Yesterday was not a good mod day. I picked up a V6 3rd member with ARB and 5.29s from Pirate a week ago for a pretty good price. Yesterday my friend and I go to put it in and everything went fairly smoothly. Took out the axles, replaced the axle seals, dropped the old 3rd and cleaned up around the area. Had a few hiccups here and there, but not that bad for a couple people who have never done anything like this.

We manage to wrestle the 62 pound ARB'd 3rd into position and bolted up. I go to re-attach the drive shaft and discover the bolt holes don't match up!!!! . At this point we've been working on the truck for 4-5 hours and when I found out the d-shaft didn't fit I lost all my energy. Bleh. So we figure out the best solution is to have a new driveshaft built or change out the U joint.

We continue to put everything back together and everything went smoothly until I try to put the passenger brake drum back on and discover it wouldn't fit. We think it got re-adjusted when we removed the e-brake cable. After about an hour we finally get the drum back on. We started at 5pm and I walked back into my apt at 1:30am. I removed my driveshaft and drove home in 4wd.

What a day.

 

Cant you take of the flange and just change the flanges on the diffs. As long as the spline count is the same it should work I think. I think you have to be carefull when you tighten the flange nut since there is something like a crush sleeve behind it from what I understand. Maybe somebody else can chime in here.

 

I'm not sure if I want to mess with the crush spacer/mesh of the gears.

I was just looking on the marlin site and saw they sell a flange that's drilled for both a 85 CV and a non-CV so that must be the difference. I wonder if I can just drill a new set of holes? I'm going to call up a driveshaft place on monday and ask their opinion. I'm not sure if that flange material is easy to drill though.

Edit: did some searching, figured it out. There are several bolt patterns out there and most people just drill new holes.

 

Let me re-echo the redrill idea.

There are several flanges. My third had two bolt patterns.

The drums are annoying as well, but resolvable. Keep up on little things like this, then you will have visions of grandeur.

Good luck.

 

I was just gonna say, drill a new set of holes, since there are 2 different bolt patterns, but after reading more of this thread, I see you already found the answer. Out at hammers a guy busted his driveshaft and we had to drill out a flange so he could use an axle someone loaned him. It was a PITA to hand drill them holes...... It would be easier to just buy one of Marlins flanges and bolt it in.

 

Damn Steve - ya beat me getting that bad boy in there. I guess there are some benefits to being a tortoise at getting around to things.

Did you find our what the 3rd came out of? I wonder if the trucks and 4Runners had different flanges - or if this changed over the years within the models too?

Sorry for your problems Steve, but thank you for sharing your experience. I'll be watching out for that now.

 

Getting ready for Pismo, I see
Sorry to hear about all the aggravation though - that's a bummer.

 

I'll just chalk this up to one of lifes lessons and one of the benifits of "learn by doing".

Mike, here's what I found so far on Pirate about the flanges and years:
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showt...veshaft+flange

I think I'll be going through the FAQ more closely. I figured you didn't know about this so you were going to be the first to know.

It turns out Roger Brown, who is the vice president of my club, has a jig for drilling the toyota patterns. That's the way I'm going to do it. The easiest way is to do it on a drill press but I really don't want to take out that 3rd again.

So right now I'm running around with 5.29s in the back and 4.88s in the front . I'll have to remedy that before pismo.

 

The jig worked like a charm. Mike, I would recommend that you check the pattern before you install the 3rd. Although, it was pretty easy to drill the holes with the 3rd under the truck, I'd imagine it's even easier with it out. Using the driveshaft itself as a jig while drilling won't work because the d-shaft is in the way of the drill.

Now for the front locker...