The Madness Continues!!!!! - Phase II

The awesome that was the Dually axle lasted about 4 months, after that I wanted MOAR AWESOME!!!!!!!! I wanted 4x4 capabilities! However I wanted to do 4x4 right, and that meant only one thing.....

SOLID FRONT AXLE!!!!!!!!!!

Amongst the Mini truck community and general wheeling comunity, the Toyota solid front axle is legendary (barring HD axle swaps such as a Dana 60 or the like), for it's stock durability and it's mod-ability (that's a thing right?). However this axle was only available for 6 years on Toyota pickups. the first gen Toyota pickup 4x4 had them it's entire model run (1979-1983 M.Y.), the Gen II toyota pickup only came with a solid front axle in the first two years of the run (1984-1985 M.Y.), that was before I was born. As you can imagine those trucks are a tad rare and even harder to locate one for sale at a bargain price...and the one I wanted came from those last two years only, and I wanted an ex-cab model.... in a word: slim pickings. After hunting around on craigslist for two months I located the sacrificial lamb. All the way out in Idaho, after convincing read tricking) my dad into driving 7 hours out to Idaho to see the truck with a u-haul trailer and another 7 hours back home with the rust bucket of a sacrifice, I had what I needed to take The Revenant to the next level!

It wasn't much to look at, but it had a decent chassis and THIS:

THAT is the legendary toyota solid front axle!!!!!

Now hold on a sec there matey! Why would I want to go through all this searching and hunting just to get a solid front axle? Solid axles are old school tech, they do not lend themselves well to on road handling, they do not make for a very soft ride, and they are not significantly better than an independent suspension in most off road terrain. Never mind how heavy a solid axle set up is...

In a word: reliability

Solid axles can go through an apocalypse of a beating before running a significant risk of failure. In a Solid axle the actual half shafts that deliver torque and power to the wheels are fully encased and have no risk of various bits of grit chipping them increasing the risk of axle failure. Also there are fewer moving parts which as a rule means maintenance is easier and cheaper. In the case of the Toyota solid front axle vs the Toyota independent suspension (which is what replaced the solid axle in 1986) the actual half shafts are bigger (30 spline hubs vs. 27 spline hubs) and the front ring gear is an 8 inch ring gear rather than the 7.5 inch ring gear used in the IFS set up in later models. never mind that having two fewer cv joints means less total torque loss along the axle itself. Also the hubs are full float on the front axle as well, which also leads to better reliability and durability

Considering my goals for this truck, where weight really isn't a concern, and I want something reliable and excessively durable capable of carrying heavy loads over all but the harshest of off road terrains. I think it is obvious why the solid front axle is the better choice by far.

It took the entire summer of 2012 to tear down, rebuild, replace, carryover, and reassemble The Revenant into a one of a kind, 4x4 1-ton dually pickup with a solid front axle.

I began with rebuilding the front axle

Cleaning it off and painting it

Upgrading the brakes

Then I moved to gutting the interior in preparation for modifying the wiring harness to accept the fuel injected engine from the 2wd truck:

I also took the time to clean out the inside and get rid of the dead mouse that had died in the air system:

Next it was time to swap in the dually axle:

But before it could go in it needed the 3rd member (diff carrier) that matched the front axle. See with a 4x4, you need to make sure that the front and rear ring and pinion ratios match (assuming similar sized tires/wheels front and rear) otherwise when you shift into 4x4 mode you torsionally load the drive line, because of the different rates of rotation in the front and rear axles, which then would lead to snapped drivelines or more likely a blown up transfer case. So out with the old and in with the... old?

Now dear reader at this point you might be thinking I'm COMPLETELY BONKERS, mixing and matching all these random parts to make this truck, throwing in a heavy duty axle into a little 4x4 mini truck...you might even be thinking "what's so great about this 'Dually Axle' anyways?!? Isn't the stock 4x4 axle on this truck good enough?!"

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dually axle is pure WIN, but I'll let the below picture do the talking, the black axle is the dually axle and the tan/dirty/rusted one is the stock 1984 4x4 rear axle

While the center diff area might be similar (they both use an 8 inch ring gear, 4.11 ratio if you care to know) you might notice that the actual axle tubes are a bit thicker on the dually, and then there are the hubs which, frankly, speak for themselves.

