I own a 1997 RZJ90 Land Cruiser Prado which shares the same front IFS as a Tacoma or 3rd Gen runner (No ABS). I want to switch to manual hubs, but how do I know if my truck comes with ADD or Auto hubs? is there an easy way to determine this?

I understand that If it is an ADD the swap is a bit more complicated (and more expensive too?)

Used the search but couldnt find anything...

 

Do you have the owner's manual? Not making a joke because it may actually say which you have.

 

Good call Eric! Didn't think of it (duh)

Will check.

 

Im pretty sure they never put auto hubs on the Tacos or 3rd gen 4runners. Just the crappy ADD

 

May I ask what the difference is between ADD and Auto Hubs?

Clueless from California.

 

ADD - Instead of hubs, you have flanges that make your axle shafts turn witht the wheel and they cannot be disconnected. This also has the actualor in the diff to disconnect one of the axle shafts at the diff. This is what is on your 3rd gen.

Auto Hubs - From what I know about them, they automaticly lock when you engage 4WD and unlock when you take it out of 4WD. Im pretty sure they never put Auto Hubs on Tacos or 3rd gens.

 

No mention to autohubs or ADD in the manual, but I guess i do have ADD.

Does this mean that i cant just buy bolt-on manual hubs? Do I have to change the whole CV axle unit for one compatible with hubs?

I saw some conversion kits for around $1000 (scary) is that what i'd need? Hopefully not.

 

From what I understand if you (we) have ADD the cv's do have to be swapped out so the ends are the type that the locking hubs can actuate. So yeah I think we are looking at spending some big $$$$.

 

The reason i started thinking about the whole manual hub swap thing is because I've seen a few Monteros break the "autohubs" on the trail, and all my previous rigs had factory hubs (CJ7, Samurai and Hilux) Yes, people do wheel the Mitsus pretty hard here

Is that an issue with Toyota's ADD system? Do they tend to fail on the trail?

 

Ah. Gottit.
Don't sweat it then, you won't be breaking the ADD mechanism.
Yes, auto hubs were crap, not only were there situations where you couldn't rely on them to engage (or to stay engaged) but they would break (kabang clank crunch clank crunch...) at the worst possible moments...

 

I have never heard of the ADD actuator failing.

 

It shares a lot with the 3rd Gen Surf, if you had the LWB version it would have an identical chassis and suspension to the Surf.

From your question I assume you have selectable 4wd, strange as in the European and Japanese markets these are permenant 4wd vehicles AFAIK.

 

You're right Morr, it's not very common to see the configuration i have, SWB, Selectable 4WD and 2.7 3RZ gas engine. Very rare, even here in Chile, but in Venezuela and Ecuador you see lots of them. In Venezuela they call the short wheelbase model Prado MERU, and in Ecuador Prado SUMO.

By the way, I see that you have some Colorado stuff on your runner. That's just another name for the Prado, right? Can you recommend European stores to find aftermarket accesories for my Prado? Is it called Land Cruiser Colorado? Do they call it Land Cruiser Challenger as well? Never seen a vehicle with so many different names.

Thx!

 

Here in Ireland and in the UK (possibly in the rest of Europe - not sure) the smaller Landcruisers are called Landcruiser Colorado's, whilst the larger (100 series?) are called the Landcruiser Amazon. The Japanese home market also uses the name Prado.

I mainly have Colorado bits on mine as the Surf/4Runner has never been available in Ireland (mines a secondhand import from Japan), whilst the Landcruiser Colorado was the biggest selling 4x4 here for a number of years, so its easier to order parts for it where feasible rather than confuse the suppliers

Sorry I don't have any specific places to recommend to you, I tend to get most of my bits from normal garages, dealers etc here. You could try asking at http://www.landcruiser-rocks.co.uk or http://www.tlocuk.co.uk/

 

Guys, I'm new to this site, just wanted to say hello from Colombia! I own an RZJ90 2005, here called Prado Sumo, they are assembled in Colombia and sold here and exported to Venezuela and Ecuador.

Mine's got Yokohama's Geolandar MT+ 265/75-16, Safari Snorkel, OME Suspension and Warn M8000 Winch, will post a pic. soon.

Saludos,

Alvaro.

 

Hola Alvaro, Welcome to Yotatech, you'll find tons of useful information on this site. My RZJ90 is japanese built, but I've seen the Colombian built ones and couldn't find any differences at first sight.


Looking forward to those pics!

 

You sure about that? I was under the impression this was the case with the auto hubs, but with drive flanges, you can direct swap. We did this on a 40, and the reason i think this is the same is because the drive flanges are just hubs that don't move. Perhaps its different on IFS.

 

Gracias Tepui, will post some pics soon. Here there are very few japanese versions and yes they are exactly the same, differences are in assembly quality (colombian being fair, japanese obviously being better) and a few parts which are made locally and not imported from Japan (glasses, rims, tyres, seats) but everything else is japanese made, assembled locally.

Here in Colombia happens the same as in Chile, people use the Prados to go to the office and the mall, mine and a maybe a couple more are the only ones being used for what they were built for.

In Venezuela things are a bit different, there are some serious offroaders using Prados. Take a loot at this club. There they call it "Meru".

http://groups.msn.com/ClubMeruVenezu...venezuela.msnw

Saludos,

Alvaro.

 

Hi Alvaro, I'm a Venezuelan, so I'm familiar with the Club Meru, in fact I've been trying to contact them to join our new 90 series tech section in ih8mud.

Ecuador has a large Prado following too, they run a race called Pura Tracción: http://www.puratraccion.com

nice to see you here,

 

Ok Tepui, will join ih8mud then, interesting.