i have a 96 taco and was wondering if i spooled the rear of my truck if it would still be daily driver worthy

 

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f31/...legends-51513/

 

[/thread] .....

 

Its fine if you have lots of money for tires and dont have to drive in the snow!

My 92 has a spool....and snowy hard packed roads are no fun. But you cane beat the traction in the dirt!

 

I'll let you know cuz I'm doin it! After finally reading the "truth about spools" thread I'm sold. I'm going to find a junkyard carrier (I need to regear anyway) to use as my guinea pig though so I can weld it out of the housing-seems a lot easier that way. I'm just worried about getting weld spatter on the axle shafts or the ring gear...

 

Do you have manual locking hubs in the front? Cause if you do, it might be a good idea to spool the front. That way, when you are in 2 wheel drive on the road the front diff wont be moving and and you shouldn't have any changes in on road driving.
That is something I considered doing to my truck.

 

The jury is still out on that one. Welding the front would definitely make it an absolute beast on the trail, but I wonder if that might be slightly offset by having to constantly shift in and out of 4HI in a hypothetical situation like this one:

I do a lot of my wheeling in state forests where the roads can go from hillclimb to mud bog to flat, hardpacked, washboard gravel in the course of a mile. Locked front and rear I'll be powering through the rough stuff in 4WD, but would the welded front mean that I'd have to always remember to shift back to 2WD if I saw a curve coming up on the washboard gravel? Plus it might be a real PITA to steer anyway even in mud. I think I'm going to weld the rear first and see how I like it.

 

And you better be real good at changing CV shafts.

for the OP. You could get a matching rear end from a junkyard and weld it up (making it a spool) and try it, and if you dont like it, put your stock one back in.

 

Well whatever you end up doing, I wouldn't weld the diff. Instead I would take out your diff and put an actual spool in. They are pretty cheep in comparison to an e locker and a lot stronger and more reliable than welding the diff. like rattle wagon said. At least you would still have your diff if you decided to go back.
Also, if you have power steering, it shouldn't be that hard to drive in four wheel drive on gravel or anything else.

 

Two of my brother-in-laws did that and didn't like it. An automatic locker (Aussie, Spartan, etc.) is cheap (particularly after you factor in the cost of replacing tires). Or use a limited slip if you have an automatic transmission. Even better is an air locker, but they are expensive.

 

Depends on your skill level I guess. I don't know how to set up gears and would rather leave it to a pro if I need such a thing done. However, that's an easy $200-300 right there on top of the $150 spool. The "cheap spool" has now become $350-450 not counting any parts that might need to be replaced as a result of disassembling the carrier. Welding is as cheap as a few rods, some scrap steel, a crap load of brake cleaner, and fresh gear oil. I actually dug up an old post where a guy took some spare gears and inserted them into the carrier for more surface to weld on-looked pretty strong. In other news check out my new sig-this thread reminded me of an old post I ran across from rattlewagon about running 35s with no lift-I decided it should be my new motto