Well I went ahead with this swap, and thought I'd do a little write up on it and share my experiences.
Start with one TRD axle out of a Tacoma or a 4Runner. Mine was from a 4Runner so it probably had more brackets to cut off due to the linked rear suspension. These axles are available in 3 gear ratios, to my knowledge, 4.10, 4.30, 4.56. I was luck enough to get the 4.30 ratio, it's a long story how this happened, if you want to know about it ask me sometime, because I don't want to type it out.
Once I cleaned it up it was time to weld on perches and shock mounts and set pinion angle.
After some paint it was ready to go in. Note the flange instead of the yoke.
Here is what I had to do to use my current drive shaft. I have a XJ front shaft in the rear, this a 1310 U-joint to Toyota flange.
The next thing I had to tackle was the brake lines. I bought some lines from O'Reillys and bent up my own. Since they come in certain lengths I had to add extra bends to eat some length. I then used my regular brake line and attached it to the breather port on the housing. This is how the stock lines work, but I had to drill and tap the housing so I could use the original bolt. The breather locations are different from my stock axle and the Toy axle, the Toy breather location is more centrally located so I may need a longer flex line. I then had to get an adapter to work with the 3/16" ends to go to the 10mm fitting. Here you can see the junction block and breather line, you can see the motor that runs the locker.
I drove it like this for a while, but my shock mounts were way to high and would cause my shocks to bottom out over a little bump. So I made some shock mounts that would drop them down a little bit. I needed about 1" more before I hit my bump stops, I got about 2" from the new dropped location.
Comparison shot.
In this picture you can see the new lower location of the shock mount, the break line adapter, the back off plate I had to make for the ABS sensor, and my ghetto bump stops.
After relocating the shock mounts I don't bottom out anymore.
That's about all it took to get it under the Jeep and make it driveable.
My thoughts on this swap:
Lower gears are good, this thing drives more like stock.
The brakes on the Toy axle are bigger, I can really tell a difference when stopping.
I don't currently have a parking/emergency brake, I am going to work something out eventually and I'll try to update this when I do.
I don't have the locker wired up yet, once again I'll try to update this when I do.
For the price of everything, I ended up with a stronger axle with lower gears, better brakes, and a selectable locker, for less than I could have bought a selectable for and had it installed. I'll try to put a parts list together of what I used.
Let me know what you think, whether I did it right or wrong, good or bad.