Now it was time to swap out the engine. The 4x4 had a poorly tuned carburated 22R, the engine I was putting into it at this time was the fuel injected 22R-E, same base engine, just fuel injected. I'm personally not a huge fan of carburated engines in general, they are overly fussy, and don't deliver great amounts of power and easily fall out of tune. modern fuel injected engines are just in general much better... but you are certainly entitled to your own opinion

Out with the old:

and in with the new (ish):

Once that was done it was time to finish up some of the body work, and swapping the pickup bed (and just gawking at how awesome the dually axle is all over again):

Then the day of Doom came.... IT LIVES!!!!!!

you can see what is left of the 2WD husk of a truck on the left. but the truck still needed painting and then it was time to drive it cross country so I could get to school on time!

This is how the truck looked as it took me cross country the first time, clearly madder than the Dually 1-Ton 2WD, but over the course of the next year The Revenant would really begin to earn it's horns...

The Madness Begins: Phase 1

This is an ordinary, 1987 2 wheel drive Toyota pickup. Nothing ostentatious, nothing offensive, nothing particularly out of the ordinary. The man behind the wheel however has plans to change all that. This is day one, October 22, 2011...

The truck is the first generation of Toyota's X-cab model, which stretches the cab and adds approximately 9 inches of storage space behind the seats of the cab. There were no additional jump seats behind the driver and passenger seat in these early models, that was the reason this generation of Toyota truck was chosen. I don't want passengers in excess of 1 in my truck. This is the only model of truck that gives me the seating capacity of a regular cab truck but with the ability to recline by driver's seat. This is, in my opinion, the perfect pick-up truck cab arrangement.



November 5, 2011, This is the official start of Phase 1.

What is "Phase 1", you might ask. Phase 1 was fairly simple and straight forward. Getting rid of the little half ton axle that the truck came with, and replacing it with the full float 1-ton dually axle. This axle pictured above came as pictured from a local scrap yard. I would need to completely dissassemble the axle and re-build it. Which I did over the course of the following two months



This is what the Dually hub looked like after I got the wheels off, and began pulling out the half shafts. Notice how the shafts flange at the end and fit onto the bolts on the hub? This is why full-floating axles are great, because the hub is supported by the axle housing, the half shaft is only stressed in a torsion mode (as it transmits engine power to the wheels) but is not stressed in shear like a semi float axle would be. this means the half shaft itself can break, crack, explode, and the wheels will not fall off!



Meanwhile some other important modifications were made to the interior...



You can see how the axle housing extends out to support the two hub bearings. The halfshaft fits inside that extended axle tube and the flange "reaches around" to connect directly to the hub and provide torque to the wheels.



This is the back end of the hub sans brake drum. the brake drum bolts onto the back of the hub and an oil/grease seal fits into the inside of the hub back.



These are the stock Toyota 1-Ton leaf springs that connect the axle to the truck, as you will see in a few pictures they are quite a bit more... robust... than the stock half ton springs...



Bare axle housing cleaned, painted and ready for installation



Stock, 2 wheel drive semi float half ton axle, note the differences between the leaf springs on this axle and the leaf springs about to be installed...



There should be several noticeable differences between the 1-ton axle and the half ton axle... One might notice that the 1 ton axle is a bit...beefier... maybe...?



At this point in the night I was excited in the extreme... not only had the stock 1 ton springs added about 4 inches of lift to the rear end, but the axle was actually installed, my little truck was now a dually! On January 3rd, 2012 I could now cross off "own a Dually pickup" from my bucket list







 This was so COOL!!! The little kid inside me was jumping up and down with joy as I gazed upon the start of my creation... This truck was starting to really turn into the Mad Truck I had always wanted it to be... I also thought up a name for it around this point, at the close of Phase 1. I started to realize that this truck was a bit of a "Franken-truck" a truck assembled from components from other trucks, some of which had died. For example the rear axle was originally out of a 1990 Toyota U-Haul Box truck. While at this stage it was really just an other wise healthy truck with grafted legs, it struck me that my truck was, as far as other cars and trucks were concerned, an undead truck...

a re-animated corpse...

a revenant...

and in that moment I realized what my truck's name was...

