Well here is a long update on the LX to catch everyone up. Sometime at the end of April / beginning of May I had a headlight go out. I have never been impressed with the light output of my LX, so I decided to upgrade to DDM Tuning HIDs. Since the LX comes stock with projectors, I was able to just throw them in and get a ton better lighting. I ordered 4500k 35w without a relay kit and I love the way they turned out. Unfortunately, I have a slightly weak ballast on the driver side. To fix this, I'm going to try and relay the ballasts for more power on start-up. If anyone wants to do this upgrade, order the relay kit at the same time.
Fast forward to Memorial Day Weekend and a group of friends and I were going to camp and wheel for the weekend. Since my 40 has become the never ending project, I figured I would wheel the LX. Three minutes onto my first trail, I stripped the ring gear in my front end.
To be 100% honest, this was completely user error. I was climbing a hill and my rear tire was trying to climb an undercut root. Instead of backing up a little and bumping it up and over, I was trying to use ATRAC to pull me up. I was using quite a bit of throttle when the front end caught traction and stripped the gears. I know better, but I'm also used to wheeling fully built rigs.
I ended up removing the drive flanges and front driveshaft so I could drive it with the CDL engaged. It worked well other than the handling being a bit twitchy. Now I had to decide if I was going to order new gears from Toyota ($$$$), try to find aftermarket gears (I couldn't find 4.30's aftermarket), find a used front diff (what I should have done), or re-gear to 4.88's in preparation of the 315's I want to run. I decided to go with 4.88's and not run lockers. The thought process behind not doing lockers was all financial. In fact, I really didn't have the money to re-gear right now…
After a couple emails back and forth with JustDifferentials.com and I had shinny new 4.88's gear sets, master install kits, and a shiny new rear pinion flange on it's way. I knew that I didn't have the time or space to pull out my 3rds and take them somewhere, so I started calling around to find a shop that I could trust in tackling the project. I came across Marsh Transmission in Tualatin, OR. We set up a time for me to drop off the truck and all the parts, then I set up a time to pick up a rental car while the work was being done. I was so excited!
Two days into the work, I get the first dreaded phone call. It seems the rear carrier bearings that were included in the master install kit were incorrect. The carrier has a radius where the bearing goes and the bearings included didn't.
This shows the carrier:
Here are the bearings. The one on the left is factory and the one on the right is what was provided.
Furthermore, the stock front pinion flange isn't going to work with the new gear set and there was only a rear pinion flange provided. I made a call to JustDifferentials to let them know what was going on. After some detailed conversations with Drew in Customer Service (who was awesome) and Carl himself (who is also awesome), I had a new front flange being overnighted to the shop. This was a complete miscommunication when I originally made the order and JustDifferentials thought that my LX was a 2004, which has a different pinion flange than mine. They bent over backwards to make sure to correct this situation with the least amount of difficulty to me.
As for the bearing, things were a little bit complicated. According to JustDifferentials, they have never ran into this problem on the 100's of gear installs they have performed and that was the only bearing they had. I had the choice of milling out the carrier so the new bearing fit or buying the bearings directly from Toyota. There was no way I was going to mill the carrier and weaken it, so I bit the bullet and ordered them from Toyota ($$$). My guess is the carrier changed at some point. Or maybe the ARB's don't have that radius and everyone is doing lockers at the same time. Or maybe they are putting the other bearing in and adjusting for it. I have no idea, but I wanted to make sure they were perfect.
Even with a few days of delay for the parts, Marsh Transmission was able to get it all buttoned up. They showed me the pattern on the gears and it was top notch! I had very, very little aftermarket gear whine (a credit to both Nitro gears machining and Marsh Trans techs) and the LX was a different animal. So far I was very happy! Heck, the LX even met a friend its first day back at work.
That is until I took it on the highway and realized I had a horrible driveline vibration…
I took it back to Marsh Trans to check everything out (which was scheduled before I picked up my LX the first time) and I explained the driveline vibration. I expressed that it was not there when I dropped the truck off, so maybe a driveshaft was put together out of phase? It felt like I had a bent driveshaft. They put the truck up on the rack and before they could start diagnosing anything, we found out both front and rear pinion seals were leaking. After they had the truck for a day, they found that the front pinion flange was out of round. That was causing the driveline vibration. They also found that the pinon seals were rubbing on the flanges. Apparently you need to push those seals in farther than usual with the new pinion flanges the JustDifferentials provides.
After a few more days and conversations with both the shop and Carl and JustDifferentials, I had another new front flange on it's way and a new rear pinion seal. This pinion seal on the rear is proprietary and you can only get it from Nitro, just in case anyone is curious. I also ordered a new front pinion seal from Toyota directly. Carl expressed to me that he chucked up the new pinon flange in a lathe and checked for run-out. It was running true. As soon as it got to Marsh, they chucked it up in their lathe to check and there was no run-out. However, both of these checks can't be done by the splines. They are done by clamping on the outside of the flange.
Marsh transmission got everything bolted up and there was still run-out on the new flange. It wasn't nearly as bad as the first one, but it was enough to see without a dial indicator. They did take a bad cell phone video and sent it to me so that I could see how much run-out the is. I know it is really blurry, but all you really need to see is how much the needle moves on the gauge:
Here is the video ->
http://vid6.photobucket.com/albums/y210/iconprez/Land Cruiser/IMG952364_zps42ubfeaq.mp4
Knowing how differentials work, there is no way that movement can be internal. The only place that can be is if the splined hole through the center of the pinion flange is off center by a hair. This is confirmed in the fact that the run-out was different between the two flanges. In hindsight, I should have ordered the Toyota pinion flange and used that one from the start. The problem is that flange has been taken on and off so many times that the gears are now set up too tight and I'm starting to get gear whine. If we pull it off again, I will have to re-set the gears. Carl at JustDifferentials has offered to redo that for me if I can send him the 3rd. I'm planning on doing this at some point, but I need to find a place for the truck to sit so I can pull that 3rd out and send it off. If they need to be re-set anyway, maybe I will sell a kidney and throw an ARB in at the same time.
Meanwhile, in all of this I finally went a leased a new car to be my daily driver. The plan is to live with the vibrations for now and deal with it once my checkbook has recovered a bit. I think the long term plan is to get my 40 drivable enough to sell (or sell it now if someone wants a project for cheap) and build the 100 the way I have wanted it since I bought it. Short term goal is to drive down to Southern Oregon to test out the new gears on the McGrew Trail with Jefferson State Cruisers. I'm excited to see how she does and hopefully it will restore my passion.
All detailed up for McGrew:
