn't hurt either. To be honest, I think the truck is over-geared as it is; it does NOT like to stay in gear with the cruise control on... Not exactly sure what's in the truck now, I'd have to check.

Because of where I work and ultimately how I would end up getting said axle or 3rd member, price really isn't going to be an issue between the two, but obviously the less expensive the better, and if I can get away with just using the 3rd member it would be cheaper. But at the same rate, if getting the entire axle is only going to cost me like $50 more, and it'll bolt right into place, I may go that route. That's also why I'm leaning towards an OEM locker instead of aftermarket; I should be able to source an OEM one fairly easily through work (in fact, I could have one tomorrow if I wanted, lol).

I've already gotten an OEM dash switch from work, and I have no fears about wiring it up; shouldn't be that difficult, or at least I can't imagine it being.


Any thoughts?

 

Yes it can be done. check out this page http://www.gearinstalls.com/ He is a member on here. I know that on the older pickups and 4runners the third members will not bolt up without modifications to the housing. But with a little mods it will fit! As for the tacos I have no clue what will fit and what will not.

 

Yeah I knew about the retrofit on the older models. When I had my 91 I was going to put a later model e-locker in it actually, but ended up getting rid of the truck before that ever happened

 

Thats a bummer! Good luck with the taco! Sorry I couldnt be more help.

 

Buy me a plane ticket and I'll retrofit your rear axle for you.

 

A direct bolt on swap of the entire axle would be the easiest. Otherwise, as long as your current axle is 8" you'd be doing some cutting, welding, and taping.

 

Yeah that's what I was thinking; same as with retrofitting an E-locker 3rd in an older axle. I've got the boss looking it over for me; should know what he'll let me have a complete axle for tomorrow I looked them up in our computer system myself and they're not a very hot item; sells TONS of the non locking ones, but honestly not many locking ones, so that's a good thing, for me anyway!


I do have step one though I suppose I could just stick this in the dash and pretend

 

It hurts when you ignore me.....

 

sooo what are you gonna do for a dash light?

 

I'm not ignoring, just caring on with the conversation after obvious sarcasm

That is a fantastic question... I'll bring a multimeter to work with me tomorrow and pull a cluster apart and see if I can't track down the wire that leads to turning the diff lock LED indicator on, assuming it would be that simple. That would be awesome because then I would just have to make it get power when the button is engaged. Otherwise I'm going to have to get really creative, lol

interesting thing is, Toyota must use the same cluster no mater how equipped, because my original cluster has the LED's in place for the 4wd indicators, and most importantly the locker indicator. I just double checked by looking at some old photos of when I pulled the cluster apart and changed the LED's over to blue ones





that change over turned out fantastically by the way; still loving the look of it

 

Yay!!!!!

 

Really got the two bosses at work thinking today about this. The non-locking diff in my truck sells for sure and we don't have any in stock, but the locking one that I want we've NEVER sold. And mine only has 72k miles on it and the one I want has 113k on it. Might end up getting the complete axle for a lot less than I anticipated stay tuned...

 

Made the deal today; I'll be bringing home the complete axle and the wiring harness for it Friday, the axle's going in this weekend, and I'll bring my original one back to them Monday! May or may not get the electronics worked out over the weekend, but I will at least have the axle under the truck

Here's the donor vehicle; an 06 Prerunner TRD. Took a serious hit to the front left... I'm also getting the TRD floor mats out of it, just 'cause

 

Nice score!!!!!


Still haven't seen a plane ticket in the mail.......

 

lol

My buddy at work (actually use to be my boss before I moved up in the world and into the office ) is going to come over and help me. Truthfully, all I'm going to need a hand with is to get the axle out of the back of my truck at my house and then get my original one back into my truck at the end of the day. I'm not going to let him put a wrench on my truck... He's a Chevy guy, I've seen how he works on his truck

 

Lawlz....!

 

Pulled the axle out of the donor truck today. Was HOPING that the harness for it would be a stand alone harness that I could yank out, but no dice on that... it ties into the fuel pump harness and runs all the way up into the cab... And the only reason I thought that it might be a stand alone harness is because last week I pulled the 110v outlet system off the truck, and it does have it's own harness down the passenger side frame rail. So, I just cut the harness off between the frame and plug for the locker and I'll be making my own. Shouldn't be too difficult. There's a lot of wires, but since I'm making my own harness I might be able to not use some of them; I need to take a close look at the schematic in the FSM and see what wires do what, but I'm pretty sure I remember reading that some are for locked and unlocked signals for the ECU and what not; stuff I'm probably not going to worry too much about if I'm making my own harness. I'm going to probe the OEM dash button and see what wires do what, and I'll probably just end up using it and a relay to engage the locker also light the LED in the cluster. Also snagged the Bilstein shocks in the rear too Not that it matters; down the road I plan to put about 3" on it, so those shocks will be going out the door then (have some nice RaceRunner coil overs at work for the front that I plan on bolting in )

 

hmmm... looking at the schematics, this may not be as easy as I hoped, LOL...

 

Never mind, I dug up exactly what I needed Complete schematic using a DPDT relay

Ask and thou shall receive, but not without a BUNCH of digging through a ton of forum threads

 

Why didn't you just use the locker ecu........?