"The Revenant"


However mad the truck was at this point, still wasn't insane enough for me, no it needed more... and thus the idea for Phase II was born...

A Breif History of Madness

Welcome, this blog is to chronicle the creation of my pickup truck. If you are familiar with my truck then you might be wondering why would I go in the direction I did? Why not a rock crawler or mud bogger? Why not restore the truck to factory stock?

What in good God's green earth would compel someone to build a truck like this?!

Well...

Perhaps some context is required before I explain further...

Like most young children I watched Disney movies as a kid. One of those movies in particular struck a special chord inside me, it was a slightly lesser known movie, called "The Rescuers Down Under", Don't ask me about the plot of that movie, all I remember is some kid getting kidnapped and some mice saved him yadda yadda yadda touchey feel goodness.... YUCK! Point is this dear reader this movie had the most epic of all epic vehicles in it (excepting maybe Death Race), the Half-Track!

Feast your eyes:






















 This Truck was my childhood fantasy vehicle. Anytime anyone asked me what sort of car I wanted to have I would always reply "I want a Half Track!"

As I got a few years older I was introduced to another influence Mad Max, and it's post apocalyptic vehicular epicness, go HERE to see what I mean

Ok now that you have some idea about my formative years and what sort of movies influenced me (not the ones my parents intended I think) you might understand why I built my rig the way I did.

I wanted a truck that could haul long distance, that meant reliability. I wanted to be able to comfortably travel over ice, snow, sand, gravel, really anything one could concieveably carry a load over, hence why I didn't want a rock crawler, but it did need to be a rugged 4x4. And i wanted a dually, because duallies are awesome, and nobody is going to tell me otherwise. I didn't want a newer truck either, I'm not a fan of all the gizmos and do-dads more modern trucks have in them. I like just a basic sound system, and fuel injection and that is it, no power windows, no power seats, and NO AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSIONS!!!!!

Now at this point one might ask: well why not just get a Ford F-350 4x4 Dually or a Dodge 3500 Ram 4x4 Dually or an old Chevy of similar size. Well that's just it. SIZE, those trucks are HUGE and WIDE. That and the only older ones that are still running are typically the Diesels, and very few of these trucks were mated with a manual transmission. Also their engines were huge! While I have exactly Zero problems with big engines, at the time I started this project I was on a very tight budget, being a college student, and there was no way I could afford to feed a large displacement engine. What I needed and wanted was a mini-truck

But wait, mini-trucks don't come with Dually axles!

Not entirely true...

you see in the late 80's and early 90's Toyota sold 1 ton cab and chassis trucks to several RV companies and to U-haul. A few of those trucks might have also made it to other commercial buyers but I'm less sure about that. In the end the only real difference between these trucks and the regular "half-ton" trucks sold at the dealer to the regular customer was the rear axle. The 1-ton cab and chassis trucks came with a native 1-ton, full float, dual wheel rear axle, while the "half-ton" trucks had a semi-float single rear wheel half-ton axle comparable to any other mini truck sold by any other manufacturer (go HERE to see why full float is awesome for trucks). the chassis on these trucks only differs by length, the ladder frame is exactly the same, same wall gauge thickness, same size of frame rail... in essence the only thing making an older Toyota truck a "half-ton" truck is the half ton axle under it, not the chassis. I should note that this is only true for Toyota trucks built before '94 which is when toyota introduced the Tacoma and quit selling the Hilux in the US.

Older Toyota trucks are a favorite of off roadsters, because parts are relatively cheap and the trucks have fairly good stock quality for 4x4 capabilities, however this makes the 4x4 trucks a bit more expensive than the regular 2x4 trucks, especially if the truck is equipped with the Toyota solid front axle. So I first purchased a 2x4 truck to convert to a dually just to get a feel for how much work a full fleged 4x4 swap would be... More on that in the overview of Phase 1